#and Jack is impressed that he wasn't bullshitting her

[doortotomorrow]

nate shepard / jack - sizing each other up

[inkdemonapologist]

[BatIM Cthulhu AU] A couple of doodles from session two, which UNSETTLED SAMMY A LOT ACTUALLY...

There have been small changes, throughout New York -- doors opening on the wrong side of the street, houses ending up just a block away from where you remembered them -- but the only people who can even tell seem to be those who remember Carcosa. Joey, Sammy, Henry, Jack, Peter, and Norman all experienced the strange shifting realm when a Mardi Gras party attempted to bring dread Carcosa to New Orleans, but Susie wasn't there. She can't see the changes we see, and the entire rest of the city agrees with her. That door was always there? The car was always that colour. That's where I remember the address being before, and there's no record it was ever different.

She trusts what the boys are reporting must be true, that maybe there are changes she can't see or remember, and both she and Sammy are terrified. These are only little things, but as more and more of the city slips into the world of the King in Yellow, what else might be rewritten...?

Anyway EVERYONE'S HAVING A GREAT TIME. If you're here for Out Of Context Quotes from our session, I have some of those too, here, under the cut!!

[Sammy is played by me, Joey is played by Boo (inkyvendingmachine), Henry is played by Maf (inkcryptid), Jack is played by Mochi (whatyouwantedmetosee) and Thren (haunted-hijinxer) is our GM!]

[Jack] I love how detective Pete is for a guy who is NOT a detective. [Sammy] He just got assigned that by Joey Drew and now it's true. [Joey] Exactly! That's how it works.

[Sammy] The idea of JDS having its own employed detective is really funny to me. "Why do you need that? You're an animation studio." "Well, you know, things come up,"

[GM] Everybody went home I believe, except Joey went to the Studio, which is like home,

[Sammy] Do we have any plan, other than just go in to work, [Jack] I though you were gonna say "other than go insane"...

[Joey] If Prophet's not the one going for the ink, then why is Sammy going for it?! Do they have a SECOND prophet situation??? [Jack] PROPHET...... TWO!!! [Henry] Prophet 2: Electric Boogaloo [Sammy] *tiredly* We don't need any more Prophets..... We don't need any more Sammys..... we have enough.....

[Jack] You just need to sip some ink and tell them it's the wrong number. Like, you've got the wrong guy. [Henry] New stone, who dis?

[Sammy] It was the false king who called through the ink, not our Lord! [Joey] Interesting... [Joey] Joey's going to ask Bendy if he can... feel this? Is he getting calls? *dad voice* Is someone calling you? Don't put your number on the internet!

[GM] Bendy says he wasn't made to be a receiver the same way Sammy was. [Jack] So technically, it's "New Sam, who dis"!

[Joey] Okay, Joey's going to note this all down in his... Notebook Of Nonsense That Plagues Them,

[GM] I'm choosing to believe that whenever Norman called in, he gave some sort of outlandish excuse, and whoever answered the phone didn't... write it down... [Sammy] Like the heckin', grian excuses-- [Joey] "I'm cutting my grass, with scissors" [Jack] Yeah!! He's cutting his grass! With scissors! In winter!!! [Sammy] And then Sammy's like "Do we know why he called out?" and the receptionist is just like "No We Have NO Idea" [Jack] With the most tired sigh. Second only to Grant.

[GM] Fun fact, Norman would answer the phone. [Sammy] Norman actually was just like, "ohhhhhhh i know THIS is some supernatural bullshit happening, I'm gonna stay home"

[Joey] Joey's going to ask Estelle if he looked like-- and give a vague description of Avedon. [GM] .............................. [GM] She is SO impressed that you knew this. [Joey] *delighted cackling*

[Jack] I love how cute Joey is about this kid. Just like... the cool Bendy Uncle! He's not related at all, but, [Joey] I feel like this is kind of how Joey just gets around kids? Maybe Joey does really want kids, just, y'know, doesn't know how to do it when gay? [Sammy] Obviously that won't happen, so-- [Joey] Yeah, [Sammy] --so then you START AN ANIMATION STUDIO, that's the only other option! [GM] Yeah, then all kids are your kids!

[GM] Alright, you've made many phone calls. [Joey] Yeah, [GM] And you only rudely hung up on one of them!

[Sammy] Sammy can surely track that down; he's used to digging up musicians. [Jack] Jack's there to assist with the Talking to People in a way that makes them want to cooperate with you, and not run in fear!

[GM, speaking for Peter] *lists all of the information Peter's dug up* And that's about what he managed to get, today! [Joey] And nothing weird has been happening... to him? [GM] WELL, OKAY. ABOUT THAT,

[Peter] Could you describe again, the strange person who was at the party? What was that guy like? [Joey] *thinking very hard* Which... strange person...? I mean... Denis was there?

[Norman] Try not to fall in a swamp this time. [Joey] I'll let you know if I find one! [Sammy] There's fewer of those in New York, so, I think we're good. [Jack] I mean, you never know,, [Sammy] ...yeah, that's true..... [Joey] HEY, Joey will let him know if he finds one!!! [Sammy] If LAKE PONCHARTRAIN opens up in the MIDDLE OF NEW YORK CITY, that will certainly be something to let all of our friends know!

[GM] Make a social-type checks to have a word with them beforehand! [Sammy] I don't know, if I should do that,,, [GM] SAMMY can make an Appearance check! [Sammy] *laughing* LETS SEE IF IM HANDSOME ENOUGH to get let in!

[GM] Everybody's like "You guys!" You're greeted with nostalgia, and eagerness! and people are trying to small talk you, I'm guessing Sammy's not going for that. [Sammy] I mean, you can try to small talk.... AT him... [Sammy] He doesn't... y'know... it's like playing a game of catch where you throw the ball to somebody, and they just hold the ball. [Sammy] Like.... okay! [GM] I did the thing! [Sammy] Cool, catch successful. [Jack] No give, only throw!

[Sammy] Look, I was trying to drink ink this morning, so I feel like this is a step up.

[Sammy] Sammy will enjoy it! We should do this more often! [Sammy] "We should do this more often" says man who will always be too busy to do this more often,

[GM] They're impressed that, at a job where there was a gunshot right in front of the stage, the thing you want to ask about is where they sourced their music. [Sammy] I LOVE that Sammy's reputation is such that this makes perfect sense to them.

[GM] His name is Alan Leroy. [Sammy] Okay, Leroy works, because then I'll remember it, because of Leroy Jenkins. [GM] This is what's been going through my head the entire time, too...

[GM] They say he's a crazy-talented musician who blew into town a year or two ago? He's really nice and easy to get along with, and when he really gets going he can make sounds come out of his instrument like you've never heard! [Sammy] These... are all.. compliments that would be really impressive except that they can all be interpreted in really concerning ways.......

[GM] If Jack wants to look harder, he can.......... [Jack] I'm doing it, Jack can make little a bad decision! He hasn't made any yet this season!! [Jack] *rolls* That's an extreme success. How much sanity do I lose!!

[Henry] We're ghost hunters. The, the pale guy is a ghost, we're goin' after him. Ghost hunters. [Henry] ...This is why you don't let Henry lead the conversation!!

[Jack] It's occurring to me that we don't know if this guy is alive??? [Joey] YUP! This is a good time to find out! [Henry] Fun! [GM] When have you EVER gone up to somebody's house and found them dead inside? [Jack] Jack hasn't yet... [Henry] The very first scenario! [Sammy] Yeah it was a pretty bad situation as I recall, we were briefly accused of being involved! [Jack] Maybe you guys. Jack's different, though.

[Joey] We wanted to make sure he was doing alright. .....does that need a Fast Talk roll? [GM] Yeah, I was about to say-- [Joey] *rolls* *STARTS CACKLING* [GM] What did you do, do you roll a three again? [Joey] I DID ROLL A THREE! :D THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I ROLLED! [GM] I thought it was the Three Laugh!

[Henry] Henry is tired. Henry rolled a 93. [GM] Well he's out late, you know, he's a family man! He has normal hours, he hasn't been staying up late, living at the studio for the last few years! [Henry] He's regretting not accepting Joey's offer to just go home. [Joey] *muttering* See, Joey knows best!

[GM] Okay, so you guys notice, right off, that the car isn't there. [Sammy] UM. HM. [Jack] Which car did we take again? [Joey] The Mercedes... [Jack] *relieved* Okay good. [Jack] .... I MEAN, NOT GOOD, BUT...

[Joey] No, no I think it's OUR car... it's just... more yellow now... [Jack] I don't like that that means it's getting yellower... [Joey] ...........................So when do we take the sanity hit? [GM] Yeah, that would be now!

[GM] The woman says she's looking forward to when he has his own ship, and they can sail away together! [Henry] [Henry] ...I'm married,...

[Joey] Joey has his face pressed to the window-- no, he probably has the window down, it doesn't matter how cold it is -- and... CAN the window go down? Hold on. [Joey] *sounds of typing* "Car... door... window... down... history... when."

[Henry] Okay, these dice are BANNED. I rolled a 90! [Jack] What if you subtly replace the dice...? [Sammy] With slighty yellower dice!

[Joey] OKAY! There ARE rolling windows, so Joey does have the window rolled down, and he's intensely watching the colour of the car. [Joey] AND ALSO, he's STILL sitting in the middle seat, he's just going to lean over someone to do this. [Sammy] Ah. It's probably me.

[Jack] No, no, Pete and Jack can get kidnapped later and take some massive sanity damage together. ✨Cute date ideas!✨

[Joey] Joey's going to inform Norman that they're going to come over, they need additional eyes on something, [GM] Well, he's good at keeping eyes on things! [Joey] So they'll be over soon. [Sammy] I like how Norman gets a heads up, but with Peter we just show up at his apartment. [Joey] Exactly! [Jack] That's because Joey's kissed Pete. When Joey and Norman kiss then that's -- not good for Sammy, probably. [GM] At least Pete and Sammy are neutral. Non-reactive. [Sammy] Norman and Sammy are "it's complicated" on Facebook.

[Sammy] Okay, we gotta go get Linda, so Susie's not alone, [Jack] We're just playing "how many NPCs can we force Thren to play at once!" How many can we shove in the back of this car.

[Jack] Jack's gonna get home and find out his cats are different colours, [Sammy] Oh NO, [Jack] Comes back and Beans is a tortie now. [Sammy] Or Beans is just an orange cat, [Jack] Oh no! Her braincells! [GM] She needs those! She has all of them!!

[Joey] Depending on who's the affected party, Susie or them, it is actually useful to have a second, like, [Sammy] Someone to compare with? Yeah. [Henry] We don't know WHO the control group is, but ONE of us is the control group!

[Joey] As trusted as Norman is, he isn't one of Joey's... white-knuckle-clutched-keepsakes of a person,

[Sammy] *sarcastic* Okay, everyone ready to go to sleep? That's not a scary prospect right now, right? That's something that we're all really confident about doing? Cool, that's great. [Henry] Yeah, yeah, that's definitely not gonna, it's gonna go great...! [GM] Nobody's even cut their hand on a slick stone! It's fine! [Henry] NO ONE BETTER CUT THEIR HAND ON A SLICK STONE! We got enough problems!! [Joey] (Looking at you, Prophet!)

[Henry] Is Joey,,, sharing this plan with anyone? [Joey] ouo Has anyone asked him?

[Joey] Let's send Henry then! [Henry] Alright. Send Henry to Carcosa! [Sammy] *exasperated* yeah that's fine.... [Joey] It's not FULLY sending him there! It's just making a connection. [Joey] A little bridge! [Sammy] Uggghhhh... Sammy doesn't think we need any bridges to Carcosa. [Sammy] We've got enough Carcosa. [Sammy] Put some back.

[Sammy] This is what happens When You Give a Joey a Dream Spell.

[Sammy] We can't actually guarantee that New York isn't going to sink. That's not out of the question. [Jack] Is the Joey Drew specialty NOT "promising things that aren't necessarily things you can promise??"

[Henry] Actually, before Henry leaves he's going to give Joey a hug. [Joey] He doesn't get to leave. [Henry] Oh. [Joey] But Joey will take the hug!

[Henry] You know this man gives good hugs. You're getting a good Henry hug. [Jack] Gonna crunch all of Joey's terrible, very bad bones. [Henry] He's gonnna try not to crunch all of Joey's terrible bones! [Henry] But, I dunno. [Henry] Roll for damage.

[GM] The lurker knows this is serious, but he's also excited, because he has heard what a slumber party is from Henry's kids.

[GM] Now it is Friday, the 28th of December. [Sammy] Okay. Cool. Let's all make an effort to not ring in the New Year in Carcosa. That's MY New Year's Resolution: Don't Be In Carcosa.

[radiant-reid]

Familiar

Spence and reader claim to hate each other but he secretly buys and sprays readers perfume on his pillow because it’s the only way he can get to sleep after meeting her. Reader sees her perfume in his satchel or suitcase when they unexpectedly have to share a hotel room for a case and maybe a confession or just good ole “hate sex”

Summary: Spencer’s secret way to sleep is revealed in a moment of upset

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader (angst then fluff)

Content Warning: nothing

Word Count: 1.2k

Masterlist | Navigation

Spencer Reid is an arrogant ass. That's the first thing Y/n had learned about him when he couldn't even be bothered to get to the office in time for her introduction. It might have been petty but it was one of the most excitement filled days of her life, and she thought the team would share her joy like they had done for Kate Callahan, her mentor.

With Tara, Y/n joined the team after JJ went on maternity leave and Kate quit to have time with her baby.

Hotch took a quick liking to her, but he was pretty easy to win over with a few compliments about the art in his office done by his son and neat handwriting on her reports- something Spencer didn't have. Rossi, too, was easy, impressed by the brilliant new agents wit and observation. Tara and Y/n became fast friends, joining the team at the same time, and being the only women in the field with the team. Penelope loves everyone, and although she misses JJ and Kate, she's gotten much better at letting people in, especially after Y/n complimented her mermaid pen. Morgan took to flirting with her fast than he did anyone else, and he enjoyed her flirting back.

But Spencer... they just didn't click. A bad first impression led to some miscommunications and they were quickly enemies. He didn't do as well as she did at keeping things civil, and had been called out on his behavior by their unit chief more than once.

His mean streak is showing on a case in Massachuttes. Whether it's how cold it was or the complexity of the case, something has him tightly wound.

"We think the unsub's ritualistic behavior is because-"

Spencer cuts her off before she can continue explaining part of the profile to the local police department. "Agent L/n is wrong. It's too early to speculate on the unique signature."

He doesn't even look as she shoots him a glare, or Hotch's that matches her's in terms of anger.

Unsurprisingly, Hotch discretly drags them both into the conference room they're using, sending Tara back to the ME with some follow-up questions, and Rossi and Morgan to get dinner.

"This needs to stop." Hotch tells them sternly. Y/n wants to die hearing his authoritative tone. It's worse than being in the Principal's office. "There's no room on this team for whatever problem you two have with each other. We need to be able to function effectively as a unit."

She sinks further down in her chair, knowing that the team worked perfectly without her. It's not an easy connection to make that she's the expendable one. They'll be able to find another ambitious, young women wanting to advance her career.

"Sorry, sir." She says, biting her bottom lip in shame.

Hotch isn't as mad at her as he is at Spencer, and it shows in the slightly softened look he sends her way before looking back at Spencer. "Reid, I will not have you interrupting another agent like that. Is that clear?"

"She wasn't even paying attention when we were writing the preliminary profile with Morgan." He claims. She's guessing it's in reference to the inside jokes he wasn't included in. He looked annoyed about it then but his eyes bore into her with fury.

She wants to call bullshit on his accusation and hope it helps the churning feeling in her stomach, but she doesn't get a chance before Hotch snaps at him "Get it together, or you can go back to the hotel."

Although she wants to, Y/n refrains from laughing when she guesses Jack gets a similar- but much softer- punishment, probably having to pick between fixing his attitude or going to his room when he misbehaves.

Spencer doesn't look regretful, but he shuts his mouth and listens to Hotch's next instruction. "L/n, we're going to the dump site, I think we missed something. Reid, look through the video sent to the police of the first murder. Try and focus on the location."

She's grateful Hotch decided to split them up, but it's still a little awkward to be going with him after getting in trouble. She doesn't look at Spencer as she leaves, following her boss to the car.

"He was wrong for interrupting you," Hotch tells her when they're in the SUV.

She shakes her head. "I get it. I'm new on the team. My opinions don't have as much weight."

"They do to me." He assures her. "And everyone else."

That's all he says on the topic, and she's not about to gossip to her unit chief about how much she hates her colleague so the conversation ends, and they go about collecting information to catch the unsub.

Hotch tells her to call Penelope for some more information about the town's history. It's what Penelope says after giving her the information that raises her eyebrows. "How's my boy?"

"Morgan?" Y/n clarifies.

"Reid." Penelope corrects.

She's too mad at Spencer not to take the opportunity to complain about him. "An asshole. He cut me off while we were giving the profile."

She sighs, tapping the end of her pen against the desk. "I can't... he's had some bad things happen." Penelope starts, trying to be careful not to tell her too much of Spencer's secret. "And today's the anniversary of one of them."

Y/n isn't a monster, of course she feels bad for him. She hasn't looked at any of the team's files, knowing they're more than their worst moments.

"I'm not making excuses." Penelope assures her. "He just- it's not an easy day."

"Thanks for telling me." Y/n says. "And I won't tell him you said anything."

"Thank you, girl wonder. Now go catch that bad guy!" She's back to her cheery tone with her farewell, and it comforts Y/n.

After an ultimately uneventful takedown, they're going to the hotel after a long few days, and Y/n finally feels like she can put the whole day behind her. When Hotch hands out room keys, she realizes there's another problem. A problem that she really doesn't want to face at 11pm: she and Spencer are roommates.

He looks more annoyed about it than she feels, which only helps in making her feel more annoyed. It's an endless cycle.

In his first non-asshole move of the day, Spencer holds the door open for her, letting her into the room first. She groans when there's only one bed, although it's what she expected.

"Don't want to share with me, L/n?" Spencer asks, sounding unbothered.

His teasing tone catches her off guard. She supposes it's the lack of sleep that's making him delirious. "No, I'm okay." She squeaks. "You can shower first."

He heads to the bathroom after taking some shorts and a shirt out of his bag, leaving it sitting on the chair. She finally relaxes a little when the water turns on, scrolling through her phone to catch up on everything she missed.

Spencer's phone starts buzzing in his bag. She's torn between going through his stuff to get it and leaving it alone. Curiosity- which she would disguise as concern if asked- gets the better of her and she rummages through his stuff to find it.

The phone stops ringing by the time she pulls it out, only a number appearing on the screen with missed call. What she touches next to the phone is a perfume bottle. More correctly, it's her perfume. Not her bottle, but an identical replica.

Her mind searches for an answer about why he would have that, and she comes up with nothing. Surely he didn't get it because she has it... did he?

She's too wrapped up in what she's seeing to have noticed the water turn off and Spencer walk back into the room. She almost drops the bottle when he clears his throat.

"Sorry- sorry, I didn't mean to go through your stuff." She quickly apologizes in a panic, putting it back in the bag and handing him his phone. "It was, uh, buzzing."

"Thanks." He says, not even bothering to look at the number. He knows who it is. She can't even look at him, wanting to run away, but his tone tells her that he's not angry at her. "You saw it, huh?"

She looks up at him when she's back sitting on her side of the bed, a safe distance away from him. "I swear I wasn't snooping." She assures him.

"Otherwise, you might be weirded out that I have a bottle of your perfume." He says lightheartedly.

"Can I ask why?" She asks, although she's unsure if it's a question she wants to be answered.

Spencer sighs, sitting down on the edge of the bed, close enough that her breath hitches. "You were wearing this the first time I met you."

"I know that." She cuts in to remind him. "I wear it every day. It's my perfume. I want to know why you have it. Is it something creepy?"

"Depends on what you consider creepy." He jokes again, cringing at himself. He's never good in awkward situations, especially when it's her that he's talking to. "I have it because it's the only way I can sleep."

Y/n frowns, still struggling to put it together. "You can only sleep if you can smell my perfume?"

"Basically." He answers unhelpfully.

She shakes her head. "No. No, that's not right. You don't like me. Why would you need your bedroom to smell like me?"

"You remind me of someone. A scary amount." He tells her.

She laughs humorlessly. "Someone you hate?"

His expected affirmative answer doesn't come. "Someone I love."

He's making her heart do weird things it's never done before, and she can't seem to breathe properly around him anymore. "That's... I don't get it."

Spencer takes a deep breath before he launches into his story, his eyes never leaving hers. "Maeve was killed three years ago today in front of me. She was kind of the first girlfriend I had." Y/n nods, prompting him to continue while she takes in the load of personal information she wasn't expecting to get from him. "She was witty, kind, and so intelligent. And all of that reminds me a lot of you."

Her heart skips a beat, and she's sure her mouth is wide open. "I'm so sorry." She says. "That's horrible."

"It was." He agrees. "And it taught me a lot. One of the things I'm still learning is to tell people they're important to me when I have a chance."

"Is that what you're doing?" She asks softly like she can't really believe it's true.

He nods. "I'm trying. Y/n L/n, you're incredibly important to me, and I'm sorry I've been acting like you aren't."

"I get it now." She assures him, moving forward so she's sitting next to him. "I mean, I wish you told me sooner, but I can live with the fact you didn't."

"Thank you," Spencer says. "And I'm sorry if I weirded you out by carrying around your perfume. You're just relaxing to be around. It’s olfactory-”

She cuts him off. “Spencer?” He stops talking, looking for her input. “Shut up.”

He gulps when she leans forward, an inch away from his lips but he easily closes the gap to kiss her when his brain catches up. Her lips taste like her perfume in a non chemically way. More because it’s a relaxing, familiar feeling, even though he’s never kissed her before. He cups her cheek to kiss her more firmly, making sure she was actually there.

“I really like you.” He tells her when he pulls back. “Romantically.”

She laughs lightly. “Yeah, I got that. What are we going to do about it?”

“When we’re back in DC, I could take you out.” He offers, although he says it with too much enthusiasm for it to be casual.

“I’d like that.” She agrees. “A lot.” Maybe Spencer isn’t arrogant after all. Maybe he’s closer to learning how to tell people they’re important than he thought he was.

[mermaidsirennikita]

what were your top 10 LEAST FAVORITE movies of 2023 (so far....)

Oh, OLIVIA. Off to your letterboxd I go!!!

But some immediate ... recent... additions:

Maestro--This is the most obnoxiously Oscar bait-y, vanity project-y movie I've seen in a long time. Like, I'm not inherently opposed to Oscar bait, I think a movie can be Oscar bait and also good. But this... I'm not super impressed by Carey or Bradley in general (I did love him with ASIB but I think he benefited from several external factors) and here??? Dry as a bone. She was better than him, but WHO WOULDN'T BE because he was giving the most try hard, bullshit performance. And cutting down Bernstein's sexuality to an OFFENSIVE and confusing degree. What even was Bernstein's relationship with Felicia? Where did that shit where she was all YOU'RE SO HATEFUL from??? I though she hated him because he was fucking around their entire marriage (even though the script implied she was... down? At one point?) and suddenly she's all YOU'RE HATEFUL AND YOU'RE GONNA DIE A LONELY OLD QUEEN. What??? And as someone who didn't know much about Bernstein going in beyond his sexuality, I feel like I still don't know much.

Priscilla--Similarly bad biopic anchored by a completely flat performance by a woman who's getting acclaim because she is the white girl of the week who everyone claims is so amazing and transformative because she has no distinguishing features and a flat affect everyone can project onto. Especially bad because Jacob Elordi can't maintain an accent to save his life and the movie was incapable of translating the incredible crush Priscilla would've felt underneath both his persona and his fame. I never got the sense of this guy's fame, and Elvis was INSANELY famous at his peak. I thought it was just bad, dude. And I frankly don't know why we felt the need for this liberation narrative when the sad truth is that Priscilla's entire career has been based on this idea that she's Elvis's widow (when they'd been divorced for years when he died and he was actually in a serious relationship with another woman when he died). And you know what? She has a right to that. I don't have an issue with that. I don't think she would've ever made as much money doing anything else, and he stole her childhood so go off. BUT. That does undermine a liberation narrative for me, and I can't get over it, especially because Priscilla has been so (willingly) in the press for the past couple of years.

Saltburn--Emerald Fennell cannot write a script and Emerald Fennell doesn't direct a super interesting movie, aside from some interesting (if not super original) visuals. I've already gone off about this movie. Barry gave a fun performance. Jacob gave him jack shit.

Anyone But You--I don't know if I'd even be as outraged about this if people didn't hype it up, but lol. It's dumb. It feels like a mid to bad romcom from 2005, which makes it worse in 2023. Finding out that the director/writer directed Easy A back in the day was suuuuch a reveal. He redid the retelling conceit, the Natasha Bedingfield deal, and the obnoxious vibes.

After Everything--Look, I didn't expect to like this, at all lol, but I did expect some laughs because I did in fact cry laughing at a couple of the other movies. BUT. TESSAH wasn't even in this for more than five minutes. Which, bless that actress, VALID. But this was like. Bad and not even bad with unintentionally funny moments??? It was mostly about Hardon??? No.

Your Place Or Mine--Can you believe this came out this year? They created a movie... so dry... and devoid of chemistry. A great example of why chemistry is important and how Hollywood has stopped caring.

Love Again--Sam Heughan. What happened. This is another one where I'm like you could've given me something. It was kind of a Celine Dion tribute piece with Celine as fairy godmother and I love Celine. But so boring. So forgettable.

Ghosted--Hideously bad. Ana de Armas is over for me lmao. I mean, she was already, but I was gonna give her a fun little romcom. Holy shit. Bad. Horrible. I kept waiting for a fun twist. NoPE!

What's Love Got to Do With It?--Bad, racist, I HATE its depiction of arranged marriage and the white bystanders gawking at it, ew ew ew hate.

Magic Mike's Last Dance--DUDE. DUDE WHAT THE FUCK WAS THIS. WHAT THE FUCK. HE DIDN'T EVEN STRIP. WHERE WAS THE STRIPPING. WHAT HAPPENED. This movie, to me, is literally the perfect encapsulation of how bad sexlessness has become in media. Can't even fucking watching a fucking Magic Mike movie without some ass. Jesus Christ. What's happened to the world.

[arobinwithoutbatman]

((Aaaaaaaallrightyyyyy comics time~ We're starting the Knightfall saga today and I'm doing the entire saga not just Tim's stuff so I have extra context.

Pray for me, y'all.

Prelude... oh okay Vengence of Bane

Okay, talking about a coup in the Carribean *and torture! Lovely!*

...so a literal newborn is to serve his father's sentence... *purely because he's a boy?! And his father was named in the coup?!* Given the torture, there's every chance that he wasn't involved the victim was just saying names!

Basically raised in prison and went lowkey mad in solitary confinement and after a coma. Almost like traumatic brain injuries have a chance of completely changing someone's personality -.-

...god damn, Bane sure improved! That's kinda terrifying

And now he has an obsession with Batman. This can only go badly

OH! Illegal human experimentation! Why the fuck not?!

Aaaaand he's now all set up in Gotham and wants to kill Batman and is impressed that he doesn't kill. Huh

-----------

Huh... Bruce and Vicki broke up. Shame

Oh hey Sionis, nice to meet you. Can't wait for Jason to destroy your empire later down the line

Sionis backstory too... kinda sad really but also dude don't use your dead dad's face skin to make a new mask. That's gross

Oh shit! Lucius!

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

Oh! Blonde dude is Bruce in disguise! Nice! Didn't even catch that until now!

Also, why is Circe dressed like that? I get the mask, she suffered from the whole facepaint thing, but basically naked? Why?

Also, waists don't work like that!!!! Has she been wearing waist training corsets? Obviously not recently, they picked her up off the street, pretty sure she's been homeless this entire time. Did they know what a woman looks like?

Oh wait! I just realised! Bruce proved himself with a gun! Great aim! *Bruce hates guns* God damn, he really sells it when he's undercover... is he okay?

Also... what is with this art style? Tim is thirteen, maybe 14 at most and he looks like he's Bruce's age

Oh damn, Bruce actually admitting he's not in his prime and starting to slow down. And Jim's potential marriage is in trouble...

Awwww Bruce calling it early for Tim cause he has school

...that wasn't Sionis? What the actual fuck is going on?

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

Bruce Thomas Wayne you will speak to Alfred with a civil fucking tongue in your head

Also, for the love of God get a therapist! This counts as hurting yourself my guy!

Awwww Jack is doing better! And Tim is about to suggest acupuncture when Jack hates needles... welp

Who the fuck is walking around at night in a knock off pinhead cosplay? And killing people?

And this is still teh damn *prelude?!*

Yeah time to rest and recover, Bruce

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

Bruce. For the love of God. Go to therapy. You are stressed and traumatised.

Oh shit Jim's got a hit out on him

And his wife is worried

Yeah Bruce is not doing well...

Lunch break!

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

Okay... military school brat

Robbing the armory. Mkay

Okay so the point f the prelude is... massive city wide gang warfare... plus potentially Arkham related bullshit

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

....Bruce... Bruce for the love of God... I'm begging you. I know Gotham is kinda falling to pieces for the millionth time but pls. Take a break

I'm sorry, this General is still a *child?!*

----------

...his name is Ulysses and even his family other than his mother want him gone. What the god damn

-------

First meeting of Azrael. Cool

Hawk of the Wilderness, Tim you goober

Hm, Tim training Jean-Paul as... a replacement Batman so Bruce can actually take a break?

...it's actually grapnel? I always thought it was grapple???

FINALLY The man tries therapy!!!!

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

Whomst the fuck is hypnotherapying a dude into jumping off a ledge?!

Dealing with a break in at Wayne Tower while Bruce and Lucius try to figure out what secrecy is going on

Ope, Azreal losing control. Oh and hypnotherapy dude again! ...oh shit he's going after the people heading up the 3 sections of this secret project

Which means Lucius is next! Oh fuck!

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

Aaaaaannnndddd Lucius is on teh bridge being encouraged to jump into the river believing it's from his dad....

Also Bruce Wayne, I will remind you again to *speak to Alfred with a civil tongue*

Okay cool they figured out it was hypnosis and Azreal caught Lucius

---------

...fuck me, how many more issues do I have of just the prelude? Cause this is the only thing I get to today at this rate cause I still wanna write things!

Oh hey Killer Croc

Oooohhhh no Bane's gonna show up while Jean-Paul is in the Batsuit trying to handle Killer Croc. His programming is gonna kick in. This isn't gonna end well for *anyone*

Oh okay Bane took out Killer Croc and immediately clocked that it wasn't Bruce under the cowl... welp

And Bruce is having god awful nightmares with the sedatives but he won't sleep any other way poor guy

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

Aaaaaaand Riddler's back

I'm sorry, Riddler once tried to *sacrifice Batman?!* Jesus Christ!

Welp, Riddler was high af and apparently Bruce has been on venom before which sucks

Riddler got shot too and Bane is still testing Bruce

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

Am I dont yet? [348/375] Uuuuugggggghhhhhhhh

DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE RELEASE THE CLOWN. DON'T DO IT, JACKASS

And Tim is cutting Jean-Paul's hair

And now everyone's loose and poor Jeremiah has had a total break from reality thanks to the trauma

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

Good grief that was a lot! So uhhhhh guess it was kinda ambitious to try and do all of Knightfall in one day

[jennawynn]

Chronotrek TOS to series finale

oops, I did it again... I forgot to update. got lost in the sauce. or something.

Honestly, I thought I had been updating at least once a season, but I guess not. Also got distracted binging the entire series of The Expanse in about a week over the holidays. BUT I just finished the Original Series. So I guess we'll go broad strokes since the play by play is pointless.

TLDR: How fucking disappointing an end.

Season 2-

Unlike much of TOS to new!Trek, T'Pring is spot on for appearance. Not that I think it's important or even a _good_ thing for most of them to be beholden to the original, but I was impressed by that. Though the whole 'property of the victor' thing is very squicky. I thought the Vulcans were 'evolved'. And then I guess he didn't gotta fuck after all.

By 2, Uhura's actually doing work. She's not just eye candy on the bridge. But then they have Jim say that finding a girl on the ship is losing an officer. Because women can't fucking exist without being partnered and can't be partnered and still work. This bullshit was actually still happening in the Navy when I was in. Men were unwilling to invest time and training in women because we'd just get married and get out to have babies anyway where a man is likely to stay in and retire. The men in my class in boot camp were told by their instructors that women join to find men, not because we actually wanted to serve or excel.

8- (Jim across the intercom) Scotty! Scotty! Stop getting your ass kicked and respond so I can tell you there's an intruder in your area! Scotty! Scotty, respond!

I hate this so much. Like when Jim and Uhura were in cells and the dude was obviously assaulting her and Jim kept shouting 'what's happening? are you ok? what's happening? what are you doing? are you ok?' like Jim, ffs, use some context clues, some deductive reasoning, and stop shouting for people to acknowledge you and DO SOMETHING.

Rainn Wilson was a good choice for Mudd in New!Trek though.

Why would they have to pay royalties? I thought this was post-currency? Post-scarcity? Is there still money?

9- This one was also squicky. So obsessed with gender. Body takeover, "love" that isn't recognized as such until it's wearing a pretty face. But of course one is a man and one is perceived as a woman so therefore let's change everything we thought so we can stay together and call it love.

10- Amanda's a pretty good reconstruction too, if aged down in New!Trek.

14- I wasn't expecting them to go the "Jack the Ripper is an immortal alien" route.

It always cracks me up when they cut to a super wide angle shot of a fight to sub in stunt doubles who are really obvious, though I suppose they wouldn't have been on a 60s tv.

19 Heeeey Dr. M'Benga!

This whole thing with the exotic witch women and how sexual she is and how she's dressed. Like that's not dumb enough, she lets herself get grappled more than once posturing with the phaser but defaulting to the dagger. Shoot one and they'd fall in line! But gotta keep reinforcing the idea that men are stronger than women.

21- Jim's look of indignation at Spock's statement that he would fit right in as a Nazi lmao

22- I don't know why I never realized that Trek is all (at least so far) in the Milky Way, that they don't even get as far as Andromeda.

26- so they can just. time travel. at will. what?

Season 3

3- hold up, roll that back. there's an ancient pregenitor superrace that seeded humanoids everywhere? This is the first I recall it being mentioned in Trek (though the trope or a version of it is also in the expanse, mass effect, etc.) "Preservers". Is it ever explored more? It's a surprise to Bones and maybe Spock too- certainly not common knowledge.

This is from before 3, but I really like the way Bones and Spock have this begrudgingly respectful relationship, like brothers. They tease and pick at each other, but have each others' backs against anything (besides Jim maybe)

4- Kirk can see the kid doing the thing. Fuckin' ground him.

Spock says fuck them kids.

Ugly = Bad was alive and well in the 60s.

5- And then they somehow have a discussion that Good =/= Beautiful in the very next episode.

Gen Obs- It feels like TOS spends more time on the bridge than other shows. The Bridge or the planet they're on. The other shows so far show more engine room, hallways, ready rooms, bunks, etc. Other places on the ship than just the bridge. They have them in TOS, but they seem underutilized. I don't have the data to back it up and couldn't find it (which was surprising to me).

Another obs- they overcommunicate for the audience's sake, but rarely with each other. Kirk never explains his thought process or orders to the people he leaves in command. When something planetside affects the ship, he doesn't tell them, he just says 'I'll take care of it down here'. His crew and his backup are often left in the dark.

13- There's so much in this one I don't like but the line about Kirk being into spanking made me smirk. Canonically in love with the Enterprise indeed.

14- Jim: Mr. Spock and I are brothers! Spock: Captain Kirk is speaking figuratively and with undue emotion Kirk: *offended face* Spock: However, what he says is logical and I do agree with it.

19 Kirk did seem to become more of a manwhore the longer the season went, no? Why did they all lose their shit so much around women? It's exhausting.

22- I love that Scotty gets to wear tartan/kilt in dress uniform.

heeeyyyy Kahless

24- And the disappointing end. In this idolized utopian setting, not only is it not permitted for a woman to be a starship captain, but then they "prove" that women are too emotional to command.

The last line of the whole series: "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's if only...."

Not as rich as any person's. And if only she'd been content to her 2nd class status and not pushed for equality. How fucking disappointing.

Everyone always points to 'the actresses WANTED to wear miniskirts because empowerment' when they talk about the sexism of the original series, and I tried to watch with that in mind, but that just feels like a smoke screen for the actual shitty sexist takes.

The show equates a woman with emotion and sexuality. She's a good officer right up until she falls in love (or someone falls in love with her), then she's just a woman- a liability and a pleasure object. They only use women in episodes that require someone to be or fall in love with them. Even Uhura and Chapel aren't completely immune, though they are the biggest exceptions and the only recurring female characters. Though of course Uhura's the comms officer (cause women talk) and Chapel's a nurse (not a doctor).

Like even if you remove the miniskirts and the gross inappropriate touching from the equation, there's still a lot of ick happening. They can imagine a future where the races are equal but not the sexes.

[runthepockets]

Most relatable The Boys characters and why:

M.M: older black dude with a shit ton of trauma. Tries really hard to be a good man, slips up sometimes but really isn't as big of a deal as he thinks it is (it wasn't great that he beat up his daughter's stepdad with her in such close proximity, especially since you can tell that a lot of jealousy was tinged in the altercation, but also? Dude was a fucking white supremacist. Fuck him.) Before he rejoins The Boys he's a youth correctional counsler, clearly very comitted to his wife and trying to help a ton of angry and misplaced black and latino boys become functional and vindicated adult men. He's very similar to me, while also being an insight on what I could be in the future.

Frenchie: dude just. Kinda does whatever. He's done every drug in the book, he knows a ton of dealers and knows a lot about weapons. He's seen a lot of bullshit. He's also one of the most laid back and grounded people in the entire show. He's as loyal and resourceful as he is impulsive and trickster-esque. He's a streetwise jack of all trades and cares very deeply about the people who choose to fight alongside him. Amongst all his random, violent crimes and impulses, he also watches cheesey romcoms and musicals with his girlfriend, and says things like "life is nothing if we can't dance!" He's just like me fr.

Hughie: a perfect everyman for every guy in his early - mid 20s. He's succesful with the ladies, he (had) a steady (but boring) retail job, and has a very close and healthy relationship with his father, but you can still tell he wants more. Billy Butcher steps into his life and shows him all this scrappy, high risk stuff, and you can tell it's scratching an itch that he's needed scratched for quite a while, it finally gives him a purpose. He's generally a good guy, with the best interests of the general public at heart, but he's not immune to falling into those shitty habits that everyone hates seeing in dudes a lot of the time; he gets jealous of other guys, especially those who have a history with his girlfriend, especially those that he perceives as more "manly" than himself, often to the point of self destruction and steamrolling the actual, material needs of female friends and partners. He's distrustful and paranoid and cagey, especially after being neglected and let down by the very role model of masculinity that got him roped into this self destructive lifestyle in the first place. There are a lot of times where you can tell he's just doing stupid shit to impress other guys, and not because he actually wants to do them. This was very much (and sometimes, still is) the path I lead during my first three years of transitioning, and very much the outlet that Hardcore and Metal were (and still do) giving me during that time as well. I have high hopes for him in the 4th season, which is due to air next year, but I also know he has to hit rock bottom before he can get back to the top of his A game, as is the human condition.

[gas-stxtion]

//ok yeah time to outline some thoughts about jack being placed in foster care.

first, obligatory disclaimer: i haven't read volume 4 yet, so volume 4 and its revelations about jack's family mean fucking nothing to me rn. (not to say that i'm going to completely disregard those details once i get there or just say they're *not canon* somehow, but that these are my thoughts *for now* and i'll adjust them as needed once i get my shit together and read volume 4.)

content warnings: this is all about abuse, especially very violent physical abuse, both between romantic partners and directed at a very young child. tread lightly. also talk of drug use and addiction and alcoholism. this post is a goddamn bummer.

jack's father, william, was a white nationalist and an extremely, brutally abusive man, especially to his son. i've thought a lot about *why* that is--not that there's ever a *good* or *logical* reason to beat a child, of course, but also abusers aren't inhuman monsters with no logic behind their actions. there's a reason jack's father was Like That, and yeah sure a lot of that definitely relates to the far right bullshit but still-

and i'll be upfront that i don't have answers for everything that was wrong with jack's parents and their background, but i'm sharing what i've got now.

anyway, jack's parents were both addicts--his father was definitely an alcoholic, and i'm sure his mother, charlotte, had addiction problems as well. based on the references to meth being a huge problem in town, we can probably assume they might've been on meth, but i'm not so sure on that for these two in particular.

at the very least, i don't think jack's *dad* was on meth, because i get the impression he was seen as *better* than a lot of people in the community to some degree, at least up until his wife left him and his kid was taken away and put in foster care. the specific drug isn't super important for this particular post, but i'm putting a pin in this for future reference. we'll get back to that at some point.

ANYWAY, jack was not the only child in even just his kindergarten class being subject to horrific abuse at home. it's a widespread problem in this community, based on the (often joking) references in the series. sure, beating your kids isn't condoned, but this town also doesn't exactly *condemn* it either, and as long as you aren't *open* about it, most people are generally content to look the other way. same for spousal abuse, both of which were happening in this household.

jack's dad was always a piece of shit btw, but over time he definitely got worse. and y'know i hate to say it, but i think jack's birth was one of the factors that made the situation worse. william was elated to have a child, up until said child wasn't immediately the perfect, obedient heir he'd been hoping for.

jack was *too sensitive* and *annoying* and william became less and less patient about that as time went on. making matters worse, jack's mother was hit *hard* by postpartum depression, and she withdrew emotionally more and more as he grew. not to say she was never present, but there was a very noticeable distance between jack and his mother that grew worse with time. her postpartum depression and her addiction fed into each other in a vicious cycle as she got worse and worse and both were left untreated.

and jack's father was... not patient in dealing with that. his wife wasn't performing her duties as a wife and a mother, and he had too much on his plate already to worry about picking up the slack. jack was left alone quite a bit as a child, often having to fend for himself or risk starvation. and when his parents *were* around, they often argued (even if said arguments tended to be one-sided).

eventually, william began drinking more and more, and these arguments grew more and more common. finally, though, when jack was three, william got violent with charlotte. to her credit, she fought back just as hard, but that escalated the situation and made it significantly worse, and jack was caught in the crossfire.

as the years passed, william grew more and more violent towards his wife and child, often brutally attacking them seemingly unprompted and then denying them medical attention so they wouldn't tell the doctors anything. jack's mother became more present and *there* for him, but it was primarily for her own survival. if she was a good mother, she wouldn't be beaten. (now i'm not saying she didn't love jack, but just that she had to care for him in a way she wasn't equipped to, or risk more abuse.)

things escalated and escalated, and then when jack was around six years old, william tried to kill them both in a drunken rage. he didn't succeed in the end, as a neighbor heard the commotion and called the police. jack and his mother were taken to the hospital, and his father was arrested. he'd finally gone far enough that the community wouldn't look the other way anymore.

jack's father was charged, but he ultimately was released and just... left town without a word. he didn't want to face his old community and see what they thought of him. jack hasn't heard from him in nearly twenty years, and he's happy to keep it that way.

jack's mom stuck around for a bit, but after a month or two, she just... vanished. without a word. all she left behind for jack was a little food, a little money, and a note apologizing for not being a good mother to him. jack hasn't heard from her since either, but he still has her letter to him.

it was a couple of days before anyone realized something was wrong, as accustomed as jack was to taking care of himself. eventually, though, *someone* realized that this six year old had been alone for two days. and ultimately jack was taken in by the state. there were efforts made in the early days to locate his mother or other relatives, but none of them were successful. so, he was placed with a very nice local family, assured that he would be adopted any day now. who wouldn't want to adopt him after all?

... that never happened, but it was a nice thought if nothing else.

[rpmemesbyarat]

RP Meme Lines from "AHS: Coven" Episode 12: "Go To Hell"

Your highest honor comes at the greatest price.

Death is not uncommon. And danger inescapable.

I don't even need to read your mind to know what you're doing.

Poor, sweet, dumb, paranoid girl.

The awful truth is I am tired.

I want to know what happened.

She's probably off in some unholy nether realm.

He's a deity. Show some respect.

Respect is something that is definitely lacking around here.

You will show me respect!

You look like shit.

I can't believe you did that to yourself.

Whoa! That was cool!

I did transmutation.

I didn't even have to think about it. It just happened.

Our powers always spike in times of crisis. This is one of those times.

You into girls now?

What are you afraid I might see?

Nothing stays a secret for very long in this house

It will come to light whether you want it to or not.

I don't have any secrets.

I'm the queen-- I will rise again!

My people gonna come for you. Rip you apart.

Give me the box of chicken. Today, please.

I'm going on break, okay?

This was the worst time of your life. Waiting on people who treated you like the piece of trash you thought you were. No power. No respect. And no future that you could see.

Your hell's on Earth.

Don't make me put you in the fryer.

Everybody got to pay in the end.

Wait! I'm not done with you!

Unless you want to stay here forever, you better hurry and get back.

Time moves differently in here.

I'm talking to you, bitch!

You made it back. I'm impressed.

Now that I've proven my power, you're gonna give me some answers.

You remember how you told me you were gonna cut me up in little pieces and plant me all over the place? I thought that was a honey of an idea.

There's got to be a way to kill her.

More marshmallows.

Well, she's not gonna be doing anything while she's chopped into 50 pieces and those pieces are scattered all over the city.

You are one crafty witch.

When do we get to see the attic torture chamber?

These wild tales of barbarity you've heard are nothing more than lies invented by her many enemies.

What a total rip-off.

How did you find me?

A dog returns to its vomit.

I see you finally got that makeover.

I'm here to set the record straight.

She even looks like a monster.

Many times while there were extravagant parties going on just below, the sounds of music and revelry drowning out the cries of torment.

You don't believe it?

It beggars all belief.

The information you've been feeding these people? It's inaccurate.

I want my money back.

Do not touch the display items!

You will never be able to pay for your crimes.

It's your only chance for redemption.

Agree to be publicly humiliated-- all is forgiven.

All anybody has to do nowadays is shed some tears, say some words

It's called repentance.

Oh, repentance my ass.

You think a man jack among them was well and truly sorry? Not a one. Sorry they got caught is all.

Y'all nothing but a pack of sniveling hypocrites, as far as I can see.

I won't profess to be sorry, 'cause I'm not.

I was getting to you before. I know it.

You made me weep.

I wept for the state of this world.

A world of lies. A world that makes promise it cannot keep.

I don't want to die.

I want my portrait hung just there.

What are you doing back there?

Do you need a break?

I probably have two weeks left on Earth.

Maybe we could be kind to one another for a change, huh?

Did you really think self-mutilation would restore your power?

You cannot lose your power. You never will. It's inside of you.

As much as I'd like to, I cannot take credit for that. It's all you.

You're saying good-bye?

A man shouldn't be disturbed when he's playing with his instrument.

You don't have your mother's features.

Oh, you know who I am?

We spent quite an evening together.

She can't love anyone but herself.

I saw everything. Everything.

Unzip me.

Whatever fantasy you have about who she is and what you are to her, it's all bullshit.

She used you. All she does is use people.

I don't suspect you have a passport ready.

You feel that? That empty heartbroken feeling?

When the rest of the world sees a wall, we see a window.

Is she alive?

She's not breathing.

That's deadly nightshade you're about to ingest through your nostrils. I wouldn't sniff around unless you're looking for a bout of delirium.

Where is everybody?

Who would have been cruel enough to commit such an atrocity?

I heard people die after three days without water.

Please tell me this is a hallucination driven by my bouquet of Atropa belladonna.

You were supposed to spend your days in romantic splendor with your true love.

You're just like Halston when he sold his brand to J.C. Penney. You've forsaken your destiny.

You bit it off.

Hey, you're in my spot!

I want to sleep!

We're leaving.

You, don't talk to me!

Is that why you came back, because you can't handle him?

You bitch.

You thought I was some dumb swamp rat you could leave behind to die?

Stop these vulgar fisticuffs at once.

It's beneath us.

I don't want to waste my magic on you.

You hit like a girl!

This is awesome!

You! You must pay for what you've done!

Wow, did you walk into the wrong house.

Who the hell is this guy?

I thought you banished his soul to the appropriate nether realms?

I'll kill all of you!

Is that blood?

How could you do this to me?

I don't remember the last time I was here when there wasn't music playing.

You pack your wader boots?

I don't like catfish. I loathe all bottom-feeders.

She's pretty, but she doesn't have your cheekbones.

I imagine she wanted me to do her dirty work for her.

We had a deal. It wasn't on paper, it wasn't stamped by a notary, but we had a deal!

You have been the most delightful distraction. A life preserver. But I'm gonna be on dry land soon.

Can't you at least pretend? Just, just humor me for a while?

I guess I loved you.

Although I really don't know anything about love, if I'm gonna be honest. But you were the sweetest of lovers. The best I've ever had. And I'll miss that.

Let go of me!

I know you love me!

Christ, I was sick!

I just needed to feel something.

I made you die those little deaths for the first time in your sorry life. I made you sing when you had no tunes left in you.

What you're doing is a crime against humanity.

Well, I've never been one for love, true or otherwise.

Does anyone feel any different?

Where's the body?

Somebody's got to kill this creep.

Is that really necessary?

I'll kill him.

We really don't need a man to protect us.

I know I mistreated you in the past but there's no greater pain than being this close and not, not being able to reach you. And to comfort you.

Oh, I'm consumed with regret.

Why are they doing this to us?

Please, I'm so thirsty.

Please have mercy.

Are you hungry, too?

I'll slice off one of your mama's fingers and feed it to you!

Yes, I have sinned.

I gave no quarter.

Have mercy on my soul!

I don't want to do this!

You will do as you are tasked.

Who is this man?

What is this place?

You have been granted your sweet release from the world of the mortal.

Welcome to hell.

I can't die!

We have a contract!

No one gets away with sin.

Everybody suffers.

[animentality]

I just finished community.

So.

Here's my review.

It was decent.

It was funny and had some really amazing moments and wonderful dynamics between people who feel real. It had some crazy wonderful episodes like all the paintball episodes, the floor is lava, the gang plays a video game, the gang does a bottle episode.

There were a lot of unique and cool stories that I have never seen before in any show and probably never will because of its highly original structure.

But.

It was uneven. Some episodes were super bad and overly reliant on "will they or won't they" romance subplots that went nowhere.

Some episodes were overly self aware and it became a pointless schtick that just beats the viewer a million times with how clever it is.

It was fun and had some really unique episode structures and gags.

But.

Its not parks and rec.

It just lacked heart and that balance of pragmatic and idealistic.

Also. In a show that relies on the chemistry of the ensemble....it had too many unlikable characters.

Pierce was intolerable. Britta became really stupid for some reason around season 3. And her white privilege fake feminism woke bullshit wasn't funny, it was mostly pathetic. She improved a little by season 6, but too late.

Chang was just obnoxious and his character was made up of forgotten subplots. They seriously just amped up his craziness and he lost all likability and was mostly just an annoying subplot.

Shirley is mostly fine but she can push it with her religious fundamentalism and lack of growth.

Annie was mostly fine as well but her irrational ocd like behavior off could be really annoying rather than funny, and her constant soapboxing came across as grating sometimes.

and it was VERY obnoxious through the seasons how she was in love with Troy, then with Jeff, then with Troy and Jeff, then Abed.

Like I get it, she's fuckable. Pick a person for her to fall in love with or DONT.

I couldn't stand the episodes where her love for Jeff was a major plot point.

Like them getting together was fine in the END, but entire episodes dedicated to them making eyes at one another, barf.

Oh. And also.

Jeff and Britta is the worst and most boring couple in all of TV history. And the constant flip flopping between them dating was just awful.

Especially the end of season 1, after Britta says fuck off Jeff for an entire season, she then suddenly decides I'm IN LOVE with you, let me publicly declare it because I'm jealous of your previously cool headed and professional ex girlfriend who is now acting like a lovesick puppy.

That actually fucked up the rest of the series for me. If they had just left it and never brought it up again I could have forgiven it as season 1 weirdness.

But then they kept teasing it even though Britta the airhead and Jeff the asshole is NOT interesting.

And that episode where they decide to get married?

Yeah, 30 Rock might have been forgettable but at least they never had Liz and Jack fuck. And mostly, none of the members were obsessed with fucking one another and teasing some bullshit love triangle plots.

Stupid shit.

And along a similar vein, Troy and Britta was so utterly...unremarkable.

So to get back on track.

I think Troy and Abed were the best characters of the series. They were the only valid couple.

I tolerate Jeff and he has some good moments, but the only two characters that will leave any real impression on me are those two.

And I'm not really that emotional about finishing community.

Like. Parks and Rec made me tear up with its finale.

But community...eh. I probably won't re watch it.

Might re watch the scene where pierce gets shot again and again, but the series?

Eh.

Parks and Rec is better, as is 30 Rock.

Now I should watch the office, I guess.

Or Brooklyn 99.

[coffee-at-annies]

@jewishomgcp

So I'm terrible about actually writing fic but in honor of the first night/day of Chanukah here's my headcanon of SMH playing dreidel.

It's a train wreck. The only reason it isn't banned in the Haus like most other games is bc they play it once a year and you can't have a Chanukah party without playing driedel.

Jack and Holster are super competitive and rub it in everyone's faces whenever they get gimmel.

Nursey is that one person who no matter how hard he tries can't seem to get a good spin on the dreidel.

Dex got bored five minutes into the game and started eating his gelt to the horror of Holster.

Bitty straight up abandoned the game to go check on his pie and has to get dragged back into the room every time it's his turn so he can spin.

He doesn't even wait to check what it is after spinning he's just gone. Jack is stuck having to collect his winnings or put one in. He'd prefer to quit and let his boyfriend have his gelt but Holster had a rules hissyfit and so he's stuck playing until he's out of gelt naturally. He keeps hoping for shin but keeps getting nun and hay.

Farmer is one of those people who can spin the dreidel on its head and she proceeds to do it every time it's her turn.

The first time she did it play stopped for a good ten minutes because everyone needed to be taught how to do it. Holster already could and Ransom learned freshman year, but the rest of them are useless at it. Jack tries so hard but he can only get it occasionally and he totally sulks about it.

It was during this interlude that Bitty first tried to leave and was forced to stay.

Chowder has spent the entire game wrapped around Farmer who is almost as competitive as Jack and Holster but keeps getting distracted by how comfy her boyfriend is.

He and Lardo are just watching since they don't want to get caught up in the drama and eventual fight between Holster and Jack.

Plus he doesn't like the way the chocolate tastes/feels in his braces so he's okay not winning any.

Chowder and Farmer are adorable and initially they kept getting fined which was okay since during the game a fine is just putting a coin in the middle. Farmer won it all back on her turn anyway.

They had to stop using that rule however when Bitty tried to exploit it to get out of playing. It was the most sickening and impressive two minutes anyone had ever experienced as Bitty called Jack every pet name in the book while sitting in his lap and staring Holster dead in the eyes and slowly putting coin after coin in the center.

Holster wouldn't let him get out of playing but he did finally relent and let him check on his pies in the kitchen when it wasn't his turn.

Tango spends the entire game asking what the different letters mean every time its his turn. The amount of times he has had it all explained to him is truly frightening. Holster can't tell if he's being trolled and at this point he doesn't want to find out.

Whiskey is doesn't talk throughout the game and spins quickly on his turn and is that person who always seems to get gimmel or hay no matter how badly he spins.

Shitty at some point decided to play strip dreidel without telling anyone he was doing it or letting anyone except Lardo know the rules.

According to her he's doing things correctly but the rest of them can't tell.

Ford is the one who bought everything and she's having fun playing but she's come to realize that she did not buy enough gelt or driedels.

Thank god Lardo showed up with a bag of two dozen plastic driedels and a bag of gelt bigger than both of her fists. Otherwise there would have been an issue when Whiskey got gimmel for the third time in a row and Holster chucked the dreidel across the room and proclaimed it a "bullshit dreidel."

This has happened around half a dozen times by the time they're halfway through the game. Holster is not the sole person responsible for needing a new driedel though. Jack has also thrown driedels and there was that one spin of Nursey's so bad that the driedel went off the table and they're still not sure where it went just that it's gone.

Thank god Lardo talked her into leaving the nice one she brought from home on the kitchen table with Jack's menorah and the leftovers of the obscene amount of latkas Bitty and Holster made for dinner. She rather likes it and it'd suck if it got broken in the scuffle.

[fakingitfanfiction]

Just For Me: Chapter 45

Previous Chapters

Ten Years Ago

The first time Amy says those three little words, Reagan’s right there with her.

“I hate you.”

She isn’t actually next to Amy, at the time, or even near her, really. She’s in the back, by the pots of coffee - regular and decaf and something called half-caf that she’s not really sure she understands or wants to as, really, she prefers her coffee like her women: strong and rich and able to rev her engine with a single taste - but, for once, she doesn’t mind a little distance from Amy. She doesn’t even mind (much) that it's Karma next to Amy or even that it’s Karma who's holding Amy’s hand.

(OK, maybe that part bugs.) (A little.) (If, by ‘a little’, you mean a lot.) (Like all.)

But still, it's… OK. (And yes, OK is absolutely as far as she’s gonna go.) This is what Amy needs right now. Karma is what Amy needs right now and yes, Reagan’s sure that 'right now’ really means 'in this one very specific time and place’ and is not code for 'has secretly always wanted all along and will dump you and go running back to Karma as soon as she makes a pit stop at her house and pulls out the I Heart Karmy tee shirt she’s got hidden way in the back, under her suitcase.’

At least she thinks she’s sure and, really, she knows that means she’s not sure, like at all, but Amy told her and if there’s anyone’s word Reagan would take on how Amy feels?

It's not Amy.

But Lolo said it too, and she’s standing right there with her (her being Reagan) and that is good enough, or at least close enough to good enough - like good enough adjacent - to get the job done.

And, as she keeps reminding herself - and may soon resort to having Lolo remind her too - this whole mess was a mess long before her and long before Lolo and long before any thought of liking girls (or anyone, really) had even started to cross Amy’s mind. This is a mess, a fight, with history.

History, when it comes to Amy, equals Karma. At least, Reagan keeps reminding herself, for now.

So there she stands, in the back (said that), by the coffee (said that too), close by Lauren, which means close by Theo (which Reagan doesn’t really mind) and close by Shane (all good there) and that means close by Liam.

Wait. What now?

Yes, Liam. As in Booker. As in Asshat A#1, Duke of the Dicks, Sultan of Shit, King of the Fuckboys.

(She couldn’t come up with an insult that started with 'K’, though she tried, but that took more than like thirty seconds and that was far more time than Reagan was willing to give… him.)

She wasn’t sure why Liam was there, except that the new girl - the one she’d seen him and Karma with, right before Karma had gone all Mike Tyson on Jack’s face - was there and, it seemed, wherever she went, Liam was sure to follow. He was like a puppy.

It would’ve been cute if it had been, well… anyone else.

And so, yes, new girl was there too and yes, she did seem sort of, kind of, in ways Reagan didn’t really want to think about, less than new.

Reagan couldn’t remember the new girl’s name (liar) even though she knew she’d heard it, once, from Liam, and so, yeah, you might understand why she wouldn't want to remember,

why she’d be willing to do damn near anything to forget it, even though she knew she never ever would. New girl was a permanent fixture in Reagan’s brain already, she had herself a cute little cubbie, right in the center of brain town, just off to the left of the four story office building that was Amy and the slightly shorter tower that was Lauren, somewhere just behind the little collection of bungalows that were Shane and Theo and, God help her, Karma.

And if she was going to keep thinking in real estate metaphors, Reagan was going to need something a lot fucking stronger than coffee.

It wasn't just her name that Reagan remembered, even if she said she didn’t. It was her face. Reagan knew, from like the very first moment she saw her, she was never going to forget that face. How could she?

It was just like Amy’s.

Karma said once that the first time she saw new girl (oh, for fuck’s sake, Lucy) that she looked sorta familiar. Reagan said once that Karma was in fucking denial, cause saying Lucy looked familiar was like saying Lolo looked kinda like the girl from Bunheads and sure, she was probably like one of six people who ever even watched that, but come on.

It’s called Google. And IMDB. Look it up.

The point (she did have one) was that Lucy looked a lot like Amy. Like Amy, if Amy had Karma’s hair (the style, not the color, though Reagan had to admit, Lucy’s strawberry blonde dye work was on fucking point.) Like Amy, if Amy had a splash of Lauren’s cheekbones and like even one one-hundredth of Lauren’s skill with blush and shading. Like Amy, if Amy had just a bit of that impish smirk of Shane’s.

Assuming that imps were constantly looking at everyone they talked to like they were imagining them naked. And yes, she meant everyone.

It was all of that - the Karma hair and the Lauren cheeks and the Shane smirk - that unnerved the shit out of Reagan the moment she saw Lucy, all up close and personal and not just on a street corner. But she could get past that, even if she couldn't forget it. It was the just like Amy part she was having some trouble with.

Lucy looked just like Amy, or close enough. 'Just like’ adjacent. (Hey, it was a good line the first time, right?) Maybe close enough that you could tell they were related, that maybe you might think, at first glance, that Lucy was a slightly younger (six months and three days), a bit less infatuated with doughnuts (she prefers crullers) (whatever the fuck those are), and so much less weight of the world (read: weight of Karma) balancing on her shoulders version of Amy. But that was just it.

She was just a version. Amy was the original, the one and only, accept no substitutes.

Unless, of course, you were Jack. In which case, it would seem, you would just accept right the fuck away. Which was, obviously, the entire reason for those three little words.

“I hate you.”

(Remember those? We’re getting there. Promise.)

But still, Reagan couldn’t get past it. Her eyes kept drifting to Lucy. Not because she liked her or wanted to like her or was even thinking of liking her. No, it was because as just like Amy as she was… it was the differences that were like a fucking tractor beam, pulling Reagan’s eyes to her. Lucy seemed - right up until the moment Amy dropped those three little words - like she was happy. Relaxed. Easy going and carefree and untouched by anything. Except, you know, maybe, Liam.

Reagan refused to think about how that might make her even more just like Amy than she already seemed.

In general, she was trying - and mostly failing - to refuse to think about Lucy at all. She didn’t want to think about Lucy, cause that would mean thinking about Lucy and Jack and that would mean thinking about years.

Nine of them to be precise.

Nine long years when Amy had been with Farrah and failed marriages numbers one through Bruce. Nine long years when the closest thing Amy had had to a father was Lucas Ashcroft and, no offense meant to Karma’s dad but… well… he was Karma’s dad.

Not to suggest that his daughter’s shortcomings painted a failing picture of him as a dad but…

Where was she? Oh. Right. Nine years.

Nine years of Amy being alone in ways no one else could ever understand. Nine years of her trying to remember only the good times she and Jack and her mother had had - Farrah had assured Reagan that there actually were some - but all of those memories being drowned out, shouted down, buried every single time by that other memory.

Because of you. I’m leaving because of you.

The first time she met Jack, a week ago yesterday, Reagan punched him in the face. She spent the rest of that night wondering if maybe, just maybe, she was getting a bit too used to resorting to violence to solve her problems. First Liam, now Jack. And then she remembered that, she imagined a younger, weaker, more heartbroken and not tough enough to hide it version of Amy, sitting alone in her room, those words running over and over and over in her head.

And then, she thought, maybe she hadn’t been quite violent enough.

That’s the other reason, besides the whole history thing (and the fact that Karma nearly pushed her out of the way to be by Amy and Amy didn’t seem to be bothered by that) she’s back here, by the coffee. She’s afraid - like genuinely concerned - that she might punch the fucker again, the moment he opens his mouth.

Of course, had she realized what Amy was planning, Reagan might not have been so worried about that.

“I hate you,” Amy says. (Told you we’d get back to it.) “I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t really care, I don't want to know.” Reagan resists the urge to mutter a 'you go, girl’ (it’s not still 2003, after all) but she can see the Lauren’s blonde mane bobbleheading up and down, silently cheering her sister (and fuck DNA and biology and blood, she’s Amy’s sister) on. “Whatever it is that you think you came back here for? You can forget it. You can forget me.” Amy turns to go, but pauses, and turns back. “You did that for nine years. I’m sure you can remember how.”

Reagan’s impressed and she doesn’t impress easy and, yes, she knows that’s bullshit because when it comes to Amy she impresses oh so very easy, but you get the point. It (her speech) was short and sweet and to the point and didn’t give Jack any time or any chance to even say a single word -

Words he would, apparently, have to be saying through another bloody lip cause Amy takes all of two steps before pausing - again - then turning and delivering a right hook to her father’s face that makes even Reagan wince and, she’s pretty sure, draws a very not manly whimper of pain from Liam.

It’s all she can do not to laugh.

And then they’re off. Amy and Karma and Lauren and Theo and Shane, across the shop and out the door, the other customers parting like the sea. Lucy’s already by her father’s side and Liam… well… he’s just… there. He looks to the door like he wants to follow the others, but he knows he really can’t, and he looks to Lucy and Jack like he’ll stay there but there’s already a wall of sorts up around them, a circling of the Raudenfeld Lee wagons and he’s on the wrong side of that too. He’s stuck there, for a moment, lost and confused, until he finally just shakes his head and drifts off, seemingly headed to parts unknown and Reagan can only hope maybe he’ll stay there.

She almost feels sorry for him. Almost. After all, she’s still there too. She didn’t follow the train out of the station with all her friends. (And, you know, Karma.) But unlike Liam, that’s got next to nothing to do with her not knowing where she belongs. Quite the contrary, really.

She knows this is exactly where she needs to be.

Lucy glances back over her shoulder at her as Reagan slips down into the booth across from Jack, but Reagan pays her no mind. She’s not about to let herself get distracted by little Miss Almost-Amy, not right now. There’s a napkin and some silverware on the table and she - very nonchalantly - twirls the knife on the tabletop, spinning it with a finger.

“Round and round it goes,” she mutters, barely holding back a smirk at the way Jack flinches at the sight of the spinning metal, or at the way Lucy suddenly reaches out - far quicker than Amy ever could - and snatches the knife from the wood. Reagan looks up, locking eyes with Jack before she speaks again. “She doesn’t mean it, you know.”

“What?” It’s Lucy who asks and it’s Lucy who Reagan ignores, again.

Reagan repeats the knife act with a spoon, but that doesn’t elicit quite the same reaction as the knife. “You probably don’t know this since, you know, you don’t really know her, but Amy didn’t mean that. Any of it.”

“It sure looked like she meant it.” Lucy again. Reagan’s tempted to tell her to go chase after Booker and let the grown ups talk, but Jack beats her to it, resting one hand on Lucy’s, a silent father to daughter moment.

Nine years. They’ve had nine years to learn that. Nine years they stole from Amy.

Reagan sort of wishes she had the knife back.

“She wants to,” Reagan says. “She wants to hate you. Actually, she really wants to not give a fuck about you one way or the other. She wants your presence or, more likely, your absence, to not mean a thing to her.”

The 'but it does’, she leaves unsaid. Jack gets it, she knows that. But him, actually hearing the words… well, that might be just a bridge too far for Reagan right about now.

“But see, that’s the thing about Amy,” she says and even Jack, who doesn’t know Reagan from fucking Adam, can see the look in her eyes, can tell how much this 'thing’ makes her love and hate her girlfriend all at once. “She forgives. Always. Eventually.”

There’s a moment when Jack’s tempted to ask if this is about him or about that girl, the one he remembers all too well, the one that was holding his daughter’s hand. But he doesn’t ask cause he already knows.

And he’s not stupid.

Reagan drops a hand down on the spoon, stilling it in mid-spin. “She wants to forgive,” she says. “She needs to. It’s in her nature. Maybe not her DNA, but in her.”

Forgiveness is Amy. Even Farrah knew that.

Someday, Karma Ashcroft is going to come walking up to my front door…

It isn’t that Reagan doesn’t understand, cause she does. She gets it all too well. Amy’s spent years hating - or trying to hate - Jack. Hate him for what he did before he left and the way he left and for staying gone for all this time. She’s spent so very long trying to hate him for all of that and yeah, Reagan gets that, she knows a thing or two about how that feels.

“It feels exhausting,” she says, not realizing or caring how out of nowhere that might sound. “It wears you down, carrying that with you. That’s why people always say that forgiveness is really for you, not for those you forgive.”

Jack nods and Reagan wonders if there’s a step for that, if one of the twelve he’s supposedly on speaks about forgiveness.

Even for those who don’t deserve a lick of it.

“She wants to hate you,” Reagan repeats, you know, for emphasis. “And I do. And that is never going to change. There is nothing you can ever do that will make me…” she slowly shakes her head and pushes herself out of the booth. “Way I see it, Jack, you’ve got two choices. You can do what you do best, what you taught her to do. You can run. You can pack up you and your… Lucy… and leave the same way you came in, slipping out in the dark where no one can see.”

Jack nods again, finally speaking, his tongue slipping out between words to swipe at the blood pooling on his lip. “And my other choice?”

Reagan shrugs. “You can start giving her reasons to do what she already wants to do,” she says. “And maybe, one day, like ten years from now, you’ll wake up one morning to discover you’ve got an actual relationship with your daughter.”

The 'but I’ll be there, right there, watching every move and waiting, just waiting, for the inevitable slip’ she leaves unsaid too.

They both already know that.

“Amy came here today because she thinks, somehow, that you’re still worth a chance,” Reagan says, leaning against the edge of the booth and hating every word of it, even though she knows it’s all true. “If she didn’t, she would have just ignored you, kept right on pretending that you just don’t exist. She’s pretty good at that, you know. Must be in the genes.”

Jack doesn’t reply cause, really, what could he say?

Reagan runs a hand through her hair and she wonders, not for the first time, what might have happened if she’d just listened to the fucking GPS. “Amy thinks you’re going to stay,” she says, and a deaf man could hear the doubt ringing in her voice. “She’d never say it out loud, but she’s got just enough Karma in her that somewhere, way deep down, Amy honestly still truly believes in happy endings and that the good guys always win and that people… all people… they’re just inherently good.”

It is, in fact, one of the things Reagan secretly loves so very much about Amy. One day, like ten years from now or so, she might even tell her that.

It is, though, one of the things she and Amy don’t have in common and Jack has already picked up on that. “And what about you, Reagan?” he asks. “What do you think?”

It’s a loaded question and he knows it and she knows it and Lucy knows it, even if that’s just about the only thing she knows about any of this. Reagan sort of envies her for that. “I think that you and I both know better,” she says. “People aren’t inherently good or bad. They’re just people. And people do good things and people do bad things. And some people you can count on and others…”

She shrugs. Others, it says (screams) you can count on too. To let you down. Every. Fucking. Time.

“You don’t think Amy can count on me?” Jack asks her.

Reagan laughs. Like a legit laugh. “She counted on you to stay gone and you couldn’t even manage that,” she says. Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she doesn’t have to check to know it’s Amy or Lolo (she’d prefer the former but figures it’s more likely the latter) wondering where the fuck she went. “In the end, Jack, I think you’re just sober enough, just guilt ridden enough that you’ll try. You’ll do everything you can to make yourself believe that she’s actually right about you.” She leans down, pressing her palms flat against the table, so she can look him in the eye. “But in the end, I know she’s not.” She laughs again, before straightening back up to walk away. “Ten bucks says you don’t even make it to graduation.”

It’s not Jack, but Lucy who calls after her as she crosses the shop. “Ten bucks? That’s it? Not so sure of yourself after all, are you?”

Reagan pauses by the door. There’s a witty comeback, a razor-sharp line already poised and set, ready for her to let it fly. But that would keep her there, that would make her linger. Another second to turn, another three or four to say the words, another five or six to watch them land, to see if, maybe, Jack’s ego is as fragile as his face.

But see, her phone? It’s buzzing again. And this time, she does check, slipping it from her pocket even as she walks.

Shrimps: Where are you? I sent Karma and everyone else home. I need you.

And when Amy calls? When Amy needs her? Well, that math is the simplest there is. See, that ten bucks? It’s just like that one or two or six more seconds here instead of with her.

It’s all more than Jack’s worth.

Eight days after the fire

She’s drunk.

He doesn't need to be an expert on the subject to be able to tell that - not so long as he can see the way she’s staggering around and slurring her words, or the sounds he thinks are trying to be her words - but, it just so happens that, when it comes to being full on, sloppy as all fuck, you’d best be praying to whatever God you believe in that you don’t remember this tomorrow morning drunk?

Jack’s got a fucking Ph.D.

He supposes that’s why Amy called him. Or, rather, why she settled for him, why she realized maybe - for like the first time ever - he was her best choice. That, he knows, was just plain old dumb luck. Amy had called Lucy trying to find Karma and she did find Karma, she found the both of them, together - though Jack is pretty sure they aren't really together, not like that - with him, in his living room in his house, even if he was almost never there anymore and especially even if Karma had sworn never to take even one step over the threshold.

“I’ve spent enough time in your house over the years,” she said. “More than you have so, I’ll just stay on this side of your new door, thank you very much.”

Jack could be forgiven if he heard that as ’fuck you very much’. It was, after all, what she'd meant.

She’d stuck to it, even then, showing a bit of that famous Ashcroft stubborn streak, refusing at first to come inside. But after the fire and after the doctors finally let Lucy come home from the hospital, Jack refused to let Lucy out of his sight and, apparently, Karma did as well and, when neither one of them seemed inclined to back down in the slightest, Lucy sighed, walked over, and took Karma’s hand and led her inside and that was just the end of that.

And that was yesterday.

Still, twenty-four hours of house guests, is just that. Twenty-four hours and maybe he’s lost a few (or more than a few) brain cells along the way, but Jack’s not so stupid that he’s letting any of this make him think anything has really changed. Karma’s at his house and Amy’s asked him for a favor (and it was actually an ’ask’ and not a ’tell’ and yes, that was different) and that’s all well and good and progress and he knows the mantra: one step at a time.

But his next step? Yeah, that’s the tricky one. The one he’s stumbled on pretty much every day for the last seven years, the one that’s always there to remind him that progress or no progress he’s still him.

That next step is Reagan.

Once she, you know, notices him standing there and all. She’s still a bit too stagger-y and yell-y and clutching that bottle in her hand like it’s her life-y to have spotted him.

So, no, Jack’s got no illusions about anything. He knows this isn’t a total sea change, it’s not some seismic shift in his life, a massive one-stop-shop fix for his relationships with just about everyone (read: everyone who isn’t his daughter) (the daughter he came with, not the one he left) and he knows that none of this is about him or about him and Amy or about putting a few more planks into the bridge over the chasm between them (the one he made, the one nine years pretty much dynamited into permanence.)

Hell, this isn’t even about Reagan, not really. It’s not about who she is or what she’s doing or what she’s lost, even if all that is what got Amy on the phone and why she sucked up her pride and tucked away her resentment and anger and sadness and anger and frustration - and did he mention anger - and actually asked him for help.

“She hasn’t even cried,” Amy said. “Not since the funeral and I think she cried more at Liam’s than at…” Jack could hear it over the line, the ache and the empty and the powerlessness, the total inability to help the one you love.

He’d hoped to never hear that again. Not from her, not from Amy.

Hearing it from her mother - about him - had been enough of that for one lifetime.

Jack spares a moment to look away from Reagan - she’s less staggering and more leaning now, on a tree that doesn’t seem likely to let her fall any time soon - and glance up at what used to be his daughter’s home away from home, at least in the physical sense. He understands, so much more than anyone gives him credit for, that Amy’s real home stopped being a place a long damn time ago. It turned from a where to a who (Karma, at least at first) right about the time her other home - the real one every kid is supposed to have - disappeared into the Austin night, never to be heard from again.

Except here he is - that disappearing home - and never, apparently, is a fuckload shorter than the word suggests.

But now, that home - Amy’s home - isn't the girl sitting who spent all those years in the house Jack built and abandoned. It’s not the woman she's become either, the one silently watching over Amy's sister, much the way she used to watch over Amy, standing guard as Lucy sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning and crying out in fear as nightmares of flame and smoke and Liam’s ash and soot covered face dance inside her mind.

Amy loves Karma and everyone knows that and everyone knows she always will. But Amy's home is five feet in front of him, leaning against a tree, muttering under her breath, clutching to a bottle in way Jack finds both terrifying and oddly familiar - and yes, he’ll grasp at any straw of similarity when it comes to him and Reagan - and he knows he can’t ever undo the last sixteen years and, if the fire has taught them all anything, there’s not a single shred of a guarantee that there will be sixteen more.

But the here and the now? Maybe he can do something about that.

Besides, you know, fucking it up.

The building, such as it is, well… it’s not really a building anymore. There’s walls still standing, sure, and some of the roof and the insurance guy, the one Amy dealt with while Reagan lurked in the background, giving him a glare Jack had once thought was reserved for him, did say that it wasn’t a total loss.

Insurance guys, Jack thought (then and now) probably out to sit down and redefine 'total’, cause he was pretty sure no one he knew agreed with Mr. Insurance’s assessment in the slightest.

There was a booth left. One, from the back, as far removed from ground fucking zero as it could have been and still been in the building. It was… salvageable. A couple of semi-standing chairs, a light fixture or two. A stance of menus that had somehow been protected beneath the melted glass of the front display case.

“If you’re going to rebuild,” insurance guy had said, “it’s not much, but it’s a start.”

It had been all Amy could do to keep Reagan from punching him, a habit Jack had thought she’d finally outgrown. But tragedy, he knew, could make anyone backslide.

Anyone.

He thought about it now, about that word. Start. A start from an end. Two of them, really, and it was almost four. Jack doesn’t like to think about it, he’s spent almost every single minute of the last eight days actively trying to think about anything else. Trying not to think how close Jana came to not making it - it’ll be another week, minimum, before they send her home - and trying even harder not to think…

He’d almost lost her.

Sometimes, Jack knows, he focuses so much on Amy, on fixing or at least not worsening, things between them that he almost forgets Lucy. She says that she doesn’t mind, she says that she understands and she and Jack both let that be true.

He has a feeling that might not hold up anymore.

She almost died. Another minute, another two, maybe three, another two or three or four more breaths and she wouldn’t have taken any more. A little more smoke, a little more flame and those thoughts make Jack shut his eyes and try not to think about it and yeah, if that actually ever works, he’ll be sure to let you know.

In the end, Lucy escaped. And no, that’s not quite right. She didn't escape, she was saved, she was pulled, dragged, somehow carried to safety by a young man Jack had sort of come to think of as a son. And that, he knew was just more of his usual bullshit. It wasn’t 'sort of’ or 'kind of’ or a 'little bit’. Liam had been the first real friend Jack had made in years and yes, thinking of it, of him, in sort of’s and kinda’s and the like, it does help to stave off the grief and the guilt, at least for a moment or two.

And then it all comes roaring back and Jack remembers that he’s not supposed to be free of the grief or the guilt (especially not that) but just because he has to live with it… well…

That doesn’t mean she does.

He takes one step closer and thinks - remembering how Reagan hasn’t outgrown punching after all - that maybe that’s close enough. He stuffs both his hands in the pockets of his jacket, it’s unseasonably cool for a Texas night, and stares up at the not-a-building anymore.

“Karma’s acting like it’s all… I don’t know,” he says and yes, he knows how stupid it is to begin any conversation with Reagan by making it about Karma. But he’s much like his daughter, not in an obsessed with Karma way. He’s just a bit of a… round the way kinda talker. He’ll get there, he’ll settle on the point, eventually. You just gotta hang on for the ride.

“I’d forgotten how 'glass half full’ she could be,” he says. “She’s acting like it’s all going to be just fine, like Liam’s just popped on down to the corner store and he’s gonna be back any minute now.”

Karma and Liam. If he's looking to get punched, he’s on the right track.

Reagan doesn’t turn or look or otherwise acknowledge that she even hears him, if she’s at all surprised that he’s there. If she’s shocked that it’s him or that he’s talking about Karma and Liam instead of her father or the bottle in her hand, Jack can’t tell.

Spoiler Alert: she's not. Reagan knew someone would come and she knew it wouldn’t be Amy and - honestly - that it shouldn’t be. Not yet. And as for Jack talking about anything other than the giant fucking elephant in the room..

She’s been with Amy for seven years. She knows the drill.

“In some ways, Karma’s really grown up,” Jack says and he’s right, too, even if Reagan might not be at a point to admit that just yet. Karma has grown. She’s less all about her and more about others, less flighty, less prone to insane plans (future Harcroft spawn notwithstanding) and, in most ways, she’s got both feet planted firmly in the real world.

In most ways.

“Sometimes though,” he says, with a slow shake of his head. “She still slips back, you know? Back to her little house on the corner of Denial Ave and Fantasy Lane.” He leans up against a tree and turns, looking at her for the first time since he got there. “Must be nice,” he says, “but it doesn’t work for everyone, does it?”

“Fuck!”

It’s more of a scream than a yell, something guttural, something past pain, more bordering on desperation and it breaks Jack’s heart. Despite what Reagan thinks, he has come to love her and even if he didn't… no one would wish that kind of agony on anyone.

She hurls the bottle (a bottle) (she’s got another one in her hands already and he’s got no idea where the hell she had that hidden) across the caution tape border surrounding what’s left of what used to be her place, listening with something akin to satisfaction - or whatever’s close enough to that that could actually break through - as it shatters on the remnants of the front steps.

No. Denial doesn’t work for everyone.

She staggers a couple steps back and leans against another tree. It’s the first of the ones that aren’t scorched or burnt or still covered in a layer of soot and smoke. It hasn’t rained since the fire - the forecast calls for thunderstorms over the weekend, but Jack isn’t naive enough to think anything short of another Noah is gonna wash any of this away - and this is as close as she can get without getting into ash and soot and tangled in that tape and, he thinks, it’s funny the things you never realize about fire.

The distance, for one. The way it reaches out, its flickering fingers of flame touching everything, scratching and clawing and digging in, desperate for purchase, fighting to stay alive till their very last breath. Jack’s eyes wander over the wreckage and that’s another one: the remnants. You always think of the damage it does, of the things it burns and melts and destroys.

You don’t often think of what it leaves behind.

Jack’s surprised at that. He’d have thought himself an expert on things left behind.

Fire is those burned out husks, the buildings gutted, the belongings - the possessions - charred to ash. But it’s so much more. It’s the trees gone black, likely to be removed, maybe replaced and they’re not the only thing, but they’re the easiest, the least painful, one tree is the same as the next and oh, if that were only true for everything. And it’s the grass - right down to the tips of each blade - burnt like marshmallows sizzling at the end of a stick. It’s the coughs that linger for days, the dark grime under your nails that you can’t get out. The way your breaths catch in your throat and you’re not sure another one is ever going to come.

It’s the eyes of a woman who looks, for all the world, like she’s not sure she wants it to.

Not that he’d say it to Amy, but Jack would be more surprised if Reagan wasn’t drinking. She lost so much. A father. A friend - and Liam was that, in the end, Jack’s sure - and a building, a business, a home. Even if that had been all of it, the sum total of everything Reagan lost that night, it would still be enough to drive almost anyone into a bottle.

She still hasn’t acknowledged him, which is good, in a way. After all, that means the bottle is still in her hand and not yet flying by his head. It’s dark, too dark for him to see the label, to recognize her choice in poison, but, he supposes, what it is is considerably less important than that it is. It is what it is, Lucy would say. And what it is, right now, no matter the vintage or the malt or the label, is an escape. Trouble is, Jack knows all too well how easily, how quickly, how without warning, that escape from something can turn into a far more permanent trap. Not that he, or anyone else, thinks Reagan’s going to follow down his path. No, for him, that bottle was a life.

For her, it’s an excuse. A high proof, finely aged, burn the inside of your throat until it matches the scorched outside of your world, reason why she isn't picking herself up off the mat, why she hasn’t even started to get on with the getting on. But it’s only been eight days and she doesn't need an excuse. No one - least of all the woman she loves - expects her to be the old Reagan just yet, not now, maybe not ever. But Jack knows better. The excuse isn’t for all of them.

It’s for her.

“She send you?”

That Reagan gets the words out clearly and smoothly and correctly tells Jack that she’s either not drunk enough, or that she passed 'enough’ an hour or so ago and now she’s fully on the downward slope to a sober that will end up tipping that new bottle right down her throat, in a desperate attempt to stave reality off, even if just for five more minutes. Trouble is, that five is never enough. There’s always another five, another ten, another hour, another day.

Another nine years. Give or take.

“She sent you, didn’t she?” Reagan asks again, this time glancing at him over her shoulder, as she points and jabs at the air with one finger from the hand still death-gripping that bottle.

It’s Jack. The bottle.

The irony is strong with this one.

“Well, you can just go right back to her and tell her that I am just A-O-fucking-K,” Reagan says, turning her back to him and staring off into the dark. It’s a moonless night and Jack knows she can’t actually see the details, just the outlines, the shape of things. He also knows that matters very little, as in not at all. “I don’t need her sending babysitters after me. And, you know what? You tell her I’m a little hurt. I didn’t even rate Lolo? I had to get you?”

He could remind her that Lauren is still out of town, that she has been since the night before the fire, that she was the one who talked to her on the phone and told her it was 'fine’ and there was nothing 'she could do’ and she should finish up with everything with Theo’s sister’s wedding and then come home and that would be just 'soon enough’.

He could. But he’d prefer to not get bottle bombed just yet.

“She think you’re gonna scare me straight?” she asks. “That it? You hear to remind me of the dangers of alcohol? Show me what I might become?”

Jack shakes his head, not that she’s looking. “You won’t become me,” he says, silently leaving off the 'you’re far too strong for that’. “I think Amy just… she thinks maybe there’s something I can do for you that she can’t.”

Reagan wheels on him - as best she can - and Jack braces for impact but it doesn’t come, at least not physically.

“In the history of the world,” she says, “there is nothing… nothing… that you could ever do for me.”

She slumps back against the tree and, if he could see that well in the dark, Jack would know her knuckles have gone white around the bottle neck. Her legs give out beneath her and Reagan slides down the trunk till she’s on the ground, her head tipped back against the tree, her eyes squeezed shut against the dark.

“OK,” she mutters. “Maybe there is one thing.” She fumbles in her pocket, dragging her keys out and flinging them in Jack’s general direction. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” she says and yeah, Jack’s going to just go right ahead and assume she just means here, like the literal place and not the more… global here.

Reagan doesn’t strike him as the suicide type. No matter the hell she’s living in.

“I hate you, you know,” she says and yeah, he knows. But he still scoops her keys up off the ground, wondering which will piss her off more. Him driving her truck or her riding in his car. In the end, it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other and, he knows, by the time he’s done, she’s gonna hate him more anyway.

So they’ll take the truck. At least the windows all work.

They don’t go home.

“This isn’t home,” Reagan says and, clearly, being three sheets to the wind - though Jack suspects the cool night breeze and the lack of any further imbibing has made it a little closer to one and a half sheets by now - hasn’t impacted her firm grasp of the obvious. “This,” she says, staring out the open window, “is so not home.”

Jack slips the truck into park and stares at the wheel, collecting himself. This was his idea, and he still thinks it’s the right one - even if it maybe isn’t all that good a one - but that was, you know, before.

Before they got here and before he remembered and, in this case, remembering isn’t just a river in Egypt or a vague sense of recollection tickling at the back of his brain. It’s more like an ice cold hand, reaching up and squeezing his heart, slowly wringing the life out of it like water out of a sponge and he wonders, just for a second, if Reagan would give him that bottle if he asked.

It’s only a moment, but it feels like… well… it doesn’t feel like forever.

It feels a lot - like exactly - like a thousand and one moments he had over a thousand and one nights and Jack cringes, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking a long deep breath, at the thought of how many of those nights ended here, instead of at home. How many of them ended with him on the ground - his own holy ground, but still the fucking dirt - instead of safely tucked away in his bed, in the loving embrace of his wife.

“Do you know how many nights Amy’s crawled into bed with me?” Farrah asked him once, after he’d been gone for two full days. “How many nights she’s taken your place because she heard me crying and wanted to make it better?”

Jack didn’t know then and he still doesn’t know now, but he’s got the feeling she wouldn’t have asked if it had just been once, even if once was already more than too many.

He pulls his phone out and taps away as he kills the engine and yes, kills is probably a poor choice of words, all things considered, but if he’s lucky, nothing else will die tonight. Not him. Not his relationship with Amy, the one dancing on the thinnest of ices.

That’s the hope, but then hope doesn’t just spring eternal for people who make good choices and do the right thing.

It’s there for fuckups like him too.

“Why are we here?” Reagan asks and yeah, that is the million dollar question, but Jack’s got no good answer, at least not a good one he can say.

This, he knows, is more of a show than a tell kinda situation, so he says nothing as he taps out the last letter of his text message - like he’d have ever guessed that learning to do that would actually come in handy - and presses send before tucking Reagan’s keys into his pocket, a move she doesn’t miss.

“Making sure I can’t run?” she asks and Jack thinks - for like a hot minute - of pointing out that even only one and a half sheets pretty much guarantees she can’t actually run, but he’s not drunk (or stupid), so he just slips out from behind the wheel without saying anything, making his way around to the passenger side of the truck, tugging Reagan’s door open.

It sticks a little. Still.

Jack gets it on the second pull and Reagan’s still too confused - and she’s hurtling right past confused and straight on to pissed as fast as her soused brain can get her there - to actually notice, so at least he’s spared a bit of mockery.

“Come on,” he says, offering her a hand out (that he knows she’ll refuse.) “I want to show you something.”

She does refuse his hand - like that’s a shock - but she eyes it for a moment, in that way most people might eye a hissing cobra, her eyes tracking it’s every move (Jack’s holding perfectly still but Reagan’s a bit of a weeble at the moment), mesmerized but wary, before she finally slides out of her seat, stumbling slightly when her feel hit the ground.

“Lead the way,” she says, waving ahead of them and Jack knows full well she just doesn’t want him to watch her weaving and wobbling as she walks and, having been on her end of that deal more than… well… a lot… in his life, he politely nods and turns, walking ahead without waiting for her. She’ll follow, he’s sure enough of that.

He’s still got her keys after all.

She’s on his heels soon enough, as he crosses the small lot and through the old gate that creaks like bones as he pushes it open and God, could this get any more cliche?

Reagan pauses just on the other side of the gate, looking at the rusted plaque hanging to the left. “A cemetery,” she says, her eyes darting from the plaque to Jack’s back and then to the plaque again. “You brought me to a cemetery,” she says. “And it isn’t even the right one.”

Jack’s phone shakes in his hand, but he doesn’t look down, turning instead to face Reagan, still on the other side of the invisible line, the last barrier between the living and the dead, assuming you don’t count six feet of earth and pine boxes of varying quality and age. He knows what she means, knows full well that the 'right one’ - the one they buried her father in three days ago - is on the other side of town.

But it’s not her ghosts they’re here for.

“It’s just over there,” he says, nodding toward the back corner of the small lot before turning and walking ahead again, not giving her a chance to argue with him. He takes the chance to sneak a peek at his phone, the three words blinking back up at him giving him a sense of relief that’s wrapped up in an eggroll of dread.

On my way

Well, he’s all in now.

Reagan doesn’t move, not right away, but eventually the creepy of standing in a dark graveyard by herself outweighs (barely) the creepy of following Amy’s father through said dark graveyard and soon she’s right behind him again, so close he could reach out and take her hand before she’d even be able to stop him.

But he doesn’t. Jack’s got no interest in getting buried alongside his memories here tonight.

He comes to a stop at the far end of the cemetery, the most sparsely… populated… area, only two or three headstones within reach, nothing there but a tree. And, really, calling it a 'tree’ is sort of like calling him a 'drunk.’

The word’s right, by definition, but it somehow misses the scope by like a country fucking mile, if a country mile was the distance between here and the molten core of the sun.

More or less.

It’s huge and Jack swears it’s grown, even if logically he knows that’s not possible. It was old when he was last here - the day he left, the hour after he told Amy it was because of her - and he’s actually a bit amazed it’s even still here.

But of course it is. Some things - some pains - will outlive us all.

“Who?” Reagan asks, stumbling to a stop beside him. “Who’s buried here?”

Jack shakes his head slowly, not quite trusting his voice just yet.

“Come on, Jack,” she says, the drunk edge to her words fading and the old bitter blade he’s used to slicing through the air between them coming slowly back. “You brought me here for a reason, right? What is it? Who is it? What’d you do? Drink and drive and kill someone?”

He lets out a shuddering breath and, for a moment, Reagan thinks that might actually be it and oh, that's… well…

Fuck.

“No one’s buried here,” he says, not even noticing as he takes a couple slow steps back and leans gently against one of the few gravestones. It could be seen as rude or disrespectful but Reagan’s the only other living one here and her opinion of him can’t get any lower. He nods at the tree. “There,” he says, nodding again at a spot low on the trunk.

She looks between him and the tree for a second before, slowly, stepping closer, and kneeling next to it in the dark. She fumbles in her pocket for her cell phone, bringing the screen to life and shining the dim light on the trunk, the jaggedly carved letters highlighted in the faint glow.

KJR

Reagan looks back at Jack, the question written all over face, even as the light of her screen fades to black.

“Did Farrah ever tell you why I started drinking?” he asks. Reagan shakes her head no. She and Amy’s mother talked about him - more than she and Amy ever did - but that was the one subject she doesn't remember them talking about. Like at all. “Didn’t figure,” Jack says, “not that it matters. The 'why’ doesn’t excuse the 'what’ of it all. But…”

He runs a hand through his hair and then crosses his arms over his chest. For once, Reagan isn’t pushing - she’s not doing much of anything - and Jack’s grateful. This is hard enough at his own pace.

“I was always a bit of drinker,” he says. “And maybe 'a bit’ is underselling it, but it wasn't… I wasn’t a drunk, not at first, not in the beginning.”

Everything’s got a beginning, everything’s got a trigger.

“When Amy was two, Farrah discovered…” he trails off and laughs, a harsh bark of a thing, ripping through the quiet of the dark night. “Discovered makes it sound like she found it while exploring new trade routes to India or some shit,” he says. “When Amy was two, Farrah got pregnant. We got pregnant.”

Reagan’s eyes flick back to the tree and she wishes it was just the booze making her stomach roll.

“We never even told Amy,” Jack says. “We wanted it to be a surprise. We were going to tell her at her birthday party. Like it… she… was a present.”

If Jack thought that was going to slip past Reagan unnoticed… “She?” Reagan slumps back against the tree, her subconscious somehow, even drunk, making sure she doesn’t cover the letters. “Another girl?”

Jack nods. “Katharine Josephina Raudenfeld. After Farrah’s mother… Nana… and my gram.”

KJR.

Reagan pulls her knees to her chest and drops her eyes to the ground. She can’t - she won’t - look at him right now.

Jack stands, pushing off the gravestone, but he doesn’t otherwise move. “Farrah was three and a half months along when it happened,” he says. “Doctor said it was just a freak thing, was just nature. We didn’t do anything wrong, we didn't make it happen, it just… did.”

He takes a couple hesitant steps forward, kneeling near her and he wouldn’t even have noticed if she pulled away, but Reagan doesn’t move an inch. She watches his hand running along the trunk, so close but yet so far from those letters.

“There was nothing… we didn’t have a body to bury,” he says. “Couldn’t have a funeral, I mean, who does that for someone who was never really a someone, right?” His fingers shake as they drift ever closer. “She was never Katharine, she was never really real.” If he sounded any less like he believed that… “They say that you’ve lost the baby, but how do you lose something you never had, that you never held or touched or…”

Jack presses his palm against the aged bark of the tree, feeling the cracked and worn wood digging into his skin.

He was going to say 'or loved’. That you never loved.

But that would have been one lie too many, even for a Raudenfeld.

“I’m not surprised Farrah never told you when I started drinking,” he says and Reagan notices, not for the first time, the way her name sounds on his lips and it hits her then - and she doesn’t know how she’s missed it all these years - the simplest of truths about Farrah and Jack.

He left her. But she never left him.

“I imagine,” he says, “that thinking about that… it probably hurts her more than anything. That one day, it cost her so much.” She can’t see him clearly in the dark, but Reagan can feel his tears dripping down his cheek. “Fate took Katharine from her. And then I took the rest.”

Reagan hears the soft sounds of footsteps crossing the lot before he does, but she doesn’t look, an odd sense of… duty?… to Jack - or maybe to Farrah or the baby she never knew - keeping her there, in that moment.

With him.

Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any weirder.

“I’m not here to scare you straight,” Jack says, his hand still pressed… no… still clutching to the tree. “No one thinks you’re going to be me, Reagan, no one’s worried you’ll fall into a bottle and never be able… never want… to climb back out.”

The steps grow still, just behind them and Jack’s eyes flick that way in the dark. He can’t see her there, she’s swallowed up by the night, but then again, he’s never needed to see her, now has he?

“Everyone’s got it wrong, you know,” he says to Reagan - and yes, to her, too - slumping down, his head coming to rest against the rough bark of the trunk. “Everyone thinks my sin… that my addiction was the booze. That I got lost in the drink. And that’s just not right.”

Not entirely, at least.

He turns slightly, eyes seeking out Reagan’s face in the shadows. “Do you know why Amy’s not here?” he asks her, not surprised when the darkness shifts, swirling in space as she shakes her head. “It’s because Amy knows,” he says. “She knows my sin was never the drinking and that’s what scares her, Reagan. That's how she thinks you just might be me, after all.”

Jack tenses, stiffening even as the words tumble out of him. Comparing her to him, well, that’s a much deserved one way ticket to punch town, but Reagan doesn’t move and she doesn’t say a word and maybe, he thinks, that’s why she'll never be him.

“Amnesia,” he says. It’s almost a whisper, but it might well be the loudest thing he’s ever said to anyone. “That was my sin, my addiction. Forgetting. Forgetting her,” his hand slips down the trunk, tracing a slow path over the border of those letters he carved so many years ago. “Trying to, at least. But I never did. I never…”

Those steps again. Closer. But halting, holding their distance. But just barely.

Jack turns again, facing Reagan in the dark. “I never forgot her,” he says, “it didn’t matter how much liquor I tried to bury her under. And I know you’ll never forget him either, your father.” He reaches out, his hand finding hers and maybe it’s just because she can’t see it or maybe it’s, oh, who knows why, but she lets him take it. “But I did forget, Reagan. I forgot what… who I had. I forgot I wasn’t alone.”

Those steps again, not stopping this time. And why would they… why would she? Jack called her here.

Your daughter needs you. The one you chose. She’s with me.

With the one you lost.

“Amy’s not here,” Jack says, “because you know you have her. You know she’ll never go, that wherever you are, she’s…” He trails off, he doesn’t actually say it, but then he doesn’t have to.

Reagan hears it anyway. She hears it every day.

Jack squeezes her hand and then, slowly, deliberately, he lets go. “Amy needs for you to remember,” he says. “That it’s not just her. You lost a father and that sucks beyond sucking and there’s nothing that can ever bring him back. But you…”

“You still have a family.”

Reagan turns to those words, spinning in the dark, those steps finally breaking through, and she doesn’t need to see to know Farrah’s there, right where she always is. Waiting for her to slip out of the dark, to find her way.

Her way home.

It’s only three steps but it feels like three million before Reagan’s tipping and toppling into her arms… her mother’s arms… and maybe it’s the feel of those arms around her or the way she instinctively just knows they’ll never let her go, but whatever it is - and the what doesn’t really matter, not in the end - that’s when the dam breaks, when the rush of everything she’s tried to bury, just the way they buried him, comes hurtling out of her in sobs and heaves and, for just those few minutes, Reagan’s not sure it’ll ever stop.

But she’s sure - she remembers - that even if it doesn’t?

Her family is never far.

Three years from now

The last time Reagan ever says those three little words, Amy’s nowhere near.

It’s still so weird to her, being here - Farrah’s house - with him, with Jack. It doesn’t matter, not a whit, that Farrah is OK with it. And it somehow matters even less that Bruce says he’s just fine with it.

Fine. Fuck that. Reagan may not have invented 'just fine’, but she’s Goddamned perfected it and if you don’t believe that, well, you can go right ahead and ask Amy.

But probably do it… later. Amy’s time is something of a precious commodity just now.

“It feels like a betrayal,” she says, leaning against the kitchen counter next to her father-in-law, well, one of them, anyway. “Him being here. Him staying here. I mean, yeah, I know this was his house first -”

“And thanks for the reminder of that,” Bruce mutters and for a moment Reagan thinks she’s said the exact wrong thing and oh, like that would be a first. But then Bruce gives her a grin, that old goofy 'I'ma fuckin’ with you’ good old boy grin of his - the one she’s never quite squared with the man who spawned Lauren 'Satan’s ninja’ Cooper - and nudges her with his shoulder. “I get the sentiment, Rea,” he says, “and I certainly appreciate it, but…”

He shrugs and that’s only about the five hundredth time someone has done that in the last six weeks, it’s happened so often it’s become a part of their family’s unspoken language and yes, it’s nice that they have something like that - and that she gets to be a part of, rather than apart from it - but it still just pisses her off.

Like that’s a first, either.

“Believe me,” Bruce says, “I know how you feel. I know Jack makes you uncomfortable and trust me, having my wife’s first husband living here, it’s not my idea of a good -”

She cuts him off. Hard. “It was your idea,” she says, turning against the counter, and scooting closer so she can whisper, lest Lucy or Karma or - worse - one of the kids hears her. Reagan’s been down that particular road with both her sister-in-law and her bff-in-law, and she knows they absolutely hate it when she speaks ill of Grampa Jack in front of the children. “You’re the idiot who suggested it.”

“Because I knew Farrah wanted it,” Bruce replies, ignoring the 'idiot’ part, and lowering his voice as well. He smiles politely at Emma as she snags an apple juice from the fridge and makes her way back out of the kitchen. “And I knew Amy wanted it.” He shrugs, again and Reagan grips the counter to keep from smacking something. “And it’s not like he’s gonna be here that long.”

He’s right. He’s so very very very right. But all the rightness in the world, doesn’t do a thing to keep them both from freezing in place at his words, their eyes doing a slow pan around the kitchen, out to the living room, just to make sure no one heard that.

It’s horrible to speak ill of the dead. That’s one lesson - maybe the only one - Reagan got from her mother that actually stuck. And, she supposes, that probably should apply to the nearly dead too.

Or, it will, if either of the nearly dead’s daughters (or Karma) or his granddaughter (or Emma) (or even Luke, even though his father wasn’t the nearly dead’s kind of son, but both of them still call him Grampa Jack and no, that’s not weird at all and God, sometimes Reagan thinks this family of hers needs a fucking flowchart) heard them.

Bruce nods, mostly for lack of anything better to do - and at least it’s not another shrug - but when he leans back on the counter and waves to Farrah, out in the living room with her little Katie-did on her hip, the smile crossing his face doesn’t match his words, not at all. “You don’t like it and I don’t like it and Lord knows Lauren doesn’t like it,” he whispers softly, “but this? It isn’t about us.”

He pats Reagan lightly on the shoulder and heads out of the kitchen, ruffling Luke’s hair on his way as - not for the first time - Reagan wonders why he’s not Papa Bruce or some such homey shit and yeah, she gets it, Karma and Shane are closer now to Jack than they are to Bruce and yes, she knows that’s only logical (he’s Karma’s family now, after all) but it still just… bugs.

Some things, she thinks, really never change.

She sighs and fires off a glance down the hall, at the very closed door to the spare bedroom that Bruce and Farrah added on a few years back. It was meant, at the time, to be a room for Katie, a nursery of sorts, first, and eventually her own bedroom, so she wasn’t just fitting into her mom or Aunt Lolo’s old room. It was meant that way and, Reagan supposes, it might someday still be that. Maybe.

Or maybe, when it’s all said and done, they’ll bulldoze the fucker to the ground and start all over.

The door’s shut, like it almost always is. She wonders sometimes - always silently to herself and never out loud, especially not to her wife - if keeping it shut is more for Jack's privacy or their benefit. There’s something to be said for out of sight, out of mind, even if she knows full fucking well that Jack hasn’t been out of anyone’s mind in months.

Cancer has a way of doing that.

Death does too.

She doesn’t need to do another scan of the room to know exactly who’s MIA, who’s behind that closed door. She’d watched as Amy headed off that way almost as soon as they got here, not before handing off Katie to her Nana (and yes, Reagan knows that’s a family tradition and that’s who Farrah is now, and she’s fine with it but, to her, there will always be only one Nana) and she hasn’t been seen since.

If she sticks with her usual pattern - and Mama Amy is nothing if not a creature of habit and routine now - Reagan won’t see her again, at least not for another hour and no, that doesn't really bother her. It doesn’t bother her so much that she only brought it up once, wondering if maybe Amy was spending a bit too much time with Jack.

“He doesn’t have much time left, Rea,” Amy said, in much the same soothing voice she used to try and get Katie to sleep at three in the morning, and yeah, that probably had something to do with both being somewhat lost causes. It was Amy’s 'mama’ voice and, if it wasn’t such a sweet and oddly arousing thing, Reagan might have objected to being 'mothered’.

The fact that she was holding her daughter, who had finally fallen asleep, in the rocking chair in the nursery - the chair Jack fucking built - and it was just about the most perfect moment she’d ever experienced had absolutely nothing (read: everything) to do with it.

“I just worry,” she said softly, careful not to wake the sleeping beauty. “I don’t want you see you get hurt.”

Amy nodded and smiled and if it didn’t quite reach her eyes… well… they were talking about the death of her father. And that, more than anything, was precisely why she so easily humored her wife about it all, why she didn’t object or get offended any time Reagan brought it up. Younger Amy might have. Younger Amy would have probably agreed but then argued just on principle.

(Read: for the make up sex.)

(Mostly.)

But Mama Amy wasn’t younger Amy and Mama Amy had spent the better part of thirteen years with every version of Reagan. She knew her wife inside and out and she knew that every time Reagan mentioned her spending a little less time with Jack?

It was always about her wish to spend more. She knew that when they talked about it, like this, they weren’t always - or even mostly - talking about the death of Amy’s father.

So, Amy did what Amy always did and kissed her wife softly and pressed an even softer kiss to the top of her daughter’s head and gently reminded Reagan that she couldn't get hurt, not by him, not anymore, and that now was the time, the only time, because time was one thing Jack just didn’t have much of.

“You heard the doctors,” she said.

Yeah. Reagan heard them. She heard their words - stage four, lungs, and maybe six months (or weeks) (she heard that too) - and she heard Jack joking about always thinking it would be his liver but he 'must have pickled that bad boy’ just a little too well (and she was the only one who laughed) and she gets it. She really does.

Getting doesn’t equal liking.

And neither of those equals being comfortable - something she’s never been and never will be when it comes to Jack and his place in their family - and yes, Reagan's also heard every one of the lectures (from Karma) (no one else would dare) about how holding a grudge, especially one against someone who never, you know, hurt you, is probably a bad idea and definitely not what a mature woman trying to be a role model for her little girl would do.

“Katie's three months, Karma,” Reagan said (said, not snapped, and see? She's matured.) “By the time she’s old enough to know what a grudge even is, I’ll be over it.”

She left off the 'cause he’ll be dead and all’ and see (again)? So. Fucking. Mature.

But Reagan’s heard it all and she's tried, really she has. She keeps her comments to herself, mostly, or to Bruce. Sometimes Lauren. Occasionally Katie, but only during middle of the night feedings and never in front of her mother or her Nana, and so, most of the time, she falls back on that other old chestnut that Martin taught her, for dealing with her own mother.

If you can’t say something nice? Well…

At least have the decency to whisper.

So she keeps quiet (mostly) and even tries to not let it seethe inside her, to not let herself dwell on it - and that’s so obviously working, right? - and to try to see Amy’s and Farrah’s and Lucy’s side of it all. She tries and sometimes she even succeeds, a bit, but it still feels… wrong. It still feels like a betrayal, though not of her, not really. Of something bigger than just her, bigger than one or two broken hearts (even if one of those was her wife’s), something like…

Them. All of them.

See, the thing Reagan can’t get past is that she remembers. She so remembers that moment when Amy told her what Jack said, about why he left. And she remembers the first time Amy told Jack she hated him. She remembers the first time Amy punched him, the first time she did, hell, she remembers the first time Karma did - and yes, every one of those was a first, not a last, or an only - and she remembers how Farrah threatened him with severe bodily harm when she found out he was back and the way Shane glared and Lolo tensed every time he was near. It wasn't just her.

They all hated him.

And yes, Reagan knows that hate is a fuck all lousy thing for anyone to need to unify them, to bring them together and she gets it - she really does - that somewhere along the line, hating Jack got to be more work for them than it was worth.

You think she never had that moment? That she never once thought about him with something other than hatred and disgust and disdain and a few more synonyms she can’t think of right this minute?

Reagan looks out into the living room, smiling at the sight of Farrah and Bruce bouncing her daughter between them, laughing uproariously at her every smile and giggle.

Her daughter. Katie.

“Katharine?” Amy asked her, in the hospital, as they laid her daughter in her arms for the first time? “I love it,” she said. “But it wasn’t on our list. What made you think of it?”

Reagan just shrugged and smiled and said she’d always thought it was a beautiful name and that wasn't a lie. Not totally.

So, yeah, she’s had that moment.

And maybe now she's always having that moment, every time she talks to him, every time she sees him and she finds herself cursing him under her breath for making her heart break - hers, not her wife’s - and for confusing her, for making it damn near impossible for her to tell anymore why it breaks.

Why it's breaking.

If there’s one lesson she’s learned from Jack, it’s this: it’s so much fucking easier to hate.

She’s alone there, in the kitchen, and Reagan remembers standing right here, right next to this counter as Amy helped prep the meatballs and Farrah slapped Bruce’s hand to keep him from stealing any more of the garlic bread - Martin’s recipe - and Lauren looked on with a bemused look on her face, like she knew she was seeing the beginning of something special, and she remembers…

Candles. Trick fucking candles.

And fuck all… why did she have to remember that?

It takes her about half the steps to that closed door - fourteen, if you’re counting along - before Reagan realizes she’s even moving. But once she does, you might think she’d stop, you might think that the fact that she has never once set foot in that room since it became his room, would be enough to bring her to a screeching halt.

And you’d be right.

But, if you’d think she wouldn’t just shake it off, that she wouldn’t just put it aside and start walking again?

Well, then you’re clearly living in the past, which is something you and Reagan might have had in common until about forty seconds ago but see, there it is again. Time. Living in the past is keeping yourself stuck in time.

And ain’t nobody got time for that. Not Amy or Lucy or Farrah or - God, help her - not even Reagan. Not anymore.

She doesn’t knock and Amy’s not surprised it’s her when the door opens. Anyone else would've knocked, but Reagan's not anyone else. “Hey,” Amy says, not looking up from the spot on the bed where her hand is resting over her father’s, neither of them moving. Reagan can’t help but notice the stark contrast, the way Amy’s skin’s still suffused with pink, all the blood, the life still flowing freely, and Jack is so…

He’s pale. That’s the word for it. Pale. That’s all he is. But it’s not all he almost is and Reagan has a moment - just one - where she wonders if this is it, if that’s why she’s here, finally, after all this time, cause somehow she knows this is her last chance.

She’s not wrong.

Jack’s been stubborn and Jack’s hung on, months longer than he should have, and every day seems like maybe it's the day, but damn does he keep fighting and lingering and…

Waiting.

“Where’s Katie?” Amy asks, even though she already knows and Reagan suspects that her wife knows, as in knows why she’s here, in the doorway, unable - just yet - to take that one final step.

Again, she’s not wrong.

“Your mom and Bruce have her,” Reagan says and she knows she’s whispering and she knows that’s fucking pointless - Jack can’t hear and even if he could, what difference, really? - but she can’t stop. “We may have to fight them for her when it’s time to leave.”

A time, she thinks, that’s coming faster for some of them than others.

Amy nods and stands, her thumb ghosting one last time across Jack’s knuckles. “I’m gonna go see if I can steal a few minutes with my nephew then,” she says and Reagan doesn’t even think of pointing out that Luke isn't really related, cause he so is and none of that is even remotely the point right now. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

She pauses, just for a moment, as if she’s waiting for Reagan to stop her, to tell her no, don’t leave, I’m not staying with him, what kinda cray cray talk is that? But when Reagan just nods and steps into the room, so that she can step out, there are tears in Amy’s eyes and, this one time, they're not about Jack.

The door shuts silently behind her and Reagan’s alone. Alone with him and that almost never happens but every time it ever has, she always says the same thing.

“I hate you.”

In truth, she’s lost track of how many times she’s said that to him over the years. She know that probably says more about her than it does about him, like, for instance, that she’s obsessive and possessive and vindictive and probably a few other 'ive’s she doesn’t know but she’s sure apply.

But still…

“I hate you,” she says again, settling down into the chair next to the bed, the one Amy was just in. There’s one on the other side as well, Lucy’s, and somehow Reagan doesn’t feel right in that one, as if this one is somehow perfect. “Always have,” she says, her hand resting on the bed, not on him. “Always will. Dying isn’t a get out of jail free card. Just so you know.”

There’s silence in the room and Reagan notices that she can’t actually hear anything on the other side of the door. She knows they’re out there.

But she's in here.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I wonder. I know it’s stupid and self-centered, but Lord knows I can be both of those from time to time.”

He doesn’t argue. He wouldn’t if he could. And not just because he learned not to argue with her - about anything - long ago.

Reagan scoots the chair a little closer, so she can rest her elbows on the edge of the bed. “I wonder… why? Why did you stay?” It sounds heartless, even to her, questioning an almost dead man’s motivations, but… “I know you say… I know you do love her. But, sometimes I can’t help wondering how much of it was about Amy and how much of it… how badly did you just once want to prove me wrong?”

Ten bucks says you don’t even make it to graduation

That was the first time. Jack learned not to argue and he learned that, no matter what he said and what she said, Reagan was always right.

Except when she wasn’t. And that was almost always about him and yeah, she suspects he took no small amount of joy in that. She would have, if she’d been him.

“I should have known,” Reagan says. “I should have seen it was a sucker’s bet. You're her father and you’re both living proof that stubborn is genetic.”

She hears the word - 'living’ - fall from between her lips and OK, maybe not the best choice there, but come on. It’s not like she can offend him.

“You made it to graduation,” she says, remembering him there, in the back, in the last row of the faculty. He was still the Hester art teacher back then, the cool Mr. Lee, even if, by then, they all knew that was really his middle name. “You didn’t cheer,” she says. “Not for Amy or Lucy or for Liam.” Her fingers clench and unclench atop the sheets “But I saw you. You didn't need to cheer, did you?”

He glowed. Fatherly pride and yeah, she spent most of the ceremony staring daggers at him and thinking how… wrong… it was that he got to feel even one shred of that. She was so busy staring, she almost missed Amy crossing the stage until Farrah almost toppled out of her seat from the sheer force of her whooping.

“I should have seen it then,” Reagan says, as she leans forward, letting her forehead rest on her upturned palms. “It should have been so clear, the way it all worked. I would figure zig, so then you’d zag. I’d think left, so you’d go right. I’d think gone…”

He’d do stay.

When they left for New Orleans, she was sure. Like 100% certain, like positive that there was a better chance Liam and Shane would end up a couple, than there was that Jack would still be there when they came back.

“Four years,” she says. “Four fucking years and nothing here for you the whole time. It was so clear, so obvious.” She shakes her head and almost smiles. “Amy actually considered staying, you know. In New Orleans. We’d made a life and a home and we were happy.”

She leaves off the 'without you around’. Maybe she can't offend, but there’s no need to kick a man when he’s down.

And who would have ever thought she’d pass up a chance to kick him?

“I convinced her to come back. I talked her into moving home with Karma and the whole time, I was so sure…” Reagan leans back in the chair, forcing her hands into her lap. “I knew that you hadn’t left yet, so I’d been wrong about that, but maybe it was just… timing.”

He’d hung on, waiting out the college years. Waiting for his daughter to come home so they could pick up where they’d left off - not that that was anywhere special - but Reagan was so very sure (yes, again) that seeing Amy, the grown up and fully adulting Amy, would do the trick, would make Jack feel useless and pointless and make him wonder just how long it would be before his very smart and now very independent and not scared of anything daughter cut him the fuck off. Like she should have, long long ago.

“You’d hightail it,” Reagan says. “Either out of town or into a bar and no, it didn’t really matter which. Same end result, you know?”

And he did hightail it, he did run. Right to the nearest bank, where he took out a loan so he could expand the coffee shop - his foothold, his foundation in Austin - and open a second location. Reagan fully expected it to fail.

She wasn’t wrong then either.

But when it didn’t do so well, Jack didn’t throw in the towel or throw back a bottle (or six) and stuck it out, waiting and working and doing all the little things until it did work and wouldn’t you know that everyone (read: Amy and Farrah and even Lauren) was suitably impressed and, yet again, Jack had zigged instead of zagged.

“You persevered,” she says and yeah, the word still tastes a little bitter on her tongue. “Just like you did with Amy. Except that was no coffee shop, was it?”

No. It wasn’t. And - again (sense a pattern, yet?) - Reagan thought that would be it, that the longer it took and the less progress he made with Amy, the more she made him jump through hoops and follow rules and the more nowhere he got for it…

“It would take a toll. It would drain and punish and hurt and you don’t deal well with that,” she says - and she’s not telling him anything he doesn’t know - and she was sure not dealing well would eventually translate into fucking up and, again, she wasn’t wrong. Not entirely.

Jack fucked up. The second shop thrived, for a bit, right up until it didn’t and then it sank like a stone and he almost lost everything. He tried dating one of his baristas but then he cheated on one of his baristas with one of his baristas and they both quit.

But he didn’t.

Reagan remembers more, the long catalog list of the fuck ups of Jack. “You argued with Lucy so much about college that she didn’t speak to you for three weeks,” she says. “You thought buying Planter’s was the dumbest thing ever and you begged Amy not to help me. You even went to Farrah, to try and get her to talk us out of it.”

Remember how those first punches weren’t the last punches?

Now, you know why.

Also, Farrah didn’t talk them out of it. She chipped in.

“Every time,” Reagan says. “Every time you could have… should have… just cashed out. Like when Lucy went to college and left you. You could’ve just moved with her, it’s not like nobody else tailed a Raudenfeld girl off to school.”

And even that wouldn’t have been wrong or enough. It wouldn’t have been leaving, yes, but not like that.

But he waited. He stayed. And then, when Lucy came back after graduation, they did leave. A two month trip to Brazil and they sent Amy pictures every day, Skyped twice a week, and Jack was as stone cold sober - with a nice tan and a new appreciation for spicy food - when he came back as when he left and yeah, Reagan hadn’t seen that coming.

“You came back with her number, too,” Reagan remembers, with a small smile that she can’t quite kill, cause damn did Jack still have some game. “That little cutie from the surf shop. Her number and her email, but you still managed to fuck that up too, huh?”

He did. But she doesn’t really remember how, but she does remember the way Jack shrugged it off when Amy asked him about it at her birthday dinner and - now - she remembers the way he was talking to her, but staring at her mother, and yeah, that probably explains all anyone really needs to know about the how.

Or at least the why.

He fucked up and he made messes and he ruined shit and any one or all of them… they should have been enough. They should have pushed him out of town, or out of his mind, or right into a scotch and soda - hold the soda - and every time Reagan was sure.

“I’m not usually wrong, you know,” she says. “Not that much. Not that often.”

Reagan sighs and tips back in the chair, her eyes falling to the nightstand beside his bed, to the frames sitting on it. They’re those clear acrylic ones you can get for like 99 cents and she sees her own face smiling back up at her from one of them, right alongside Amy’s and Katie’s. She’s all of three hours old in that picture and Reagan still remembers that Bruce had to take it cause Farrah couldn’t stop crying enough to focus.

Jack had asked for that picture, when he moved in, but Farrah wasn’t sure that was the one he really wanted. “I can get you a different one,” Farrah told him. “One of just Amy and the baby, if you’d like.”

Subtlety was never Farrah’s strong suit.

But Jack hadn’t liked. That one, he said, would do just fine. Reagan suspects he thought it would annoy her. Or that, maybe, he actually loved her too.

Yeah. No.

She plucks the frame from the table, cradling it in her hands. “Amy was three months along when the doctors told you,” she says. “Three and a half when you told everyone else. Six months away.”

Six months. For Katie. And for Jack.

They said it was a long shot. Six months was the outside, the far end of the scale, that anything past three… well… that was just Jack living on borrowed time. Maybe, with treatment, the most aggressive, they could… prolong things. Maybe. But he’d be in the hospital the whole time and his immune system would, basically, cease to be and sure, if he could last long enough, he’d be able to see the baby.

From behind glass and from a distance and that was only if he was lucky and the docs, they didn’t put all that much stock in luck. No matter what he did, it was going to be a race and it didn’t seem the odds were in his favor.

Not that Jack listened and oh, there’s a shock. “I’m going to hold her,” he said, even before they knew it… she… was a, well, she. “I’m not going to see her under glass, like some exhibit at the zoo.” Oh, he told everyone exactly what was going to happen, he’d tell anyone he could get to listen - and it’s probably not that surprising the number of people who suddenly listen when they know you're dying - that he was going to make it.

“With time to spare,” he said. “I’ll see her born. And then some.”

Reagan sets the frame back down, and scoops up the other one, staring down at it like it’s the first time she’s ever seen it, not like she’s the one who took it. “I remember,” she says, “when Amy suggested that maybe she get induced a little early. So you could 'beat the clock’.”

It was probably the only time Reagan can ever remember seeing Jack angry with Amy or raising his voice to her.

And it was definitely the only time she could remember agreeing with him. Or understanding why.

She stares at the picture. Jack and Katie, both as bald as can fucking be, both looking right at her, and Goddamn if her little girl doesn’t have her grandfather’s eyes. “You made it,” Reagan says, softly. “You made it. You got to see her born… and then some.”

She sets the picture back down, carefully, and turns to the bed and then her hand… it’s on his and he can't take it and, truthfully, Reagan isn’t even sure he’s still really there. But Amy is and Lucy is and she’s not going to take that from them.

She’s spent long enough trying to take Jack away.

“I hate you,” she whispers. “I hated you before I ever met you. Because you hurt her. Because you somehow got it in your stupid head that leaving her was better for her and I will never ever be able to understand how anyone could leave her. Ever.”

Her eyes flick to the picture. Her and Amy and Katie and no, she can’t ever imagine a time when leaving her daughter would be anything close to an option. But then, she doubts Jack ever could either. Not until he did. Not until the math just added up.

Because of you. I’m leaving because of you.

“You said it wrong,” Reagan says. “Not 'because of’. For. You left for her, before you and Farrah ruined each other and she had to watch.”

A little pain, Jack had figured, was worth it. A little hurt, a little loss… well… it was math.

Her eyes drift to the other picture, to his smiling face, and yeah, the smile is as big as the world, but his… he's…

“I remember when I took it,” she says. “I remember thinking you shouldn’t have been there. Not because I didn't want you to be, cause I did. But you should’ve been…”

Gone.

Until the day she dies, Reagan will never tell anyone, not even Amy, about the next few minutes, about the way she presses her cheek against his hand - so cold, already - or about the way she heaves and sobs, like she did in Farrah’s arms so many years ago. Those are the first and last tears she sheds over Jack.

And they’re just for her.

When they’ve passed, when she’s got herself back in one piece, Reagan stands, still holding his hand in hers. She leans over him, memories of a coffee shop table and a stupid fucking bet that she’d lost even before she made it, flooding her mind. She kisses him, one soft press of the lips atop his head, and she whispers.

“You left for one little girl, Jack. And you stayed for another. And I swear to you, I’ll take good care of them both for as long as I live.” She squeezes his hand one last time. “It’s OK,” she says. “You can rest now.”

Reagan walks from the room and down the hall and out the front door without a pause, without slowing or speaking to anyone. Lauren starts to follow, but Amy catches her arm and shakes her head. Reagan climbs into her truck - not Lightning, not anymore, cause some things do change - and she drives without thinking, though she knows where she’s going the entire time.

The text from Amy comes as she’s leaning over Martin’s stone, her fingers tracing the letters of her father’s name.

He’s gone.

“Take good care of him, dad,” she whispers. “He earned it.”