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phawareglobal · 8 months

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Dawn Clarke - phaware® interview 455

Pulmonary hypertension patient, Dawn Clarke, a resident of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation in Southern Ontario. Despite her rare disease diagnosis, Dawn decided to focus on her mental health and explore her creative passions. She emphasizes the importance of looking after all aspects of one's well-being, including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. She encourages others to find their purpose and make positive changes in their lives, even in the face of challenges.

My name is Dawn Clarke. I am currently residing on the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Hagersville, Southern Ontario. This is my mother's homestead, where she's come from. She's indigenous. My father is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He is non-indigenous or what we used to call him, Caucasian. I grew up in the military life, my father was in the military. My mom was quite young when she had me and got with my dad and started moving around to different places. Life at the beginning was a little complicated for me. Both parents were strict and that's how my upbringing was with all the things that go along with that. So I became a really quiet person. I should start off too by saying that I did a have congenital heart defects and heart surgery at four months of age. Incidentally, my parents were not at the surgery, so they were about two hours away when I did my surgery. They were back home.

They didn't have a vehicle, so I had no parent there at hospital during my open heart surgery. I did find out about that years later. I believe that there's a lot of childhood traumas that help lead up to the health of where people are now into adulthood. That was something that I had to deal with. So I did get surgery at infancy. I had intended on joining the military. I had actually passed all my testing. I did really well. The only thing I was waiting for was a phone call to say, "Okay, it's basic training time, let's go." For some reason, that call never came.

I ended up going to school from nursing. When my children were one and a half and three and a half, I ended up going into nursing school. It was quite difficult to say the least as a single mom, single parent, and going through nursing school. Somehow we made it through though. With the help of family and relatives, we did get through that. But after a number of years, I had been really kind of wondering about doing mental health work. I did dabble in some training here and there with the mental health field, but it was kind of something that my brain was always wanting to lean towards.

A few years ago, I started developing shortness of breath. I was down in weight compared to where I had been for a lot of my adult life, probably about 180 pounds, which is still overweight for a short person. I started getting symptoms when I was working as a nurse. Weight started coming on again. I thought, "Oh, must not be as active as I was before." I was getting a high blood pressure readings, and that had never been an issue before. So even with my cardiac history, I had still been fairly healthy.

I had been trained to do palliative care nursing, so I was seeing a lot of palliative care patients. I got to the point where my troubles with my breathing became more of an issue, especially to the clients than they were… me coming in, trying to get up the stairs to see them, sitting down and taking a couple of minutes to catch my breath, at a point where I was starting to bring my oxygen in with me to do the stairs or to get from point A to point B to their rooms or anywhere to see them.

By this point, I had gotten quite bad. I finally decided I just can't do this anymore. I'm going into houses that are difficult to maneuver around, also into smoky houses that I always despise smoke, cigarette smoke, and having to take care of myself in front of patients before I could care for them. It was just getting to be way too much. The physical maneuvering of patients became very difficult and I just couldn't keep up anymore.

On top of these things. I also have scoliosis, and it's something that I was diagnosed with when I was 12. So between my back and the pain, between the weight gain and the shortness of breath, it just became very difficult to move people, to turn people to do any things that they needed to get down on the floor to do leg and feet dressings, if they happen to be sitting on a couch, for example.

Yeah, it just became too much. I tried to push further, but I just couldn't. Mentally, I was starting to deteriorate as well. I knew there was something wrong by this point, and I hadn't quite got the diagnosis yet of PH, but it did soon come after pushing and trying to get in to see a doctor.

I think I was diagnosed in June of 2019. I went off work July of 2019. Probably for the next year I was wearing oxygen pretty much 24/7. Sitting in a chair, so where I am now, just maneuvering myself around became quite difficult and caused me a lot of shortness of breath. It was to the point where, "All right, I don't think I can do this anymore." So I had to give that up, give that role up. I did not give up my nursing license, I still have it, but I am now on... What's the term? Non-practicing. So I'm a non-practicing registered nurse.

I decided to hold onto that because it was a big part of me. It's a big part of my life. It was a great accomplishment for me to get through schooling and having two little ones at home as a single mom. It was something that was really hard to register in my brain that you can't do what you've been doing, but I'm hanging on to this because I knew still at that point, even though everything kind of took a dive down, including my mood and everything else, my look on life, my outlook and the uncertainty, it took a huge chunk out of my wellbeing.

I decided at some point, probably within that first year, "Well, okay, what can I do? I know that I have been thinking about changing careers. I've been thinking about giving up at least the physical part of nursing." There was something still calling me to the mental health world. Well, I started acrylic painting and I sang. I had sang for many years and I liked writing, and that's most of my life, as well. Not that I did a lot of it, but I did like it. And one of my goals since I was a teenager was to write a book, which I still haven't done, but I've started a couple of things.

I've written a few little things, poems. I have a long poem. Those kinds of things all mean a lot to me as who I am as a person. I decided at some point along the way, I'm going to somehow combine the creative things with the mental health and the background of nursing and help other people on their journeys and their wellbeing, as well.

That became my focus. Not to say that every day is easy or that I can focus on these things every single day. There are still difficulties. I managed to change my viewpoint and my outlook on life and my perception of life, and I managed to change those things to a positive light and decided you can still live. You don't have to lay back and wait to die because what is the purpose of everything that I've done and everything I've wanted to be?

I always, always felt like I had a deeper purpose in life. Some people are good getting their purpose fulfilled through looking after their family or through working in a community, and that's enough. But there's something more that I'm meant to give. I'm still not 100% sure what it is, but I think I'm finally going down the path now. I decided to paint. There was a year, I think between 2019 and 2020 that I really didn't do much of anything, but I think that was my angry year. That was my diagnosis year. It was my spot that made me take a look at my life and decided to change my path. I could lay back and die. Life's over for me, boohoo. I know that's a lot of us. That's where we are. That's where we have been or we're getting to that point. But there is a point where you can take control of what you can.

I had to look at my blessings. So I had to look at, I have my sons. At that time they were both home with me. I have one still home now. I have my mom, my dad, my sister. Even though I still had a lot of traumas to deal with, which I was currently working through and still am, those people were still close to me and important to me. I was now around my mom's family, side of the family. They were a huge support.

I felt like I couldn't quite leave this area and move away, because I thought about moving down east many times, but I had to use what I could. Also because of being from First Nation's community, I thought there's so much I can do. So I'm going to combine all the things I know and put them into a wellness journey for other people. I'm still not 100% sure what that's going to look like, but I have done many paint parties, you might call them. A lot of them are workshops. I get hired by organizations mostly for say, a personal paint party. Probably 95% of what I have done has been organizational workshops. I'll get people thinking about positive things, so what do they want for themselves that day or that week or month, or what would they like to wish for somebody else?

It could be someone they don't necessarily like so much. What do you wish for that person or yourself? Think of one word or a symbol. It could be a heart. It could be anything and you put that down on the backside of your canvas. You write happiness or love, unconditional love. Anything that you can think of or a heart or a star or anything and that's going to be your focus during that painting. The painting session, you go forward with that thought in your mind. We really try to keep negative thinking out of it because it's very, very easy for all of us to think negatively and go, "Oh, I'm terrible at this," and oh my goodness, there's always negative that we can throw to ourselves. We really try to take that out of the equation and just keep everything to a positive as much as we can.

I would say that normally it does work and it helps most people to stay in a more positive mindset. Thinking positively, looking after my mental health that's been a huge, huge component of my wellbeing. Continuing to be in therapy because therapy can be for everyone, not just seriously ill people. It keeps us on track. That has helped me by looking after the mental health piece, my emotional piece, my spiritual piece, and my physical. We know that physical and mental health and emotional, spiritual all go together. We can't look after one and not the rest. We can't expect to do well in one and expect everything else to catch up. We've got to purposely look after all of those domains. I find by doing that and keeping myself in check with my mental health as well, even my spiritual health. By spiritual health, I mean even things like connecting to nature. Learning how to connect with nature. Learning how to breathe. Learning how to be calm and maybe put yourself in a better place.

That becomes really easy to do once you've done it a bunch of times. You may need to focus and push yourself to do it at first, but eventually it's just an amazing place to be. So with meditating, learning how to focus, we can do so much for ourselves. People need to start looking at that, giving themselves that gift because it's there. It is in all of us to do. So by looking at all those domains and looking after each one, we do better for our physical health, as well. My physical being has improved. My breathing has improved. My energy level has improved. My focus is starting to improve a little more, because that's been very difficult to do.

But all in all, if you look after all of those things in your life, you become a better version of yourself. You start to see the world in a positive light again, and not think so much about how much life I have left. I still do think of that sometimes or, "When am I going to die," or, "What's the purpose? If I'm going to be gone in a year or 10 years or five years?" The purpose is because you need to be here now. You need to be here. You're on this earth. You have purpose. You can take from everything that happens to you in your life and pull it in and switch it around, bam, put it out as something that you can do for yourself and for other people. That was my choice. It's not to say that I don't ever struggle with my mood or with triggers or anything that comes up in my life, but I need to know how to come out of that.

With everything I've learned through somatic therapy, through there's a thing called FIT. It's focused intention technique. I learned how to do that, as well. There is training for that. It's something you can use on yourself, and it's something you can use to help other people. Give yourself the gift, I'll use that word again, the gift of life. You get to go forward in the way you want to, in the way that you can. Just do it in whatever way you're able to. If you look after all the pieces of yourself, it gets easier. I guess that would be the biggest thing is transforming my life to meet the needs of not just myself, but others as well. But there came a time where I had to look after just myself, and that was fine. I decided that's okay. This is what I need to do.

My last job was helping to kill me. It was helping to dive me down lower in depth, because I wasn't able to focus on myself and my needs. That really woke me up. It made me go, "Yep, I guess I have to listen to myself now and listen to my body. It's telling me things and do something about it. Don't just keep pushing it back. Do something about it." I ended up having to move from where I was. My rent was going up a little higher every year. I could no longer afford to live there, because I wasn't working, at least not getting a nursing income. So my sons and I had to move. Thank goodness for our First Nation. They had been building a new set of townhouses and one had just been completed. We were lucky enough to get to move into that right at the time I was running out of money from whatever resources I could get it from.

We moved in here. The rent is significantly lower. I know not everybody has that opportunity, but it enabled me to start looking at what I wanted in life instead of worrying about the financial piece. So even if it's a matter of you have to move in with someone or a relative or something where you might not have as much, you might have to give up some things, which I did, but at least it got me thinking about my life again and having a purpose. So that's where I am now.

My name is Dawn Clarke, and I'm aware that I'm rare.

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deerydear · 10 months

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I feel like I've partaken in this behaviour, but I refuse to capitulate to this fucking yawning, stretching fungal infection that is "an autistic self-diagnosis based on internet memes".

I hate it.

Make up a list of all the things that you do that are "autistic things", what do you do with that list when you're done compiling it?

What's the point?

...or is the point to be on a never-ending scavenger-hunt?

One way of entertaining yourself?

I would analyze my own reason for this behaviour so:

The teachers in school say I'm so smart when I sit around and analyze things and explain them, rather than being one of those ROWDY, RAMBUNCTIOUS CHILDREN WHO CAN'T SIT STILL!

I'm not autistic.

It's just rewards-based training. It's a habit that became ingrained.

"UGH, FUCKING KIDS WANTING TO RUN AROUND, PLAY, TALK TO EACHOTHER?!?!?! DON'T YOU KNOW HOW DISRUPTIVE THAT IS TO MY CLASS???

SCHOOL IS THE FOUNDATION OF OUR SOCIETY. FUCK YOU FOR HAVING FUN!

I HOPE NONE OF YOU GOOD KIDS EVER DREAM OF HAVING 'FUN'!"

I wondered what would be the fruit of a brainwashed society.

The rebel critics of yesteryear would always talk about this subject... and yet, the people don't wake up, because now they can gaze at their own navels instead of looking up and around themselves. Why?

"because I'm autistic. I have trouble socializing, and understanding social cues."

Why?

I already discussed this in the previous blog-entry that I linked at the beginning... but what if it's simply something that can be worked out through trial and error?

I don't think I could ever generalize all autism, but I know people who are just like me... who would rather lose themselves in a label, than have to work for something they want.

"Oh, I'm special. Just give it to me. I don't want to change. I don't want to adjust. I want to be a very special little boy. I want to be an infant, forever."

Same thing the anti-sjw critics were mocking, ten years ago.

I remember feeling as if I were "supposed" to be against the anti-sjws,, "because So-and-So said that they're big meany buttheads... and also they're homotransmisogynoiracist SHITLORDS who want to take away your rights.....

Fascists start off with debate, then escalate! Do not debate with fascists!"

Except anyone's a fascist, nowadays. Your dog is a fascist. Your mom is fascist. That's why the police came for them. Same old tricks of yesterday, but you thought you were too clever to be fooled by it, didn't you? That's how they got you.

Pride.

"It will be different, this time.... because I am involved."

Schmuck-muck-muck!

It's all a big propaganda war, on all fucking sides. Cockroaches are always looking for scraps. Hungry dogs are looking for unattended plates of food.

Do you sit and dine with the Unclean?

Wasn't this planned as a party banquet?

Matthew 13:24:

"Another parable He put forth to them, saying:

'The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’

He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’

The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’

But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, 'First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.' ’ ”

Luke 18:9:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.

For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Matthew 18:21

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!"

“Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt.

“But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’

Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt.

“But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment.

“His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it,’ he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

“When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called in the man he had forgiven and said, ‘You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?’ Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt.

“That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

Matthew 13:1

Later that same day Jesus left the house and sat beside the lake. A large crowd soon gathered around him, so he got into a boat. Then he sat there and taught as the people stood on the shore. He told many stories in the form of parables, such as this one:

“Listen!

A farmer went out to plant some seeds. As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them.

Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died.

Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants.

Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand."

His disciples came and asked him, “Why do you use parables when you talk to the people?”

He replied, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others are not. To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them. That is why I use these parables,

For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.

This fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah that says,

‘When you hear what I say, you will not understand. When you see what I do, you will not comprehend. For the hearts of these people are hardened, and their ears cannot hear, and they have closed their eyes— so their eyes cannot see, and their ears cannot hear, and their hearts cannot understand, and they cannot turn to me and let me heal them.’

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you hear, but they didn’t hear it.

“Now listen to the explanation of the parable about the farmer planting seeds:

The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches away the seed that was planted in their hearts.

The seed on the rocky soil represents those who hear the message and immediately receive it with joy. But since they don’t have deep roots, they don’t last long. They fall away as soon as they have problems or are persecuted for believing God’s word.

The seed that fell among the thorns represents those who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth, so no fruit is produced.

The seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God’s word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted!”

#not reblogging because I don't want to start a fight #I don't know you #autism self-diagnosis

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cptsdjourney143 · 1 year

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What happened to you?

TW: trauma, self-harm, abuse

The sound of rustling notebook paper. The off-white tinge and contrasting lines. The thinness of the sheet between my pinched pointer finger and thumb. The scratching of the pencil point. These are just some of the things I miss about writing.

I have defined myself as a writer for as long as I can remember. It is one of my go-to words when I am asked to describe myself. And no matter how long I goo without writing a word it will always be true. I am a writer. But I think my past trauma and relying on pen and paper to process has impacted my relationship with writing. I have spent so much time pushing down everything I went through… pretending everything was okay over and over again. Now bringing it back up feels impossible.

I have recently returned to therapy and have started seeing a psychiatrist again. I am so tired of anxiety and depression. I am so tired of hating myself. I am tired of the shame and guilt and hyper vigilance. I am tired of being broken. I am constantly haunted by the question: What is wrong with me?

I have been trying to answer that question for 19 years, more or less. I have spent more than half of my life trying to figure out why I am the way I am.

On the outside I look fine. Successful, even. My mom and dad were high school sweethearts. I have supportive family members and friends. I have a wonderful husband and we have built an adorable little family of dogs and cats and horses. I got good grades in high school and continued my academic excellence through college and graduate school. I passed my speech pathology licensing exams with flying colors. I got work right out of school and have established a good career.

Write me down on paper and I seem like perfection. So that is what I have always tried to emulate. If I looked perfect on the outside no one would know how broken I was on them inside. I thrust myself into activities and hobbies just so that I could excel at them for as long as I can remember. In middle school it was Girl Scouts and Horseback Riding. In High School it was music, theater, art, track, and writing. I consistently made honor roll. I made National Honors society. But you don’t need my resume. I did everything I could to be the best at everything I did.

I have worked so hard on being perfect that I shoved down the negative. I have shoved it so far down that I don’t remember a lot of it. The harsh reality is that even through I tried to bury the negative, my body remembers. My body remembers fear and pain. My body keeps holding on to what my brain is trying to forget.

Being perfect on the outside is not helping the pain on the inside anymore. So I went back to therapy and back to hunting for answers to the question: What is wrong with me? I thought the neuropsychological evaluation I took in graduate school would give me some answers. Their testing confirmed my anxiety and depression diagnosis. It confirmed I have fantastic language skills, but my working memory and executive function are “below average.” It talks about my distress and dissatisfaction with my life, lack of coping skills, avoiding new one challenging situations, and so much more. It says in clear black ink that I restrict my emotions and have difficulty with relationships.

“It appears Caitlyn finds many of her relationships to be confusing or complicated. Results indicate that Caitlyn has conflicting feelings about her family, finding them to be supportive and loving… yet also invalidating and unhelpful when she needs them.”

That girl is not perfect. But she is also me. That neuropsychological was from 2015. That was 8 years ago, and I am still looking for answers. I have been looking for answers longer than that.

I have talked to my therapist and psychologist yet about the possibility of ADHD. A lot of my symptoms seem to align: Attention and memory issues, executive dysfunction, motivation paralysis… This constant need to be doing something productive but unable to do anything so spiraling in my mind instead. My mental health team agrees that ADHD is a possibility, but I have not started on any ADHD medication at this time.

In therapy we started to approach my grief. I have experienced a lot of loss in some very traumatic ways. My first memory of loss is my Bubby. I was so young when she died and I felt the loss greatly. I remember watching her get sick and then fade away. My next memories involve my grandma having a stroke and moving in with us. The grandma that used to make us eggs-in-a-basket and always smiled was gone. She was a ghost of her former self. My uncle moved in to help with her care. We watched her fade away as well… and then she was gone and my Uncle moved away. I don’t know why he left, just that him and my dad had some sort of argument and that was the end of it.

For a while there weren’t any more loses. Then when I was in my 20s they all seemed to come at once. My cousin overdosed and passed away, leaving behind two children. Not too long after that my dad passed away. Losing my father has been one of the hardest things I have ever faced, but my mom was an absolute wreck. I had to put on my brave face for her. I was perfect, after all. My grandfather passed a few years after. My mom had just started to be herself again and then she lost her father. Her brother died by suicide not long after… she was the one who found his body. Just a few days ago my Uncle passed away. I am dealing with his loss now. Which is part of why I am writing now.

So yes, I have experienced my fair share of grief and loss. I thought I had been dealing with my grief, but after all these feelings with my uncle passing, I am not so sure.

My therapist asked if I felt like I have come to terms with my grief and I said I had. So she mentioned that there had to be a reason I felt so much hate for myself. She asked if anyone ever made me feel like I wasn’t enough. But I had parents that loved me. I was a good student. I was supposed to be perfect. But I still had anxiety and depression. I was still broken. She said she was glad to be on my journey with me and asked me what I was looking for from therapy.

Once again I had been so good at looking perfect on the outside that the brokenness inside was shoved so far down that I was able to hide it from myself and my therapist. But she could see there was work to be done.

So I started looking harder… thinking about why I went back to therapy and what I wanted from it. I started looking back at old notebooks and journals and videos. I found entries as far back as 2004 talking about my anxiety and depression.

Anxiety and depression did not seem like enough of an answer to what was wrong with me. ADHD didn’t seem to be the right diagnosis either. Nothing I did seemed to be helping.

I don’t entirely remember how, but some how I came across looking at Complex PTSD online, but that didn’t make sense either. I didn’t survive a natural disaster or torture. I wasn’t in a war. I wasn’t abused. Yeah, I had been through some hard stuff, but nothing compared to that.

But the symptoms… the symptoms were like looking at all my deepest shames in bold black ink.

- Difficulty with emotions

- Distrust in the world

- Constant feelings of emptiness or hopelessness

- Feeling damaged or worthless

- Feeling different from others

- Difficulty with relationships

- Dissociative symptoms

- Headaches, dizziness, chest pains, and stomach aches

- Regular suicidal feelings

I have experience all of these things. I thought they were all just my anxiety and depression… maybe they are. I really don’t know. But I didn’t have flashbacks to anything that that was a major component of PTSD. Then I read about emotional flashbacks: intense emotions that seems to come from no where. I feel like I live in this state. Constant fight or flight. Constant anxiety. Constant spiraling. Constant emotional flashbacks. But emotional flashbacks to what?

So I kept doing research… in to myself and in to CPTSD. And I continues to see myself in each blog post, video, article, research paper, and book. I started to read the book “What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing.” By Bruce D Perry and Oprah Winfrey. They wanted me to shift my perspective from “What’s Wrong with You?” To “What Happened to You?” Sure, I was used to reframing my thinking. Years of therapy have taught me that it is often necessary.

So what happened to me? When I was only 12 years old I began to self-harm. Looking at pictures of myself at that age now as a 31 year old… I look so young. I look like a baby. I don’t remember why I started cutting myself. There was no event I can remember that caused it… I just got so tired of feeling sad and anxious that I wanted to feel anything else. So I decided to feel pain instead. But this didn’t feel traumatic enough to warrant complex PTSD. Considering it took me 7 pages of lead up to get here… I guess I am carrying some trauma.

My earliest writing mimicked my current thoughts over and over. Not good enough. Not worthy of love. Feeling alone and like no one could ever understand. I self-harmed all through middle school, high school, and college. I had stopped cutting myself by graduate school and have not self-harmed in that capacity since then. I thought that since I had stilled doing it, I was over it.

I lived in constant cycles of anxiety and found relief in cutting and then felt deep guilt and shame and fell in to deep depressions for most of my formative years. Growing up like this changes a persons brain. So far reading about CPTSD has made me really grateful I took neuroscience in grad school. There is a lot of talk about the brain.

What happened to me? I cut myself for many of my childhood years, teenage years, and my young adolescence. Why? I don’t know. I don’t remember. I have spent so long trying to forget. But my body didn’t forget. My body holds all that fear and anxiety and shame and deep seated guilt.

Here is what I do know. My oldest journals and notebooks do not say anything about why I started cutting myself and I may never remember. That has to be okay. There might note be a clear answer. The defining moment part of me longs for. The thing that I can point at say say “That! That is why I am the way that I am.”

I know that somewhere along the line my emotional needs were not met. Which is the definition of emotional neglect. But the very idea of that makes me fiercely defensive. My mom and dad loved me and I had a good childhood. I know my parents had many flaws. They both had anxiety and depression. My dad was an alcoholic. But I have so many memories of them full of love.

I still hid my self-harm from my parents. I don’t know why I felt I could not go to them, except for my need to be perfect on the outside. I don’t know what I feel the need to be perfect. I have no memories of being told I needed to be. I have always put that burden on myself.

I threw away a lot of the journals I kept from ages 12 to 17. Those were my worst years and I was absolutely ashamed of them. I was past that phase and didn’t need them anymore. Ii don’t remember exactly when I threw them away, but I remember that it happened. I wish that I didn’t now. I feel like they may have had some answers.

My diagnosis is probably not the take away here. My therapist says I give my mental illness too much power. It’s hard not to when it has been there since I was 12 years old. I have grown comfortable with new labels. Anxiety, depression, panic disorder, ADHD, CPTSD… whatever it is, I’m working on it.

But I still feel like my “trauma” wasn’t “traumatic” enough. I think that is my need to be perfect, though.

My therapist said she thought I should continue therapy. She said she was happy to continue with me on my journey. I am not sure what I want from this journey, but I figured this would be a good place to start.

#trauma #mental health #anxiety #depression #ADHD #neurodivergent #CPTSD #childhood trauma #TW

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naejigo · 2 years

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Entry 3, Dec 8 2022

Nae here reporting.

I was overstimulated the whole day. I still am. Everything is loud, I've worn my noise cancelling headphones all day. I'm currently in a non-verbal state. People keep touching me to get my attention but I feel like it's obvious that I don't wanna talk to anyone?

On one hand I'm facing imposter syndrome. Thinking maybe I'm neurotypical and have been tricking myself into thinking.. I'm not neurodivergent. Because right now I'm too depressed and I feel like I'm not being... I feel like I'm not. I... I don't know. Honestly. Everything is too loud.

My therapy is next week and that feels like such a long time from now. Idk. I'm getting a diagnosis, isn't that good? I mean it's pretty expensive, I'm paying for myself, and I'm doing this in secret so... It's quite sad. My parents would talk about how their bloodline isn't... Flawed. Feels like getting disowned because it happened once, and then I just shut down, poof. I stopped learning about mental illnesses, stopped learning about nd all those things, just became this clueless teenager because my parents told me no kids of theirs are mentally ill or different. That was a year ago.

Two years since I broke out of my "sheltered child" state of being and then got back in because the outside world is so scary and my parents lied to me. I don't know. I don't know.

I think I know why I don't remember my childhood. I also know why it's coming back to me only now.

You know sometimes I wish I had died with my younger brother that morning when I was 5. Sometimes that is. I could have escaped so much pain. Just like that. But no, of course not. Of course I've had to be abused by multiple people, forget, and then remember about it only now.

The bullying in primary school for 6 whole years. Being singled out throughout secondary school. Getting brainwashed by your dad. Remembering being imprisoned in the small smelly toilet by your grandmother because you were 4, 5 and 6 and acting my age multiple times. Constantly being guilt tripped and gaslighted by your mom that it ends up being your fight response because that is what's normal and you don't know what else to do. Being cursed at by your older sister because she didn't like having a younger sibling. Your older brother used to act out his anger with his hands and legs so your fragile 6 years old body actually went through so much beating, and you simply just never realize it. You were 5, watching how your younger brother died. You were 6, waking up one day realizing you don't remember what happened for a whole year, you were 7, 8, 9 and so on just forgetting until now and you realize, oh. That's why you didn't remember. That's why you forced yourself to shut and be this person that everyone likes. This is the person you created so carefully over the years because you realized being yourself never made anyone's day so here you are.

Everyday I wonder what it's like to unmask. Who is this person behind the mask? I'd like to meet her. I just don't know how.

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puitik · 2 years

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A letter to my friends

Hi friends,

If I sent you a link to this post, just know that you are a special person in my life and that’s why I feel the need to tell you this. A few days ago (28/09/2022), I finally got my official diagnosis from my psychiatrist, that is depression. Yeah, after years of doubting myself, I can finally say what I have is depression. I’ve always thought that my problems weren’t serious enough to call it as such but now here I am, taking antidepressants and having weekly therapy sessions.

This may be confusing or you may not know how to react to this and that’s normal. I had once been the one who was lost when I had friends who expressed suicidal thoughts. Speaking of which, at this point you may be wondering if I ever had such thoughts. To be honest, I did have those thoughts and maybe still do feel that way. But rest assured, I will not go through any suicidal attempts because while I do not fear death (as in no longer existing), I do fear pain.

So, when did this all start? I suspect it started from my poly years, back when I was overwhelmed with both school and CCA subcomm responsibilities. School started at 8 am in the morning and because of subcomm, I came back home at around 10 pm. I cried every night until I couldn’t take it anymore and that’s when I quit subcomm.

But it didn’t end there, I never stopped crying. Sometimes, I don’t even know why I’m crying so hard. Sometimes, I have this sense of doom that I’m about to die. Those were probably panic attacks but I’m not sure. Some of you might know that I have a bad memory so I don’t remember much of my past but I found writings from secondary school that alluded to suicidal thoughts, which surprised me. Could it have started from that early? My childhood was quite turbulent though so it seems plausible.

While I did experience low mood, crying and suicidal thoughts, I didn’t feel it was serious enough to warrant professional help so I endured it until I quit university last year. That was a wake-up call for me to seek help because I knew I couldn’t go on like this. Actually, I knew I was having difficulties with uni stuff in year 2 and asked my academic mentor for a LOA which was declined. Then it didn’t help that when I asked my mom for help and told her my thoughts about quitting uni year 2, she mentioned marriage and family’s honour etc. So I took an unofficial LOA by only taking 2 online modules and thought things were going well when I came back but nope. I was only avoiding the problem. That was when I decided to quit.

However, I’m thankful to have supportive friends who stayed by my side while I was going through all this. To the friend who saw my pain through my smile, thank you. To the friend who didn’t treat me like a failure, thank you. To the friend who’s still here, thank you. I have issues with my family but I know I scored it in the friendship department, even when I feel like I’m a shitty friend sometimes.

If you’re wondering on what you should do after hearing this news, there’s nothing different. We can go about our usual meetups and maybe this time talk more about our mental health. And don’t be afraid to ask questions. Weirdly, there’s no such thing as an invasive question to me so feel free to ask about depression or my past etc. I would also love to hear more about your opinions on mental health or your own struggles, if you want to!

Thank you for reading this whole ass essay. Love you all!

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beaversatemygrandma · 3 years

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Hmmm I was just given another option of how my year may go. I Could always move up to NC for a while with my dad, where I’ll actually have somebody who will help me move forward and teach me how to be a real adult. Coming out as transmasc will likely not happen tho, but at least i could be openly bi up there. (read more bc im rambly thinking about this stuff)

Not to mention he’s willing to take like two days off, get me insurance, a license and a car right as i go up there. Like instantly. Instead of this argument with my mom about how i’m rushing to get my license (im fuckin 21 im not rushing, i Need one). Plus she says she’d be okay with me moving back in, but i’d be paying rent, and she doesn’t want me to yet. (apparently wants to remodel her bathroom first but idk what that has to do with me) Not to mention she’s wanting to bail on this state as soon as my sister graduates. Which is maybe in a year and a half? So, if i do that, I might not be in FL for a long while (at least six months or so but if i like it there? maybe longer), but at least I’d have a car and be able to drive back as i please. I love long road trips, so that’s def not out of the option for the one of you wondering ;3

It would be a good change of pace and after talking to the bf about it, he says it might be a good chance to move on and get to do what i want to do instead of just existing as i am. Which is a bit sad, but ik we weren’t going to be a forever thing. We’ve established that one a while ago. But heck, as of the end of may it would be my longest relationship at 2 yrs. I’d definitely still talk to him too. i mean sure, i dont know anyone there bc i havent lived there since i was 7, but id at least have my dad, youngest sister, and grandma. It’s a solid idea and my dad even knows people working at NCU and i might be able to get in there and actually do college now that im not burnt out to extreme points. Plus, he wouldn’t charge me rent.

And not knowing people would give me a good chance to put myself out there again and not struggle with sifting through the friends i have in my mom’s town to avoid the relations to my ex. And maybe not be suffocated by being close to all the town’s stoners. Like i am now. Ish. I stopped talking to people and im starting to wonder if its even worth trying to go back to them because i might not have the friendship degeneration thing, but ik all of them do. (except like one and i will REGRET leaving them behind bc we still text like once a month and theyre so fuckin encouraging and sweet even if it is the much older stoner i hung out with back in the panera days) Besides, being with that group just led me into turning into a stoner myself and im breaking away from that one because holy hell that was a Ride start to finish. (my brain goes FAST again and its shocking like holy shit i can read still) A lot of regretful stuff happened, even if some of it was fun as hell, but not worth it in the long run if i want to be a functioning human being.

Will i go up there and be one of those people on tinder looking for friends because they’re new to town? yeah probably. Will it work? I fucking hope so. I want to gather other like-minded people to hang out with so bad. Maybe some other nb people too. (and tbh maybe a gf because heck yeah)

I’m liking this idea currently. It’d be a nice change of pace. Having a supportive parent around would also be a nice thing. And my little sister needs an influence from somewhere (even if the two of our ADHD issues goes berserk when together. I’ll do something impulsive, then she does and it’s usually worse bc she’s only 12 and Much Worse with focus even on meds.) And my dad supports meds, unlike my mom. So if i could get this adhd treated, things might just get easier too. (instead of self-medicating with things i shouldnt self-medicate with lol)

Random unrelated thing, i actually ended up talking to my mom about the mental health screenings she got me as a child. Apparently 2 doctors said i was super hyperactive with adhd and another one said aspergers. So. I might have undiagnosed aspergers too. So that’s a thing. (no she never medicated me or went any further with testing. bc giving benzos to kids is bad which i can understand, but i didnt grow out of it like she thought i would and it causes me problems.)

The only things im really worried about with going up there, is of course, leaving people behind, possibly having to take care of my extremely hyperactive sister who overwhelms me, and being in a big city. Like Big City my dude. It’s Charlotte. I mean yeah sure, its where i was born, but i havent been in a big city since i was 7. Relearning how to drive during Their rush hour instead of the one here will be very overwhelming. Perks though, would be real public transportation (they have trains and real buses, like holy shit), a parent who gives a shit, and the insane amount of decent paying job openings up there that wouldn’t be in a tourist trap where i’d get disrespected by rich white people all the time bc they think im stupid or smth. (no avoiding karens tho if i go back into customer service but if i can help it, im avoiding that)

But i think just having a parent who encourages me and wants me to progress in life would be the biggest help. My mom seems to not want to see me getting ‘better than her’ bc the rest of the family looks down on her for not being successful (ig, i mean her sister’s a lawyer who stole my college fund to put her kids into private schools and accessed the will from my granddad way too early and all that shit when we’re the ones who needed that money bc we make less than 20k a year) but still, aren’t you supposed to be proud of your child if they’re going to potentially be in a better spot than you are? Like my dad continues to remind me that i graduated with honors and a bunch of special stuff and how that isn’t common and how i have so much potential that i dont think i have and how i can actually qualify for a decent well paying job if i just go back to school. Plus, he’s got the connections to NCU. That’s a good school. I really wouldn’t mind actually getting some peace of mind for the future by getting what i need to done. And He’ll Help Me. (EDIT: It’s not NCU, it’s UNC. The Tar Heels. The blue one. In NC. Not Cali.) And he even knows how the world works a lot better than my mom seems to. He actually knows how to use those government help things and work around all the issues there instead of the blanant avoidance my mom has to it. (i havent had insurance since i was 17, like heck i need to go get myself checked out for A Lot of things and i cant afford to do that. She also doesn’t believe in credit cards. Real words she’s said. I shit you not.)

i think i might do it. i dont see myself thriving back at my mom’s. she’d just keep me under her control and prob have me just at yet another standstill like ive been in since 2017. (fuckin pandemic really didnt help that. chose a bad year to get my shit together tbh because that didnt work, hell, neither did i lol) Yeah sure, i got to move out and see what that’s like. Living on my own, working over 40 hours a week, seeing how poverty+ tastes... it tastes bad. I dont want to do that again. I learned some things. I’ve matured and have (mostly) processed what the actual fuck the trauma i got during high school was. (ahh the neo-nazi and the abusive jackass of a bf i had... hoooboy...) Plus real seasons?? Sign me up. I miss seeing orange leaves in the fall and snow in the winter. And not suffering with daily 90+ degree weather.

Even if i can’t (the transphobia is scary my guy) come out as transmasc, i’ll still likely get my hands on a binder and just go full gnc. More than i was before tbh. I’ve always been the ‘tomboy’ so it wouldn’t be so out of place doing that all of the sudden. Prob also going to cut my hair to have that fauxhawk that can be used in the most nb ways. It seems very nice and very versatile. Might help the dysphoria that I’ve apparently had since 2015, likely longer. That’s just when i learned the word for it. Which has been Much Much worse lately due to the quarantine mane i still have going on. (mom wouldn’t help me just shave it off.... ;-; Tho it is only shoulder length now with an undercut. Better, but still not good.) And the weight. Oh god and the weight. I miss my days of being flat as a board and having people unable to tell what i was. But nooo, i gotta be curvy. Doesn’t help that my mom makes me feel bad about it too. (thanks for the plus size clothes i got last xmas... im not that big. Damn.) Might also be the birth control... my body has more female hormones now than it knows what to do with. I could benefit from a break from it tbh.

Also, who knew that if i stop self-medicating in a certain way, I’d get my will to live back? I sure wasn’t expecting it to hit so soon after quitting after hearing all the bs about how it was addictive and hard to quit (it’s not. At all. sure there’s a certain reliance your brain gets if you smoke for like four years straight all day everyday, i didn’t personally but it was a decent amount, but after like a day or two it’s gone. No headaches. No weird pain and mood swings. Whoever started the shit about it being so bad obviously never tried it. *glares at fuckin reagan and DARE and all the racial/criminal issues that come with it*) Though, I’ll still be happy that it’s getting legalized. (not fully in either of these states but still, it’s at least decriminalized in NC) It is a good thing in moderation, like giving a cat catnip. Just an extra plaything tossed into your enclosure sometimes so you don’t get bored and depressed. I haven’t done it in a good two weeks though and only really will if i end up hanging out with said stoner friends or to knock myself out if insomnia is kicking my ass, but that’s really it. I don’t want to anymore and that’s the end of that. Not going back to embracing stoner culture like i did back in my apt and panera days tho. There’s some sketchy people who come around and its usually with drugs that actually are bad. (like that one tinder date who tried to bring coke into my apt and me and my roommate had to quickly shut him down. Never did hear from him again. Which is good. Not gonna associate with that shit that’s actually addictive and potentially dangerous.) Anyways, just glad im not too burnt out anymore to think and talk to people. This is definitely a step in the right direction. I think i could actually have a chance if i make the move this year. I definitely have enough savings to drop on the whole move and car and whatever else I’d need. (stimmies themselves pay for the car bc i never did spend them)

Hopefully, this will end with me feeling good about myself for the first time ever and actually doing something with my life instead of sitting around depressed as hell. Could maybe be a real adult for once. Hell, I’m almost 22, i need to get onto this shit. My gap year may have been four years, but im getting there. The positive influence from the bf and his family have been good for me and i think it was the kick i needed to get me started. The pandemic has given me a chance to breathe and process things. So, it hasn’t been all bad. I just have to remember to pace myself so i don’t burn out again. It took way too long to recover from it.

Side note: Holy fuck the covid case in NC are SO MUCH LESS than FL. Like less than half. Only about 1k vs like 6k a day. Another pro I guess.

#beavers speaks #hnnng might just get my life started for real this time #personal thought gathering #thoughts are gathered so no tag rant #i weighed out some pros and cons and theres a lot more pros sooo #also still wondering about that diagnosis my mom got for me years ago #i could probably get my mental health tested again at some point and see what's up there #because if its both adhd and aspergers like she mentioned then that would explain A LOT #but yeah gonna try and be a heckin adult #big choices to make and places to see #the tiny extra bedroom in my dads trailer is def tempting #can't be smaller than that shitty apt bedroom right?#like it was only like 8 by 6 i think which is just a glorified closet #stick a futon in there and i got a reasonable room #okay maybe a little tag rant

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chocoholicannanymous · 3 years

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Concepts in Action (Glee)

Follow-up to Concepts of Insanity, spawned by a talk with @jwmelmoth

Slighty different mood than that one, but same base principle.

Returning to the loft after skating should be a relief after the awkwardness of doing such a loaded activity with his ex. Except it doesn't feel that good, and he's got some uncomfortable suspicions regarding Blaine's backpack.

“So, dad. You brought Blaine. Exactly when's his ticket back?”

“Day after tomorrow, same as mine.”

“Right. And where is he staying?”

“Well...” His dad's facial expression answers that question in a way that makes Kurt's heart sink.

Fan.Tast.Ic.

“So when you said I could return my present if I wanted to, exactly how was that supposed to work? It isn't, is it? I'm stuck with him whether I want to or not.”

“Kurt!”

His dad's voice is full of surprise and a bit of censor, but Kurt isn't going to let that influence him. His dad's crossed a line, and Kurt's not going to pretend otherwise.

“Remember the first Christmas after mom passed away? How you sat me down and apologized for my presents, before I'd even opened them, because you just weren't good at buying gifts? And remember how I told you that anything you'd gotten me would be perfect, because it was from you and I loved you? Yes?

“Okay. I still love you, but I'm taking the rest of that back. You coming here to tell me you have cancer was bad enough. Finding out you consider my ex an acceptable 'gift' for Christmas goes from bad to really shitty, and I don't know what you were thinking. Especially seeing as apparently you felt it was okay to tell him about your cancer before telling me.”

“I didn't want you to be alone.”

Kurt just stares, unable to process.

“I have cancer, and I knew you'd have a hard time to deal. I brought Blaine because I figured you'd need the support, the comfort.”

“And you brought my ex for that?”

Then again, support wasn't Blaine's strongest suit even when we were together, was it?

“Hey, you're the one who told me he wasn't just your boyfriend, he was your best friend too.”

“Yes, but that was before” he cheated on me “we broke up.”

His dad still doesn't seem to get it and Kurt can't take it.

“You know what, I need some air. I'm going to take a walk. You stay here, make sure Blaine stays out of my bedroom.”

Kurt starts out with going around the block, but he's still upset after and takes another loop, this time longer. It takes half an hour for him to feel ready to go back inside and deal.

Sitting on the couch with his dad and Blaine as they watch baseball is annoying as hell. Any other time, he'd take the closeness and read Vogue, especially now that his dad has admitted to knowing about it. But with Blaine actually watching and interacting with his dad about the game Kurt feels uncomfortable not doing the same. So he tries. Once he gives up and reaches for his magazine he heard his dad and Blaine joke about having bet about how long he'd hold out.

And then the next hit comes.

“So, Kurt, I know that this might be a bit weird for you, and you can totally say no if you want to,” sure, just like I could return the 'gift' of your presence, “ but I'm applying to NYADA for next year.”

Kurt sighs silently. Of course he is. The thing is, he can see it, the way Blaine probably assumes it'll play out. Blaine moving to New York, going to NYADA, buddying up to Rachel just like in high school... Kurt being expected to just take it, regardless of if he had been accepted or not. Any contacts Kurt might have gotten supposed to be at Blaine's beck and call, Blaine talking his way into Kurt's classes trying to replace him, like he had in Glee and with Cheerios... Kurt bending over backwards to make Blaine happy, just like in high school.

Because there would never be a chance of him being allowed to continue to say no to Blaine with them at the same school.

Thank god that's not going to happen.

And really, what was Blaine trying to do here? Pretending that Kurt's opinion mattered? The time for that would have been months ago, before applying.

“Oh really? You know what, I think NYADA might be perfect for you.” Not in terms of actual schooling, maybe, as Kurt's had the blinds torn off regarding Blaine's talent, but for the rest... He imagines Carmen Tibideaux subjecting Blaine to some of her special treatment. The definition of Karma, surely.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. From everything I've heard you'd get along really well with the dean, and well, Rachel seems to thrive. Good luck.”

With no encouragement to keep talking about NYADA Blaine wanders off to grab something to drink and Kurt refocuses on his dad, trying to squeeze out as much of this visit as possible.

“Hey Kurt? What does NUY want with you?”

Kurt turns his head so fast it feels like he's in danger of whiplash.

“Are you going through my mail? Stop it!”

The words come out hard and he can see both his dad and Blaine react. He doesn't care though.

“You know, you going through my personal things wasn't cute when we dated either. Back then I just cared more about keeping the peace than about keeping my privacy. Since that's not a problem anymore, let me just be clear. I might be allowing you to stay here, but that's not an invitation in any way. Not to snooping, not to feeling at home, and not to getting back together.

“This is my home, and you are – putting it kindly – a guest. Behave with the decency I know your mom expects of you. If you can't do that then leave.”

He wishes Blaine would, but knows it's not likely.

“Buddy...”

“Kurt! You can't mean that you'd throw me out. Where would I go?”

Blaine looks like Kurt has done the verbal equivalent of throwing a bucket of ice water in his face. It has no effect on Kurt's resolve though.

“I neither know nor care. You either respect my home or you don't stay in it. This is New York. There are thousands of hotels and hostels.”

His dad just stares at him, as if he doesn't know who Kurt is anymore, and it hurts. Out of all the people liking Blaine better than him Kurt had never figured his dad would be one. And yet here he was, feeling the same way as he'd once felt with Finn.

“Buddy, you're being a bit harsh here, don't you think? Yes, I'll admit that maybe bringing Blaine without warning you was a little...impulsive, but why are you so angry? And don't be so hardnosed about getting back together, for your own sake.

“Like I said earlier, love's important. Holding on to love is important. I don't want you to throw away what you and Blaine have, not when you never know what will happen, or how long you'll have that opportunity. It's a cruel world, Kurt, but having someone to share with makes it better.”

Kurt takes a deep breath and tries, really really tries to keep his bitterness in. He's not doing that great a job.

“Holding on to love is important, sure. But there's such a thing as holding on too long and too hard. Blaine and I broke up for good reasons, and I wish you'd respect that.”

It's like his dad isn't even hearing him though.

“You know, your mom and I found it hard being apart too.”

Kurt did know. As a kid he'd loved hearing about his mom's semester in France, and he'd been told enough to know that it'd been tough. He'd read some of their letters to each other though, and he doubts either of them dealt the way Blaine did.

“So? Yes, being apart is hard. But that isn't an excuse for everything. I didn't want to get you involved in all of this, but since that's obviously not going to be an option anymore, fine. Blaine cheated. He felt I didn't pay enough attention to him, you know, between finding a job and a place to stay, and making enough money to pay the bills, and generally trying to make myself a life here after he practically pushed me to go here.

“And so he went and found someone else to give him that attention.”

He practically spits out the last sentence. It feels good to finally allow himself to say it, but the look on his dad's face doesn't feel as good.

If he was less angry maybe he'd be able to stop himself, worry about his dad's heart. But the anger's been simmering too long for that.

“That's why we broke up, and that's why I find the idea of getting back together objectionable. And you can talk about holding on to love until you're blue in the face, but I'm not the one who needs that lecture.”

He swallows down the lump in his throat, but goes on.

“As for the rest of it, are you seriously suggesting I take back my cheating boyfriend because that's better than being alone? Or because I don't know how long I'll live? Because if you are... What's next, dad? Telling me I should marry him because you and mom didn't get enough time together?

“If any of those things are going through your head you are also welcome to leave. I'll never not welcome you in my home, dad, but I need you to respect me. I need you to not act like you're putting someone else's son above yours.”

That's a warning that hits the target, and it's obvious that Burt Hummel remembers a row of uncomfortable talks about Finn. He deflects by turning on Blaine though.

“You...”

“No, dad. It is over and done with. Leave him be. Just... Just leave it alone. I don't want to take anymore fighting. Please?”

They stare at each other and for a while Kurt wonders if he should have done as he normally does and just backed down. Swallowed down his hurt and anger and frustration, kept quiet about the injustices done to him, and just pretended to be okay. Tried to not upset his dad, and risk his health.

Except he's done that for years, and it's clearly not working. His dad's health has failed again, with the cancer – and no matter how good the prognosis, or the treatments available, a cancer diagnosis is a health failure. Plus his dad is trying to fix him and Blaine, out of some misguided idea that they're going to be the next Burt-and-Lizzie, and he never would have done that if Kurt'd been honest about the cheating instead of blaming distance.

At least Kurt hopes he wouldn't.

“Sometimes, dad, first loves end. They end because of death, or because they're not meant to last, or because of something else. And then you meet someone else, and they make your life amazing. I'm not going to deprive myself of that by holding on to something that's ended. Just like you didn't. You found love again. I will too.

“I just need to be allowed to do so.”

They keep staring at each other, and then his dad nods. Kurt can't help it, he throws himself in his dad's arms, with tears already beginning to fall.

As they hug Kurt hear Blaine muttering in the background about finding a hotel, but he doesn't care. The door to the loft closing feels like it's closing on him and Blaine too, and it's such a relief.

After several minutes they let go. Both need to remove traces of crying, but that's good.

Once they're seated again Kurt searches for something to talk about, but his dad beats him to it.

“So, NYU? Or should I pretend I didn't hear that?”

“No! I have been thinking about things, about school, and I was an idiot for not applying to more schools last year. So, I did some research and then I did something about it. I've applied to half a dozen schools, and I've already been accepted to one for the fall semester. I don't know if there's any school willing to take me for the spring, but if there's not I'll just keep working and try to save up money.”

“And what about NYADA?”

There's no judgment in his dad's voice, and Kurt smiles as he tries to describe the situation diplomatically.

“It's...not looking as good in my research as I thought, so while I did reapply there I'm not sure I want to go there. I really shouldn't have listened to Rachel last year, because as it turns out? NYADA actually isn't the most prestigious school for performing arts, and it's probably not even the best for me. I guess we were both a little starstruck, you know?”

The game is back on, but they ignore it and talk, and it's everything Kurt would have wanted.

O--o---o--O

Months later as classes start up Kurt receives voicemail after voicemail about Blaine starting at NYADA, about how bad it is that Kurt's not been accepted, about them meeting up. Kurt ignores them as he did the calls and walks into vogue.com with a smile.

He doesn't feel the least bad about not getting in. Hell, he didn't even apply for the fall semester.

No, Kurt's happy where he is, with his job at vogue.com, a spot at the New School and a couple of scholarships helping pay the way. Oh, and a new boyfriend, which also contributes to his happiness.

Turns out? Acting in new ways can get you new and rewarding results. All you got to do is try.

#chocoholic fics #kurt fic #kurt hummel #not for the klaint of heart #burt hummel #free kurt

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justoneofthoseghosts · 3 years

Note

Break me + brettsey

A/N: To the anons who requested for this, I tried my best 🥲 Also, you know I love fluff so wow, this was really emotional to write but I do love a challenge so er, grab some tissues maybe.

Warnings: character death

Throughout the years, Sylvie has learned that life isn’t always fair.

No matter how hard she studied for the 2nd grade spelling bee, someone studied harder and got that big, shiny trophy. She had her first kiss at seventeen with a boy she thought she’d love forever but he ended up being a manipulative jerk, just the first of many who turned out to be frogs instead of princes. Her birth mom sought her out and just as they found their footing, she died at child birth.

But this one, it really takes the cake, Sylvie thinks.

She pleaded with Matt to get his cough checked out weeks ago, asking him politely when she noticed it getting more and more frequent. It crept in especially late at night in bed when they were supposed to be sleeping, instead, she would hear him try to stifle it so as not to wake her. He shrugged it off and told her not to worry, which is classic Matt. She should have known. Even after all these years, her husband is still so stubborn.

One night, when the coughing won’t stop, she manages to get through to him and he agrees to go to the ED. Sylvie grabs the car keys and leads him out the door.

They greet the new charge nurse, who brings them into a treatment room. Sylvie doesn’t think much of it as Ethan comes in and they make small talk and catch up with the ED chief, who at 70 seems to show no signs of retiring. He orders a few standard tests. They wheel Matt off to get an x ray while Sylvie goes to grab a snack from the vending machine.

When Ethan finds her forty minutes later, his face is grim. Her heart drops to the pit of her stomach and she knows it’s not just an ordinary cough.

Stage 4 lung cancer.

Matt Casey, retired CFD battalion chief has stage 4 lung cancer.

It’s like a cruel joke. Matt’s never smoked a single cigarette in his life but his career as a firefighter has finally caught up with him - all the fumes, the smoke, the dust have made their way into his lungs. Sylvie doesn’t cry while the oncologist takes them through their options. She’d gladly sit through a hundred rounds of chemo with Matt if needed.

Except he doesn’t want that.

They argue about it for several weeks. Matt says he wants to spend the rest of his days at home, maybe they can rent a cabin in the woods in Michigan where the air is fresh, the sky is blue and they can just be, waiting for the inevitable.

“Matt,” she starts to say, an edge in her tone. They've been going around in circles and Sylvie is ready to put her foot down.

Matt shakes his head, taking her hand and gently telling her what he's been repeating since that day they found out, “I’ve lived a full life. We have these great kids and grandkids. I can’t ask for anything more.”

Sylvie yanks her hand out of his grasp. She's had enough.

“What would you do if it were the other way around?” She yells, her voice trembling slightly. She doesn’t think she’s every screamed at him this loudly in all their years together but she doesn’t want to give up. She needs him to understand.

Matt sighs, running a hand through his now grey hair. After a beat, he looks her in the eye. She knows he can't lie and say he'll take it lying down if she were to tell him what he's been parroting.

“I’d be begging you to get the treatment because I couldn’t bear to live a day without you,” he admits quietly.

They hold each other’s gazes, neither willing to concede.

“Please, Matt,” Sylvie whispers as she feels the tears threatening to fall. She grabs hold of his arm, squeezing it. She needs him to fight, if not for himself then for her because she doesn't think she can handle life without him, not quite yet.

He finally relents, “okay, okay, we’ll get the chemo.”

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close. Sylvie burrows deeper into his embrace, sobbing. She cries for the first time since they found out about the cancer and Matt rubs his hand over her back, comforting her.

Sylvie drives Matt to the hospital for his rounds of chemo while he jokes about shaving off his hair. One night, she wakes up to find his side of the bed empty and the light in the bathroom on. She peers in and sees him kneeling in front of the toilet, vomiting. She takes a seat beside him and quietly helps him, remembering their wedding vows.

In sickness and in health.

On the side, she starts to volunteer for the CFD’s firefighters cancer network, trying to raise more awareness on the dangers of such a noble job. She cheers with Matt one Spring morning when Gallo, Violet and Ritter decide to run the half marathon in full firefighter gear, in support of the cause. She’s glad that even if they’ve both retired, 51 still remains to be a part of their family.

Six months in, the doctor tells them that the chemo isn’t working as well as he hoped and the prognosis isn’t good. Sylvie still wants to continue but Matt sits her down one night after dinner.

“I think it’s time we just wait this out, Syl.” He tells her gently, interlacing his fingers in hers.

Sylvie wants to say no because this can’t be how it ends for him, someone spent his life saving people is about to succumb to a deadly, incurable disease. It really, truly is unfair.

But at the same time, she understands his request. He doesn’t want to put their family through another roller coaster ride of emotions, of uncertainty, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s saying he wants to take the reins and do it his way.

It reminds Sylvie of that quote from Harry Potter she read when she was younger.

To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

She didn't understand it at all at thirteen but she does now, glancing over at Matt and seeing the steely resolve in his eyes.

They’ve been together for over 30 years. They’ve built a home filled with love and kindness, full of laughter and running blonde children who all grew up to be exceptional adults with thriving careers. They have two wonderful, adorable grandchildren. She remembers what Matt told her, how he’s lived a full life.

She feels a tear slide down her cheek and Matt’s other hand brushes it away. She knows the next word coming out of her mouth will break her heart but she says it anyway because it's what's right.

“Okay.”

There’s something in the air, Sylvie thinks and her soul begins to fill with dread. Today, it seems, is the day. Matt’s been in bed for the last three days, not really able to move or eat much. Without the chemo, the doctor told them he had about three months to live and with each day that passed after that, Sylvie started to feel hope that maybe he had more to give.

It’s been a little over a year since the diagnosis. Sylvie’s trying to read a book while Matt is taking a nap. She’s distracted by her thoughts but hears him whisper.

“I think it’s time.”

She nods, her lower lip quivering. She approaches him and kisses the top of his head before making her way out of the room to make a few phone calls.

The house starts to fill with family and friends arriving to say their last good byes. Their kids are here, surrounding their dad and telling stories about how Matt always put them first no matter what. The remaining members of their second shift at 51 start to trickle in one by one. Sylvie told them it was going to be a celebration of Matt’s life, how she didn’t want them to mope around because it isn’t what he would want so they laugh and jest until late in the evening.

Matt kisses his grandkids one last time before they leave and Sylvie climbs into bed with him. He rests his head on her shoulder as she holds his hand and watches his eyes flutter close and his breathing gradually stop.

Sylvie recollects their many years together - growing from friends to something deeper, the first time Matt swung like Tarzan from the aerial after they got together and Sylvie telling him never to do it again and of course he did many more time and she never really stopped worrying, buying a house, their wedding day, the birth of their children, sending off each kid to preschool up until watching them graduate from college, meeting their grandchildren for the first time, celebrating personal and professional milestones together, cheering each other on.

She looks at her husband’s still form thinking yes, it has been a full life.

#you ask for angst and I try to deliver #but wow that was hard to write #and I'm sorry in advance #chicago fire #brettsey #fanfic prompt

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starryeyedrogue · 3 years

Text

mental health & vent

again, a long one. please stick with me here.

tw: depression, anxiety, ptsd, epilepsy diagnosis, suicidal thoughts mention

hey everyone, like I said in my last post, I won’t be as active on here. this doesn’t mean I’m quitting by any means, I’m here for the long haul! I just need a break for a little bit.

side note: I am not in any way suicidal or practicing self harm. this is just to vent and act as a PSA for my mutuals/followers.

now onto my main message.

I’ve seen lots of posts about mental health lately, and I’m so incredibly proud of those who have spoken up. They’ve inspired me to make my own post, actually. normally I’d keep it to myself, but this time has been rough and I want to get it off my chest. I’ll probably delete this later, but still.

I’ve been depressed.

long story short, I had a very traumatic experience a couple years ago with an ex boyfriend (not going into it on this post, for details just dm me. not something I’d want to post publicly, this is just an explanation) and I was deeply depressed. I was never diagnosed “officially” because I was afraid to speak up, as this would expose what I was going through. I had really bad anxiety at that time too, and I still do. I also have PTSD flashbacks from it now and again. none of this was diagnosed, and I still don’t want to bring it up to my doctors/family. my irl friends don’t even know, at least not most of it.

I have monoclonic epilepsy, which means my seizures are fairly small. my arms, legs, feet, hands, and fingers twitch, and I lose control for a few seconds. it doesn’t hurt, and sometimes I don’t even notice or remember it happening, but my family does. epilepsy in general runs in my family, and it can be triggered by a great deal of stress, lack of sleep, and of course flashing lights. in my case, I never “had” epilepsy or seizures until the “experience” I mentioned before, as it caused massive amounts of stress for about 2 years straight. it’s gotten better, as I now have medicine and am out of that situation, and I haven’t had a seizure since September, which is amazing and a huge blessing.

writing has helped with my depression and anxiety a lot, as I can write out what effects me the most. honestly, some of the characters are based off of myself (before vs after) and the person from the “experience.” this is just for therapeutic reasons, as I don’t really want to go to real therapy (I’d be too embarrassed to ask for it or talk to someone anyway, though I probably need to go eventually and plan to when I’m on my own).

however, when I stopped posting it, I started feeling bad again. I didn’t think I needed to post my stories to feel better or to make a childhood dream into reality, but not posting it made me feel somehow worse. I’ve stopped writing as much, and I’ve lost motivation to do just about anything. I’m working on a couple things to help myself get out of this “funk,” but any tips would be greatly appreciated!

this may seems stupid, but I’ve been depressed and very anxious about my schooling. I started in cyber security and got about halfway through, but I became depressed and had other issues so I didn’t finish the degree. now I’m starting in psychology, after praying for months and months for help with figuring out what to do for school. I finally got an answer, and that answer was to be a Christian counselor! I want to help as many people as I can, especially since I know how it feels to be anxious, depressed, and have PTSD.

I’m dealing with a lot of changes right now, as I’m selling my first car, might have to move out of my first house/childhood home, and just a bunch of other stuff. this sounds trivial, but I hate change. it seriously stresses me out. my neurologist told me that if I have any more seizures, I won’t be able to drive for 6 months to a year to be safe (as I could have an “episode” as I call it while driving and hurt myself/others in a potential car accident). trust me, trying not to be stressed while being stressed, anxious, and depressed is not easy.

on top of all that, my irl friends have all but abandoned me. I never hear from them (all but one, she’s the best!), and when I do they ignore me or pretend to listen when they obviously aren’t. I try to make plans with them, but they ignore me or just say “definitely!” but never try to set up times to hang out. It’s been almost two years since I’ve seen them all together. I was able to hang out with the friend I mentioned earlier to go to another friend’s recital, but that was it, and that was months ago. I totally get being busy, but I miss them and I don’t think they miss me, which really hurts. one friend ditched us on graduation day and we haven’t talked to her outside of “happy birthday,” or “@___ look at this thing I know you like,” which she never responded to. graduation was 4 years ago. I miss them all, even if they aren’t really my friends. I miss familiarity and their chaotic personalities. I’ve known them my entire life. honestly, I haven’t made any other friends irl, even though I’ve tried (I’m very introverted and a lot of people don’t get my humor/personality. I’m very much a mischievous old lady that uses weird wording (li.e. using uncommon words for my generation mixed with modern stuff, basically I sound like a vampire that’s been around since the 50s and mixes the eras together in some unholy mixture) at heart and I have very niche interests that I cling to like they’re my last hope). basically, making friends and meeting new people is hard for me for various reasons.

tumblr is different though, which I’m seriously grateful for! the people I’ve talked to are all so nice and really fun to talk to, and they’re part of why I’m posting this. @elvish-sky gave me the courage to post this and @hey-its-nonny and @padawansofthejediorder have been amazing and super nice to me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. the reason I’m posting this is to let them know what’s going on if I don’t respond to messages for a while, and to let them know what wonderful people they are and how much it means to me that they care about me, even if we’re just tumblr mutuals. I love you guys, thanks for being here! it means more than you know.

my mom and dad both had health scares recently, which made me spiral even more. I honestly don’t know what I would do if one of them died. they’re literally my world and my best friends, as ridiculous as that sounds. my mental health was so low I honestly thought I’d die too. they’re both fine now, which is truly a blessing and a massive relief. when I say I thought I’d die too, I don’t mean I wanted to commit suicide, but I honestly can’t imagine a world without my parents, especially my mom (hers was the main health scare, it was a case of reaction to a new medication for her migraines). we’re insanely close and she’s my best friend, as cheesy as that sounds. I don’t know what I would do without her. it’s making me teary just thinking about it.

long story short, please be patient with me. I’m dealing with a lot right now, and I need some time to take a deep breath and focus on my mental health. if you have any suggestions/tips for dealing with depression, anxiety, and PTSD flashbacks, please let me know!

for those I’ve tagged, you don’t have to reply or even read this whole thing if you want, I tagged you because I thought you’d like to know about this and/or I wanted to show my appreciation for your kindness!

I love you all, thanks for sticking around and listening to my rants. <3

#roguespeaks #sorry that was super long #vent #mental health #roguesrambles

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write-orflight · 4 years

Text

Like Real People Do. Chapter 9

*Gif not mine*

Masterlist

Rating: M

Words: 3.2k

Warnings: Kinda nsfw talk(not really tho) violence

Request: OPEN/CLOSED

A.N: Only an epilogue left guys! thanks for going on this journey with me and making me remember my love for writing. End of chapter based loosely on season 4, episode 3. and even then it’s what I remember. I didn’t feel like rewatching the episode so if you see any inaccuracies, you didn’t. Much love, Cia

Chapter 9: We should just kiss

You and Spencer have been dating for almost a year now. Or as he would put it and 10 months 29 days and 4 hours.

After your first night together, you woke up and headed directly to headquarters after a minor detour to shower together again per Spencer’s request. That ends up making you a little more late than you wanted to be so you end up ignoring your coworkers, making a beeline for hotch’s office.

“What’s that all about?” Derek asks as he watches the two of you enter Hotch’s office, shutting the door.

“They’re probably going to tell Hotch they’re dating.” Emily says, not looking up from her file.

“What?” Derek says at the same time as Garcia says “You knew?” He looks at Garcia incredulously, “Knew?”

“Sorry, I was sworn to secrecy. But I only found out a month or so ago.” Garcia shrugs. “How did you know?”

“Come on, I'd be bad at my job if I didn’t notice the immediate pining looks change to smiles.” She laughs, giving Derek a pointed look. “I had suspicions but they were confirmed when she snuck out of our hotel room in Arkansas last month.”

“Plus did you see that football sized hickey on her neck just now?” JJ adds, inducing a laugh from the group. The two of you came back to the group then after a very awkward conversation with Hotch that he kept staring at your neck for. You thought you did a good job covering it but apparently not enough because as soon as you walked in he just reached into his desk drawer handing you both the office relationship form with a simple ‘Don’t let it get in the way of work.’

“What’s so funny?” You ask.

“Nothing important.” Emily smiles. ��Congratulations though.” She says, nodding towards your hands you didn’t realize were joined together. You both flush, immediately letting go of each other.

-------------------------------------------

You meet Diana around month 6.

You end up with a case around Reno at the time and Spencer asks to stay an extra day to visit his Mom. Hotch approves the both of you to stay behind, assuming you are going with him.

“You don’t have to, Y/N.” he says, nervously. “You can go back if you want.”

“Well, what do you want, dear?” You ask, looking up from the book you were reading. “Because, I’d love to meet your mother but only if you’re ready.” you emphasize to him. You knew how protective Spencer was of his mother and you were aware of her diagnosis. You’d understand completely if he wanted to wait to introduce the two of you.

“No, I want her to meet you. I just, never thought I’d be in this situation.”

“What do you mean?” You ask.

“Being in a relationship.” He says. “Loving someone enough I want people important to me to also love them. I just never thought it was in the cards for me.”

You look at Spencer with a soft expression. Despite how he was sometimes with you, you could tell Spencer wasn’t the most confident. You would never understand why, you loved him. You couldn’t even imagine not wanting Spencer in your life.

You sit your book down and level him with a heavy look “Come here.” You say, from your position on the bed. Spencer, not needing much convincing immediately lays on top of you. You proceed to show him exactly how much you love him that night.

The two of you walk into the care facility hand in hand. You’re immediately greeted by the front desk nurse. “Spencer!” She says, happily. She immediately takes note of the joined hands and smirks. “And who is this?”

“This is Y/N, my girlfriend.” He says, smiling brightly. You instantly extend a hand to shake the woman's hand. “I was hoping to introduce her to my mom today. Is it a bad time?” He asks.

“No, honey, she’s having a good day today. She’s reading in the common room if you’d like to head back.” Spencer nods his thanks before leading you back there.

Spencer scans the room quickly before landing on his mom, she gives him a bright smile. Spencer immediately speed walks towards her, pulling you in tow, you practically have to jog to keep up.

“Spencer.” She immediately holds her arms out, Spencer letting you go to hug her.

“Hey mom.” He says, he turns back to you, and you're standing awkwardly waiting for him to introduce you. “Mom this is--”

“Dr. Y/N Y/L/N.” She cuts him off, smiling at you.

You reach your arm out to shake her hand, which she mainly just holds for a second before releasing you. “It’s very nice to meet you, ma’am.” you add.

“Diana.” She corrects before turning to Spencer. “Your letters were right, she’s very pretty.” She smiles at the flush that spreads across both of your faces.

The three of you sit and make small talk, updating Diana about your lives separately and together. Eventually, Diana speaks up. “Spencer, why don’t you go talk to Dr. Callahan before you go. I’m sure Y/N doesn’t mind keeping me company.”

Spencer looks at you hesitantly, you nod at him. “We’ll be fine. Go.” You smile, he smiles back at you before heading out the conference room.

You and Diana sit in comfortable silence for a minute before she speaks “Your nails are such a pretty color.”

“Thanks!” You say, before adding excitedly. “I keep the polish in my bag, I can paint your nails if you want.” You say before rummaging in your purse pulling out the aforementioned polish. She smiles and nods at you holding out her hand to you. You instantly got to work.

“Do you always carry around polish?” She asks.

You shrug. “When you’ve got a job like ours you have to. Guns aren’t really kind enough to not chip your polish.” You laugh, she joins you.

“This is nice.” She says. You tilt your head, questioningly. “Girl talk, I never got it with Spencer. And frankly, I never thought I would.”

You smile. “Well, I’m not going anywhere Diana, so you can get your girl talk from me whenever.” You chuckle, she laughs with you.

“He loves you, you know that.”

“I love him.” You look her in the eyes so she’d know you were being genuine. “Spencer is the best thing to ever happen to me and you raised a wonderful son and partner.”

She looks at you misty eyed, patting your hand affectionately, before letting you get back to work. You’re talking and laughing so much the two of you don’t even notice Spencer watching the both of you in the doorway of the common room with a smile on his face.

----------------------------------------------

Spencer accidentally meets Persephone at 9 months.

You had gone to your college roommate’s baby shower which had taken longer than you thought so you asked Spencer to go to your apartment to feed Garbage. Upon entering he heard noise in the kitchen, he didn’t see your car out so he knew it wasn’t you. He pulled his gun out to investigate and well…

That’s the story of how Spencer almost shot your godmother.

When you came home, you walked into the sight of Spencer and your godmother sitting around your table having tea.

“Persephone!” You say, surprised. She’s instantly up from her spot at the kitchen table, hugging you tightly. “I thought you were still in Tibet.”

She smiles at you. “No, dear. I’ve decided to go to Puerto Rico and help with hurricane relief. I thought I’d take a brief detour to come see you but ended up running into Spencer here.” She turns and smiles at him before leveling you with narrowed eyes. “Who you failed to mention in your letters.” She says, with a pointed look.

“I’m sorry, Phone.” You say, “Life’s been hectic, I just couldn’t find the words. But this is Spencer.” You say walking towards him, settling in the seat next to him. “My boyfriend.” You settle your hand on top of his, he squeezes you in return.

Persephone was very much the opposite of your mother. She had long dreads fashioned with gold beads and shells tied back typically with a bandana. She believed in spirituality, often trying to read your palm or tarot most of your life and you always found her meditating or doing yoga when you would come home in your teenage year. She was a free spirit that didn’t match your mom’s strict demeanor and regime at all.

Yet they were best friends.

Having met in college and your mother being forced to tutor her in economics, the pair quickly became lifelong friends eventually making her Maid of Honor at her and Noah’s wedding and Y/N’s godmother. She had taught Alice how to loosen up and Alice taught her many things like caring for others before herself. After her passing, Persephone dedicated her life to helping others as well as raising Alice and Noah’s daughter. Not that much ‘raising’ went on, you were a very independent child. Just like your mother.

Persephone sits and has tea with you guys for a while before announcing her flight is leaving soon. The two of you offer to take her to the airport but she refuses your offer so you opt to just walk her out.

“It was nice to see you, Persephone.” You say, hugging her as she leaves.

“You too, sweetheart.” she says, before leaning to whisper to you. “Hold on to that one, He seems to keep you balanced.”

“Trust me, I am.” you smile.

---------------------------------------------------------

Fights happen. Just like with any other couple.

When you first move in together at 10 months they happen a lot as you adjust to each other's habits. Like Spencer never hanging up his towel or you leaving your makeup on the bathroom sink. But you get used to it as you get used to each other.

Sex is good, great even. You’d never been with a guy who was so intuitive of your body. He treated you like you were a puzzle he had to solve every night. Finding new ways to get you off, what you liked, didn’t like, what made you mad. Sometimes he’d just tease you for hours until you were begging for his cock. Sometimes you’d push his buttons all day just so as soon as you got home, he’d lay you on the nearest surface and fuck you until it was hard to walk the next morning. Sometimes he was brutal, leaving bruises you weren’t aware were forming at the time and most times, he was doting. Treating you like you were the most fragile yet most important thing in his life because, well, sometimes you were.

The nightmares never stopped. You were foolish to think now that Spencer was in your bed every night they would. You’d wake up gasping most nights, thankfully not waking Spencer, then you’d make a cup of tea to calm yourself down before joining him back in bed. Some nights, you’d wake up screaming. For your parents, Spencer, anyone. He’d wake up then, instantly cradling you in his arms while you sobbed into his bare shoulder.

Thankfully, it doesn’t affect your work like you thought being an open couple would. If anything it made you work better together which is why Hotch sent the both of you on this case today. You were to go undercover as social workers to investigate what you believed to be a cult.

You were interviewing some of the children when the first shots rang out and you two and the social worker you had come with were ushered in a tunnel underground with the other women and children. You were trying to keep your cover and remain calm but you couldn’t help but look at Spencer in worry. The woman you had come in with had been shot and it was starting to look like Waco in here. Spencer was looking back at you with the same look, praying this wouldn’t be the last moment you had together because you couldn’t hold each other like you wanted to.

The leader came in later with his goons storming up to you and Spencer. “You know, I just heard something real interesting on the news.” He said, casting a dark look to the both of you. “That there are two FBI agents being held hostage inside. Now, imagine my shock when I saw that because as i was told by the two of you, there was only one and that she was dead on the floor. So…” his goons leveled their guns at you. “Who is it?”

Though you hadn’t necessarily shared your thoughts with Spencer, you’d hoped he came to the same conclusion you had regarding the man’s profile. He was a narcissist and charismatic sure, but he was violent and willing to do whatever it took to get his way. You also knew he wouldn’t kill a woman. Sure, he’d hurt and maim but you knew if he found out Spencer was an agent, he would kill him, no hesitation.

You knew what you had to do.

“Me.” you said instantly “It’s me.” Spencer tries to not blow the cover you just gave him but he looks at you with a shocked pained look. “I’m Agent Y/N Y/L/N.”

The man’s goons look at him for instruction. He gestures for them to lower their guns and you think for a second you’ll be fine. But then the man is gripping you roughly by your hair dragging you out the room by your roots while Spencer watches in horror.

The first hit takes you by surprise, it shouldn't have, you knew it was coming as soon as he dragged you into a room alone. It was best to not fight back so you just became his punching bag. You knew the team had to be listening to what was happening to you, you knew they’d risk the whole case if it meant getting you out of danger. You needed a way to let them know you were fine.

“I can take it.” You say, to the air really. “I can take it.”

“You can take it, huh?” The man grabs your hair roughly again before landing another punch.

-------------------------------------------------

You were now captive alone in a room. Of course you’d prefer not to be but if you were comparing rooms you’ve been captive in at least the digs here were sweeter.

You’d found a way to get in communication with Derek, with you moving the blinds with your boot to speak and him using morse code. You were suddenly thankful for that weekend Spencer got bored and forced you to learn morse code because now you knew there was a bomb and they were planning on setting it off with everyone inside.

You had to get out, but more importantly you had to get these women and children out first which made you try to break down the woman who was checking on you’s defenses. You knew she was the one who made the call to social services in the first place. You knew you could get her to do the right thing if it meant protecting the children. So you made her aware of your plan, get the women and children back into the tunnels and out of the compound before all hell could break loose.

You could really only hope Spencer was holding his own.

--------------------------------------------------

Spencer had made it out just barely in time and not in the best of shape that didn’t stop him from immediately looking for you. He searched around frantically until his eyes landed on the woman he knew made the 911 call, corralling a bunch of children. He approached her hoping she knew something.

“The agent he took earlier. Where is she?” he asked, panicked.

“She came with us but we lost one of the toddlers she ran back inside to get him. I never saw her come back out.” She said sadly.

Spencer’s eyes leveled back to the burning building trying to keep his tears at bay. He was a scientist, he knew the odds if she had truly gone back inside considering where the blast was located she couldn’t have survived. He choked as heavy sobs racked through him, turning away from the building because he couldn’t watch the sight of something that had taken the love of his life. He was so distraught he almost didn’t catch the melodic voice behind him.

“I’m sure we can find you a new stuffed lamb, honey.” You say to the 5 year old cradled in your arms. There’s a reason you're not a firefighter. You were not cut out for the running into burning buildings business, you felt fine but you were sure you’d be coughing up black for days. You approached the back of the ambulance. “Can you go with this nice man for me? He’s going to make you feel all better, alright?” The child nods shyly into your neck before you hand him off to the EMT. You look around before your eyes land instantly on Spencer, who looked like he’d been crying. You couldn’t help the stray tears they fell from your face as you jogged (well, limped) towards him. He instantly wrapped his arms around your waist letting you cling tightly to his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” you ask.

“Am I okay?” He says, incredulously. “Yea, I’m fine Y/N. Are you ok?” He says, you nod.

“A little sore but I’m fine.” You wipe the stray tears from his face. “What’s wrong?”

“They said you ran back in. I- I thought--”

“I’m not.” You assure him, knowing what he was about to say. “I’m alright, Spen.”

“Marry me.”

That makes you stop in your tracks. You look him in his eyes, they’re soft and genuine looking back at you. “What?” you say.

He reaches into his jacket's upper pocket, producing a ring. “I was going to wait until our anniversary, I was going to take you back to the planetarium and rent it out so we could have it to ourselves. I had a whole idea but considering how you like to scare me every couple months with a near death experience.” You chuckle slightly at the annoyance in his voice. Before he looks back at you with so much love and admiration. “I can’t live another second without you knowing I want you to be my wife so…” He gets down on one knee. It’s not at all how you pictured your proposal, definitely not with cop lights flashing and ambulance sirens, and the smell of burning wood. But because it’s Spencer. Because it’s you. And because you’re both still breathing and alive. It’s perfect. Just like everything always seems to be when you’re together. “Will you marry me, please?” he asked again.

“Yes.” You say. “Of course.” You add laughing. He slips the ring on your finger and doesn’t even feel like extra weight on your hand. In fact it feels like for the first time in your life, it’s right. He sweeps you into a bruising kiss. You don’t even notice the team watching and smiling, misty eyed. Only thing you notice is the comforting weight of Spencer near you and how in that exact moment the world feels still.

Taglist: @haylaansmi @yoruebeautiful @kianagilder-blog @l0ve-0f-my-life @bihoeofmanyfandoms @dreamer7black @baby-banana @drreidshands @blameitonthenight21 @slyskyeey @liaabsurd @di-essere-amato @oliviamaerose @nightlygiggless @eevee0722 @april-14-blog @dilaudidwinchester

#spencer x reader #spencer x reader smut #spencer reid x reader #spencer x you #spencer reid x you #criminal minds #bau x reader #spencer reid x reader smut

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featherymalignancy · 4 years

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PART ONE — The Eyes of Texas: A Rowaelin Origin Story 🏐 🍺 ❤️

Long before Cash and Nesta, there was Rowan and Aelin.

Rowan Whitethorn—a Navel academy graduate and recently discharged second lieutenant from the United States Navy—takes a break from studying of the police academy exam in Los Angeles to fly back to his native Hawaii and compete in a twos volleyball tournament with his ex, one of the best sand players on the amateur circuit.

Beyond Remy’s devious machinations to win Rowan back, the biggest impediment to victory is the so-called Ashryver twins, a pair of cousins from Miami with a reputation of their own. Rowan can’t help but admire the gorgeous and sharp-tongued Aelin Galathynius, who’s more than ready to give Remy a run for her money—both on the court and in the race for Rowan’s affection.

This takes place in the same AU-verse as my Nessian story In Vino Veritas, about four years before.

This is a two-part story, you can jump to Part Two here. ♥️

The Eyes of Texas, Part ONE

No matter how many times he made the journey, Rowan Whitethorn always found a wonder in returning home. He’d been glued to the window on the plane’s final descent into Maui three days ago, drinking in the sight of the Kahului Bay’s glittering waters and the distant peaks of Haleakalā rising up like silent guardians in the distance. It had only been six months since he’d last been home, but it still made his heart race; he doubted it would ever fail to take his breath away.

It had only gotten better when he’d landed and found not just Cash and Fen waiting for him, but Lorcan as well. The self-proclaimed success story of the friend group, Lor had gotten a full-ride to MIT and graduated with a 4.0 before being recruited to some tech giant in the Silicon Valley. It didn’t matter how times Rowan tried to point out that he himself had needed a recommendation from a US Senator to get into the Naval Academy; Lor would simply start rattling off college rankings and acceptance rates until Rowan conceded defeat just to shut him up.

Even though they lived down the California coast from one another, Rowan rarely got to see Lor. So far as any of them could tell, Lorcan’s whole life was his job, and despite his obscene salary, he rarely took days off, let alone vacations. So for him to come to see Rowan play in the tournament--Ro didn’t think he needed to tell his friend what it meant to him. Not that it would have mattered if he had; the only thing Lor wasn’t good at was talking about his feelings. A likely culprit for why he didn’t have a girlfriend, considering their friend Essar had once dubbed him “the hottest man on all eight islands”.

From the airport they’d driven across the island in Cash’s beater pick-up, Rowan in the cab and Lor and Fen riding in back. It had reminded Rowan of old times, of being 18 and carefree. It reminded him of life before his mom had died, before the Academy and his naval service, before Lyria and the cancer and all the heartache that had come after.

Sitting in the truck, the radio blasting and Cash’ squawking tunelessly along with it, Rowan had felt more himself than he had in months. The stress of studying for the detective’s exam had been wearing on him more than he’d realized, and in that moment it had struck him how badly he’d needed this distraction. A glance at Cash had told him his friend was thinking the same thing.

Cash had been Rowan’s best friend since before he could honestly remember, and despite Lor’s obnoxious declarations to the contrary, Cash was hands-down the smartest person Rowan knew. It had come as a surprise, then, when they’d all started growing up and talking about college and Cash had shown no interest. Neither had Fen, but that Ro had expected. The free spirit of the lot, he seemed perfectly content to stay at home and work odd jobs so long as he could still surf every day. But Cash...he’d always seemed a little lost to Ro. Just a late bloomer, his mother had always insisted. Some of the best people take the longest to develop. Still, Rowan had assumed that now that they were in their mid-twenties, Cash would have figured it out. As far as he knew, though, Cash was still working at the same stuffy restaurant he’d worked at when they were teenagers, though he’d thankfully graduated from a dishwasher to a server and an occasional bartender.

As if he’d known what Ro had been thinking, Cash turned to grin at him, a secret smile that traditionally had spelled trouble, getting grounded, and occasionally running from the police.

“I have some news,” he’d said, eyes twinkling. “Remind me to tell you later.”

Ro had meant to ask the minute they’d gotten back to the house, but suddenly there was a shot in his hand and everything else had faded away. They’d partied all night and well into the next day, a decision he’d regretted when they’d all piled onto the ferry to Waikiki for the tournament. Thankfully they’d still had half a day to recover at the hotel before the tournament began, though the trip had gotten decidedly less restful when they’d arrived to find Remy waiting for them, already pissed off.

According to his friends, Remelle St. James was Rowan’s greatest sin. They’d dated on-and-off through high school in what Cash had generously described as a slow-burning dumpster fire, but had lost touch after Ro had left for the Naval Academy and Remy accepted a scholarship to play volleyball at UC Irvine. It was only after Lyria’s diagnosis, and—a devastatingly short six months later—her death that Rowan and Remelle reconnected. For all her other faults, Remy had also lost a sister to cancer young, and she’d been there to counsel Rowan through the worst of his grief.

Her romantic pursuit of him the following year was admittedly less admirable, and Rowan had been quick to lessen his connection to her when it became clear what she wanted from him. Still, that had been almost a year ago, and when she’d called to suggest he come to Hawaii and play in this invitational with her, it had been an offer he couldn’t refuse. Remy was one of the best amateur players on the circuit, having just missed the opportunity to play professionally on the AVP tour the previous year. It was why she’d called, she claimed. This tournament was a great way to get exposure, and mixed doubles was a much higher profile division than that of female twos.His friends, on the other hand, had immediately called bullshit.

“As much as I want to see you,” Fen had said when Rowan had first called with her proposal. “She’s playing you, brother. No offense, but there are tons of guys here she could recruit if she wanted. She asked you because, once again, she’s trying to dig her claws in.”

“Hate to agree,” Cash had chimed in. “But he’s totally right. She just wants in your board shorts.”

“Are you saying you don’t think I’m good enough to win?” Rowan had countered.

He could picture Cash rolling his eyes from 2,500 miles away.

“Of all the things we just said, how was that your takeaway?”“I never get to play anymore,” Rowan had admitted. “And I miss it. I think I’m just going to do it.”

“In that case, can’t wait to see you, brother.”

And that had been that. It had seemed a great idea up until he’d spotted Remy glowering at him in the lobby yesterday, and now, in the midst of the fourth set of the semifinal match, he was wondering if his friends hadn’t been right.

Game Point, he reminded himself. Just one more point and they’d be in the finals. Just one more point and he could take a blessed break from Remy and all her castigations.He stretched a hand behind him as Remy stepped back to serve, flashing two fingers to signal he would be blocking cross. He could hear her huff of disapproval even with his back to her. They’d been having problems with their coverage all game, and though Rowan could have very reasonably argued it was because of Remy’s defense, she’d blamed his position on the block.

“What’s the point of being a giant,” she’d snarled after the last point they’d lost. “If you can’t shut a hitter down at the net?”

“I’m trying to force the spot you keep saying you want,” he’d snapped back. “Maybe after this game you might want to look into a digging clinic.”

He heard the snap as the ball was served, tracking his opponents through the net as they received. It was a less than stellar pass from the guy, and though the set his teammate gave him was decent, Ro could see the swing was going to be exactly where he wanted it.

He lingered to the left until the last moment, feigning a block that would force the hit line. He struck just as the hitter began to make contact, taking a quick step to the right before exploding up. Rowan could feel in the way his muscles uncoiled that it had been a perfect jump, and he turned his face away to avoid a broken nose as his hands made contact with the ball. He could tell from the sound alone how dominating a block it had been, and he wasn’t surprised as he watched the ball fall into the sand on the opposite court, it’s angle so punishing there had been no chance for a defense.

The gathering crowd erupted in cheers, and Rowan turned to Remy in celebration, only to find her lips pursed.

“Nice block. I hope this means you’re going to actually listen to me next match.”

Too annoyed to respond to that, Rowan turned to shake hands with the opposing team before stalking past Remy to where his friends were lounging. Unsurprisingly, she was right on his heels, pushing the water bottle he’d about to take a sip from away and scowling at him.“I told you that you needed to be more aggressive on the block,” she said. “Would it honestly kill you to admit I’m right?” “Every block can’t be a roof, Rem! You need to be quicker at reading the coverage or we are going to lose in the finals.”

Remy crossed her arms.

“You’re just mad because you don’t have the stamina to keep jumping like that.”

“Don’t start with me about stamina,” Rowan said. “For someone who is hoping to get on the tour, you’re lagging on defense.”

Rowan was unsurprised when she reached back and slapped him in the face, though the blow had admittedly come fast enough that he hadn’t had time to avoid it.

“You’re an ass,” Remy snarled, tears in her eyes.

Once, that might have been enough to get him to soften his tone. After ten years of dealing with her gaslighting, he was now sure that they were manufactured.

“Do not do that again,” he said in a quiet voice. At this more tears welled, and she reached up to touch his face, her small palms resting on his cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Ro,” she said, eyes flicking briefly to his lips. “I’m just--there’s a lot riding on this for me.”

“Our next match is in twenty minutes,” Rowan said, peeling her hands off of him. “Get some water and walk it off.”

She seemed put out at the dismissal, but she must have known she had little recourse to argue after slapping him, so she simply nodded and turned away, giving his friends a hateful look for good measure before stalking off. Fen watched her go with unveiled distaste before turning to Rowan and shaking his head.

“Dude, I know I’m gay, but I will never understand what you see in that girl. She straight sucks.”

Cash bubbled his lips in agreement.

“There’s nothing to see,” Lor said. “She’s a fucking nightmare.”

“Here, here,” Cash said, and Rowan rolled his eyes.“We’ve been playing together forever,” he protested. “And Remy knows we aren’t...seeing each other anymore.”

“Does she?” Lor drawled. “Just because you’re not banging her right now doesn’t mean she’s done with you, Whitethorn. Remelle St. James is not a girl you can just walk away from.”

“We’re twos partners, not soulmates,” Ro said. “And if playing with Remy means winning this tournament, I don’t really care what you jackasses think of it, or of her.”

“The sets cannot be worth it,” Lorcan drawled, sounding bored.

“She’s the best amateur female player in this tournament,” Rowan snapped back.

“Please,” Fen said. “She’s barely in the top five.”

“And who’s number one, then?”

Fen grinned, dark eyes fiendish.

“You haven’t heard? There’s a chick here from the University of Texas, and apparently she’s—”

“Holy shit,” Cash interrupted, eyes skating over Rowan’s shoulder. “Who is that?”

Rowan turned in time to watch the hottest woman he’d ever seen saunter towards them. She was taller than average—easily exceeding six feet—and corded with a sleek musculature that would have heralded her as a volleyball player even if they weren’t at a tournament. Her gorgeously tanned legs went on for an eternity, and he felt his mouth go dry at seeing the minuscule bikini bottoms she wore, the burnt orange Lycra hugging a toned ass that told him she probably had a damn good vertical. Her long blond hair was pulled into a high ponytail and braided in the popular style, and when she turned to smirk at him in a flash of pearly teeth and dazzling blue eyes, he felt a little weak.

“Goddamn,” Cash said, interrupting Rowan’s reverie. “She is fucking gorgeous.”

“That’s her,” Fen said. “From UT. Aelin Galathynius. Ro, I hope you and Remy can pull it together for this match. Otherwise this girl is gonna fuck you up.”

They all watched as she trotted onto the court, bending over in a stretch Rowan was afraid was going to make his board shorts too tight.

“God lord, she is perfect,” Cash said, tilting his head slightly to better admire her well-formed assets.Rowan felt a prickle of irritation at his friend's appraisal, but before he could address it, or—more realistically—dismiss it, Lor gave an unimpressed snort.

“She’s too tall.”

“I don’t understand how a guy pushing seven feet can have a maximum height restriction for the women he dates,” Fen said.

Lor only shrugged with a smirk, but Rowan was barely listening. He felt another twinge of displeasure zip down his spine as he watched a muscular blonde frat star stride onto the court towards the Galathynius girl, who beamed at seeing him.“That her boyfriend?” He asked, trying not to sound overly put-out by the idea.

“Cousin, I think,” Lor said, expression gloriously bored. “Aedion Ashryver. I played him in a tournament in Miami last year. He’s marginally above average.”

“High praise, coming from you,” Fen said, earning only an eye roll in response.They watched as Ashryver took several exploratory swings, Aelin working out her wrists as he did. Rowan admired her flawless form as she gave her cousin a tight set and he crushed the ball into a sand on a punishing downward trajectory.

“Nice hands,” Cash said, eyes alight with appreciation as she shot Aedion a quick set to a similarly successful result.

“I can block him,” Rowan said, trying to read Aedion’s form for flaws. “He’s swinging hard, but he’s hit that same spot every time.”

“That’s not going to be enough on its own,” Lor said dryly. “Your best bet is to force Galynthius to receive first then shut her down on the block. I bet her swing is weak.”

“That opinion is completely baseless,” Cash said. “You have no idea what her swing is like.”

“I know that cocky assholes are never as good as they are obnoxious,” Lorcan retorted, gesturing to the Galythinius girl again.She’d seemed to have taken note of their attention, hands on her hips as surveyed Rowan from head to toe. Something about the way she looked at him—her tongue tucked almost suggestively into her cheek—had pleasant goosebumps breaking out on his arms.

Given her brazen assessment, Rowan felt justified in studying her as well, trying to school his expression into that of a player sizing up an opponent for weaknesses. In reality, he was just admiring her.The sports bra she wore did nothing to minimize her gorgeously firm tits, and her stomach was an alluring tapestry of muscle, the smooth bronze skin unblemished save for the corner of a tattoo which peaked out from the top of her bikini bottoms. From it’s color and shape, Rowan thought it might be a flag, though he couldn’t see enough of it to tell which country. Before he could stop himself, Rowan imagined peeling the offending garment off her and getting a better look. Rowan tried to get his mind right as Aelin Galynthius gave him a smouldering grin and turned away, but he was still so caught up in her that he flinched when he felt Remy’s fingers trailing down his back.

“You ready, babe? Let’s do this.”Rowan definitely debated telling her not to call him that, but not wanting to reignite the tension when they were so close to winning he simply nodded and headed towards the court to warm up as well.

“Good luck, champ,” Fen said. “Make sure you find out if she’s single for Cash.”

Rowan flipped him off and jogged onto the court, trying to ignore the way Aelin Galynthius’s eyes raked him appreciatively as he passed her.

Still relatively loose from the previous match, Rowan sped through warm-ups, not wanting to give the Ashryvver cousins too much insight into his skill level. When they were done, the tournament organizer came over to congratulate the four of them on their place in the finals before briefly running through the rules.

“There will be a line judge to settle any disputes, but you’re mostly expected to police yourself. We’re all adults here, so I expect everyone to behave like it.”

At this the Ashryvver cousins exchanged a mirthful look that failed to go unnoticed by any of the assembled. Rowan could feel Remy bristling beside him. She only grew more rigid when Aelin let her dazzling blue eyes slide to Rowan and she winked.

“It’s best of five this match, first to twenty-five, win by two, cap at 30. Switch on hard sevens. Any questions?”

“I have one,” Aedion said, a bronzed grin stretching wide enough to reveal dimples in his cheeks. “When we win, am I going to get lei-ed?”

Rowan rolled his eyes, fighting down a searing stab of annoyance. Ethnically, his family may not have been kānaka maoli, but Rowan had lived in Hawaii his entire life, and the culture was important to him. Why wasn’t he surprised that this haole douchebag had just gone for the most tired pun in existence?

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he told Ashryvver. “The losers don’t get shit.”

At this, Galathynius laughed, the sound low and musical.“I love a man who knows how to dream big.”

“Shall we?” The coordinator cut in, his gaze flitting between Aelin and Remy, who Rowan presumed was scowling.

They nodded and he flipped a coin, which Rowan called in the air.

“Heads.”The shaggy-haired coordinator extended his arm to show them the gleaming head of Sacagawea on the gold dollar coin.

“We’ll serve,” Rowan said, forcing himself to shake Aedion Ashryvver’s hand as he did.

Enough of this bullshit, he was ready to beat this punk into the dusk. He was also ready to put some distance between himself and Aelin Galathynius before her beauty robbed him of any good sense. Together or no, Remy would have his balls on the grill if he openly flirted with someone else in front of her, and it was a complication he couldn’t afford this close to victory.

It was easier said than done when Aelin slid her hand into his, squeezing in a way that felt oddly suggestive. However, it only lasted a second before she was turning on her heel and strutting to her side of the court.

“Good luck,” she said over her shoulder, brushing the long tail of her braid down her back. “You’re going to need it.”

Remy growled something that sounded suspiciously like “bitch” as she took her place behind the serving line. Rowan gave her what he hoped was an encouraging nod as he made his way towards the net, hand stretched behind him to give Remy the block signal.

Aelin Galathynius grinned at him through the net, blue eyes glittering before she slid on a pair of sunglasses.

“So,” she said as Remy continued to prepare. “What’s your name, gorgeous?”

There was a pleasant cadence to her voice when she spoke, the trace of an accent he couldn’t quite place.

“Trying to get in my head?” he shot back, willing himself not to fall for her tantalizing games.

Aelin gave a sultry laugh.

“More like your pants.”

At this he heard the snap of the ball being served, and he swore as he watched it sail into the net. It wasn’t like Remy to make service errors, but the dirty look she gave him as he retreated to receive Aedion’s serve told him she considered it his fault.

“Are you done flirting,” she hissed as he passed her. “Can we focus on winning now?”

Rowan longed to snap back a retort that he hadn’t been flirting and she was the one who seemed to be lacking focus, but by this time Aedion was behind the line, preparing to serve. Rowan watched the toss and adjusted his position the minute Aedion made contact, easily receiving the ball. He called for a hit outside, but Remy’s set drew him into the interior of the court instead, almost as if she were trying to pull him away from Aelin.

Adjusting his position, Rowan swung. It was Aelin who received the dig and Rowan quickly retreated along the net, ready to stuff her on the block. He was in the perfect position to cut off the diagonal hitting lane, leaving her to either tap it over—an easy receive for him—or shoot line. Rowan thought of what Lorcan had said about her weak swing as she approached, and part of him hoped she would attempt a cross so he could show her how it was done.

He crouched, muscles burning in anticipation to spring up and stuff the ball right back in Aelin Galathynius’s smug face.

Except, he didn’t.

Aelin exploded into the air as the ball reached her, her vertical impreeven given her height. In a flick of her wrist, she’d tattooed the ball right down the undefended right line. Remy made a dive for it, but Rowan could tell from the minute Aelin had hit it that it was a point.

It was—she was—

Rowan shook his head, slightly dazed. Whatever skill Rowan had expected from her, she’d just blown right past it. She was phenomenal.And what was more, she knew it. When Rowan had finally gathered his wits enough to glance at her, it was to find her grinning back.

“Welcome to the majors, Big Boy,” she purred, and Rowan couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss her or throttle her as he retreated back to his receive position.

Ashryvvers: 1 Remy & Ro: 0.

Rowan’s warring aggravation and admiration raged on all through the first set, which he and Remy lost...badly.He tried to ignore his friends’ jeers as he retreated to hydrate before the second set began, trying to analyze Aelin’s game for flaws.The problem was, there were none, at least that he could see.

“So what’s she like?” Fen asked as Rowan took another sip of gatorade. “Seems like you two were really hitting it off out there.”

“Annoying,” Ro replied. “She’s got Remy all riled up.”

Remy had refused to speak to Rowan after the set, and she was currently standing alone in the middle of the court, glaring daggers at the Ashyrvver cousins.

“Like I said,” Lor said in a dry voice. “That she-demon has plans for you. She doesn’t like that Galathynius is moving in on what she sees as her turf.”

“What are you even talking about ‘turf’?”

“I think he means your dick, man,” Cash added, grinning when Rowan turned to glower.

“I do,” Lor said.

“I’m not sleeping with either of them,” Rowan said, trying to reassure himself.

“Sure you aren’t,” Fen said, shooting Lorcan and Cash a conspiratorial wink. “Do you mind if I quote you on that in my best man’s speech? Aelin seems like a girl who appreciates irony.”

“You aren’t going to be his best man,” Cash said. “Obviously it’s going to be me.”

“Ro can’t choose a best man who's already slobbered over his bride,” Lor pointed out. “So it has to be me.”

“It will be none of you,” Rowan said. “Because I would never marry a girl like that.”

Cash gave a bemused laugh.“Like what, gorgeous?”

“Athletic?” Fen added.

“Sharp-tongued?”

“Talented?”

Rowan growled.

“Remind me why I bother with any of you,” he said, tossing his empty bottle to Cash before jogging on the court.

One good thing about his friends’ teasing: it had fired him up. Even with Remy obviously still mad at him, he dominated in the second set, and the third. Between both Ashryvvers’ ability to jump and play defense, he never managed a clean kill—the kind he normally wracked up by the dozens against other, lesser opponents. Still, it was enough.

Unfortunately, Aelin continued to make comments and give him sly looks even as the score turned against her, and Rowan could feel it wearing on Remy. By the fourth set, Remy was visibly flustered, the sizable lead Rowan had given them late in the game shrinking as Remy continued to make useless mistakes.Rowan fought not the swear on game point as Remy went against Aelin on the block and was smoked.

“Lucky shot,” Remy said as she was forced to shake Aelin’s hand to signal the end of the set. Aelin flashed Remy a taunting smirk that Rowan could tell meant trouble, and he debated the merits of interfering just as Aelin said, “There was nothing lucky about that, and we both know it. Please don’t embarrass yourself.”

“You think you’re better than me?” Remy demanded.

Aelin only laughed.

“No,” she said.

Rowan may have relaxed at hearing that, but before he could Aelin added, “I know I’m better than you.”

Remy turned, lip curling up.

“Not what the scoresheet says.”

Aelin pushed the sport sunglasses she was wearing on top of her head, presumably so Remy could see her roll those sparkling azure eyes, ringed at the iris with pure gold.

“I think we all know why the score looks like it does,” Aelin shot back, pausing to give Rowan a bone-melting smile.

Honestly, there was so much sexual charisma in it that he had to actively fight his body’s natural reaction. His brain might not have been a fan of Aelin Galathynius, but his cock sure was.

Remy jammed her hands onto her hips, the rage in her eyes cold enough to burn as she stared Aelin down. Rowan, she ignored.

“I don’t need him,” she snapped.

Aelin smirk went slightly wicked.

“Good, then you won’t mind when I take him home later and give him the ride of his life. After my cousin and I bury you in this match and win the tournament, that is.”

Aelin flashed her pearly teeth in a razored smile, letting it rake over Remy before falling on Rowan. He should have been insulted by her objectification, but in reality it just turned up the tension that had been simmering between them since the match had begun.

Remy’s answering laugh was cold, and Rowan braced for impact. Despite her bravura, he doubted the Galathynius girl understood what she was starting. Remy could be downright cruel when provoked, and the gleam in her eye told him she was preparing to go from the jugular.

“As if he’d be interested in a flat-chest, loud-mouthed cunt like you.”

At this Aedion growled, the first serious emotion Rowan had seen him display all day.

“Hey,” he snapped. “Watch your mouth.”

“That’s enough, Rem,” Rowan cut in. “We didn’t come here to talk trash.”

Remy turned, sneering.

“She started it.”

“That can’t honestly be the retort you’re going with,” Aelin said, crossing her arms with a smirk. “I expected better from you, short stack.”

At 5’9, Remy was above-average height for a woman, but compared to Aelin’s towering frame she looked positively impish, a fact Rowan knew probably filled her with rage. She wasn’t used to being looked down on the court, either physically or metaphorically.

Rowan caught her around the waist a second before she lunged, causing Aelin to laugh.

“You’re a bitch,” Remy snapped.

“I’ve been called worse by better,” Aelin said, tossing the ball to Remy with no small amount of force. “Better luck next time.”

Remy let out a small grunt as the ball knocked some of the wind out of her, but she seemed determined not to give Aelin any more than that. Tossing the ball to the ground, she made a show of storming off.

At this Aelin turned to her cousin, cocking her head back in Remy’s direction.

“Voy a destruirla.”

Aedion laughed and gave a longer response in the same language, and Rowan found his eyes trailing down to Aelin’s tattoo again. At this close distance he could clearly see the white star set into a red triangle, inverted by the position of the tattoo.

The Cuban flag.

Good god, and he thought she’d been distracting before. Knowing that she spoke Spanish…

When he glanced up it was to find Aelin grinning.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said, running the column of her braid through her fist in a way that had him inevitably imagining her wrapping her hands around something else. “They don’t make gringas this gorgeous.”

“Is this your strategy?” Rowan shot back, desperate to find his footing with her. “Work my partner into a frenzy so we’ll lose?”

Aelin laughed, though her gaze had chilled somewhat.

“I don’t need tricks to beat you, handsome. I think I’ve already proven that.”

“At yet that match is still all tied up, two sets a piece.”Aelin and Aedion exchanged a dangerous smile.

“Maybe I just wanted to prolong the match so I could spend more time with you,” she said. “Clearly I shouldn’t have bothered. Try not to be too embarrassed by what comes next, mi amor. It’s going to get ugly.”

“I can handle it,” Rowan shot back before adding, “And you.”

Far from seeming unnerved, Aelin preened a bit at that, clearly pleased by the challenge.

“Prove it, big boy,” she said, hands on her hips as she squared up to him.

He took a step in her direction, standing toe-to-toe with her now even with the net still between them. She may have been tall for a female, but at 6’6 he still had to tilt his chin down slightly to meet her eye.

“I intend to,” he said. “Repeatedly.”

She bit her lip at this, the first blush he’d seen burnishing her beautiful bronze skin.

“Basta, Aelin,” Aedion called, cocking his head. “Dale.”

“Good luck, Hulk Smash,” Aelin told Rowan, turning on her heel towards her cousin.

Rowan couldn't’ find the good sense to move his feet as she sauntered off to join her cousin, the two of them bantering back and forth in rapid Spanish. Cash was going to die when he found out Aelin was Cuban.

Half-Brazilian himself Cash worshipped Latin women, and for the most part, they—like most women—worshipped him right back.

Ro tried not to let the idea of Cash and Aelin hitting it off bother him as he continued to watch the Ashryvver cousins. Perhaps Aelin would be immune to Cash’s easy charm, though Rowan had to admit it was unlikely. Unlike Rowan, who often came off dour despite his best efforts, Cash was engaging and almost impossible to dislike. More likely than not, Aelin Galathynius would take one look at that million-watt smile and enviable head of dark hair and forget she’d even met Rowan.

The thought was surprisingly irritating, and Ro forced himself to put it aside as the line judge called for the final match to begin. He glanced around in time to see Remy striding back onto the court, her expression more neutral than when she’d stormed off.

“Ready?” he asked simply.Her eyes blazed with a determination she’d lacked since the Ashryvver cousins had gotten in her head.

“Absolutely,” she said. “Let’s end this.”

Something in her bearing had changed, and Ro felt adrenaline surging through him.

This was the player who’d dominated in the matches leading up to this one; this was the teammate who was going to help him shut the Ashryvver’s down once and for all.

They lost the initial coin flip and the Ashryvvers elected to serve, Aelin blowing him a kiss as she stepped behind the line. Rowan ignored her.He had bigger fish to fry.

She had a punishing jump serve that stung Ro’s arms as he received, but he still managed a decent pass, and the set Remy gave him was damn near perfect. Aedion and Aelin shifted as the former dropped back for coverage and the latter prepared for the block. She’d yet to stuff Rowan, but he couldn’t deny she had hops enough to cause him real problems if he wasn’t careful.Still, the set had drawn Aelin farther into the court than he could tell she liked, leaving the line undefended. Rowan intentionally approached at an angle as if he meant to swing cross before changing his body position last minute and aiming line.

Aelin jumped, but her effort was futile. Her left hand just missed the ball, which sailed down the line and struck deep.Rowan’s first kill of the entire match.He couldn’t help a glance down at Aelin as he smiled.

“Welcome to the big leagues, Galathynius.”

Aelin only rolled her eyes, but she offered no retort as she retreated to Aedion, switching to Spanish presumably to discuss strategy.

With Remy more in the game, she and Ro got out to an early lead, a fact that he could tell filled Aelin with fiery displeasure. As hard as he was swinging, Rowan had finally figured out Aedion’s swing, and though Aelin tried to move him around the court with her sets to avoid Rowan’s block, they were finding only middling success.

Rowan didn’t permit himself to think too much about it as they steadily racked up points, but when he looked up to find the score was 24 - 18, his pulse sped up.

It was match point.

One more point, he told himself. One more point and he and Remy would have won the whole damn thing. It was so close he could almost taste it.Still, as he watched Aelin take note of the same thing, her blue eyes flashing, he knew it wouldn’t be as easy as all that. Aedion finally managed a kill the next point, and when Aelin stepped back to serve, everything in her posture signaled danger ahead.

Rowan watched the ball spin as she tossed it in the air, timing her jump to perfection. Remy adjusted to defend the line, but the ball unexpectedly hit the top of the net instead, the force of the blow pushing the ball over onto their court. Remy dove for it but it was no use; it was in the sand even before he hit the ground.

24 - 20.

Aelin gave a self-satisfied smirk as Remy tossed the ball back to her.

“Dare you to do that again,” she snapped, and Aelin’s smile only widened.

Tossing the ball, she did just that. The ball hit the tape and fell in the same spot, proving it wasn’t a lucky shot. She’d clearly practiced utilizing the net, and now it had cost them back-to-back aces.

24 - 21.

Remy gave a small scream of frustration as she went down hard for a second time, brushing sand out of her hair and off her face as she glared at a preening Aelin. She readjusted closer to the net lest Aelin try the tricks third time, her body poised to spring. Except Aelin didn’t try it a third time. She aimed for the back corner instead, tattooing the ball into the space Remy had just abandoned.

“Goddamnit!” Remy snarled, storming towards Rowan. “Switch me.”

24 - 22.

Repositioning again, Rowan was blessedly able to receive her fourth serve, Remy’s set putting him tight on the net. He’d expected Aedion to cover him but in a flash Aelin was there instead, exploding upwards just as he made contact.He heard the snap of the ball against skin, and only had time to cast a hand out blindly as the ball came back onto his side. Unfortunately, it wasn’t high enough for Remy to get to.

Aelin beamed as Rowan turned to gawk at her. It was rare at his height and speed that he got stuffed on the block. Even Aedion, who was close to his height, hadn’t managed it.

24 - 23.

“I told you it was going to get ugly,” Aelin purred. “I don’t make idle promises.”

“You’re still behind,” Rowan said, but Aelin only smiled.

“But we have the momentum,” she said. “And chiquita looks like she’s running scared.”

A glance at Remy told Rowan Aelin was right; she looked flustered, and when she caught Rowan looking at her she scowled.

“Let’s just finish this,” she said. “Sideout. No quarter.”

If they scored now, they’d win the match. But if Aelin and Aedion got more up on them, it would force at least two more points as they had to win by two.

Aelin only chuckled at this, heading back to the serving line for a fifth time. She served a floater this time, the lack of spin on the ball sending it sailing over the net at an unpredictable angle. Remy received, and after Rowan put her slightly too close to the net, Aedion stuffed the ball back in her face.

24 - 24.

The next point Aelin won on a deep roll shot to the right corner, and suddenly it was match point in the opposite direction.

24 - 25, match point to the Ashryvvers.

Thankfully this time, Rowan and Remy were ready. Rowan went head to head with Aedion on the block and won, earning only his third kill of the entire match.

25 - 25.

The next point was a service error from Remy after she attempted to tickle the tape the same way Aelin had, resulting in another scream of frustration.

25 - 26, match point for the Ashryvvers again.

Rowan gave Remy a set off the net and she managed to catch Aelin off-balance for a rare shank from the blonde.

26 - 26.

Aedion shot Aelin a quick set to the middle and she had the ball in the sand before Rowan could even react.

26 - 27, match point for the Ashryvvers.Service error from Aedion after a bad toss for his jump serve.

27- 27.

Rowan wiped sweat from his eyes as he tried not to dwell on the score. With a cap at 30, there were only a possibility of four more points either way. He let out a steadying breath as he stepped up to serve. Aiming deep, he caught Aedion in an awkward position that resulted in an unredeemable pass.

28 - 27, match point for Rowan and Remy.

One more, Ro told himself. One more just like that and they would have won.He aimed for the same spot only to realize that Aedion and Aelin had switched positions, and where Aedion was powerful but cumbersome in the sand, Aelin was lightning fast. She managed the receive Aedion couldn’t, and when Aedion set her tight, she crushed the ball cross-court, right into the corner.

Remy threw up her hands, beaming.

“Out!” she said. “It’s out. That’s the match! Ro, we won!”

However, Rowan could tell in her bearing something was off, and he let his eyes flit to the line judge to investigate. The man came over just as Remy made a move to casually swipe at the sand with her toe, and he gestured to the imprint of a ball still visible in the sand.

“In,” he said, giving Remy a warning look as the Ashryvvers murmured to one another. “Point to the Ashryvvers.”

28 - 28.

Rowan tried not to tense at the realization Remy had been willing to cheat. It set his teeth on edge, and served as a reminder why he normally kept his distance from her. It was a rule he’d have to remember after today.

Aelin stepped up to serve with an unkind smile twisting at her full mouth, and tattooed the same deep corner she’d just hit. The line judge--not waiting for Remy’s assessment this time, ruled it in.

28 - 29, match point to the Ashryvvers.

Unfortunately, Aelin miscalculated as she attempted to hit the same spot with her next serve, and this time it was ruled out.

29 - 29, the final match point.

Whoever won the next point would win the set and the match. One point to decide who would be the tournaments champs and who would be the losers.

Rowan’s could see the same thought in Aelin’s eyes as the both approached the net, Rowan’s hand stretched behind his back to signal his block to Remy.

“So,” Aelin said as Remy went through her pre-serve ritual. “Where are you taking me to celebrate after?”

Rowan flashed her a feral grin.

“Didn’t take you for a girl who celebrates her losses.”

“I’m not,” she said. “But buy me a few congratulatory drinks when I win and maybe I’ll show you what type of girl I really am.

”Rowan heard the short whistle to signal Remy was asking for a re-toss on her serve, and he focused his attention back on Aelin momentarily.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he challenged.

She bit her lip, eyes falling unmistakably to his cock. Her gaze was like a fist around his dick, and he had to fight back a groan.

“You know exactly what it means,” she said.

At that moment Remy served the ball, saving Rowan from his pitiful lack of retort. He forced himself to refocus as Aedion received, trying to forget the offer of casual sex Aelin had just thrown onto the table. Or perhaps she was just teasing him, trying to get under his skin so he’d forget what he was doing.Unfortunately for her, he wasn’t so easily rattled. Tracking Aedion as he received the ball and swung, Rowan forced him cross on the block. Remy returned with no issue, and Rowan’s muscles coiled in anticipation as Aelin dug the ball. Aedion set was right where Rowan now knew Aelin preferred it.

She swung hard but met his block, and just when Rowan started to think he’d won the point, she threw out a hand on blind instinct, sending the ball back up into the air on her side of the court. Instantly Aedion was there to feed her a quick set, and Aelin swung again just as hard.

Again Rowan jumped and managed to block her, and again she recovered.

Breathing hard, she approached a third time, exploding upwards at the same time Rowan did. This time, however, she pivoted mid-air, managing to avoid his outstretched hands and send the ball careening down.

Everything seemed to slow as Rowan turned to watch Remy dive for the ball, but it was too late; it had already hit the sand.

That was it; game, set, match.

The crowd erupted in cheers as the line judge made the official designation, and Aelin beamed.

“Nice game,” Rowan told her, stretching his hand out to her. “I thought I had you.”

Her smile only widened, eyes glittering as she tugged off her glasses and slid her palm into his to shake.

“Play your cards right and you still might.”

Rowan opened his mouth--though to say what, he wasn’t sure. Before he could formulate a response, he felt the brush of a hand down his back as Remy appeared at his side.

“Congratulations,” she said coolly, her arm slithering around Rowan’s waist now even as he subtly tried to peel her off. Undeterred, Remy tightened her grip as her eyes flitted to Aelin’s tattoo.

“Not bad for a pair of--”

“I would think very carefully before you finish that sentence,” Aelin warned in a soft, dangerous tone. “And take your hands off him; he’s clearly not interested.”

Remy scowled.

“That is none of your business.”

“You made it my business when you started manhandling him in front of me. He’s too polite to embarrass you, but I’m not. Keep your hands to yourself.”

At this Remy loosened her grip a bit, even as she turned to glare up at Rowan.

“Are you serious going to let her speak to me like that?” she demanded.

“She’s not wrong,” Rowan said, wishing they could do this without an audience. “We’ve talked about this before.”

Remy only gave a cold laugh.

“Oh I see. Some slut offers to suck your dick and suddenly you have no loyalty. You’re a pig, Rowan.”

“Don’t call her a slut,” Rowan said, losing patience. “And stop acting like this is anything new between us.”

At this Aelin huffed a laugh, and Remy snarled.

“You are a miserable bitch, and you fucking deserve each other.”

At this she stormed off, and Aelin turned her bronzed grin on Rowan.

“She’s lovely,” she said. “You make a charming couple.”

“We’re not together,” he said uselessly.Their exchange just now had already made that clear.

“I know,” Aelin said, waggling her eyebrows as she gave him another suggestive up-down. “Lucky me.”

Rowan debated for half a second if he actually wanted to take this girl up on her tantalizing offer, even knowing it could never be anything more. After this weekend he would go back to Los Angeles to continue studying for the detective’s exam and she, presumably, would return to school in Texas. It wasn’t just the distance, either. Something about the idea of a one-night stand with her left him feeling a bit hollow. He’d gone through a ‘casual sex’ phase in the dreary months and years after losing Lyria, and now mindless hook-ups--even with a girl as hot as Aelin--had lost their luster. Besides, Aelin seemed like a girl who deserved better.

On the other hand, Rowan was only human, and goddamn him, there was a part of him which very much wanted to accept. Before he could stop himself, Rowan imagined stripping off Aelin’s bikini and teasing her until she begged for his cock. As dominant as she was on the court, something wicked told him she would be submissive in bed.

However, before he could make a decision either way Aedion appeared, flashing Rowan a cocky grin as they shook hands before throwing Aelin over his shoulder and jogging towards a throng which had gathered at the center of the court. They were young--mostly likely still college students like Aelin--all of them dressed in various articles of burnt orange clothing, chanting “Ashryvver” at the top of their lungs.

Rowan could help himself as he tracked Aelin through the adoring crowd, beaming as the tournament administrator fought his way through the mass to place a beautiful fresh lei of white orchids around her neck. As when the man handed both Aelin and Aedion a crystal vase—serving in the place of a trophy, their throng of admirers burst into even louder cheers as the opening bars of All I Do is Win by DJ Khaled blared over the speakers. Rowan fended off a sensation dangerously similar to disappointment as Aelin scrambled up to sit on the shoulders of a sickeningly-handsome man with dark hair and striking blue eyes. Rowan watched as she strung a hand under the stranger’s chin to grin down at him, his smile similarly enraptured as they traded a laughed.

Rowan forced his shoulders to drop from their rigid position. Perhaps she had just been teasing all that time. After all, she didn’t seem to remember Rowan even existed as she swayed to the music, fingers casually strung through the strangers hair to keep herself steady.

Forcing himself to look away, Rowan retreated back to where his friends waited. It was fine, he told himself. He came here to play, not get his dick wet, and he’d done that, and done it well. Now was the time for celebrating being back with his favorite people, not sulking over some girl he barely knew.

“Great game, man,” Fen said as Ro approached,accepting the Gatorade in his friend’s outstretched hand. “That was a tough break at the end.”

“No shame in that match, Ro. That girl is just unstoppable,” Cash added.

“And one good thing about you losing: I think you shook Remy for good,” Lor said. “She stormed over her to spew a bunch of bullshit about how much she hated all of us before she stormed off. Don’t think we will be seeing her again any time soon.”

“Oh amen to that, brother,” Fen said. “That’s worth losing a match any day.”

“I can’t say I was sorry to see her go,” Rowan admitted. “You were right; she had ulterior motives.”

Lorcan pretended to examine his nails in feigned indifference.

“I, for one, am shocked.”

“Speaking of ulterior motives...” Cash said, eyes trailing to where the Ashryvvers were still celebrating, Aelin perched on the mystery man’s shoulders. “Talk to me about Galathynius.”

Rowan clenched his jaw, debating the merits of making up a lie before relenting and saying simply, “she’s Cuban.”

“Oh fuck,” Fen said. “You’re in trouble now, Kahukore.”

“I knew it,” Cash said, grin wolfish. “She’s perfect.”

“Cousin’s pretty hot, too,” Fen observed, eyes tracking Aedion as he posed for photos for the tournament website. “What have you got on him?”

“He’s a douchebag,” Rowan said. “The first thing out of his mouth before the match started was a joke about getting lei-ed.”

Fen only laughed, teeth bright against his brown skin.

“Lighten up, man. If I dismiss every haole guy who makes that joke, there won’t be any dick left!”

“There’s an obvious solution here,” Lor said, cuffing Fenrys affectionately by the back of his neck. “Stop chasing after white boys.”

“No promises,” Fen said, grinning. “Let’s go get drunk.”

“Can I shower first?” Ro asked, pushing his silver hair out of his eyes. “I feel like a vagrant.”

“And you smell like one, too,” Cash said. “You’re a jackass,” Rowan said, though he couldn’t help laughing as he strung an arm over his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“You owe me fifty bucks, by the way,” Cash called to Lor.

Lorcan rolled his eyes.

“You said she was Puerto Rican,” Lor said. “She’s Cuban, so I don’t owe you shit.”

“At least a drink, then. Fen thought she was Swedish!

“We don’t know!” Fen said, laughing. “One of her parents could still be Swedish. We’ll have Ro ask her later. Double or nothing, Kahukore?”

Rowan’s jaw clenched, and he fought not to scowl outright. A quick glance back at the court told him that though Aelin had finally alighted from the brunette’s shoulders, they were now kicking sand at each other like children. He wondered how long it would take him to get her bright, infectious laughter out of his head.

“If you want to know, you better ask her now.”

“Wait, seriously?” Cash said. “You didn’t get her number? What is wrong with you?”

“She’s not my type.”

“What does that even mean, ‘type’?” Fen said. “I don’t like even women and she’s still my type. Don’t turn into Lor unless you’re cool with dying alone.”

Having no reasonable response to this, Rowan just rolled his eyes.

“Rude,” Lor said, not actually sounding bothered by the comment.

“Let’s just go already,” Rowan said.The sooner he got drunk, the sooner he could forget about Aelin Ashryvver-Galathynius and all the promises he’d seen in her dazzling eyes.

“Last chance,” Cash warned. “Are you sure you don’t want to ask for her number? If nothing else, she looks like she’d be willing to give you the ride of your life.”

Rowan had to admit he was tempted, especially as he remembered Aelin promising him the same thing. Still, when he watch the same dark-haired guy string an arm around her shoulders and kiss her temple, his mind was made up.

Jerking his head towards the parking lot, he permitted himself one final glance in Aelin’s direction before he turning his back to her for good.

Several hours hours later, Rowan found himself sitting on the beach with a beer in hand, watching the sun set over the glittering azure water. Oahu wasn’t quite home— not in the same way that Maui was—but Rowan hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the islands until that moment. It was the familiar sound of the surf and the balmy air, much cleaner here than in LA.

More than that, though, it was being here with his friends. He couldn’t remember the last time all four of them had been together, and he didn’t want to think about how long it might be before it happened again. He just wanted to enjoy the evening and...forget for a while

.“What are you thinking about?” Cash asked from beside him. “You look a million miles away.”

Not wanting the dampen the evening’s light mood, Rowan took a swig of beer and said, “

Just wondering if I should take out a bigger insurance policy on my motorcycle. Remy knows where I live, and part of me is afraid she’s already en-route to the mainland to destroy all my shit.”

At this, Lor laughed.

“Listen, you’re not wrong.”

“Just please tell me we are done with her,” Cash said. “I don’t think I have any more fake nice left in me after this weekend.”

“We’re done with her,” Rowan confirmed. “Also, she is never going to make the tour.”

“I don’t think AVP was very even on the table,” Fen said. “She just made that shit up to get your attention.”

“It might have worked, too, if Galathynius hadn’t stepped in,” Cash said, holding up his beer.

“At the very least, we’d be stuck entertaining her all weekend while she tried to slither in your pants,” Lor told Rowan. “For that, at least, I’m grateful to Galaythius.”

“Now, she will make the tour,” Cash said.

“Future Olympian, no doubt,” Fen agreed. “And Ro missed his chance to be right there with her. Instead he’ll be watching her win gold on tv and jacking off into a pool of his tears.”

“Are you done?” Rowan said, lobbing his empty can at Fen.

“No,” Fen said. “I have enough material to last us the night, at least.”

Rowan rolled his eyes as they all labored to their feet and headed towards a rowdy pub farther down the beach. No one had to ask where they were headed; drinks at the Hideaway had always been their tradition when they came to Waikiki.

Despite the early hour, the bar was already bumping by the time they arrived, and as soon as they walked in and surveyed the scene, Cash burst out laughing. Lor, who’d followed his friend’s gaze, gave a good-natured groan.

“Oh you’ve got to be shitting me.”

There, sitting on top the bar, was Aelin Ashryvver-Galathynius, her usual coterie fawning around her as she tipped her head back to drain a shot of tequila. She’d traded her bikini for a pair of cut-off over-alls worn over a distractingly lacy bralette, her long blonde hair falling to her waist in two French braids.

She still wore her lei from earlier, the white standing out brilliantly against her burnished skin.

Everyone she was with cheered as she held the glass aloft, and before Ro could think to make a quick exit and save himself the awkwardness of having to face her. Aelin’s mouth stretched into a sensuous grin as she surveyed his blue button-down and slim-fitting chinos.

“So we all agree now, right?” Cash said, giving Rowan a gentle shove. “Ro has to go over there and talk to her.”

Rowan’s stomach twisted unpleasantly as he watched Aelin lean over to whisper to the same dark-haired guy she’d been with earlier.

“Definitely,” Fen said. “It’s fate.”

“No,” Rowan said, turning towards the bar in an attempt to block Aelin out. “And I think she has a boyfriend, anyway.”

“Only one way to find out,” Cash said, grinning as he slid past Rowan. “Wish me luck, boys.”

Rowan had to actively fight a scowl.

“You’re seriously going over there?”

“Listen, brother: if you’re really not going to take your shot, then I am.”

He gave Rowan a challenging look as if daring him to call his bluff, but Rowan only shrugged.

“Go for it, man.”

Rowan told himself not to look, but curiosity got the best of him as Cash approached. Aelin watched him do so with keen interest, eyes glittering as she slid from the bar to her feet. Rowan was too far away to hear Cash’s opening line, but whatever it was, Aelin tipped her head back and laughed, her hand inadvertently falling to his arm as she did so.

“I need a fucking drink,” Rowan muttered, flagging to the bartender and gesturing for three shots of whiskey.

Draining his, he glanced over again. Cash’s head was bent slightly as he spoke in Aelin’s ear, her smile dazzling as she listened.

Lorcan reached for his own shot, but Ro grabbed it before he could, throwing in back in a single movement before taking Fen’s as well.

“Damn boy, you’ve got it bad,” Fen observed.

“Cash better take her somewhere else to fuck,” Lor added, frowning. “She strikes me as a screamer, and I forgot my earplugs.”

“You both suck,” Rowan said, resisting the urge to look at Cash and Aelin for a third time. He already felt pathetic; he didn’t need to look it, too.

However, after a beat he couldn’t help himself, and he glanced up just in time to see Cash brush a kiss on Aelin’s cheek before retreating back towards them.

When Aelin caught Rowan looking she crooked a finger towards him in an obvious “come hither” gesture, and Rowan felt his stomach flop pleasantly. Cash grinned as he reached their group again, jerking his head in Aelin’s direction as she crossed her legs in an expectant gesture.

“What did you do?” Rowan demanded.

“Greased the wheels for you,” Cash said, smiling. “Go get her, champ.”

At this he turned to Fen, smile widening.“And the cousin’s bi, by the way. You’re welcome.”

“Good work,” Fen said, clapping Cash on the back before turning to frown at Rowan. “What are you even still doing here? Go already, before she comes to her senses and chooses someone else!”

Flipping him a casual middle finger, Rowan smoothed back his silver hair and headed towards her, trying to seem more suave than he honestly felt. Jesus, he hadn’t been this tied in knots by a girl since he’d met Lyria as a first-year cadet. Normally the idea would pain him, but in that moment he had the oddest sensation of her standing beside him, smiling as if to say, “make me proud.”

Aelin smirked and uncoiled to her feet as he approached, grin widening as he said, “You stalking me?”

She gave a lover’s laugh, low and sensuous.

“Oh, you know how the songs goes: The Eyes of Texas are upon you, do not think you can escape them.”

He couldn’t fight his smile at this.

“I should have known,” he said.

“I’ll forgive you this once,” she said. “But you owe me. Why don’t we start with...your name? I’m Aelin, as I’m sure you already know.”

Not wanting to give her the pleasure of agreeing, he simply said,

“Rowan.”

“Nice to finally meet you,” she said. “Took you long enough. I thought I was going to have to kiss your friend just to get your attention.”

“He would have loved that.”

Aelin laughed.

“He’s charming, but too pretty for me; I have a rule of not dating guys who have better hair than I do.”

“Don’t tell him that,” Rowan said. “It will go to his head.”

“Quite literally,” she said. “Let me introduce you around,” she said as Aedion approached.“My cousin, I think you know.”

Aedion only grinned, holding up the lei of purple orchids around his neck. “Told you I would.”

Aelin rolled her eyes as she ran a hand down the back of the dark-haired man she’s been with earlier, seeking his attention. When he turned, she gestured to Rowan.

“Galen, this is Rowan. Rowan, this is my other cousin, Galen.”

“Nice to meet you,” Galen said, his accent thicker than either Aelin or Aedion’s.

Her cousin.

It seemed so obvious now. Though his hair and skin were darker than hers, he had her same brilliant eyes, as did Aedion. Rowan was never going to hear the end of it from his friends.

Galen gave Rowan a quick up-down before firing off in rapid, staccato Spanish, the words so fast Rowan couldn’t even pick out a single one.

Aelin only gave her cousin a good-natured eyeroll before pushing on his chest.

“Vete,” she said. “no me molestes.”

“Let me guess,” Rowan said. “He threatened to string me up if I even so much as blink wrong?

”Aelin gave a look of theatrical mock surprise.

“No way, you speak Spanish?”

“Tell him I come in peace,” Rowan said.

“He knows I can fight my own battles,” Aelin replied with a strug. “He and Aedion just like to prove their usefulness. Where were we?”

“I think you were introducing me to your court,” Rowan said, gesturing as the legion of people surrounding Aelin.

“Everyone else can wait,” Aelin said, gesturing to the bartender for drinks. “I don’t feel like sharing you quite yet.”

When two tequila shots and two beers appeared on the bar, Rowan threw down a fifty before Aelin could put it on her tab.

“Trying to butter me up?” She asked, batting her eyelashes coquettishly.

“Do I need to?” He replied, accepting the shot from her.

She only smirked, grabbing his fist and running her tongue down the back of his hand before covering it with salt. He had to fend off a pleasant shudder. The gesture had shot straight to his cock.

“We’ll see,” she said, offering him a lime now, too. “Ready?”

He lifted his glass to her, but before he could lick the salt, she grabbed his wrist.

“You can’t drink without a toast, are you insane?”

“I don’t have one.”

She rolled her eyes before coaching his arm up above his head.

“Arriba,” she said before gently guiding his hand down. “Abajo. Al centro,” she prompted him to clink his glass to hers in the center. “Por dentro.”

With that she licked the salt off her hand before throwing the shot back easily and sucking on the lime. Rowan decided not to read into the suggestive look she gave him as she did so.

When they’d finished, Aelin grabbed his hand, gesturing for him to pick up his beer before she pulled him away from the bar.

“Where are we going?” He asked, hazarding a glance back at his friends to see them all watching him with knowing smirks.

“Somewhere quieter,” Aelin said, leading him up a set of rickety stairs that lead to an upper lounge.

The low couches were open to the air and overlooked the beach, and considering how things with Aelin had begun this afternoon, it felt…dangerously romantic.

You can’t fall for this girl, he reminded himself.

She didn’t live here, and neither did he. He was busy studying for the detective exam, and she was still in college, for Christ’s sake. Whatever he did, he couldn’t catch feelings for her.

However, it was an idea that felt easier said than done as Aelin yanked him down beside her on a couch, her head propped on a fist as she studied him with those mesmerizing blue eyes. She was so beautiful it was almost hard to breathe.

“So,” she said. “Start at the beginning.”

He laughed.

“The beginning of what?”

She grinned, her lips the most kissable shade of pink.

“Everything. I want to know it all.”

IF YOU LIKED THIS AND WANT MORE, CHECK OUT PART TWO, OUT NOW! 🏐 🍺 ♥️

TAG LIST: @tswaney17 @katexrenee @mightymorphingayagenda @nalgenewhore @superspiritfestival @mis-lil-red @pilesofriles @whitewashedasiangirl @http-itsrebecca @starkovsnesta @thebitchupstairs @sometimesimthatbitch @islareds @faerie-queen-fireheart @queen-of-glass @sleeping-and-books @enpointe10 @justgiu12 @thesurielships @awesomelena555 @alyx801 @carbconnoisseur @ladywitchling @keshavomit @stardelia @thewayshedreamed @annedub @cityofchelsea16 @spyofthenightcourt

#tog modern au #tog x acotar #rowaelin #rowan x aelin #In Vino Veritas Prequel #featherywrites

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bunnylouisegrimes · 3 years

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It’s A Wonderful Afterlife (NOS4A2 Fanfic)

A/N: I’ve had this story idea in my head for awhile, but I got to writing it yesterday and the day before yesterday. Basically, this one is the story of Rose’s transformation into a vampire. It’s gonna cover some heavy topics such as nearing the end of your life and terminal illness, so be warned, but there’s a lot of happiness in the middle and near the end. Hope you all enjoy!

It’s A Wonderful Afterlife

A NOS4A2 Fanfic

By: Bunny Louise Grimes

As the years went by for Rose, very little had changed in terms of her personality. She had remained shy and introverted (unless in the company of those she deeply trusted), she had remained both gothy and girly, and she had remained nerdy. Her love for her toys, her games, her writing, her art, her vampire husband, and her children had never waned. Fifty years of marriage and a set of dhampir twins later, and from the inside, she was as young as she had been on her wedding day.

Physically, she had her differences.

By the time she reached 57, grey hairs were starting to show in ways they hadn’t before. She had never been the type to dye her hair, but in order to preserve its beauty that she so cherished, from then on out, she dyed her long hair the closest shade of matching brunette she could.

Her height was as short as before, her weight was roughly around the same spot thanks to her vigorously making sure she never went past 200 pounds, and her eyes were as hazel as before, with the exception of holding an aged look. Her face and skin had shown the obvious signs of age, but such a thing was inevitable. It was nothing a little makeup couldn’t help make look better.

Charlie still found his June Rose to be as beautiful as he always found her. He had asked her on and off since their consummation on their wedding night, where he took her virginity and kept it within him to turn her into a vampire just like him one day, if she was willing to grow an older human. She always told him she did; she wanted to see how long this “human” thing would go. She wanted to experience humanity till the end, when the next chapter in her life would have to begin and vampirism would take the lead.

But by the age of 75, when she looked as though she was older than Charlie (when he wasn’t in desperate need of souls), and looked to be a grandmother to the children of Christmasland rather than mother, and her parents and brother had moved on to the other side from their own respective health issues, things were beginning to be odd. It was a whole seven months after her 75th birthday when something wasn’t right.

The first sign was the weight loss. Rose had always been a bit plump, but both she and Charlie noticed her normally soft potbelly was slimmer and smaller. They also noticed her thighs and arms were slimmer. This confused them, and they kept it in mind, but they figured it could be the result of age rather than a sickness.

The second sign was the pain in her abdomen and middle back. Within a few weeks of noticing her fat going down, she had pains in these areas on and off, and they would pick up in intensity and frequency some days.

The third sign was the general sickness she felt. One moment, she would be playing with the children, the next, she would be feeling extremely nauseous and fatigued. She would have to throw up in the bathroom and it would take a few minutes for her to recover. Charlie and her both knew that this went beyond weariness from play due to elder age. This was an apparent illness, and something was physically wrong.

However, Rose was also unusual not just in her gastrointestinal area, but her mind as well.

Forgetfulness and misplacing something was nothing noticeable, as she did it all the time. But she suspected something wasn’t right when within those same few weeks, she was slowly starting to forget things that just happened. Both her and Charlie would be watching an episode of one of their shows, and by the time commercials ended, she was struggling to remember quite a few details of what happened before them. It took her a moment to connect the events together. The same happened when she would read, and every once in a while, she would have to slowly read the same paragraph three times.

The turning point came when she and Charlie were discussing things in bed, and she was struggling to remember certain conversations they had and she had with the children only a month ago that she remembered a week before. A few details Rose brought up were nonexistent, and Charlie had to correct her. That night, she decided that between these small forgetful spells and these stomach issues, it was clear she needed to go to a doctor as soon as possible. He agreed and promised to take her in the morning.

The next day, they left Christmasland for the appointment Charlie made for her the moment he woke up. They explained to the doctor all of Rose’s physical and mental symptoms. The doctor nodded; how he nodded made her nervous. When she was younger, she was a nurse, and through her medical knowledge, she could guess what these symptoms meant, but she wanted to trust another medical professional’s judgement, as these things could be nothing rather than something, but as obvious as it sounded, it was always better to be safe than sorry. She had seen that nod before when in the presence of both patients who were relieved to find their serious symptoms were nothing and those who were about to have the news of terminal illness broken to them. Like a coin flip, it would be heads or tails: heads would be another day to live, tails would be a death sentence.

A series of nerve wracking scans and tests with Charlie by her side later, and the diagnosis was clear. The moment the doctor came back to their room, Rose, like a bloodhound, smelled the sullen seriousness in his face and tone of voice. She recognized that face and voice from her nurse days; the coin was tails. He was about to give her the date and method of her execution before slamming his gravel down.

Rose had always imagined that she would go out thanks to her heart or some sort of diabetes related sickness, given bad hearts and diabetes ran in her mom’s side of the family, and her obesity she tried to control would certainly be a contributing factor. Genetics were a hell of a double edged sword: they could give you the most beautiful set of eyes and hair with skin to match, but they could also give you the worst odds of illness you could think of.

This time, it was not Rose’s heart that would fail her, or the development of diabetes. It was two things that were just as genetic, but aruguably worse. She recalled her mother telling her that Rose’s great aunt had died of pancreatic cancer, and it was a miserable way to go. She also remembered her mother telling her that Rose’s great grandmother was suspected of suffering from Alzheimer’s before succumbing to death.

Well, it was no surprise to Rose when she learned that these two things were her method of execution. Not only because she suspected they could be possibilities, but because the facts were simple: if she was somehow strong enough to survive the painful destruction her body would suffer from the cancer, the synapses in her brain would be eaten away, just as if she was bitten by a zombie from one of her stories, and much like a zombie, not much would remain of her but a dead shell. She would be a burden to her husband and children, and they would have to watch her go from being a loving, wonder filled woman to a sickly, miserable, pain filled stranger who wouldn’t even be able to remember herself, her lover, or her children.

Both her and Charlie took this news with with equal sadness. The future was bleak, and they knew that. Not even chemotherapy treatment was worth it.

“My grandfather suffered from esophageal cancer, and he did not fare well with chemo thanks to his genetics,” she explained to the doctor. “Given that I am half my mother, and she is half of him, my odds are not good, are they?”

“Well, you certainly have a better chance than your mother, but yes, he is a direct blood relative, so the odds are there. If you wish to go through chemo, we can get you started on it, but if you don’t want to risk it or have any treatment, you’ll have roughly a year left to live. Since cancer and dimentia do have a connection, as it spreads throughout your stomach and body, your mental decline will come rapidly. I estimate that you will go through the final stages of both illnesses simultaneously, and it will, to put it lightly, be painful for all parties involved.”

Rose nodded. “I don’t think I want to risk it. I don’t think there’s much of a point to go through all of that, only for my mind to fail me. Not to mention, wouldn’t chemo worsen it?”

“It can, yes,” the doctor continued. “Since the state of Colorado offers the End of Life Options Act, we can administer physician assisted suicide, if that is what you would prefer, but there will be a few things you’ll need to do.”

Had Charlie not been in her life, Rose would’ve agreed to do such a thing in these circumstances, although, if she hasn’t met him, she most likely wouldn’t have been in the state of Colorado and instead stuck back home in Ohio, where no such laws would exist. She knew that with the choice of transforming into a vampire, suicide wasn’t needed.

“I’ll need to think on that,” Rose lied.

“I understand, as this is a lot to take in. Please contact me as soon as possible when you have come to your decisions.”

Father and Mother Christmas departed the hospital and stepped inside the Wraith. The drive back to Gunbarrel was at first silent, but Charlie needed to pull over to a secluded area. Rose could see the tears in his brown eyes.

“My beloved...” He hushed, his deep voice breaking. “You’re so sick...”

“I know,” she said softly. “I wanted to give my humanity the best run I could, and I did. But I’m not going through this shit. I’m going out on my own terms, only I won’t have to die. I’m becoming a vampire, and going into the next chapter of my life.” She turned to Charlie. “You don’t need to cry, baby. You have the power to prevent my departure from this world. I already talked to each of my family before they went, and they knew I was going to be immortal as long as I could be, but I could still contact them through my new psychic powers. If you and the kids are more sensitive to spirits, that must mean I will be too. Hell, we’ll make it look like I chose to die without treatment or assisted suicide to the doctors. I’ll be alright. Everything will be alright.”

“Yes, I know,” he sobbed, wiping his eyes. “It’s just... the idea of you dying... the fact is, you had been dying, and you are dying. I know that’s humanity, but when you have something like this... you are not only dying in the human sense, but the clinical as well.”

The gravity of Charlie’s words slapped Rose in the face, just as the news of her diagnosis in the first place had moments ago. Even though she had another chance, unlike so many others in her place, there was still a sadness to be had. This chapter in her life was done, and she could either do one of two endings: continue down a horrible road until salvation was given to her and everyone was left scarred from their experiences, or embrace salvation now. Rose knew that she was going to avoid that horrible road and jump straight to the awe inspiring transformation that would mark the next chapter, but it was a shame her human form had to suffer like this, and that it was even an issue. In addition, 75 was decently young for elderly death. If she were in her 80’s, or especially her 90’s, this was expectant, but 75... it seemed a bit too soon.

She began to cough, and Charlie handed her his white handkerchief. Her eyes widened when she saw blood splatter, and that’s when her own tears poured from her eyes. She gave it back to Charlie and buried herself in his chest. The two held onto each other and wept for a good twenty minutes before deciding they needed to head back home.

Before they exited the car to greet their children, Rose suddenly smiled as she held Charlie’s hand. “Tomorrow,” she said. “I think tomorrow is a good day to celebrate my last day of humanity, and then I’d like to transform. If that’s okay with you.”

A smile formed on his own face. “Whatever day you are ready, my love. I will fuse your innocence back inside of you whenever you desire.”

They broke the news to the children, but they handled it well. They understood the severity of the situation regarding their mother’s health, but were excited and viewed the positive side, that their mother was to be an immortal vampire much like them and their father. When their mother told them she would like to celebrate the last day of her humanity tomorrow and transform into a vampire tomorrow night, they knew that much was to be anticipated for. Their father assured them that tomorrow would be a day to never forget.

While the other children ran upstairs to go to bed, excited for what tomorrow would hold, Millie, Lorrie, Nicholas, and Holly stayed behind. They ran over to their mother and hugged her.

“Even though you’re not gonna be a human anymore,” Lorrie began, “it doesn’t change a thing.”

“We always knew you’d be a vampire like us one day,” Millie added. “We hope you’ll be healthy and happy again real soon.”

“I will, babies,” Rose reassured them. “I will.”

“If we’re half human...” Nicholas spoke up.

“...That means we’re the last pieces of your humanity, right?” Holly finished.

“Yes, it does, babies,” Rose smiled wider. “I suppose it does.”

The twins beamed at each other in pride.

“But just because I’ll become a vampire doesn’t mean I still won’t be myself,” she clarified. “We’ll all still be just as we were, just with me having some physical improvements. It’ll be just as if I will always human.”

They nodded and knew it was time to get ready for bed with the others. They raced each other up the stairs, their parents tagging behind. When everyone was ready, Charlie and Rose bid the little ones good night before snuggling close to each other in their own bed.

Sleep could not come quick or easy for Rose, as her worries and anxieties mixed with her excitement kept her awake, but somehow, she found herself asleep. While Charlie slept, he dreamt of how the party would look for his beloved: the balloons, the streamers, the cake, the lights, the roses everywhere, the unicorns, the glitter... everything to honor his lover’s life and everything that represented what she was and would always be to their family.

When he awoke the next morning, Rose was still asleep. Letting her get her much needed rest, he snuck downstairs. The children had all woke up at the same time he had. They all snuck down the steps and they paused, amazed at the sight that awaited them downstairs...

When Rose opened her eyes and rubbed them, she turned next to her to find Charlie missing. She went to the bathroom and left her bedroom to check on the children. They were not in their very large and ever expanding bed. She noticed that the living room was dark, but all sorts of odd shadows filled it. She went down the steps and turned the lights on.

“Surprise!” Everyone cheered.

Rose gasped. Her eyes were filled with wonder as she saw what her living room had become.

Rainbow lights and glittery streamers filled the ceiling. Colorful balloons and roses of all colors were everywhere. In the center of the coffee table was a cake with candles that became aglow once she turned the lights on. A wonderfully designed unicorn figurine with roses in its mane and tail set on the cake.

“Oh... oh, it’s beautiful!” Rose cried, tears of joy filling her eyes. “Oh, I’ve never seen anything like it before!”

Charlie beamed and pulled a pink dress over her nightgown. She hugged him and kissed him on the lips, cheeks, nose, and forehead.

“How did you all do this?” She asked.

“I dreamed it, like I do everything... well, not everything, as you are far too beautiful to be dreamed from me.”

She blushed and hugged him even tighter. “You are the sweetest man I’ve ever known. I am so happy to know you, be with you and have all these little ones to raise with you.”

The children rushed to her and she gave them as many hugs and kisses as she could give.

“Look outside, and you’ll see the party goes beyond this room,” Charlie said.

Rose opened the front door and was taken aback. Christmasland was covered in more roses, balloons, glitter, and rainbow lights. Amongst it all, the rainbow unicorns from Charlie’s zoo played in the snow together, free to roam from their usual enclosure.

“It’s all in your honor, my dear.” Charlie laid a kiss on her head.

She could speak no words, just gaze in amazement as the children ran outside to play. Charlie and Rose did the same, and for the rest of the day, they played and occasionally stopped to eat. Rose did her best to keep it together, but surprisingly, no ill feelings or forgetful spells came to her. Perhaps because her body knew that it was only one last day until her body would be immune to all ailments, so it needed to use the last of its strength. Or because happiness was her best medicine in the moment. She couldn’t tell which.

By the end of the day, they had gathered back inside, she blew the candles on the cake, and they began to eat some of it. The time had come where they needed to go to bed so that their mother’s transformation could occur. She read them her favorite bedtime stories before they all got too tired to stay awake. She and Charlie kissed them all good night and closed the door, knowing that would be the last time they’d ever see her in her old form.

When they entered the room, the couple closed their door and the fireplace kicked on thanks to Charlie’s abilities. Rose laid on the bed and sighed.

“Today is one of the best days of my entire life,” she said. “I have you and the babies to thank for that. You have made my human days very special, and you will make my vampire ones the same.”

Charlie laid next to her. “You have made my days very special, and you have made the babies’ days very special. We have you to thank for that.”

They exchanged a kiss before Rose sat up. “Well now... are we ready?”

“Are you ready is the more important question.”

“I think I am,” she said. “Words cannot describe how wonderful this day has been from start to finish. It is a day I will cherish forever. And before my sicknesses get to me... I shall end my humanity and ring in my new vampirism on the happiest note possible.”

She looked at herself in a mirror nearby as she slipped her dress off. “Oh, my dear human body. You have seen so much since the moment I was born. And yet, here we are. You won’t be the same ever again, and you will be improved in ways unimaginably amazing, but I hope you know how much I appreciate you. Even when I’ve experienced self hatred, I was always thankful for you. I hope you love this new form.”

She turned back to Charlie and laid back down. “I guess this means I’ll get to eat people with you guys. The right ones, of course. And fangs, nails, a new body temperature... That should all be an interesting experience. And I can’t wait to see what using similar if not exact abilities like you will be like... this will not only be the next chapter in my life, but will be a bonding experience that will bring us all closer together, I think.”

“I agree, my love,” he said. “I agree.”

The two snuggled close together.

“Thank you for doing this, sugar pop,” she sighed. “What would I do without you?”

“What would I do without you is the bigger question,” he chuckled. “I will always love you.”

“I’ll always love you too.”

He leaned into her ear. “Are you ready at this moment?”

“Yes.” Her voice had some nervousness in it, but the confidence outweighed it in ways immeasurable.

“Lift up your chin so I may see your neck.”

She did as she was told. Charlie gazed upon it and his fangs came jutting out, an energy boiling within him.

“Good bye, old life,” Rose whispered with peace. “May our memories live on for all of immortal eternity.”

“Welcome to your new summer to blossom, my June Rose.”

Charlie slammed his fangs down upon her neck, an energy force emitting from the two bite marks. She gasped and her eyes widened. A foreign, but comfortable and oddly familiar sensation came over her. She clutched onto his back as blood dripped down from the bite marks. They glowed a white-blue color.

As the sensation consumed her, she felt as if she was traveling back in time. Every few seconds was another year she felt healthier and younger. It took her a moment to register that’s what that was, but when she saw her face in Charlie’s eyes... she could confirm her wrinkles were fading.

She looked at the arm she could see most clearly. Her wrinkles had dissipated and the fat had returned. She was sure her other arm looked the same. When she looked at her hand, she saw her nails gaining a yellow tint. She felt them increasing in length. Once they reached the same length as Charlie’s, they stopped. She couldn’t see her feet or legs, but she could feel the same effect happening to them. Her legs and feet (and especially her thighs) gained back the weight they had lost. She noted that her pallor was now matching Charlie’s, based on how her arm and hand looked.

Her breasts, always large, plumped back to their youthful size. Her stomach had also returned to the cushiony potbelly Charlie always loved to rest his head on. As embarrassing as it sounded, she felt her privates tingle and somewhere above them, a burning sensation occurred. She thought about it, but considered that her fertility must’ve been returning. She was miserable on and off when experiencing menopause, but she supposed as a vampire, she’d be able to withstand any pains she might experience if she had periods again. In addition, she was sure Charlie would still find her menstrual blood as delicious as he did before when she was human.

Through the reflection in Charlie’s eyes, Rose could see her wrinkles had completely faded. The aged look her hazel eyes held flooded with a new look of old youth meeting for an eternal kiss after years of departure. Her face returned to how she looked on their wedding night, only a bit more pale. She grunted as her white teeth gained their own yellow tint and increased in sharpness. A group of fangs came out from behind these new teeth. Once this occurred, blood filled her mouth and trickled down her throat while ice cold breath emitted from her nose and mouth like a rabid animal. A warmth in her stomach made her feel as if she had drunk the finest coffee or hot chocolate rather than blood.

My God... this is why vampires crave this stuff... it’s got flavors in it that we can’t taste.

The dye in her hair had faded, exposing the natural grey. But it quickly disappeared as her natural brunette took over. At long last, she felt she could embrace her natural hair again. Even its volume, thickness, and waviness returned.

Rose had to fall back further at the sheer force from her insides. The blood that fell from her neck returned to the permanent bite marks and absorbed back inside of her. Cold chills consumed her. Her eyes, nose, ears, tongue, and touch nerves sharpened. The cancer cells in her body exploded like little stars until they were gone entirely. Every healthy cell underwent a metamorphosis that strengthened them and kept them permanently superhuman. Because of this, her immune system had reached powers impossible for the human body, destroying anything abnormal. Any sickness would be identified and wiped out instantly thanks to her new antibodies. Even her asthma had been erased from her lungs. From within her brain, the synapses snapped back together like a puzzle, and her memory was the clearest it had ever been.

I’m healthy again... Thank God, I’m heathy again...

Once her body was complete, a new sensation took over her back. She tried to jolt forward, but Charlie was still on top of her. He stepped back, as every ounce of innocence was back inside of her now. She lurched forward and leaned down. She could see her new legs and feet and her other arm, just as the other one.

Her back felt heavy. Something was weighing her down... something was coming out of it... something...

Unable to control the scream that came from her, two large masses of bone, muscle, and skin came from her back, perfectly ripping her nightgown, and extended to reveal... bat wings. Through the light in the room, the veins had looked like their own art piece to Charlie.

As quickly as the pain came, it left Rose and she laid back down, gasping and skiddishly feeling the new wings. Just like one’s arms or legs, she found she could move them like any other appendage. She flapped them, noticing they were larger than her. A small gust of wind filled the room.

“They’re... beautiful...” Charlie marveled.

Unable to speak, Rose stood up and stumbled. She found that her wings and heavier weight added some balance issues, but within thirty seconds, she had adjusted. She walked over to the mirror to look at herself more closely. Her toenails clacked against the wood, just as Charlie’s did. She looked just as she did when she was young; this time, she was pale, colder, had sharper senses, had vampire teeth and nails, a vampire bite mark on her neck, and very large bat wings on her back. She curled them up and extended them out comfortably. She flapped them a few times, and she found herself being lifted up into the air through the force of such gusts.

“Woah!” She cried. She let her wings die down and she landed as gently as she could on the floor.

She turned to Charlie, who stared at her with twinkling eyes.

“I guess I’m gonna need to make holes for these bad boys in all my clothes, huh?” She laughed. Her voice had largely remained the same, but this time, there was a youthful strength to it.

Charlie chuckled and beaconed her back to bed. “I suppose we shall. You look absolutely stunning, just as you always have. Only this time, your inner beauty is emanating from you. We shall see all of your abilities in the morning, especially since I’m sure the children would love to see you and your new talents as well. I’m quite surprised that scream didn’t stir them. But I believe your body needs a rest after the amount of change it had to go through.”

She nodded and crawled back into bed, right next to Charlie. They cuddled up next to each other. Her wings curled back up in a way that was comfortable. He rested his chin on her head and she nuzzled her face in his chest. Their combined warmth made sure they wouldn’t feel cold while sleeping. Rest had come easy for the both of them, and they found themselves sharing a pleasant dream.

Tomorrow would be the day the children would awake to be gifted with their healthy vampire mother, but even so, she would still always be the mother they knew and loved. For Charlie, she would always be the wife he knew and loved. For Rose, her new chapter had begun, and the dawn of a new era was ready to last for the rest of their eternity.

#nos4a2 #charlie manx #charles manx #nos4a2 charlie

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alarawriting · 4 years

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52 Project #30 (Writeober #15: Mortality): Everybody’s Happy As The Dead Come Home

Ever since my mother died of breast cancer a few years ago, I’ve been making time to go visit my elderly father about once a month. That may be conjuring up the wrong image in your head, so let me clarify. My father’s over 70, but he still has a lot of the energy he had as a younger man. He works as a consultant for the big corporation he spent his entire adult pre-retirement life working for, for about three or four times as much money, and he enjoys it. He’s got an active social life, spending time with friends he had shared with Mom as a couple, and new friends he’s made from his bereavement group or his consulting work. And my sister, the baby of the family, lives with him, and my two younger brothers come to visit him a lot more often, since they live a lot closer than I do. So if you’re imagining a lonely, stooped old man pining away in a house that smells like stale cat food – that’s not my dad, and I can’t imagine it would ever be.

I arrived late on a Friday night, as usual. My sister met me at the door, and actually looked me directly in the eye. Stephanie’s autistic; she never looks anyone in the eye. “Eleanor,” she said, and that was another strange thing, because she almost never calls anyone by name… unless she’s doing it for emphasis. “When you find out, don’t say anything about it,” she said.

“About what?” Most of the time Stephanie makes sense, but every so often she says something that sounds like her mind has jumped ahead in the conversation without realizing all the missing pieces she never bothered to say.

“You’ll know,” she said. “And you’ll want to ask ‘why’ and ‘how’, and I’m telling you that you can’t do that. Don’t ask any questions. Just come talk to me after you’re done.”

“Done with what?” I asked.

And then a voice called me from the TV room. “Lennie? Lennie, is that you?”

Only my mom and dad are allowed to call me Lennie. And that was a woman’s voice. I froze in place.

“Go see her,” Stephanie said, and headed off to her room.

I turned toward the TV room, slowly. “Lennie! Come out and see me!” my mom’s voice called.

I didn’t know whether to be terrified, or to start crying and fling myself into her arms. I walked very slowly, very cautiously, to the edge of the kitchen, where I could see my parents in the TV room. Both of my parents. My dad was smiling.

“Lennie!” my mom said, standing up. She hadn’t been able to stand up without help for months before she died, but here she was, standing up easily. She didn’t look any younger than she had when she died, but she looked healthier. The extreme thinness she’d suffered from at the end after it had metastasized and she’d barely been able to eat was gone; her flesh was filled out, her skin as taut as you could expect from a woman her age, and healthy-looking. Pale, but her natural paleness, not the weird, sallow, almost yellow color it had been at the very end.

“Mom?” I whispered.

“Come here. I need a hug,” Mom said, sounding exactly like she always had – joking, but there was always that note of truth under it. She didn’t wait for me to make my way to her – she never had, not until she was too ill to get up – but came straight for me and gave me a hug, and she smelled like herself. Not like a rotting corpse, not like ozone or nothing or whatever a ghost is supposed to smell like.

When I was a kid, my brother Jeff and I watched the miniseries version of “The Martian Chronicles”. In particular, he was always impressed (and terrified) by the part where the astronauts meet their long-lost loved ones, who turn out to be Martian shapechangers luring them to their deaths. I always wondered, if the people they saw on Mars were dead, how did they fall for it? How did they not know that dead people could not somehow be on Mars?

As I held my mom, who’d been dead a few years now, I understood. They’d wanted to believe. I wanted to believe. Stephanie had warned me not to ask anything – no “how are you not dead”, “how can you be here”, “why are you alive,” nothing like that. I assumed that was what she’d meant, anyway.

“Mom, I’ve been trying to trace some of my past that I’ve forgotten. Do you remember the name of my third grade teacher?”

“Huh.” My mom seemed to be thinking about it. “I think it was Mrs. Wilder, but I’m not a hundred percent sure. Second grade was Ms. Jenner, right? And fourth was Mrs. White?”

“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t, in fact, remember my third grade teacher’s name, and neither did my dad. The Martians in the story had been telepaths; they’d been able to perfectly impersonate the astronauts’ loved ones because they could read the astronauts’ minds. Now I had a piece of information whose answer I didn’t know, and no way to easily confirm it unless Jeff remembered; he was only two years younger than me and had had some of the same teachers. But some of the people I had friended on Facebook were high school classmates, and a tiny number of my high school classmates had also been with me in elementary school, and might remember my third grade teacher’s name.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” my mom said. “What’s going on in your life?”

“Oh, you know,” I said. “Things are going okay. Mom, if I’d known you were here I’d have brought the kids.”

“You can bring them up next time,” Mom said.

This was so weird. My mom was definitely dead. I had seen her body in the coffin, lying in state, looking nothing like she had in life. But here she was, impossibly, and I was holding an almost normal conversation with her. “Have Jeff or Aaron come over since you’ve… been here?”

“Jeff was here last weekend,” Dad said. “And Aaron lives next door, so he’s been over nearly every day.”

My grandparents used to live next door. When they died, my mom and my uncle inherited the house. My uncle bought out my mom’s share and rented the house out, and my youngest brother ended up renting it. My other brother lives in an apartment down in the city; I’m the odd one out, living in a completely different state, with a husband and kids.

So all of them had known, and none of them had told me. I expected Stephanie and Aaron to never tell me anything, but I was more than a little irritated with Jeff.

“Let me go drop off my stuff,” I said, since I was still carrying my bag.

I went back to Stephanie’s room, which used to be my room, a long time ago. The boys used to room together, but my room was too small for Stephanie to share with me, and she had needed a lot of space of her own… so they’d converted the loft in the garage into a bedroom. It had never been warm in the winter, though, so as soon as I moved out, Stephanie had moved in.

Stephanie was, as usual, on her computer. I shut the door behind me. “Okay. What the hell is going on?”

“She’s not the only one,” Stephanie said, without looking away from her computer. “I’ve been doing research. They’re all over the place. There’s no explanation yet, and apparently none of them will talk about it. I asked Mom and she said I was really rude, and sulked and was really passive-aggressive.”

“So we’re not worried about Mom turning into a Martian shapechanger or vanishing, we’re just worried that she’ll get mad?” To be fair, making Mom mad had always been a thing worth avoiding at all costs. “When did she come back?”

“I don’t know exactly, but presuming that she came to see me right after she came back, it would have been Monday around 3 pm.”

“And no one told me? You have my email address!”

“…It just didn’t feel right, telling you something like this in email. I felt like I should wait for you to be here.”

“And Jeff didn’t? And Aaron didn’t?”

Stephanie shrugged. She still didn’t look away from her computer. “They probably felt the same way.”

“Does Dad… know? Like, does he even remember that Mom is dead, or does he think this is normal?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

I sat down on her bed. “Steph, I’m asking you to make an informed guess. Has he said anything to you that would either suggest that he’s aware this is abnormal, or that he isn’t?”

“I don’t read minds, but I haven’t heard anything from him one way or the other. He’s very happy, though.”

“I got that impression,” I told her. I went to the guest room, which used to belong to the boys, opened up my laptop, and sent Jeff a question on Facebook about my third grade teacher.

Mom appeared while I was debating whether or not to also ask him why the hell he hadn’t told me about her. “Lennie, don’t hide in your room. Come out and talk to me and your dad. You need to catch me up on your life!”

Part of me wanted to break down crying. Part of me wanted to run to the car. Part of me was annoyed the way I always used to be annoyed when my mom wanted to spend time with me and I had stuff to do. And part of me hated myself for being annoyed by my mom for any reason at all. She was back from the dead and I wanted to hide in my room? But I wanted to hide in my room because I wanted to do research to figure out if this was really my mom or not. And what had Stephanie meant by “all over the place”? People all over the place had returned from the dead? Why wasn’t this all over the news?

What I said was, “Okay, mom,” and I went out to the TV room to talk to her.

***

Here I was, having a completely mundane conversation with a dead woman.

Yes, my husband was doing well at his consulting business. Yes, my oldest daughter was doing well in college. My youngest daughter had a rough spot a few years ago but was doing better. The daughter in the middle was putting a lot of time into her music, and was getting really good. I didn’t mention that my oldest daughter had gotten a diagnosis of autism like her aunt, or that my middle daughter was failing all her subjects because all she cared about was music, or that my youngest daughter was openly bisexual and dating a nonbinary teen in her class, because those would be fraught topics around here. My mother would be openly disapproving of the failing in school – as was I, but I wasn’t here to listen to a lecture about what I should be doing differently to make sure Rhiannon passed her classes – and she’d be what she thought counted as supportive about the other things. Are you sure it’s a good idea for Janie to have an autism diagnosis on her medical record? Lots of people will discriminate against her, just ask Stephanie, it’s not a good thing to admit to the world. And if Lori wanted to date a person who claimed to have no gender, good for her, but was she sure it was a good idea to admit to the world that she was bi when the world is so prejudiced? Blah blah blah. No. I wasn’t going there, not with my mother back from the dead.

All the questions I wanted to ask. How? How was she back? Why? Was there an afterlife after all? What was it like? Are you absolutely sure you’re not a telepathic shapechanger who wants to eat us? Is anyone else coming back or is it just you? But I couldn’t do it. My mouth wouldn’t make the words, and I felt like Mom being alive was a soap bubble that might burst any moment. If I said she was dead, would she disappear? I couldn’t take the risk.

Now I knew why Jeff and Aaron hadn’t told me. The compulsion not to talk about it, the fear that talking about the circumstances of her death and her apparently-no-longer-deadness would cause her to stop being no-longer-dead. I wouldn’t be able to tell my husband about this, or my kids, not unless they came here. Not without feeling like Mom might disappear if I did.

Which was probably how Stephanie had gotten away with it, in the beginning. If this was some kind of emotional pressure, something emanating from the presence of a dead woman... Stephanie was typically immune to emotional pressure. Or pretended she was, anyway. She hid behind her monotone and her face that barely expressed anything until she couldn’t, and then she’d go and have a meltdown in the bathroom. But she wanted to please Mom. We all wanted to please Mom. So if Mom had told her she was rude for mentioning the death thing, Stephanie would be unable to mention it again. Because she wouldn’t want Mom to think she was rude.

This felt very much like I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. Dead mother back to life, check. Weird inexplicable pressure not to talk about it, check. But Mom clearly remembered things that had happened shortly before her death, and showed no evidence of knowing about anything that had happened since, unless it was public knowledge. She talked about interests the girls had had three years ago, interests they’d all outgrown since. She talked about my plan to remodel my own garage – I had completely forgotten that was even a thing we’d planned at one point, because I’d lost my job shortly after Mom died and then the money wasn’t there for the remodel. She didn’t know I was working with my husband in the consulting business now, which a telepath would obviously know because it dominates my life nowadays. Obviously a Martian telepathic shapechanger would have to pretend not to know things that supposedly happened while they were dead, but if I’d forgotten about the garage, what were the odds a telepath could pull it out of my head? There had to be more accessible thoughts in there, after all.

I didn’t know what to ask Mom. How do you feel? That was always a good one, back in the day, because Mom’s chronic illnesses meant there was always something she could complain about, but she wouldn’t do it until she was asked… she’d just quietly resent the fact that no one had asked her. But did dead people still feel things? Would that intrude on the topic I wasn’t supposed to talk about? What’s going on in your life? Oh, nothing much, Lennie, I’m back from the dead, how about you?

So I talked about myself. I was learning to work leather and I’d made myself a wallet, but I left it at home, I could bring it to show her next time. I was also learning to repair dolls. The girls had all abandoned theirs and I felt bad about it, so I was cleaning them up and repairing them and putting them in dioramas. Mom was very interested in both topics, and asked if I could repair some old dolls she had up in the attic. I was pretty sure I’d already done it – if it was the dolls I was thinking of, Dad had given them to me right after Mom died, and they were the ones I’d learned on. But was it safe to talk about? Dad wasn’t saying anything; had he forgotten he gave me the dolls, which was entirely possible, or did he think it wasn’t safe to talk about either?

I’d wanted for three years to be able to tell my mom that she was wrong about all the weight loss advice she’d given me because now it had come out that scientists had never proven that fat made you fat and the low-carb diets were probably better for you than the low-fat ones, but I didn’t know if she could still eat. Also, my mom was back from the dead and I wanted to start an argument with her about a topic I’d always hated when she talked about? Didn’t I have anything better to do? That really kind of made me a shitty person, didn’t it?

When Mom had been dying, I couldn’t talk to her about the future. I didn’t know how to bring myself to talk about things she’d never see. I’d never known how much my conversations with her consisted of me talking about future plans until I couldn’t any more. Now I couldn’t talk about the future or the past, at least not the past three years, and large parts of the present had to be left out too, because I didn’t know what would remind her that she was dead and make her go back to her grave. Even though, logically, I knew that was unlikely to happen because Stephanie had done it and had just gotten a rebuke that that was rude.

At the same time… I knew I had to say something that Mom could talk about, because if I just talked about myself all night, later on she’d probably make some passive-aggressive remarks about how everything always had to be about me. In desperation, I asked her if she’d seen anything good on television lately.

“Oh, I haven’t been watching anything in a while,” Mom said. “It’s been so long since I felt well enough to go anywhere, so I’ve been going for walks, and your father and I have been taking trips to museums and historic sites. We’re going to be going up to Boston next week.”

“I have a client up there,” Dad said, “and they want me to do a training thing. And I was telling them, no, no, Boston’s too far, but I remembered how much your mom loved Boston, so I asked her if she wanted to go and she said yes, so now we’re going. We’re going to fly, though. The days I was willing to drive that kind of distance are long over.”

“You could take the Amtrak.”

Dad made a dismissive gesture. “It’s gotten so expensive. Flying’s actually cheaper.”

“When are you going?”

“Next Wednesday we’re going to fly up there,” Mom said, which said something about her opinion of the future, at least. “Your dad’s got his presentations to do on Thursday and Friday, and I’ll wander around the city, and then we’ll spend Saturday seeing the sights together.”

“There’s this fantastic restaurant I went to last time I was up there on business,” Dad said, “and I checked their web page, and they’re still open. So we’re going to go there.”

So Mom could eat. Or Dad wasn’t afraid of talking about eating with her, anyway. Maybe ruled out vampire, but Martian shapechanger was still on the table.

I didn’t literally believe my mom – or the entity that appeared to be my mom – was a telepathic shapechanger from Mars like in The Martian Chronicles. But it was obvious that something so far outside the norm that it was only imaginable by making references to fantasy and science fiction was happening.

I tried, very carefully, “How have you been feeling, Mom?”

“I’m great!” She laughed. “I haven’t felt this good in ages. Sugar’s under control, I can see pretty well, none of the usual aches and pains… I’m doing pretty good!”

Did she remember she had died of cancer? Did she even remember that she’d died?

It was 2 am before I got to go to bed.

***

6 am and I was up and out the door before there was any chance of my mother or father being awake, assuming my mom even slept anymore. But at the very least, she was in her bedroom with the door closed and no view of the driveway I’d parked my car in.

Do I sound like a terrible daughter when I tell you I’ve never visited my mom’s grave? I haven’t been back there since the funeral. I always knew my mother wasn’t really there – that if any part of her had still existed in any form, it wasn’t trapped in a coffin under six feet of dirt. It made it somewhat difficult to find the graveyard, though, because I couldn’t remember where it was, or its name, or which church it was associated with, and it wasn’t exactly like I could ask my mom. When I finally found the place– it wasn’t that hard in the end, my parents live in a small town and there aren’t many graveyards – it took me half an hour to find her grave.

It seemed undisturbed. But if Mom had been back from the dead since Monday, that would have been time to fill in a grave. I went looking for the caretaker.

They get to work early in the graveyard caretaking business, I guess; I found him pushing a lawnmower over on the other side of the graveyard.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“This is going to sound stupid,” I said. “But I got an email from a jerk I used to know in high school claiming he was going to dig up my mother’s grave, and I just wanted to make sure nobody’s touched it.”

“Nobody’s touched any of the graves, ma’am,” he assured me. “Aside from a couple of funerals we’ve had this week, no one’s done anything to disturb the ground here at all.”

“Thanks,” I said, “that’s reassuring. He was talking like he was actually going to do it, but I guess he was all talk.”

“Well, if anyone comes by and disturbs any of the graves, we’ll have them arrested,” he said.

I had my answer. My mother had not climbed out of her grave. Which seemed impossible anyway, now that I knew enough about the funeral industry to know exactly how hard it would be to smash a coffin open, let alone dig through six feet of dirt. I couldn’t rule out her turning immaterial and floating out of her grave, but my mom had seemed very material and biological when she’d hugged me. I’d always thought of ghosts as something that were almost never solid enough to interact with the world, if they even existed.

***

If I was going to get up this early, I was going to get a pancake breakfast at the diner. My parents still think sugarless cold cereal is a reasonable thing to eat for breakfast. They were always night owls; I made myself breakfast and school lunch every morning but the first day of school, every year after about third grade. I was also a night owl, once I didn’t have to get up for school anymore, but I used to make my girls a lunch every night and store it in the fridge for them. Now they’re too old and too cool for Mom lunches. They’re eating something, but it might be cafeteria food, lunch they pack for themselves, or for all I know sandwiches from 7-11 or Starbucks with their allowance.

The point is, I hardly ever get a nice breakfast, because I am hardly ever willing to wake up early enough to cook myself one, and my parents certainly weren’t going to. So I went to the diner.

Normally I don’t talk to anyone at a diner, beyond smiling at them and telling them my order in an upbeat, cheerful voice because waitresses get too much shit from too many people for me to add to it inadvertently. Also because I don’t want them to think I’m eating alone because I’m a sad, lonely bitch no one would love; I want them to know I’m doing this because I really, really enjoy not having to socialize. But today I had something I needed to know.

“I’m a writer,” I told the waitress, “and I’m doing research on ghost stories in the area. Have you heard anything, you know, Halloweeny or spooky? Ghosts appearing, dead people walking around, poltergeists, that kind of thing?”

“Can’t say I have, but I’ll ask around, see if any of the girls know any good stories,” the waitress told me.

And then she took my order back to the kitchen, and I surfed the net on my phone while I waited, and then I got my pancakes, and I ate them. I was chasing the last blueberry around on the plate when another waitress approached me. “Stacy told me you were collecting creepy stories for a book?”

“From the local area, yeah.”

“I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for, but… my cousin says that a lady on her street, her husband died a few years ago? But she just saw the guy walking with the lady down the street, having a conversation like the guy never died.”

“Do you think you’d be able to give my email to your cousin and have her reach out to me? That sounds like exactly the kind of story I’m looking for.”

“Uh, sure.”

I gave the waitress my email address. This was probably going to come to nothing; I doubted the waitress would even remember to give it to her cousin. But it’d be really good if I could get the details from someone who knew more about it.

***

Jeff’s more of a morning person than I am. I got a response on Facebook, but I had to wait to get back to my parents’ house, where my laptop was, to read it. On mobile, Facebook will only let you read messages if you have the app, which tells Mark Zuckerberg exactly where you are and what you’re doing with your phone, all the time. I don’t have the app. Sometimes this means I can’t read messages on mobile, but I prefer that to having an evil data empire know everything about my movements.

My parents weren’t awake when I got home. Or they were still in their bedroom. They used to do that a lot. Mom’s desk was in there, and Dad had a laptop… which he usually used on Mom’s desk, since she died. I wondered where her machine was, and if she had made a thing about it once she came back.

“I’m not sure I remember what your third grade teacher’s name was… I can barely remember my own third grade teacher. Were they the same? I can’t remember. I think my own teacher’s name was… Wil-something? Wilber? Wilkins? You’d be better off… well, you’re at the house now, or are you back at your home? Kind of important to know, because I could give you some advice about who to ask, but it’d be a different thing if you were at Dad’s house.”

He meant, “You’d be better off asking Mom, but I don’t know if you know Mom is back from the dead or not.” I was pretty sure, anyway.

I responded. “I’m at Dad’s house. Wondering how I’d be able to tell the difference between someone who’s real and a Martian shapechanger. Could the name have been Wilder?”

Five minutes later I got my answer. “Mom isn’t a Martian shapechanger. It was the first thing I thought of, so I checked.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

That answer I didn’t get until half an hour later. “I… just didn’t feel right, talking about it in an impersonal medium like the internet. I know you have a cell phone and I probably even have your number somewhere, but I remember you’re not the biggest fan of actual phone calls, so I didn’t want to disturb you.”

I replied with my phone number and the message “Call me.”

And then I had to sit by my phone, doing nothing important, nothing that would engage my attention in any serious way, waiting for him to call. Which took twenty minutes, despite the fact that I could see that he was online.

Finally the phone rang. “You raaaaang?” I answered in my best parody of The Addams Family.

“I’m pretty sure I must have, or you wouldn’t have known to pick up,” Jeff said. “Of course, I might have buzzed. You could have your phone on vibrate. Or maybe I sang, depending on what you have for a ringtone.”

“’You saaaaang?’ doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi to it.”

“Wow, how long has it been since I heard someone put je ne sais quoi in a sentence? I think we’re old. I think that’s an old person expression now.”

“What’s going on with Mom?” I asked, quietly, in case anyone might be in the hallway to hear me.

Jeff sighed. “I don’t know what is, but I can tell you what isn’t,” he said. “Stephanie confirmed that she eats, sleeps and goes to the bathroom normally, and I confirmed all of that for myself. The toilet in their bedroom is still broken enough that they don’t flush it unless they have to.”

I winced. That was a level of detail I could have done without. “So, not vampire or undead. How did you solve the Martian thing?”

“On Monday, Dad woke up and she was laying next to him in bed. If the goal was to kill him, it would have made more sense to do it then, before he woke up, than to put on this whole elaborate performance.”

“You’re taking me too literally. I’m not worried about aliens trying to take our family off guard so they can kill us. There’s any number of things they could be up to, and they don’t have to be aliens. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Stepford Wives. My Little Pony.”

“…My Little Pony?”

“There’s creatures called Changelings that feed on love. They impersonate ponies and take the love that other ponies feel for the ones they’re impersonating, as food.”

“Kind of psychic vampires mashed up with Martian shapechangers.”

“Yeah, but without the telepathy, so they’re not as good at it as you’d think. It’s a children’s show; they have to telegraph to the kids that these aren’t the real ponies. In real life, anyone who did something like that would be more competent.”

“How much verisimilitude do we need, though? She’s got moles in the same places Mom had moles. She’s missing a toenail just like Mom. Things I didn’t consciously think about, things I might not have remembered if you asked me to describe Mom.”

“That just means that if it’s not Mom, it has the ability to rummage deeper into our memories than we’re consciously aware of. That’s why I asked you my third grade teacher’s name. I genuinely don’t remember. Mom would, I’m pretty sure. Dad wouldn’t and Stephanie and Aaron were both too young.”

“I’m not sure I remember, but when you said Wilder, that sounded like it could be right. Do you know anyone from elementary school? Some of them went to high school with us.”

“I have some Facebook friends from high school, and maybe one or two went to the same elementary we did, but I haven’t been able to locate any actual people that I remember from elementary school. They don’t have a Classmates.com thing that works for elementary—”

“It says it does.”

“It lies, there’s nowhere to enter your elementary in your profile. All it lets you put in is high school, and it’s from a drop-down, not even freeform.”

“Huh. Guess I never tried it. I’m still in touch with anyone I cared about from back then.”

“I literally don’t care about anyone from back then, but that makes it hard when you’re trying to figure out your third grade teacher’s name.”

“If she can probe our memories,” Jeff said, “then nothing you or I know, or ever knew, would be safe. You’d have to come up with something to ask her that Dad wouldn’t know, or me, or Aaron, or Steph, or yourself, but that you know Mom would know and that you know someone else who would know it too.”

“I could ask Mariana for something.” My mom’s close friend and high school classmate was one of my Facebook friends. We don’t generally communicate directly with each other, but I follow her posts.

“That’s a good idea.” I heard the sound of a whistling teapot in the background. “That’d be my hot water for my oatmeal. If you get anything from Mariana, can you tell me about it?”

“Yeah.” I’d wanted to tell him about the story I’d heard in the diner, but no one got between Jeff and his oatmeal. “I’ll talk to you later. Probably online. Voice is making me paranoid.”

“I know what you mean. Do you need me to come up this weekend? I could make a day trip tomorrow.”

“That might be a good idea. I want to talk to Aaron, do you know what schedule he’s on?”

“He works nights now, so you’ll want to get him around 2 pm or so.”

“All right. Enjoy your oatmeal.”

“I will!” he said, putting a ridiculous amount of emphasis into it as a joke.

***

Before I could finish writing a message to Mariana – before I could really start, honestly, because how could I explain why I needed what I needed without admitting Mom was back from the dead? – someone knocked on my door. It was Mom. She was wearing one of her usual kind of shapeless but colorful nightgowns, and her hair was not brushed, so it was kind of a wreck. I noticed for the first time that it was grey. Mom had always dyed her hair since she started going grey, and it had still been auburn when she’d died. I’d never seen it fully grey. “Your dad and I are going to the arboretum,” she said. “Do you want to come?”

“Since when have you been into trees, Mom?” My mother had always been fascinated by history, and to some extent natural history like dinosaurs, but I’d never seen her express an interest in nature per se.

“I never was, much,” she admitted, “but the world is so beautiful. I was always more interested in the way humans shape the world than the way it came out of the box, but things like arboretums, Japanese gardens, zoos and aquariums… they’re made of nature, but they’re made by humans, and they say something about the people who chose to make them the way they are. And you know that your dad has always enjoyed nature.” My dad was interested in science, in general, and considered the natural world part of that. He was not exactly the kind of guy who would go camping.

In the past, I would have said “no, thanks.” I was never all that interested in nature myself, certainly not trees – maybe beautiful rocks or interesting landscapes, but looking at trees wouldn’t have seemed interesting to me. I still didn’t care much about trees… but my mom was back from the dead. I’ve gone much stupider and more boring places than an arboretum with her in the past, and now… if this was really her, if she was really alive again, I was going to spend all the time with her that I reasonably could.

“Sure, I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll take my own car, though. Just give me the address.” I always took my own car if I possibly could, because I’d get carsick if I wasn’t the one driving. “Should I ask Stephanie if she wants to come?”

“Sure, you can ask. I doubt she will, though.”

Stephanie, however, surprised me. “Yeah, I’ll go with you. We’ll meet Mom and Dad there?”

“Yeah.” Dad had texted me the address, so I pulled it up in my GPS. “About half an hour from here.”

In the car, she asked me, “Have you found anything out? I know you were looking into the whole Mom thing.”

“Jeff thinks she’s really Mom. We have a plan to get Mariana to give us a question that we don’t know the answer to, but that Mom and Mariana both would, so we can confirm she really knows things and isn’t just reading our minds. And a waitress at the diner said her cousin has seen what looks like someone else coming back from the dead.”

“It’s all over the place, actually,” Stephanie said. “I’m finding reports from everywhere.”

I glanced at her. “Why wouldn’t this be making the news, then? People coming back from the dead!”

“I feel like maybe no one wants to go on the record.” Stephanie looked out the window. “Nothing on Twitter or Facebook. No pictures of dead people on Instagram. I’m seeing things on Reddit and Tumblr – places where people use a consistent pseudonym, not like 4chan, but where that pseudonym can’t be tied to their actual identity. I’ve posted about it in both places, but I can’t make myself tweet about it.”

“Any idea why not?”

“It—” She shrugged, hands exaggeratedly widespread and head canted forward slightly. “It just feels wrong,” she said. “Like… we’re getting away with something. There’s a natural law we’re breaking here. I can post as toomanymushrooms or u/catonahottinroofsundae and no one knows who I am, but if I post as Stephanie Robbins and I tell everyone that my mom Suky Robbins is back from the dead…”

“What if that brought it to the attention of, what, some kind of authorities?”

“Yeah, pretty much. And even if I was just posting under my own name… I don’t have to say Mom’s name. I don’t have to put a mention to her Facebook in a post. But everyone knows my mother’s name, or they could find out from my name if they wanted to.”

“And you think maybe there are a lot of people with these weird feelings?”

“I don’t think so, I know so. A lot of posts explicitly talk about the fact that they can’t bring themselves to say anything in public, or talk about it with their real names on it.”

“Are they all parents?”

“No. It’s all kinds of people. Best friends, siblings, spouses, children… the only pattern I see is that nobody died a long time ago. It’s all, ‘my brother who died last year’ or ‘my aunt who died two years ago’ or something. Longest I’ve seen anyone talk about was a son who died five years ago.”

A thought occurs to me. “I can add something to your pattern, though.”

“Yeah?”

“You’d expect that, even if everyone with a resurrected relative feels this sense of dread about telling anyone about it with their name attached, because they feel it will, I don’t know, maybe cause the dead person to disappear back into their grave… you’d think somebody would do it anyway because they don’t care. Someone whose alcoholic abusive father came back and they wish he’d go away again, someone’s asshole brother, someone’s former best friend who betrayed them. But so far, no one has. How many people have you seen talking about this?”

“It’s hard to say because no one’s using their real names. Someone might post from their main blog and their side blog, or maybe they have a different name on tumblr vs reddit but they posted to both. But I’ve tracked thirteen separate names, and of those, I can tell for a fact there are at least nine unique ones because they talk about different people.”

“Thirteen isn’t ‘all over the place’.”

“I didn’t mean all over the Internet, I meant people coming from all over. I’ve tracked the UK, California, North Dakota, Ontario, France, India and New Zealand. Nobody’s tagging their posts and no one is willing to contribute to a master list, so it’s hard to find anyone outside of the people I follow or the subreddits I’m in, and I don’t know where everyone comes from. But it’s geographically widespread. I suspect it may also be happening in other places where people don’t generally speak English or maybe don’t have Internet access.”

“And what’s their sentiment? Like, are people frightened? Upset? Excited? Weirded out?”

She took a moment to think about it. “They’re happy. People are happy it happened. Weirded out, yes. But happy.”

“No whacked-out conspiracy theories about how it’s the contrails raining down adenochrome or something?”

“Not from the people it’s happened to. There was one flame war I saw where a religious person was saying that the person whose sister was back from the dead had to repudiate her. She’s not really your sister, she’s a demon from Hell sent to trick you, et cetera. And the person whose sister was back turned out to be just as religious, and they threw a holy fit. Literally. A holy fit.” She giggled. “A whole lot of stuff about how the righteous were coming back and Jesus had granted some people eternal life and this was that, and how dare you call these beings demons when they’re obviously blessed by Jesus himself and you’re the kind of person who would have called for Jesus’s crucifixion if you’d been alive then, and all that kind of thing.”

“Did anyone else who’d had returned people say anything?”

“This was Tumblr. None of the people who have had returns are communicating with each other in any way I can see. I reached out to a few on Tumblr private messaging but no one has answered. The only places I’m seeing conversations about it between people with returns have been on Reddit, because it has a forum structure. Tumblr is more like a whole hanging web of disconnected strings.”

“Still, you’d think that someone would be publishing a news article about it. Even if no one is willing to go on the record with their real name…”

“Maybe it’s not enough people. Nine unique instances, maybe up to thirteen, maybe more in places I haven’t surveyed. It’s not like I have access to literally all of Tumblr, after all. But that’s all I can confirm, and what if there isn’t any more?”

“If anyone came back from the dead I would expect the news to take notice.” I turned onto the final road; the arboretum was at the end of this stretch. “I went to the graveyard today. Mom’s grave hasn’t been disturbed. I checked with the groundskeeper. So either Mom’s body floated ethereally through the grave dirt, and her coffin, or her original body is still in there and whatever she is now, it’s not the same as what she was then.”

“It’s too bad we can’t have her exhumed,” Stephanie said.

“It probably wouldn’t tell us much anyway.”

“She’s younger-looking than she was before. Not by much, and the grey hair hides it, but she’s healthier-looking and less wrinkly. And I don’t see any evidence that she still has diabetes, or that she’s taking any pills at all. I haven’t seen her take any insulin shots, or anything.”

“Huh.” She wasn’t restored to her youth, or her hair wouldn’t be grey and there would be no wrinkles at all. She wasn’t restored to what she was at the moment of death, obviously. She wasn’t restored to what she’d have been at the moment of death without the cancer that killed her, if she didn’t have diabetes anymore. I felt like there had to be a pattern here I wasn’t seeing. I really wanted to talk to some of these other people having this experience.

I pulled in to the arboretum’s parking lot. Mom and Dad weren’t there yet; Dad doesn’t drive like an old man, but he doesn’t drive as fast as he used to, either. “Do they do this kind of thing a lot? Arboretums, parks, et cetera?”

“They don’t usually invite me, and I wouldn’t usually come if they did, so I don’t know. They do leave the house a lot.”

Dad’s car pulled in, and he and Mom got out. For the first time I could remember, Mom was actually moving a bit faster than him. Both Mom and Dad were the kind of people who walked quickly everywhere they went, but for a long time, Mom was slowed down by her various illnesses. Dad was still healthy for his age, but he’d slowed down a good bit since Mom’s death – grief was hard on his health, it seemed – and now Mom seemed healthier than he was.

“Did you know there are people who come here from all over just to see our leaves in the autumn?” Mom said.

I did know that; it was typically a factor in making it hard for me to come visit during the autumn. “I think it’s the mountainsides. There’s leaves turning colors all over the country, but not on mountainsides.”

“In California they don’t even consider these mountains,” Mom said. “They call them hills when they come visit.”

“No respect for the elderly,” Dad said.

“Yeah, these young mountains think they’re all that, but wait 100,000 years and see how tall they are then,” Stephanie said.

We strolled around, looking at the trees, reading what it said on the plaques in front of them. American Elm. Yellow Birch. Eastern White Pine. I’d seen trees just like these my whole life, and a good number of them, I’d never known the names.

“You never think about how beautiful the world is,” Mom said. “We’re all rushing through it, trying to accomplish the next thing. Or entertain ourselves. Read a book, watch TV. So few of us really want to interact with nature.”

“Careful, mom, your hippie roots are showing,” I said, teasing.

“I think if my generation had remembered what we were back when we were the hippies, the world would be better off.”

“We didn’t forget, Suky. The hippies were always big news, but you know as well as I do how many people our age just wanted to go punch a clock, buy a house, vote for Ronald Fucking Reagan… We thought we were the generation that would change the world, but it wasn’t our generation, it was us. People like us, who wanted to see a better world and weren’t content to just live like the sheep our parents were… but there’s people like that in every generation. And they’re always outnumbered by the assholes.”

“Actually, they’ve done a study,” Stephanie said. “The reason generations get more conservative as they get older is that at every point, the poor are more likely to die than the rich, and the rich are more conservative than the poor. So by the time you get to middle age, a lot of the people looking for social justice and diversity are dead. And there’s a lot more dead by the time they’re elderly.”

“I don’t buy it,” my dad said. “There’s entirely too many stupid poor people in this country who are brainwashed into supporting causes that help out the rich people and screw themselves over. They’re not living longer than anyone else in this country. The math doesn’t work.”

“Let’s not talk about politics,” Mom said. “I think we all know there’s something more important we ought to be discussing.”

“Mom?” Stephanie said, and looked at her, which is not a thing Stephanie does very often.

“Suky?” Dad said.

I didn’t say anything. I watched as Mom looked up at a tree and said, “It’s time we dealt with the elephant in the room, don’t you think?”

“Are you going to tell us about—” I couldn’t say anything more. I couldn’t bring myself to make the words.

“About the fact that I was dead, and now I’m not?” She looked at all of us. “I think we should talk about it, yes.”

It felt like there were eyes, watching us. I wanted to yell to my mother, to tell her not to talk about it, that someone might hear… but who? And why would it matter?

“Is that something you’re okay with, Suky?” Dad asked.

“I’m fine, but I’m getting the impression the rest of you aren’t,” she said. “Why haven’t any of you brought it up, except Stephanie, the once?”

“Well, you told me it was rude,” Stephanie said.

Mom sighed. “I guess I did. I’m sorry. This isn’t really easy for me either.”

She sat down on a bench, and Dad sat with her. Stephanie and I sat on a short stone wall around a tree. “I suppose I should start by saying, I don’t really know much more than you do. I don’t have any memories of being dead. I woke up in bed, next to your dad, on Monday morning, and for a while I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there… I assumed I went to bed the previous night, but I couldn’t remember what had happened the night before. I couldn’t pin down anything I remembered as to exactly when it happened, not in the recent past. And when your father woke up, the shock on his face and the fact that he kept asking me if I was really here made me think, wait, the last thing I remember was that I was in a hospital dying of cancer, so why am I here now?”

“So you don’t remember any kind of afterlife?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I believe I had some sort of existence, but I don’t remember anything about it. When I wake up, I have flashes, feelings that I dreamed something about it, but I can’t hold it in my head long enough to write it down or even talk about it. It just… disappears, leaving behind only the memory that something was there a few minutes ago.”

“You know how unlikely the idea that an afterlife exists is, scientifically, though. Right?” Dad said. “Consciousness is an emergent property of a trillion neurons working together. Imagining that there could be some sort of construct that exists outside the brain and body is like imagining that a video game character could be waltzing around in front of us.”

“And yet I’m here,” Mom said.

“Time travel or a Star Trek transporter with some modifications would make more sense than something supernatural, like an afterlife,” Dad said stubbornly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Stephanie said. “If Mom doesn’t remember…”

“Have you had a medical exam?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “I don’t have health insurance anymore. I’m dead, remember? I can’t even begin to figure out how we’re going to address getting me a legal identity again, and to be honest… I can’t know I’ll be around long enough for it to matter.”

“None of us know that,” I said, “about ourselves or anyone else.”

“True, and it’s going to be hard to travel if I don’t have a legal identity. So I suppose I’ll have to address it eventually, if I last that long.”

“Thank God your state ID hasn’t actually expired yet, or there’d be no way we could fly to Boston. The passport’s expired,” Dad said. Mom had been legally blind when she died, so she’d had a state ID rather than a driver’s license.

“Is there any reason you might not? Aside from the things that could kill anyone?” I asked.

Dad said, “Your mother and I discussed… when she first appeared, I found it nearly impossible to talk about the fact that she’d been dead. When she broached the topic, I could talk about it to her, but I couldn’t tell you kids.” He shrugged. “My working theory is that there’s some kind of alien experiment going on or that time travel is somehow involved, but the fact that none of you kids were able to tell each other about it until you knew the other one knew suggests to me that someone with the ability to directly affect human emotions or thought is, for some reason, making it hard to talk about this. Maybe that means it’s a short-lived experiment.”

“Maybe I escaped from hell and no one wants to talk about it for fear the devil will take me back,” Mom said, but she was laughing. Mom had never believed in hell. Dad was an atheist; Mom definitely had strong spiritual beliefs, but they were kind of a package of woo that included reincarnation and ghosts, even though she’d been raised Catholic.

“There are others like you,” Stephanie said. “None of them have talked about it themselves, but family members or friends have talked about it online, under pseudonyms. I haven’t found any evidence that anyone has mentioned anything under their real names.”

“A lot?” Mom was surprised.

“So far I count between nine and thirteen unique individuals, plus Eleanor heard a rumor that someone who might live in town might have come back. We don’t know any details, though.”

“We need to find them,” Mom said. “I need to find them. I have a second chance at life, and I’m not ashamed of it. I won’t be silenced about the fact that I exist.”

“It might not be the best idea, Suky,” Dad said. “There are a lot more crazies out there than there were when you died—”

“—there were plenty of crazies then, Dee—”

“—right, and even then it wouldn’t have been a good idea. There might be some religious nut job who thinks that if you were dead you should stay that way. Or someone else thinks that you know how you came back, and wants to force you to tell them.”

“Those are valid points,” Mom said, nodding. “And to all of those people who might want to harm me because they think I shouldn’t be alive or they think I know how I came back, I say a hearty ‘fuck you.’ I won’t be silent because there are crazy people in the world. I’m not afraid of death, not anymore.”

“You’re going to risk Eleanor’s kids?” Dad asked sharply.

“I agree with Mom,” I said, standing up. “Nobody should have to keep quiet about the fact that they exist. But I have to tell Will.”

Stephanie made a face. My family doesn’t like my husband. They have justifications, but in the past few years, since Mom died, Will’s gone to therapy and has done a lot of work on himself. Mom was the only one in the family ever willing to forgive anything, though, so I’ve never tried to get them to change their minds.

Mom said, “Well, is he still a total asshole?”

“He’s… been trying not to be. He’s in therapy, and we’re doing couples counseling, and he’s working through a lot of baggage from his upbringing.”

“Why not tell him to bring the kids up and join you here, then. Coming back to life, might as well start a clean slate and see where things go from there. And you’re right, he needs to be involved in the discussion. Your girls, too. They all are old enough to understand what’s going on here, and what could happen.”

“You know I will never stand in the way of anything you want,” Dad said, which is the kind of thing Dad says rather than “I love you”. Things like, “If they ever fail to respect you, I will smite them” – talking about us and our treatment of Mom – or “You have always been my worthy opponent.” Yes. Sometimes my father talks like a comic book character.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea,” Stephanie said, “but I know you taught me to be who I am to the world and fuck anyone who gives me shit about it, so… same principle. I don’t think you could be you and lie about who you are.”

“And we need to involve Jeff and Aaron,” Mom said. “I’ll call them and get them to come here.”

“We turned off your cell phone ages ago,” Dad objected.

“Dee, we still have a land line. I know we do because I hear it ring, and sometimes you even answer it.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s right, we do.” Dad shook his head. “This world where everyone carries around their phone in their pocket all the time… it’s strange how you get so used to a technological or societal change that you forget that you did it a different way for 67 years.”

Nothing ever stopped my mother when she wanted something strongly enough, if she believed it was right. I hadn’t even thought of the considerations my father brought up before he talked about them, but I’ve never believed it’s okay to hide in conformity and live in fear. I didn’t think Will had ever believed in doing that, either, and my daughters had grown up going to political protests.

“We need to find out more about these other people,” I said to Stephanie on the way home. “See if we can contact them directly, find out if any of the actual returned people are planning on going public like Mom. We could coordinate if they are. Strength in numbers.”

“The religious right are going to crap their pants,” Stephanie said, laughing. “A Deist who believes in reincarnation, is married to an atheist, and has a gay son, came back to life. Jesus Christ hasn’t got a monopoly anymore.”

“That is probably going to be the most fun part of this going public thing,” I said.

***

So now I don’t know what will happen. My husband’s driving up from home with our girls, my oldest younger brother’s on a train, and Mom’s been looking up contact information for journalist friends she had once, checking which ones are still alive, using Facebook – we never deactivated her account – and my dad’s LinkedIn. Stephanie’s found two other people who have family members who came back from the dead, and one of them’s been willing to talk to her in private messaging on Tumblr.

I still have a hard time telling anyone who doesn’t already know, but it turns out, I can write about it without feeling the pressure, the fear. Don’t know if I can post it, yet. I guess we’ll see. I’m hoping that if I can get more information from more people who’ve been through something similar, maybe we’ll find a pattern, a point of commonality… maybe even an explanation for why we all feel this pressure not to talk about it.

Tomorrow we’re all going to talk about whether we’re going to do this or not, but I know my family. What my mom wants, she gets, if it’s possible and if it’s ethical. My husband and my kids are going to be in favor of her going public, and my brothers won’t stand in her way any more than my dad would. So we’re going to do this. The thing we’re really going to talk about is how to keep ourselves safe when we do.

Everything in the world is going to change. I just don’t know exactly how yet.

***

Obligatory notes because I’m so fucking late with this piece:

I have fucked up royally. I went into this without an outline and about 6,000 words in I realized I had attempted to consume a ball of energy larger than my head. This is going to end up being novel length, most likely. I struggled really hard to find a place I could reasonably end it as a short story, and yeah, it is absolutely not an ending. No followup on the Martian shapechanger thing, new idea is brought in and then treated like it’s the climax, protagonist is almost entirely reactive and passive. As a short story, it’s shit.

Unfortunately I found this out after I was already late. Not going to bore everyone with why this was a week late except that it’s allergy season and I’ve been exhausted lately. So there was no time to try to write something else. I hope you found it entertaining, if somewhat frustrating; it’s shit as a short story because it’s plainly a piece of a novel. Which I’m not going to write real soon because I have like 3 novels ahead of this one in the queue, but if I live long enough it will get done.

It’s kinda cute that story #30 falls on the 30th now because I’m late and story #31 is the last of my Spooky 5 Halloween-appropriate stories. But not cute enough to justify how late this is.

BTW, while this is not as autobiographical as “Radio” from Inktober, it is heavily drawn from real life. I altered some things because this is fiction, but the mother and the father in this story are pretty close to real life. Except that my mother hasn’t come back.

#52 project #writeober 2020 #alara's october 2020 prompt fics #spooky5 #late!

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