#and because i am an adult now i *have* to go to the funeral home (?) today and to the funeral tomorrow

[da-proti-toku-grem]

feeling like a total asshole today 👍

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for correcting my niblings without my brother's input?

I had a massive falling out with my family when I was a teenager. I was into goth/edgy/horror culture and true crime before it was accepted by the mainstream, plus my parents were older when they had us and we lived on a farm. They needed my brother and me to keep the farm going, and I decided to pursue college instead. At some point after this they sold/lost their farm, but I do not know when, which fueled their resentment. At their request I did not speak to them until 2021, when my brother found me on Facebook to tell me my parents both died of covid and we held a Zoom funeral. After that he moved several states over to be closer to me so we could work on reconciliation and forgiving me for the farm incident.

So now I (45f) babysit his (44m) two youngest children (10m, 8f) for free, and have been since 2021. Initially he had full custody as his ex wife did not have a job or any job experience when they divorced (before we reconciled) but she now has a full time job so they share custody currently, although she is in our home state, so they decided the kids should go to school there still and spend holidays and summers with him. I am currently an art professor at a local university and for summer semester I only have morning classes and he works afternoons, so it works out.

Last week, his youngest asked me; "OP, how come you lie so much?" Her brother tried to shush her but I asked for clarification. Her brother told her she wasn't supposed to tell me, but she did anyway, and then he also chimed in to confirm. Turns out, whenever I told his kids about any vacations to other countries I took, he said I was making it up to sound important. When I told them I went to medical school, he said I was lying and was a glorified art teacher and only went to community college. I have a serious boyfriend who I have mentioned, although I do not spend time with him while babysitting per the mother's request not to have any adult with her children before meeting them and giving the okay, and so my brother insists I made him up.

I was very hurt, and so I showed them pictures, diplomas, videos, etc proving I was not lying. It is true I got into a community college near our home town on an art scholarship and an FHA grant, but I was able to skip generals due to advanced courses I was taking in high school. I quickly got interested in the medical field and was able to transfer to a medical school on several scholarships and obviously loans. I became a pediatric oncologist and was happy with that until my later thirties. I had kept art as a hobby but eventually realized I wanted to do more with it. I retired from pediatric oncology and then became an art professor five years ago. When I was a doctor, I met my current boyfriend (46m) who is a trauma surgeon. Starting in my late twenties, until covid, I was able to travel throughout the US and even to many foreign countries, sometimes for work, sometimes for vacation. There was no way for him to know this as we were not in contact, but I was very hurt that instead of believing me, he has been telling his kids I'm a liar for the past two years. So yes I did show them the photos and videos specifically because I was hurt.

The following day my brother called me and shouted at me, angry I had deliberately contradicted him. He was angry enough he was shouting at me. He has been dragging this on through text for the past few days. His ex wife also contacted me, asking for my version of events, as apparently their children called her crying about the situation. I told her exactly what I said here. He called me not an hour later screaming. Unbeknownst to me, she has been trying to get full custody of the children and he's convinced that this situation will get his kids taken from him, something he has a fear of due to the fact he has two adult children from a previous marriage who went no contact when they both turned 18. He insists that his ex wife turned them against him, and now he is terrified it will happen again. I was not aware of this until recently, nor did I think this would cause an issue with his custody. It has been very awkward babysitting his kids, as they have been very quiet since this whole thing happened. I don't have kids myself, nor have I been divorced, so I don't understand parenting or divorce etiquette, but I am still very hurt and even angry with him for calling me a liar to his children. Before I make any further decisions regarding an apology, I wanted to get advice as to whether I am the asshole for not bringing it up with him before showing his kids evidence that I did, in fact, do those things, and if so, how I can rectify this appropriately.

What are these acronyms?

[piratefishmama]

Beware The Thorns | Part 1

(a NSFW multi-part ficlet)

“Who was that Eds?”

“Mind your business, shithead” Eddie pocketed his phone, he recognised the number the moment it flashed up on his work phone, a device he always had on him regardless of where he was, he could be at a FUNERAL, and he’d have that phone on him.

In this instance however, it was merely a family dinner. Well… family and the Henderson’s, so yeah. Family. He’d excused himself upstairs and answered as soon as he was out of earshot.

Evidently, he’d been followed.

“I heard you say you loved them… are you seeing someone?” Eddie tried really hard to not be insulted by his tone, a weird mixture of disturbed amazement, with just a dash of disbelief for flavour. Was it that much of a stretch to see him dating someone?

Was it that unbelievable to the person he’d practically grown up with, that he could find someone who’d like him?

Maybe it was. Didn’t mean he had to like it; his job had kept him away from actually… dating anyone.

“Maybe I am, again, mind your damn business.” Of course they didn’t know what he was, what he did to earn his money, he’d spun some lie years ago about an online business because ‘rockstar’ had to… actually have evidence, he had an actual legitimate website to keep the lie going, nothing ever really went through it, but… it worked to keep the questions at bay.

Nobody asked, and he didn’t tell, he was a grown ass adult, he didn’t NEED to tell anyone.

Dustin sighed, shoulders slumping in defeat, good… he’d have never gotten anything out of him anyway “fine, fine don’t tell me… don’t tell meee, your only brother.”

“We’re not even relat—”

“The best man at your future wedding.”

“Since when was I getting marri—”

“The Wan Kenobi to your Obi.”

“What the—”

“I am happy for you though, the both of you! I hope you’ll bring him home someday, I’m sure we’d all like to meet him” Eddie’s eyes widened… he’d never… fuck … he’d never said anyth— “What, you think you’re all crafty? C’mon Eddie, you can’t even sit normally.”

“The fuck has that got to do with anything?!”

“Y’know… gay people… they can’t sit properly… in chairs…? Is that wrong?” at least that proved that Dustin could be uncertain about some things.

“You’ve been on that stupid app again, haven’t you?” He had the decency to look guilty at the very least. “The fuck have I told you?”

“It’s dumb and addictive and I should stop, BUT IT’S HELPING ME LEARN!”

“It’s filling your head with bullshit! Fine, I’m gay, what the fuck ever. Go back downstairs for the love of all that is holy, and just give me a minute to process that you’ve been theorising my sexuality based on how I sit, and don’t you DARE tell anyone.”

“Oh, c’mon Eddie! You’re old enough to come out now, you have your own place, your own business! Plus, we all love you, no judgement here, this is a judgy free zone.”

“I will rip out your larynx and shove it up your ass if you even THINK of telling them.”

“But… how will you know if i’m thi—okay I won’t say anything, i wouldn't say anything. Not my place.” Eddie had levelled him with a look, a single, rage squint look, a look which promised imminent pain if he did not take his nosy ass and remove it from his presence, and he’d accepted that look for what it was. A promise.

Not just a threat.

“I’m gonna have to go early, my… my boyfriend, will be home tonight, the ridiculous idiot never has food in so I’m gonna go sort that out.”

“You’re buying his food for him? Eddie… that’s… he’s not just using you for money is he cause that’s really bad.”

“No dumbass, he’ll give it me back.”

“Right away?”

“YES, right away.”

“Not just promises he doesn’t intend to keep?”

“Dustin, I will brutally murder each and every one of your characters in graphic detail within five minutes of every campaign for the next year if you do not—”

“Okay!” Hands up in surrender, Dustin took a step backwards, a threat to his precious characters was no laughing matter, even if Eddie would struggle to make that kind of threat happen, the risk was there! He still had to ask “is… is he good though?” Of course, Eddie could threaten all he liked.

Dustin was his little brother, or as good as! It was his job to be insufferable.

The question however, made him think, he could pick any of them, any one of his clients to mould this imaginary boyfriend from, maybe mix and match, bring him to life from attributes of all of them, that’d be fine right? Nobody but Dustin really knew he was dating so… he wouldn’t be introducing them to him.

Perfectly coiffed brown hair… a warm smile… big, strong hands, a constellation of pretty moles dotted in places Eddie knew far too well. There was no amalgamation of faces, no mixture of personalities to make the perfect one, just a soft smile, warm hands, broad shoulders, muscle, and perfectly soft, thick brown hair… his favourite.

“Yeah… he’s… he’s great, Dustin… you’d like him” big strong softie he was, and it was so easy falling into the role of his boyfriend too, he’d been paying for that package for what felt like forever, he felt like he knew the man inside and out, like the back of his own hand.

He was the only one to have paid for that package continuously for over more than a few months, even Hagan only paid for it every now and then, never continuously. He thought Steve would have gotten tired of him by now but… It’d been two years.

Some people expected MARRIAGE after two years in a relationship.

Steve Harrington seemed to want him more and more by the day and the surprising thing, was that the thought didn’t invoke the same level of panic that he were SURE it would if anyone else were to have those wants, those needs of him.

He felt… comfortable with Steve, safe with him. Like he could show hints of himself, the real himself without the fear of losing him, of putting him off.

“You look so dopey smiling like that, y’know? You must really like him, huh?” He’d been smiling? Fuck… “Well… anyone who can make you smile like that just thinking about him is alright by me, I’ll cover for you, you can go sort his food out if you want.”

This was fine… totally completely fine. Would be better if Dustin could actually keep his mouth shut but alas. Dustin had a history of foot in mouthisms that'd gotten them into trouble after trouble after trouble years on the trot.

Eddie probably shouldn't have continued to tell him stuff, but that was his little brother so. He had to.

“Uh… yeah… yeah I like him. Thanks, I’ll… grab my coat, just tell em I feel sick or somethin so I’m goin home” he didn’t say goodbye, Dustin probably did that for him, just grabbed his coat and snuck out like he used to do as a teenager when he simply couldn’t be bothered dealing with his fathers drunk ranting about queers being put in cages.

He did have to come to one very unfortunate conclusion after that conversation though. After seeing Steve instead of a mishmash of faces, after being unable to put a random face to the title and spin it as truth.

Feelings were there. Real feelings. The mushy shit. The wants for more that he couldn’t have. The Pretty Woman syndrome without the corny and frankly rushed happy ending.

It couldn’t continue anymore, what he had with Steve had to end. Feelings… real feelings… he couldn’t have real feelings for his clients. It put his whole career on the line, his way of life gone in an instant all because his heart had to go all gooey for someone who probably didn’t even give a real fuck about him.

This was fine.

After the evening was done… he’d end it, terminate their contract. It was for the best. Steve deserved better than him anyway.

Part 3

[theeggoman]

Being "Too White" Is A Myth.

Sometimes I worry that I'm just a white person pretending to be Latino (because when you're mixed race you're always thinking that you're not enough) but then I remember how every single person in my foster home including the adults referred to me as a "Wetback" or a "Beaner" or a "Fat Mexican" or an "Alien" instead of simply calling me by my white sounding first name because to white people, you will never be enough. It doesn't matter how much or how little white blood you have, in America if you're mixed with a single drop of anything that isn't white, you're not and will never be white.

I wasn't white when I was being tackled and forced down naked on the floor by the police at 12, I wasn't white when I was put in ESL at 8 even though english is my first language, I wasn't white when Christian religious leaders were explaining how I was cursed with the Mark of Cain to have a "skin of blackness" and being Latino made me inherently evil, I wasn't white when I was being sexually assaulted at 5 because I was "naturally promiscuous" and "born looking older" and "asking for it," I wasn't white when I was tackled by boarder patrol in south Texas and detained over night in a holding facility until my grandparents could come get me out, I wasn't white when my friend's mom took me bra shopping and insisted she had to be in the dressing room while I changed to make sure I didn't steal anything, I wasn't white when the doctor wrote my fucking race on my birth certificate while I was being pushed out of my Mexican mother who had to spend hours dealing with the racist medical staff who refused to let my white father into the delivery room because they didn't believe I was his child.

And now I get on tik tok and see people accusing mixed race children of being "white washed." They say we don't experience racism because we're "white passing." They tell us we're grasping for straws and we're stealing from our own fucking culture. They say we're "spicy white," that our blood is diluted, that we're not real.

Are we not real in the same way that our country did not legally recognize our white parents until the 1960's? Are we not real in the same way that we were legally declared bastards who couldn't inherit our own father's last name, his property, his money, our childhood homes? Not real in the way we weren't permitted to attend our white parent's funerals by their white family members? Not real in the way we weren't issued fucking social security cards? Were we not real when our parents couldn't "really" legally get married? Were we not real when our POC parent was shot dead for daring to fall in love with a white person? Were we not real when were named after our POC grandmothers? Were we not real when our White grandmothers cried at our birth and asked why we had to come out "so dark?"

Am I not real when I light the candles on my Ofrenda on November 1st and 2nd, when I bring fresh carnations and Pan Dulce for my brother because he was too young to have a favorite candy for me to put at his grave? Am I not real when I spend 6 hours slow cooking bone broth for Birria after removing all the seeds from the Guajillo chilis so my white friends don't die? Am I not real when I translate for a single mom who wants to use the library printer? Am I not real when I braid my curls? When I wash the Serepa? When I run from owls?

And am I not real when I jam out to country music? When I go camping with my friends? When I celebrate Christmas before Three Kings Day? Am I not real when I choose to embrace both sides of my culture? When I put my foot down and decide I am not half of anything, I am entirely both?

I don't care if you think I'm too white. Don't put your insecurities on me just because you don't wanna learn Spanish.

[strawhbrrries]

Babys Breath, v

pairing: bob floyd x seresin!florist!reader

summary: Bob stumbles into the nearest florist to the funeral he’s attending and, unknowingly, charms Jake Seresin’s sweet younger sister with all the anxious charm he possesses.

warnings: everyone calls reader “sunshine”, fluff!!!, protective older brother jake??, horrible descriptions of the navy, warnings will differ depending on chapter, no use of y/n or description of reader, not proofread 

word count: 1441 words

authors note: because i love you guys, you get it a day early!! a bit juicier this time!! how do we think the rest of jake's reaction is gonna go? bob + sunshine forever and ever!! as always, please enjoy!! mwah!!

tag list: @myownworstenemyyy @kloofspeaks @bcon24 @chaosofmanyfandoms @strangerparks @kmc1989

find the masterlist here!

read the previous part here! read the next part here!

“You don’t believe me? And why the fuck not?” You held the phone between your ear and your shoulder, trying to close up the shop and interrogate your brother at the same time.

“You’ve given me no reason to trust you, Sunny. I told you not to text him.” Jake responded, voice laced with annoyance. You were sure if you could see him his eyes were halfway in the back of his skull and a hand was on his hip in that sassy pose he did.

“Oh my god, Jake. Am I not a fucking adult? Even if I did text him, which I fucking didn’t, why does it matter? He’s not Javy or Rooster who just want to fuck me and add another notch to their belt.” You snapped, scrunching your face in annoyance. The over-protectiveness he was exhibiting was eating at you, your nerves were hanging on by a thread.

“It doesn’t matter, I told you not to do something. It shouldn’t take all of your self control not to go against me. I’ll see you at home. Goodbye.”

With that he hung up, the tears of frustration welling in your eyes at his words. The universe just wanted you to fail, how could you not respond to the text? Just last week the sweetest man found his way into your shop and now you’re supposed to simply act like he didn’t exist?

hey bobby, I know this is a long shot but i need some saving

can we go get something to eat?

You locked the door to the shop and looked at your phone one more time before frowning and putting it away. The last place you wanted to be was your house, the argument with Jake would just escalate and you weren’t ready for that. Not right now at least. You’d find solace in the one place you shouldn’t. With Bob. You sat on the steps in front of the building, waiting for a response before deciding if you should just go home and face the Seresin wrath.

Every time your phone went off you hoped it was Bob and it never was. You figured he was busy, probably had other plans and didn’t want to hang out with you. 

“Is anyone sitting next to you?” The voice caused you to look up and locate where it was coming from, a smile spreading across your face when you saw who it was.

“Hi Bobby.” You pat the spot next to you, ushering him to sit on the steps next to you. 

“I was around the corner, figured you’d rather see me in person than a text.” He spoke softly, pushing his glasses up a bit and looking at you as he sat down.

“I appreciate it, I was waiting for a text. Can’t lie, I was a bit disappointed to not get one.” You chuckled, laying your head on his shoulder and breathing in. He smelled so good, especially after having worked all day.

“I hope you’re not still disappointed.” He teased, poking your side and laying his head on top of yours. He wasn’t going to pry and see what was bothering you but he couldn’t lie and say he wasn’t relieved that you came to him first about it. “I’m sorry you had a shit day, where do you wanna eat?”

“I don’t care, just not the hard deck.” You responded, closing your eyes and enjoying the softness of the moment.

“I know a spot, c’mon.” He stood up and offered you his hand, intertwining your fingers and leading you to his car.

He drove to a small diner on the outskirts of the town, intentionally so you didn’t have a chance to run into your brother. He assumed the bad day was because of your brother, and that was why you asked not to go to the nearest bar with some damn good food. The place was small and obviously family run, Bob had been here a few times before and would highly recommend it to anyone.

The two of you got a small booth in the back corner, away from the commotion of the rest of the diner. It felt more personal this way. A sweet older woman was your server, she acted like she’d known the two of you your whole lives. Once your food came she left the two of you alone, letting you talk and joke around.

“Phoenix paid me a visit earlier.” You stated, putting a fry in your mouth while he connected the dots.

“Oh my god, that’s where she went earlier. Sorry for that, I’m going to assume she came on pretty strong.” He apologized and it wasn’t even his fault, taking a bite of the food in front of him.

“Yeah, she kinda scared me a bit at first. She gave me her number though, soon I’ll have all of dagger squad.” You joked, covering your mouth as you giggled

“You know the dagger squad?” He tilted his head to the side, furrowing his brows as he tried to figure out where you would know that from unless your brother actually was in it or Phoenix told you.

“Uh, yeah. So, if I tell you this. I need you to swear you won’t speak to him about us, or anything hinting towards me.” You put your pinky finger out, the ultimate swear.

“Okay?” He hesitantly shook pinkies with you, becoming even more confused than before.

“Jake, or Hangman as you would know him, is my brother.” You let go of his pinky and took a sip of your drink while he processed the information, he rubbed his forehead as he thought about it.

“I guess I’m just confused why you kept it from me? I won’t say anything to him, I promise, I’m just confused?” 

“I get a lot of navy men at the shop and I always ask Jake about them, just curiosity I guess. You were the one man he basically swore me off of, told me I couldn’t text you back and we got into a huge argument about it.” You explained, picking at the skin around your nails anxiously. This could go horribly and blow up in your face or he could be completely understanding about it.

“Sounds exactly like him, I should’ve known the second you said he was an asshole. Hangman is the only asshole I really work with, makes everything so much harder. So he doesn’t know?” Bob asked, fiddling with the food on his plate.

“I’m not even sure anymore, he texted me earlier that you had a girlfriend. Which, I didn’t know we had taken that step.” You teased, winking playfully. “But then he said he didn’t believe me when I said I hadn’t texted you back. Which, yet again blew up into a huge argument-” 

“Which is why you called me.” He finished your sentence, shaking his head in understanding. “Phoenix started it!”

“I’m sorry for bringing you into this, Bobby.” You chewed at your bottom lip, frustrated that you brought him into the middle of this because you liked him too much.

He assured you it wasn’t just your fault, it was equally his fault too and he made sure you knew that. For the rest of the meal you explained how the initial argument with Jake went down and how you ultimately decided to say fuck it and do it anyway. Bob was appreciative of that fact and understood why you kept it all a secret. He even promised to continue keeping it a secret from your brother for as long as you wanted, even pinky swearing on it.

“We should probably get going.” You groaned, stacking the dishes from your food and paying the bill as a thanks for him saving you. Although, you both argued over it for a good few minutes.

The ride back to your car was filled with lots of laughs, you told him a ton of stories about your childhood with Jake. How you were constantly telling others he was your real brother and how you got your nickname. He called it an honorary callsign, you giggled and said you’d never call it that. He praised you for being able to live with Jake and dealing with him all the time. You walked hand in hand with him to your car, stopping in your tracks when you see the person leaning against it.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Jake exclaimed, pinching the bridge of his nose and doing a double take at the two of you holding hands. “Are you sure you didn’t text him back, Sunshine?”

[handweavers]

my uncle was a complicated man who often made it difficult to be around him - he was frequently abrasive, struggled to give affection freely, and his love and concern usually expressed itself through a harsh and abrupt, stilted demeanor. he could be very angry a lot of the time, a deep seated rage and a callousness at times that stung and wounded. but he had a difficult upbringing, and it was easy to understand why he was the way he was. he was born during the japanese occupation of malaya during ww2 when my family was interned, and many members of our family and the sikh community were targeted for beheading and lynching by the japanese imperial army. my family was very poor back then, and repeated traumas and losses and abuse had hardened him. he struggled with alcohol addiction all his life, like most in my family, and he could be very cruel when he would drink.

but i'll never forget how he made an effort to take care of me and make sure i knew he loved me. the first time i returned home to malaysia as an adult, on my own, after being kept away for many years by my father, i had to reconnect with my family on my own, with my home country on my own, without his help or guidance. and my uncle showed me a degree of kindness that no one expected, and embraced me without hesitation when i came out as trans, and enforced that among the family. no one could go against him, he was the patriarch of the entire extended family, and his word was law. his approval of me meant even those who would have shunned me had to tolerate me or risk being shunned themselves - he held that much power. and when i was going to fly back to canada he called me at the airport just to tell me he loved me and that this is my home and my family and no one can take that away from me and that i belong here and he will miss me. he rarely spoke like that to anyone, ever, even his own children. it was deeply uncomfortable and difficult for him but he did it anyway because he felt like it was important, that i was important. and he took care of me in many ways over the years, and if it weren't for him i likely would have been/would be homeless and would never have been able to go to university at all. and now without him i definitely can't afford any of that and i'm not sure what to do with myself. he made sure repeatedly and consistently to communicate in whatever way he could to tell me that he cared, in his own ways, and to step in where my father could/would not.

the last time i saw him was in august of this year when we had lunch together, and he told me i did well and he was proud of me to be the one to finally bring my dad home, knowing how awful my dad is. he and i were the closest living relatives to my dad and the people who knew him best, and i could go to him for help when my dad was making things very hard for me and he understood. he was the only other person still alive who could wrangle my dad, who could 'deal' with him, set him in his place. my other uncle could do the same, and he also took care of me and made sure to check on me and remind me that i am a part of this family and that i belong with them, but he passed away when i was 19. now it's just me left to deal with my dad without either of my uncles' help, and no one else alive who knows what it's like to be tied to him directly in the way that we are. and i didn't get to say goodbye, and i didn't get to attend the funeral nor help scatter his ashes to the sea. when i go home every part of him will be gone gone gone and never coming back and there's nothing i can do.

[boyfridged]

if you got complete control over DC and got to write a Jason solo comic, how would you go about it? or like what would be the story??

you're indulging me!

well, my first preference would probably be writing a jason-never-died elseworld and this is what i'm doing with my series robin vol 2. or something like 80s retroactive but longer, so essentially a robin jay series that we were robbed of.

but i'm presuming you are asking about what i would do with the main timeline... i guess if you've been following me for a while, nothing on this list will come as a surprise, because it's simply a combination of my own meta dressed in plot points... i'm just not sure how i would organise it, since i mostly think about these in terms of fanfiction, so it's a bit fragmented in my head. but i think it would be doable to combine those:

addressing the current mess in canon: unavoidable. i always imagined (and by always i mean i've had that image in my head for at least 5 years now) if i were to write a comicbook script for jay i would start with the classic simple layout showcasing the more sunny (early days robin jay's) version of gotham but with panels shaped like shattered glass imposing on it, displaying different contradicting pieces of canon and culminating with the question of who *the real* jason todd is, as a nod to countdown asking the same. dc actually attempted to do something when the infinite frontier was first introduced, it just wasn't very well executed... (and as far as i know the hypertime is still supposed to be relevant so it would work...)

since i already started talking about countdown it could also contain some multiversal insight into all the other worlds in which jason todd is alive.

or maybe an idea i once dropped here, with the mystical serpentine of magical fog (the one from the lost days and the end of the utrh when jason presumably is brought back to life once again) traveling through the scenes of flashbacks of other characters (perhaps even just a reflections of retcons!) tarnishing jason's memory when he's dead, cut to kid jay literally stirring in the coffin, and finally an adult jason waking up with a jolt in the final scene. so many options.

you get the image. i wish that dc utilised the weirdness of the meta in a serious way, and that the talk of the past was a talk of the history of comics in a sense... as i previously expressed here.

as you all know by now my reading of jason (and batman in general even) is mostly based on the 80s... and so it would be a love letter to this era. i would definitely want to include some robin jay stories there as well, maybe make jason investigate cases that date back to his childhood and are somehow interconnected, creating a bridge between the narratives and reconciling them.

ending what i call the long funeral - jason's era of remaining dead both socially and to the narrative. what i have in mind is an arc in which he is working on a case that seems to have to do with magic/ghosts, but that ultimately turns out to be a case of corruption and plain police brutality. two things here: i would want him to fuck up spectacularly so that he starts questioning his modus operandi and dedication to vigilantism in general. and it would set up the ground for the introduction of abolitionism and link the story to his early ethical framework.

a retirement arc. jason's proper come back to the crime alley and reintroduction to the land of living (the alley might be a graveyard to bruce but it's a home to jason...) and very importantly, a cast of civilians! leslie is definitely back. i would also love to use dana & denise, and maybe even some pre-crisis characters.

i would fridge bruce. put him out of commission basically, death or not. and i'm not saying batman jay era but actually i am saying batman jay era. (i once again can't find a link to the post explaining my bat jay agenda but if it's of your interest i can elaborate.)

a two-face story. about forgiveness or rather about the fact that it never quite passed. and about willis.

the themes... the motifs... you know me. ouroboros and self-mythologization and the sacrifice and catholicism (probably not in a way you think) and family duty. and politics. here you can also guess what i'm thinking about, and it's a revolutionary abolitionist turn.

and to conclude: big words but i would use jason to bring love back to the gotham lore and batman titles in general. he is a character that has always stood in the centre of both values and challenges that the story faced. if he's not treated with consideration and not taken seriously, nothing in it is.

[hiraethblack22]

Fire and Ice. (Bucky x ofc)

Here I am with the continuation of the story Breathe Underwater. Your responses have inspired me to write a mini-series called "Fire and Ice". However, we begin the story at the moment when our characters meet.

MASTERLIST of FIRE AND ICE: HERE!

IMPORTANT: I won't use Y\n but the lead character will be given a name and will be a fully formed character. Set in a time where everyone is still alive and Bucky is free of the hydra.

Warnings: violence, blood, torture, and manipulation. Vulgar language. The story will contain adult content. Probably a whole lot of Smut.

Summary: Thirteen is a HYDRA pawn, a soldier, a spy and an assassin. A wraith. Chosen because of her powers and transformed into the perfect weapon. (enchanted!reader) What happens when her mission becomes locating and eliminating The Winter Soldier?

-> CHAPTER TWO <-

CHAPTER ONE: Exit Music (for a film)

“What do you think happens now?”

A voice broke through the fog of images that were plaguing my mind.

We had sat in silence, my feet naked in the lake's cold water, as the house slowly emptied behind our backs. I had walked away absent-mindedly, unseen by the procession of family members within the old family home, dropping onto the dirt as soon as I reached it, my black funeral clothes still on, staring at the sun slowly sinking into the water.

My brother crouched beside me—hands on his knees, head bowed down. The familiar colour of his blond hair stung painfully in my chest—the same shade as our mother's. It was a weird feeling seeing him like that; Michael was always composed, elegant, and kept himself as a royal would.  As I watched him, I couldn't help but wonder what was going through his mind. Seeing him vulnerable, without the usual stubbornness that bore his eyebrows and his chin always high and spoiled look in his eyes, it was like seeing him without a mask, seeing him through different eyes, and made me feel closer to him. As we sat there together, I felt a sense of unity between us that I hadn't felt in years, and for the first time, it felt like our relationship could only get better.

My brother was a copy of her. Our father used to joke about it before he died, saying that Michael had been too busy growing up clinging to our mother’s skirt, which had shielded me from her, preventing me from taking after her even a little bit. I resembled my father with my brown hair and eyes and the slight nose hump beneath the freckles. As a child, it was hard to witness— confining me to watching their love from the corners of the rooms and behind impenetrable doorways. It was as if a trench had been built between us, and thus I had grown up with my father and with his interests in horses and golf, yet part of me did wonder whether he did it out of pity or out of guilt, the fault of having a spouse who preferred the male heir. Then, as the years passed, I discovered I could occupy a different space in the lives of our family. And that was it. 

“When we die,” Michael followed, his eyes never leaving his hands, “where do you think we go?”

I shrugged. I had no energy left in me to speak or even think. But I also didn't want to drop into the catatonic state I was in last time. “Our father would say that when a person dies, they go to a beautiful place.”

“Do you believe it?”

I nodded, taking his rough hands in mine. "He’d tell us to stick together."

“My beautiful place is here. With you.” Michael stared into my eyes, and I had never seen a more resolute look on his face. I felt my heart swell with love and gratitude. His words echoed in my mind, and I couldn't help but smile. I knew that no matter what happened, we would always have each other's backs. And in that moment, I knew that there was nowhere else I'd rather be than right there with him. "We will be together forever, sister. Trust me.” He kissed my hand, and we went back to watching the sunset. A soft smile curled my lips. We were going to be fine.

***

“Thirteen!”

A blow to my stomach made me jump, desperately gasping for air. My eyes shot open just in time to see the tip of the boot flashing straight towards my nose. I raised my arms, barely blocking the blow to my face. The force of the impact knocked me backward, slamming my back against the bars of the prison cell. Gasping for air, I struggled to calm my pounding heart and better acknowledge my surroundings. The stale, musty smell of the cell filled my nostrils. I tried to stand up, but my legs felt weak and unsteady. I stumbled to my knees, supporting myself with my hands against the filthy floor.

And there it was—the sad, cruel, bitchy reality. 

The man laughed viciously, clapping a hand on his chest—right over the symbol engraved in his dark uniform. Hydra. The cureless poison, the undetectable illness you couldn't feel, until it killed you. 

“Your time has come.”

The sweet haze of the dream vanished in a blink, drained by the cruel truth of life. The man in uniform fisted a hand around my hair, hauling me to my feet.

“You’re such a delicious thing, I almost feel sorry for you,” he said, closing the distance between us. The liquor on his breath made my empty stomach clench in disgust. He passed his tongue on his lips like an animal trying to seize its prey-his eyes dark and cruel. I struggled against his grip, but he was too strong. I felt sick with fear and revulsion. “Almost.” 

He yanked my hair, dragging me behind him like a broken doll. Like every week, the time had arrived. I tried to steel myself for the inevitable, but my body trembled with dread. I felt a scream building in my throat, but it died before it could escape. This was my life now—a never-ending cycle of pain and misery at the hands of monsters who took pleasure in my suffering.

I gazed at the cell beside mine. Inside, the woman huddled on herself, her eyes wide with terror. I knew what was coming. The man would take her next when they had finished with me, just as it had happened so many times before.  

She was grasping the bars, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks. The terror in her eyes mirrored my own. Her lips trembled, trying a few times before the words broke free from her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she hissed, her voice broken and rough. 

Before I could even think about whispering back that everything would be fine, we were in the corridor, walking fast towards the stairs. The darkness was the sole thing I had known down in the cells of Hydra, except for the only occasion when they sent me out there for a mission; but, even if I was outside, breathing fresh air, watching the blue sky, or feeling the comforting warmth of the sun on my skin, I yearned for the darkness of the cells once more, where I knew it was me suffering and not the people I was sent after. It was a familiar feeling, one that I had grown accustomed to over the years. The cries and pleas of the people I was sent after were too much to bear. In the cells, it was just me and my nightmares. 

One after the other, the cells held men, women, and children. All of them were scared and huddled together for warmth and comfort, clinging to each other to survive. Victims of a fucked-up system. 

As I passed by each cell, I couldn't help but wonder how many more innocent lives would be lost before someone would come and save us. Even when the cruel voice in my head screamed that nobody would come for us, the world had forgotten us. I remembered the day a mother was taken away from her daughter, dragged to one of these rooms, and never came out. Her screams echoed through the halls as she was dragged away. The girl clung to me, begging me to save her mommy. It broke my heart to know there was nothing I could do but offer comfort and promises of a better tomorrow. They were lies; they came for her some days later, and I'd never seen her again.

Some soldiers had tried to escape and revolt against the captors, but it was all pointless. They were made an example of; I still heard their screams, their prayers, and their cries in the silence of the night. 

I was hauled into a room. The lights were so bright that I shielded my watering eyes, but the unforgiving strength in my hair didn't pay any attention to my pain, especially not when he was going to inflict much, much, more.

“Place it on the chair and power up the machine.” 

I cried out, trying to plant my feet firmly against the ground, trying to claw the hand that was dragging me to the chair. He simply laughed, handling me like a temperamental child.  I could feel the fear rising in my chest, making my heart hammer in my ears. I knew what was coming next—the machine, the cold metal in my neck, and the head splitting ache. The thought of it made me shudder. But there was no escape. 

 “Come on, don’t be difficult.” The man threw me onto the chair. Still laughing as he fastened my wrists to the chair's armrests and wrapped the belt around my head. Another pair of hands tied my legs to the chair. The man pressed his fingertips on my face, stretching the corners of my lips. “Give me a smile.” 

I was trapped, bound to the chair, and not even allowed to close my eyes in defeat. I couldn’t fight; I couldn’t speak, but they laughed as I cried and screamed, praying in my mind that someone would come and rescue me. 

The science team tortured me with the promise to murder my brother if I fought back. Treating my sorrow as their own private, amusing show. The experiments were never ending. I didn’t know what they were looking for or what they were trying to shape my mind into. The only things I knew since they had captured me were hunger, pain, and regret, as they had dressed me in their uniform and forced me to commit atrocities.  

“You are a special one, Thirteen.” A woman appeared before me, holding a syringe. The liquid in it was shining brightly, its warmth moving and waving around the syringe like flames. “We gave you this power, and you have tamed it. The previous twelve could not endure its existence in their organisms, not even for a single moment, but you..." She smiled as if fascinated—her eyes shone in a weird light; was it excitement? Or was it the familiar grip of a delusional mind? "You have hosted the flames for years, gracing the world with their wonder.” I watched the syringe come closer and closer, until I felt the familiar pinching of the needle. As the liquid coursed through my veins, I felt a sudden rush of energy and clarity. The world around me seemed to come alive in a way that I had never experienced before. 

The world grew louder; I could now hear the buzzing noise of the computers, the soft breathing of the guards standing all around the room, the stable heartbeat of the science woman before me, and the scent of the food she had eaten. My mind raced, and I struggled to keep my thoughts in order. “Bending the world under the fist of Hydra.”

They made me steal, and lie, destroy governments, cancelling entire cities from the maps. Kill and slaughter. Whatever was that they injected in my veins, it turned me into their puppet. They pointed and I attacked, without whispering, without questions.  Relapsing my life into a routine of lessons that made me more lethal—Magic and dancing alternating with combat, weaponry, poisons, and construction of explosives. And yet, all of that was pointless when it all came down to them. I became clay in their hands, to be shaped according to their sick desires. They had beaten me until I couldn't move, broke my bones until I was nothing more than a pile of shattered flesh and bones. And then they implanted thing thing inside of me, something dark and foreign that filled me with bloodlust.

The pain was excruciating; every inch of my body felt like it was on fire. If I tried to fight them, it could mean the end for the only person left in this world who meant anything to me. So I lay there, broken and defeated, as the pain threatened to swallow me whole. 

Michael’s safety had given me the strength to stare quietly as they beat, broke, and shattered my body and mind. Letting them put this thing inside of me. I had no chance of escaping—not when it could risk the life of the last remaining person I had loved.  

I felt reality shift. The world spun faster. The uncomfortable sensation of my body turning inside out. The woman before me—whose name I’d never had the privilege to acknowledge—she split into two before becoming one again, swaying to the left and then to the right in a constant waltz that made me want to claw my eyes out of my head.  She smiled and turned serious a couple of times, watching my trembling body with fascination. “You made me a monster.”

“No, thirteen.” She pinched my chin. Her eyes shone in a red light, piercing into my soul, before returning to their usual blue shade. I tried to speak, but my throat felt tight and dry. I couldn't find the words to express the fear and confusion that consumed me. The woman's grip on my chin tightened, and I winced in pain. “I made you into an asset.”  

My mouth parted, quivering over the frantic breathing pattern that possessed my body. My thoughts ran feverishly in my head, confusing words and sounds rooted in my soul, speaking cruel words in dozens of different languages.  

“Thirteen?” 

The voice echoed in my head, clinging to the roots of my being. 

"Ready to comply."

Gloved hands emerged before me, so white that they seemed to shimmer in the neon lights. I was freed from the restraint that kept me confined to the chair, allowing me to rise to my feet. I rolled my shoulders, stretching my neck—not because I felt any pain; I felt nothing at all—but in preparation for the mission. 

“New mission. Locate and kill,” she said, presenting a photograph before me. “The Winter Soldier.” 

I need to thank everyone who commented and liked the previous part and the ones who asked to be tagged in this next part.

It's certainly not what you expected to read, but we'll get to that specific passage in a couple of chapters. I wished to give you a deeper insight into the characters and the plot.  @thefandomplace @bonkyandsteebluver @billihill - let me know if you still wish to be tagged to the next parts!

This is a test chapter, to see how readers react to the story and to allow me to figure out in which direction to proceed. Let me know what you think and if you would like to be tagged in later parts!

[heybabybird]

i absolutely can not post this anywhere else because my brother follows me on twt and ig but the ao3 writer curse finally descended on me but i just needed to tell somebody before i start going crazy lmao

if you are reading this there's 5 points you should be aware off:

the men in this family and extended family doesn't do shit

mother is single handedly raising 2.5 household

i can't move out i have been assigned the pseudo-caretaker role

i'm sick, i haven't been getting help, i don't have time

i'm fine

honestly i don't even know where to start except my home life is a MESS but anyway my uncle's(who i never really know but is my mom's few remaining relatives) on his death bed and even though it's lunar new year the whole week have just been funeral planning. it's depressing. also we just pre-bought an urn i didn't know they're /that/ expensive what the heck

i alsooo maybe perhaps have the only daughter in an asian household forced to be the pseudo-caretaker curse! yay! anyway i am guilted to not being able to move out or go very far because i'm always needed on 'stand by' in case anything happens. i work a business(two actually; family's food business, my own business and some times odd jobs here and there. i'm tired) and my salary?

"oh don't spend it, the family's in a Situation, you better have money on hand just in case(we need to pay for anything)! :("

my uncle have no one(mom and her siblings are adopted, majority passed away during covid) so we are the ones paying his hospital and funeral bills. mom is frantic and visiting him daily while waking up at 4-5am to start the business(we have NO employees, just me and mom. she doesn't want to hire anyone)

my mom's tired. i'm tired. for very different reason.

also last year? found out i have a rare blood disease! :) i'm sick too, very! but i can not afford the time to get checked up! i've been missing my appointments since year June :( i also haven't taken my antidepressants since April :(

that aside, i 100% understand why my mom is Like That, but it's very mentally exhausting for me, a grown adult teenager, to be obligated to throw away my entire life just because I have to take care of family that i barely know. i barely have any hobbies or life goals anymore! i wanted to move out so bad! but my mom would overwork herself if i'm away.

my thoughts are all over the place i'm aware i sound like an asshole but please please keep in mind while my heart aches with loosing family i'm also going crazy and i barely know this uncle(he just... pops up suddenly, but i UNDERSTAND, he's important to my mom)

also my dad's verbally abusive and controlling and downright exploding with anger issues @ mom sigh he throws tantrums a lot

i'm doing my best but i'm so tired. i missed hanging out with my mom. i haven't since i was 15. since dad stopped working and she throw away her life to raise us. now i'm earning and i can't even spend it on her and it makes me so depressed. she barely have any personal belongings because she doesn't spend on herself! and it's lunar new year(still is). but we haven't celebrated in so so long. every year i do the cooking and it's the one time of the year everyone's home and i put my entire heart into making a meal but... you know, it doesn't matter i am going to lie down for a bit thank you for reading if you got this far sdfsgdfg

[eirenical]

I've been struggling to figure out how to make this post, or even if I want to, for days now.

In Jewish traditions, we're all too well aware that within each celebration of joy, there is potential for sorrow. That each moment of happiness comes with the risk of pain, the reminder of pain. It's why we break a glass at a wedding.

At a funeral we rend our clothes.

Or in modern times, a symbolic ribbon.

This is to show that with the loss of this person, there has forever been a hole torn in the fabric of your life. A hole that can never again be mended.

On Tuesday, I lost my Uncle.

Most of you probably have a certain image in your mind when you think of the word "Uncle." Someone you see at holidays or a few times a year. Maybe they send you a card for your birthday or show up with a gift.

That's not who my Uncle was to me.

He wasn't an "uncle" the way most people think of an uncle. He was my third parent for my entire life. For almost 45 years. And for the last decade and a half, I lived with him, shared his home, squabbled with him like only an adult daughter can, and was there for him when he needed me, just like he's always been here for me when I needed him.

I feel like there's been a hole torn through the center of my life and all I can process are the empty places, so many empty places, where he stood, larger than life for so many years and where he just ISN'T anymore.

I still look downstairs when I wake up at 5 to see if the light is on in the kitchen to know if he's awake... and it's not on.

I still look down the hallway to the den when I come downstairs to see if he's reading on the couch or at the computer and he isn't there.

I still look to see if he already turned the outside light on at night before going over to my parents' for dinner.

I still try to tell him there's a brie thief in the house whenever I steal some of his brie for breakfast because I know it makes him happy to know I like what he likes.

I still try to check to see if he has books to return to the library when I go to return mine.

I can't go downstairs in the middle of the night to get a drink, because I know he won't be awake at 1 AM to catch me and complain about how he can't sleep and how I should be sleeping.

I burst into tears when I took his "#1 Uncle" mug out of the dishwasher the other night, knowing he'll never use it again.

Yesterday my nephew said to me "Can we go to your house and get more noodles for soup?" and I almost fucking cried because it's not my house, it's HIS house and I just live here.

And then my niece sat down on the floor in MY spot while I was sitting in HIS chair and leaned her head back against my hand for head rubs just like I used to do to HIM and I guess that my thing now, and I don't even know how to PROCESS THAT because he was the best of ALL of us and his shoes are way too big for me to fill, but my niece and nephew need me to fill them as best I can, and I'm going to be rattling around in them for decades before I even get close to being a FRACTION of who he was.

I don't know how to do this.

...it's only been four days.

I miss him.

I want him back.

:'(

[pascaloverx]

As It Was (S2)

Chapter Eleven

previous chapter next chapter

Summary: Lots of news in this new season, which will be full of several twists and discussions. And of course, lots of James Buchanan Barnes.

Author's note: Dear readers, I will be writing this fanfic again. This second season will have shorter chapters and it will probably take me a little longer to update the fanfic but I hope you like it!

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS STORY, there may be adult content and verbal and physical violence.

Coming home after the nightmare of being poked, measured and watched by medical staff is incredibly lonely. There I had a team watching me and at my house, everything is a mess. An emotional mess mainly. My father passed away and I couldn't even be at his funeral. Despite everything, he raised me. Not to mention that without having to prove Barnes innocence, I am without a goal at the moment. My thoughts are interrupted by a knock on the front door.

"Coming!" I say going to answer the door quickly. But a few seconds before opening the door, I decide to take precautions; after all, there are now two dangerous men who tried to kill me roaming free. One of them even killed my father in cold blood. I remember a gun that I hid some time ago under the kitchen table. I rush over there and grab the weapon. So I finally open the door, holding onto the gun concealed at my waist. Ready to attack anything that comes my way."

"It's good to be able to come back here without having to hide." James Barnes says in front of my house, a house that used to be ours. He's dressed like a professional investigator, hardly resembling the man who was a fugitive not long ago. Instead of letting him enter my house, I close the door in his face.

"Barnes, go away, and if possible, don't come back." Is all I allow myself to say, as my emotions take over. I think Bucky wouldn't understand the disappointment of seeing him return to work for those who once pursued him or prioritizing his job over you. It's no wonder you two parted ways.

"I'm not going anywhere. Open that door and let me in." Barnes shouts in an authoritative tone. I would really like to open the door and tell him to fuck off, but opening the door means looking at him.And looking at him in the moment means looking at the man I love. Because no one risks their life for someone they don't love.

"I don't want you here. Don't make me call the police to get you out of my house." My scream is loud enough that I worry about my neighbors hearing it. But it seems to work.

Unfortunately, it only seems so — Barnes enters through the back of the house and surprises me by holding myself firmly against the living room wall. Neither of us said anything, we just looked at each other as if we were in a staring contest.

"You won't get rid of me, Melisa. I won't let you kick me out of your life again." James says looking determined.

"And who do you think you are?" It's all I can think, Seeing the way Barnes doesn't seem to want to leave. How dare he not leave? How can this man dare to appear like this, as if nothing had happened?

"The love of your life and the only person on this world who is willing to give up on everything for you." Barnes He speaks so seriously that it surprises me. But I can't deny that he risked a lot to save me. However where does this leave you as a couple?

"Would you like a formal thank you for the services provided? Thank you for risking your life to protect me from dangers that you yourself create it for me, satisfied?" My mocking tone must have affected Barnes, who once seemed confident and now appears disappointed.

"Do you think I created those problems for you? I don't know if you noticed but it was your father who got us into this." He says rebutting what I said, which infuriates me.

"Was it my father who put work above our relationship? Who chose to say goodbye to our security to serve the country?" I'm at my limit, almost overflowing with tension.

"So this is the problem? Not the fact that I was framed and persecuted because I was the unlucky guy who married the wrong psychopath's daughter?" Barnes crosses a line I wasn't prepared for.

"If our marriage was unlucky for you, I'm pleased to inform you that we are no longer married. We shouldn't have been. You and I are wrong for each other." I say not believing in the veracity of my words. But what does it matter?

"Even if it's wrong, even if it's bad luck, even if I die from it. I will never be able to give up loving you, Melisa. No matter what you say, I will always be yours." Bucky says, approaching me as I try to hold back my tears.His touch on my face is all I need to melt. I can't resist what I feel for him.

"What are we going to do, Barnes?" I ask, holding myself back from kissing the man in front of me.

"I don't know about you, but I'm going to kiss my ex wife until she apologizes for kicking me out of the house." He says, and I don't even notice when her lips kiss mine. I only allow myself to get lost in Barnes.

[metatomatoes]

Long-ass personal story/rant under the cut. Feel free to skip, I'm mostly just writing this down to get it out of my system.

So, 2024 did not start out all that great, but it was manageable. And then February hit, everything proceeds to fall apart. Yay.

February 1

My beloved uncle John died of cancer after transitioning to in-home hospice care in early December. This one is rough. I'm very close to him and his family. I was raised by a single mom, and while I was very young my uncle was her go-to when she needed someone to watch me. That, and she wanted me to have an positive relationship with an adult male family member because I couldn't get that kind of social development at home. TL;DR he was kinda my surrogate dad when I was little and we never lost that bond.

The following week was kind of a blur of tears, grieving and prepping for my uncle's wake and funeral. I volunteered to do a reading/reflection at the service. I went to work, although I definitely was not at my best. For example, I accidentally purchased $800 worth of company swag on my personal debit card. Stuff like that.

February 9

My parter and I go to his wake in the afternoon and get home around 10 pm. Sad, difficult, exhausting, but also full of love and support.

Feb 9/10

I'm not sleeping well so I'm up late watching something, when around 1 am I hear water dripping inside a wall where that does not make sense for that sound to be heard. The upstairs unit in the 3-decker condo I live in is currently unoccupied, so I go up there to discover their living room radiator has a massive leak. We turn off the heat and the radiator valves, stopping the outflow of water and get as much of the water on the floor mopped up as possible.

February 10

Wake up to a water-soaked living room ceiling. Apparently the leak went on just long enough that a lot of water got under the floorboards upstairs, despite our best efforts to soak it all up. So, now we have pretty significant water damage that is going to have to be fixed at some point - fingers crossed we just have to strip and repaint as opposed to needing to have the whole thing re-platstered.

I can't think about all that right now though, because this day is also my uncle's funeral. It's a nice service. I read one of my uncles' favorite poems and give a short reflection, which goes well. Reception followed by family gathering. It really was good to see all my extended family, and people I haven't seen since my uncle John got married. (I'm quite famous among my aunt's family from their wedding, where I notably accidentally drank champange and gave a very enthusiastic performance as a "bop bop" girl when the wedding party was recruited to pretend we were a band at the reception. I was 6 at the time, so I do look a bit different now 😂).

Feb 12/13

I wake up in the middle of the night because my partner is burning up with a fever and tossing around like a fish out of water. Yep, he got the Covid - turns out my uncle Eric (who my partner and I spent a lot of time with over the course of the wake and funeral for my uncle John) tested positive when he got home on Sunday. Honestly I have never seen my partner this sick in the 8.5 years we have known each other! Neither of us have contracted Covid before now and this shit is no joke.

I have an oral surgery on Friday so I'm crossing my fingers I don't get sick as well.

February 13

At work, my amazing employee "A" of 3.5 years lets me know her last day is going to be March 1st. She's leaving for personal reasons which are 100% legit and I know it was a hard decision for her to make. Still, I am really going to miss this girl, as will everyone she works with on our team.

And on a somewhat selfish note, this also means a lot more work for me as I fill in for her responsibilities and start the recruiting process. So that's a lot to plan for, but at the time all I felt was just....loss. And pride, because I know it took a lot for A to make this decision and prioritize herself and her family over work. I'm just sad about it. And a tad overwhelmed, but I can manage, right?

February 14

Partner is still very sick, but by the end of the day he's starting to improve. Unfortunately, my wonderful cat Killick passes away in the evening. This was not out of nowhere - he's a senior cat who was diagnosed with hyperthyrodism a few years ago, which he never quite bounced back from despite our and our vet's best efforts. The last few months he's been losing weight, but we actually thought he was doing a bit better because his activity and social time was increasing. However, in the last week he hadn't been very interested in food and was sleeping more than usual, so we scheduled a vet appointment to see what was up, but it was not to be.

I miss my kitty 😭

February 16

Alas, I could not escape the Covid 🤒. I wake up with a high fever, achy all over and sweating. So I cancel my oral surgery and spend the next 2/3 days mostly horizontal. I do have some very creative fever dreams though.

Today

I am mostly recovered from Covid. I've spent the last few days getting my life back together as during all the above events and illness my partner and I ran out of pretty much everything in the house (like groceries and toilet paper) in addition to falling behind on things like house cleaning and groceries. We've also been spending a lot of time focused on our other cat, Mia, who is adjusting to being an only cat now. She's gettting there, and so are we.

I'm still a little behind at work, but catching up as I can. Luckily, my position allows me to set my own schedule and priorities and I have never been more grateful for that kind of flexibility.

Emotionally, I'm a little all over the place. I have broken down in tears over tiny things, like me forgetting an item at the grocery store. I have times where my mood is downright awful and I'm mad at everything. I have had trouble sleeping and maintaining focus, times when I'm hyperproductive and times when I really just want to do nothing but zone the fuck out. I know it's going to take time to find my equilibrium again, and I'm doing my best to give myself the grace to do that.

Anyway, there's no real point to this story other than FUCK this stupid shit show of a month. If you made it this far, thank you for reading, and I hope your month has been better than mine!

[quordleona03]

Not quite a Christmas story

My mother was born in 1935. In 1940, she and her mother went as refugees from WWII to Canada, where my mother spent the next five years in a Catholic boarding school and my grandmother worked in a munitions factory and they saw each other on Sundays. My grandfather was in the navy. After the war, my grandparents had two more children, hated each other, and divorced in 1969 when their youngest child turned 18.

My mother came to Scotland in 1959, taught school for a year, met my father, went back to Canada to get married, and came back to Scotland in 1964. She had three children, and when we were young, she gave us a wonderful childhood with - moments.

At Christmas she would devise each of us a stocking with small presents she had bought through the year, just right as stocking-stuffers, and also always fruit and nuts tucked into the toe. She taught each of us to cook - I have been baking expertly since I was eight years old. She taught each of us to read, and never banned us from reading any of the books that crowded our family home. She gave fantastic birthday parties, and because my birthday falls inside the Christmas holiday season when everybody is partied out, she also used to organise a second party for me elsewhen in the year - at Hallowe'en, or in the summer holidays. She liked to give thoughtful perfect presents but when I made clear my favourite present was a book token and an afternoon in the biggest children's bookshop, that's what she gave me, plus oddments to unwrap so it wasn't just booktoken envelopes to open on the day. She took us to a cottage in the Borders every summer, a 4-room cottage with no electricity, water heated by the fire in the living-room, and we spent golden weeks there.

She got me my first set of adult library cards, two years early, when she realised I had literally run out of books to read in the children's library. She gave me blank lined notebooks for journals, and my first two manual typewriters, and bought me paper and pens. She read aloud to me: The Once And Future King, and Ivanhoe, and The Lord of the Rings.

And then there was a birthday party that was cancelled at the last minute because my mother realised she had left too much undone and couldn't do it: the teacher told the class and told me separately and sent me home early and must have told the children not to tease me about it. There was any number of times I got screamed at for offences I didn't understand at the time (and only sometimes understand now). There was the strange distancing that happened between ten and seventeen, as I became less and less able to fit the mold of the daughter she wanted. I came out to her at seventeen - she was almost the first person I told: and she was horrified, and I lived for the next two years in an atmosphere of unremitting disapproval. The disapproval didn't end when I was 19: I left home.

My mother was homophobic til the day she lost consciousness: she just got better at hiding it over the years. The measure of her love for me is that despite wishing all of her life that I would stop being a lesbian, she never could bring herself to disown me.

My mother dealt with my neurodivergence - I am dysphraxic - by deciding it wasn't real: I spent decades of my life not sure why I was always so clumsy and so kackhanded with anything requiring delicate coordination. She didn't want me dysphraxic any more than she wanted me lesbian.

I found a page in one of her journals, a Christmas fantasy of her family in ten years time: of her oldest child married and with kids, her youngest child married with another kid. I was not in this fantasy: the unsatisfactory daughter.

My mother was a hoarder: it took me months to clear her last home of stuff. I found the teddy bear she'd had since she was five, tucked away in the clutter, and gave it to the undertaker to include in her coffin at the funeral. It seemed to me she should go with one of the things she'd loved and kept in life. My mother hoarded things. She and my father, who died ten months before her, lived in a large flat that was cluttered wall to wall with things - with books, of course, and with food, with clothes she no longer wore, gifts she had never given, inheritances and things picked up in charity shops, the once-useful and the might-be-useful and the someday-useful. And papers. And journals. And spent lottery tickets. She hadn't held down a job since the 1980s, and she had - from her journals - sometimes elaborate fantasies about what she'd do when she won.

We were waiting for the paramedics to take my mother to the hospital after the last bad fall she had, and because it wasn't an emergency they were very late. I made us cocoa and toasted cheese sandwiches in my mother's kitchen, while we were waiting. The last meal I made for her. I can't remember what the first one was, when she first showed me how to cook.

A couple of months later, I invited a couple of volunteers from a soup kitchen/food bank to come over and take what they wanted from the kitchen. I had meant to have it better organised but when they came, they looked at me, and at my mother's kitchen, and one said "You haven't been able to get started on this, have you?" and I said no, and they said "we'll do it". They boxed up everything they could take with them, and sorted the rest into cardboard boxes of what a charity shop would likely take and what should just go to the dump, and somewhere, I hope, some of that hoard of mugs are still in use, being drunk from with hot tea by someone who could really use a cuppa.

My mother died on this day, on 23rd December 2015, and over the years I have dealt with the anniversary of her death in different ways: I've gone on holiday, I've gone swimming, I've gone for a walk, I've gone to see Cats the Movie, I even one year worked a full day at work because Christmas fell on a Sunday and they were offering full hours to anyone who wanted to work the last Friday.

This year, I'm tired and in recovery from COVID. I've made bread, done laundry, done the dishes, had two naps, tried to read a Mira Grant novel, changed the cat litter trays, taken the rubbish out, gone for as long a walk as I could manage, and I'm still sitting here, contemplating my mother's life and death and legacy and wishing for, I don't know what.

My father's life is so much easier: he had a happy childhood, work he loved, a retirement spent writing and walking and caring for his wife. My father's life makes a satisfying story: he wrote some of it down in a memoir for his children.

My mother's life was strange and muddled and broken and full of cluttered things and unfocussed anger and a lot of misery. And yet: I still miss how she would say my name, sudden and joyous, "Oh, it's you!"

[slickshoesareyoucrazy]

Unprepared

It's been 7 weeks since A died. And while I am still crying every day, which is concerning me and J and our son and probably at least some of my coworkers at the library, I'm not actually feeling 'bad.' Not like the immediate aftermath, anyway. I can't say anything has gotten 'better.' I think I'm just more used to crying now, which I guess if you stand on your head to perspective shift, could be considered 'good.'

Anyway, nearly everyone I've spoken to about A on any level has mentioned how sudden and unexplained his death was, and how that somehow is expected in some way to be 'worse,' on some horrible gradated scale of Terrible when it comes to losing someone you love. It's another weight that slides the scale down the bad line further. 'So young,' and 'so sudden,' are things so many people have said to me in response to my grief, and I know they mean it to acknowledge how hard it must be to deal with and how much extra or at least different...sharper...the pain must be. Because I was unprepared for it.

There is some truth to that, I suppose. I am still actively grieving A every day. Part of that is definitely because I never expected to be grieving him. But I honestly was unprepared for the first horrible death I experienced in my life too.

I was 11 when my grandmother who really did most of my parenting...who while she was never listed as my legal guardian, is who truly raised me...died. She had colon cancer. She was 76. She was sick for over a year and in at home hospice for almost 6 months. Everyone else around me (all adults) knew she was dying. But no one ever told me. No one actually ever talked about the fact that she was dying. I thought she was just sick. Every other time anyone in my life was sick, they got better. Whenever I was sick, I got better. She wasn't in a hospital; she was at home. She still smiled at me; still hugged me every day; still cared about me more than anyone else did. No one said, 'Gramma is going to die soon.' Not even in a euphemistic, religion-loaded, 'soft,' way. I guess they thought that 11 year old me would be able to just know or deduce that she was dying...that I'd know what hospice was...without them ever saying anything. But I didn't know. So it was a terrible shock when it happened. Even though no one else was surprised at all, and in fact, several people were relieved, including my mom. She was tired of taking care of my Gramma after working all day.

I cried so much at that visitation, my mom told me I was embarrassing her, that I was too emotional, and didn't let me attend her funeral. That's when I learned to not cry in front of other people, to try and keep it quiet when I cried alone, to try and limit showing big feelings to anyone about anything.

That's all out the window now. I cry every day. I cry in public. I'm crying so much more and so much more often and in so much space that the people around me are unprepared for it. I'm unprepared for it. But maybe it's not 'worse.' Maybe I need to cry. Maybe I've always needed to cry and now I finally can and do and I'm starting not to care that I'm doing it. And maybe that's coming from being unprepared.

[karrenseely]

A Letter to my bio mother.

A few years ago my mother wrote me out of the blue, after having not spoken to me for 20 years. She ignored me when I finally managed to graduate college despite all she'd done to me, she (and the rest of the family) ignored me at my father's funeral, she ignored me when I graduated from medical school. That first year after she and dad disowned me I wrote to them about once a month. I never got a response. That Christmas I stopped by our house and dropped off Christmas presents for everyone (Mom, Dad, Sister). Mom wouldn't even look at me and retreated into the house. Dad basically told me to go away, I didn't belong there anymore. It hurt, a lot. Then a few weeks went by, and I got a box in the mail, I was excited because the return address was my old home, I thought maybe, they've finally accepted me and come to their senses. I opened the box and was immediately crushed, they had sent back all the gifts I'd worked so hard to find for them, unopened, still in there wrapping paper. So needless to say, I was very surprised to see she had messaged me on FB, and that old hope resurfaced once again. I opened the message and was crushed... once again. She had sent me a message to yell at me. This is the letter I would have liked to send back. Instead, I blocked her because it hurt so much, even now I second guess that decision because a part of me still wishes she could have loved the daughter she had.

The message I am responding to: "I just saw your go fund me page. Our hope in "cutting you off" was to leave enough time and space for you to grow up and really think about the huge step you were wanting to take. It didn't help that YOU told us it was our fault and then demanded that we pay all your medical expenses to have the surgery. You are as much to blame for the family separation as your Dad and I are. I will accept my part of that blame. I knew when we did it that we might never see you again but it was a risk both of us were willing to take because we were hoping you would not choose to take such a difficult path through life. It was a gamble and we lost, but so did you. You have a wonderful, intelligent, funny, sweet, smart family members you have never even met. Erin's kids, Paul and Kayla. Your loss, believe me. They are great great kids and that is not a comment just from their grandmother. We hear it all the time from other adults that get to know them. When you left I lost my only son, then I lost him again when you had the operation. Not having children you can not begin to comprehend the depth of that pain. Losing a parent doesn't even come close. God gave me a second chance to have a son in my stepson, Karl, and now that has been snatched away from me as well because he committed suicide in April. Do not underestimate the amount of pain and loss your family has gone through because of your choices. Your Dad, Mother, Grandma Seely, Grandpa Seely, and all your aunts and uncles grieved for you and the person we all knew and loved named [Deadname]. Fortunately, your Grandfathers never knew what you were doing as it would have destroyed both of them. Life changes ALWAYS leave huge ripples in the pond. I wish you well in your chosen life but don't place all the blame on the family YOU chose to leave behind."

Dear Mom,

I do not understand you. I am your daughter. I have always been your daughter. On some level I'm sure you've always known this. I'm sure as a toddler I said I was a girl. I remember doing lots of things that were not typical for a little boy, but certainly were for a little girl. So I'm sure you knew, though you denied it. You denied me.

I will always be grateful to you for letting me play dolls and barbie with my sister, for letting me get a doll instead of a transformer, for teaching me how to cross stitch, knit, and encouraging me to read. For teaching me how to do household chores and how to cook. For making sure I took my medicine and staying up with me at night when my asthma was bad, for sending me to camp Not-A-Wheeze, for not letting me die on those horrid nights when I couldn't breathe. For saving my ankle and my ability to walk. For going to bat for me when that teacher really didn't like me because I had such a hard time acting like a boy.

But this is also why you hurt me so deeply. Because I mistook you loving the son you thought you had, that you wanted, for loving me. I was hurting so much. By the time I came to you, I was desperate. I was already self harming, though you never knew. I had already gone through the process of accepting I was trans, not that I liked it, but it was the only way I knew of to find any relief from the torment of not being allowed to be me. I was dying. I was already fighting the shame I'd been taught. I'd already learned it was bad to be a girl, and that it was doubly bad to be girl that everyone insisted was a boy. I had desperately tried to hide it, I was terrified of being friends with girls, because I thought if I was, someone would learn my horrible shameful secret. I had been dealing with these feelings for years before I came out to you. And I knew, if I didn't get help, I wasn't going to survive. So I came to you. But you denied my feelings and called it a phase... except this phase had lasted for years, when I look back, it lasted as long as I could remember, though I didn't understand that at the time.

I was so lost and confused, my parents didn't believe me. I didn't know what to do, so I tried to last a little bit longer. I think I came out to you again. This time you denied I was your daughter again. Things were bad, really really bad. By that time, puberty had already started and was destroying what little comfort I could find in my body, worse, to my horror, my voice started to drop. I knew there was treatment to stop this from happening, and I so desperately needed it. But everytime I asked for help I was denied. Worse, anytime I couldn't hide the fact that I was your daughter you yelled at me, shamed me, made me believe I was freak, a pervert, a monster. I felt so helpless, so hopeless, and so very very alone. I broke. I know I stopped growing mentally at that point. I dissociated so much, that what memories I have are fragmented, and I got stuck at age 15/16 for years. I couldn't cope with the world anymore. Somewhere in there you sent me to a counselor. I didn't know you were hoping he would erase me. And he hurt me, he hurt me so much. I thank the gods and the universe that you didn't force me to continue seeing him, and instead sent me to the only female psychologist in that office... but it was in that office, it was impossible to fully trust her, I never was able to talk about how I was really feeling, because I never felt safe in that office.

I stopped feeling safe at home too, after I came out to you. My parents who were supposed to love, accept, and support me, instead turned on me. Demanded I explain why I existed, why I knew I was a girl. Adult's can't even explain this, and you demanded this of me, a child. And no matter what explanation I managed to draw up, it was never enough for you. Instead you twisted it, and used it to dismantle any self worth I had, any sense of safety I had with you. For some reason, looking back I have no idea why, I trusted you right up to the day you disowned me. I thought I deserved everything you did to me. I thought that if you didn't love me, then no one could. I never even tried talking to my only two real friends I had after you disowned, as I was convinced they would hate me too if I came out to them. Thankfully, I was wrong about that.

Sometime later, I began to learn that what you did to me was wrong, I began to understand it was abuse, but it didn't really sink in, until I was at a queer youth retreat and one of the sessions was about the power and control wheel. It was then that I really saw what you had done to me, that what you were doing to me was abuse. You gaslit me from the day I was born, and everytime I tried to tell you otherwise, you told me I was crazy, I was shameful, I was broken, I sick, I was wrong, I was sin incarnate. You did everything you could to try to control and erase me short of outright murder. Worse, you actually told me you wanted me dead. What kind of mother tells her daughter she wants her daughter dead?

At some point, my maternal grandmother got a hold of me. I think it was a letter via snail mail. I learned that she still wanted to have a relationship with me. She didn't understand, and she constantly misgendered me and dead-named me, but she at least talked to me and welcomed me into her home. Then a few years later after she moved into assisted living for awhile, she disappeared. There was no forwarding address, I had no way to contact her, you stole her away from me. By that time she didn't have the cognitive faculty to get a hold of me on her own. I never saw her again. You took away the only living relative that still wanted a relationship with me... Then years later, you dangled her contact information in front of me, like I had done something wrong by not talking to her all that time. And you told me she was dying. But by that time I had already grieved for her, I couldn't go through that heart break again, and she was so far into her dementia that she wouldn't remember me anyway... why reopen those old wounds. Today I understand that was my CPTSD (from you, my peers, and society's abuse) telling me to avoid anything that would hurt.

Then, seven years ago... gods has it been seven years? It still hurts so much. Seven years ago, you apparently found out about my project to try and create a halfway house for homeless LGBT+ kids. You decided to write me the last message I ever got from you. You blamed me for what you did. That somehow it was my fault that you disowned me. You know, that day that you cut me out of your life, out of our entire family, you showed me your love was conditional. I remember you telling me that you'd take me back if I only would continue to pretend to be a boy for you, but you would be monitoring me to make sure I wasn't letting the real me out. You shattered the love and trust I had in you.

Even if I figured out somehow that I was wrong and I was a boy, how could I go back to you? To parents who never really loved me enough to let me figure everything out, to parents whose love was so conditional. And yet you say you did it for me. That is a lie. You did it for yourselves in a last ditch effort to try and continue to control me to be your imaginary son. You didn't do this to help me understand "what a huge step [I} was wanting to take." I was already well aware, I had spent years figuring that shit out even before the first time I came to you looking for help. I knew what I was in for, I'd had flashes of it for years in the abuse I suffered from my peers when they saw the girl I was trying to hide. I knew it from all the research I had done, from the fellow trans people I knew online by that time.

I didn't choose to be disowned. You chose to not love me, accept me, or support me. You chose to disown me. I didn't have any say in the matter. And yes, how you chose to respond to my distress, my suffering IS your fault. Shaming me for being your daughter when you wanted your imaginary son. Shaming me for being a girl, for teaching me that I was something that needed to be hidden, something horrible, something icky, for forbidding me from talking to my sister about it, the only other person I had ever considered talking to about it after coming out to you, why? The only conclusion I could reach at that age is that I was so sick, so horrible, I would somehow corrupt her too. So I obeyed you and no, I never told her. She learned some of it on her own, but because I wasn't allowed to talk to her about it, she considered me a pervert. I never discussed any of it with her... not until after you disowned me.

So yes it is your fault. I WAS A CHILD! Worse, I was your child! Of Course I thought you would help me! It's why I came to you in the first place, it's why I kept coming to you. Because I WAS YOUR CHILD! I was your daughter and I was suffering so much. The only two paths I could see, that I could ever see was death or finally getting to be me, in a body that didn't constantly hurt me so much. But you denied me all of that. You denied me. You chose to do all of that to me. For what? For an imaginary son that never existed? You broke me. Of Course I blame you for that. I blame you for all the emotional abuse, neglect, and medical neglect you did to me. You were my mother, you were supposed to love ME, not some imaginary person you wanted instead, but ME. It is beyond twisted to me that you think I am as much to blame for what you chose to do to me. I didn't have a say in the matter. I had two options: live and be myself (while apparently losing everyone I ever loved) or dying. I chose to live. I refused to die for you. You haven't accepted any blame at all. You never did. All you do is try to gaslight me into believing that my being your daughter is somehow my fault. I didn't get the choice. You decided to create me. You decided to give birth to me. You decided to accept the responsibility of raising me. And then when I refused to be what you wanted... you threw me away like garbage. The only reason you never saw me again is because you never accepted that you had a daughter instead of a son. You never loved me. You wanted me dead and told me so yourself. With everything I went through growing up, it's a miracle I survived. To this day, I don't know how I did. Not with how much you tried to destroy me. You gambled with my life, hoping I would choose to continue to pretend to be your son, that I would continue to endure the constant torture of not being me. I would not have survived that. I barely survived at all.

Thank you for reminding me how much you took away from me. You took away my parents, my sister, my extended family. You took away everyone I ever loved. Thank you for reminding me that I have never been allowed to meet my niece and nephew, who by now are adults living their own lives. I pray to this day that neither of them were LGBT+, given the family they grew up in... it would have been a nightmare for them. I still grieve that they never tried to get in touch with me, that my sister never allowed me to be part of their lives.

You said when you disowned me you "lost [your] only son." But that's the whole problem. You never had a son. And you refuse to see this. To this day, you deny my existence, and blame me for it. And you assume I don't have kids. I have 3 wonderful kids who are becoming adults as we speak, or are approaching adulthood far to rapidly for my liking. They are amazing. And unlike my niece, nephew, and step brother, you chose to never have them be a part of your life. I am so proud of them. So please don't presume to know how I would understand the pain if I were to lose them. And please don't presume to think that the pain of losing a child is the same as losing everyone you ever loved, of knowing your parents hate you, of knowing your mom wanted you dead. The pain of knowing this when I was still just a child. These are two entirely different traumas. Please don't equate them. And please don't presume that it wasn't you who chose to throw your child away like she was garbage.

When father died, you ignored me, you tried to keep me away from his funeral. If my sister hadn't called me, I would never have known. And then at the funeral you never acknowledged my presence, no one from our family did. Instead you had your church lackeys try to push me out the door while I sat in that chair weeping, grieving. Did you know, that it was then that I finally understood you were not ever going to love me, accept me, or ever be a positive part of my life.

My grandfathers never knew the real me, because you made me believe telling them would kill them. I remember I tried reaching out to one of my uncles once, but it was such a hard conversation, and it only felt like they wanted to get off the phone. They never called me back or tried to reach out to me. No one except my maternal grandmother ever reached out to me in any positive way. So please don't tell me they all grieved for me, they chose to never talk to me again. They chose to cut me out of their lives as much as you did. I have very little sympathy for them, given when you disowned me I was homeless. I couch surfed throughout that summer. I really needed their help, since you refused to help me. Had it not been for some amazing friends letting me stay with them, and helping me get back on my feet, I would have ended up on the streets, like so many homeless LGBT+ kids. They chose to do that to me, just as you did. So no, I won't cry any tears for them choosing to throw me away too.

You mentioned that I had a step brother, whom I was never able to meet. You seemed to think you could replace me with him. I feel so bad for him, that you would put that burden on him. And then before I even knew I had a step-brother, he took his own life. I wonder every day if it was because he was LGBT+ and the abuse he suffered killed him. I wonder all the time if you abused him like you abused me. I wonder, what if he had been able to talk to me, get support from me, if he'd still be here. It hurts to know he died by suicide, because I wonder if it was for the same reason I almost died. I will always wonder...

You wrote this letter hoping to hurt me I think. You succeeded. You hurt me again. I had managed to live my life, find a family for myself. A family that actually loves me for me. Whom I can share all the joys and sorrows of life with. Whom got to see the joy I experienced when I finally got to be myself. When I didn't have to hide anymore. Who got to see me graduate college, who got to see me go to medical school, who saw me graduate and flourish. With three wonderful children that I helped to raise, and 6 others that are like nieces and nephews to me. But out of the blue, you wrote to me, to try to hurt me again. For what? Because I wanted to help other LGBT+ kids who went through what I went through? How petty is that? And yet despite everything I had accomplished, everyone I loved currently. You still managed to find me and hurt me again.

The day I got that message from you, was the day I was finally able to make a choice about our relationship. I'd never been able to before. It was the day blocked you from contacting me on FB ever again. Please don't try to contact me again. You made your choice, and it is apparent to me that you will never acknowledge what you did to me. How much you hurt me. How 27 years later I'm still in therapy over what you did to me. I've long since lost hope that you'll ever tell me you love ME and that you're sorry.

Sincerely, your daughter, always,

Karren

[wildswrites]

fire and brimstone ;

prompt from @flashfictionfridayofficial​​ !! word count : 864. context : 30+ hours post zombie outbreak, stopping for a break. content warning : death [zombie] mentions.

“Do you think we’ll go to space again?”

The stars are twinkling tonight, light pollution washed out more than usual. In the back of my mind I know that means that half the county is dead and gone, corpses shuffling around with the rest of ‘em. I try to keep my thoughts away from that shadowed corner as it threatens to overtake me, but that is easier said than done. Still, I refuse to be cowed by this internal negativity. 

“Now I’ll go along with a lot of things for your benefit, but I’m not going to sit here and pretend to believe that you have been to space.”

This earns a giggle, and with a start I realize that it is the first one I’ve heard since that conversation beneath the magnolia trees. It’s hard to reconcile that this particular conversation was only a day and a half ago; in truth it was another lifetime, when we worried for funerals and going away parties, ice cream sundaes and the merit of fruity toppings against chocolate. Thirty-six hours, give or take. Unbelievable. When I want to take her hand this time, I do not resist.

(continued below cut)

“I meant as a species, but I like the way you think,” she replies, in that voice that means she’s really putting some thought into it. The knuckles of her free hand scrub absently at the underside of her chin - just short of the typical finger and thumb posed for deep thought. “Have you ever wanted to see the stars up close?”

I haven’t, but I don’t think there is a soul in this county - dead or alive - that thinks in the same way that Sienna does. When we were kids, someone spread a rumor that she was from another planet, not just another state. It was cruel in the way that kids are cruel, but she seemed to have no problem with it even then; she has always been sunshine incarnate, and I am glad for that now.

“I don’t think we can actually see the stars up close,” I say rather than voicing any of that, because that way lies danger. “Fire and brimstone and all that.”

“Fire and brimstone?” She huffs out a little laugh, scarcely more than an exhale. Her thumb is caressing slow and light across the top of my hand, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It takes everything in me not to stare down at our interlocked hands. She continues, “and here I thought your side of the family didn’t go to church.”

“You have to admit that the stars are more interesting than what some god may or may not have in store for us.” There are few in this town that I would dare say any of this too. Religion is the lifeblood of the American South, and it is horrible enough that most of my family lives openly in sin. It’s easier if it goes ignored. “At least we can see the stars.”

“Some people think that they can see the gods.”

I look at her now, but she is not looking at me. Just as under the magnolia trees, her gaze is focused skyward. Though the stars enchant me, twinkling above and so distantly, Sienna is right in front of me now. Sienna, whose magic awoke in my defense. Sienna, who speaks of past lives as if she is collecting them. Sienna, who will make it home with me or be the end of us both. Maybe then I can gather the courage to tell her the truth - about me, about my family, about us. The possibility of it all is terrifying and invigorating at once, and when I squeeze her hand, I garner her attention at last.

“Are you sure you don’t have anyone that you want to look for?”

She was in foster care after she lost her parents, but I don’t know much more than that. Were they kind? Did they treat her well? Were they consistent? Did she keep in touch with them after she aged out of the system? To that end, there are many things I don’t know about Sienna’s adult life - obstacles that could stand between the realization I made just over a day ago. I have to ask again, or I will drive myself wild with the questions rattling about my brain.

“Just you,” she says in a way that feels like she must know all of the words that I do not dare speak. She glows, and then I realize that she is truly glowing, golden magic shimmering just beneath her skin as if it runs through her veins. Maybe it does. She releases me and stands, immediately offering me her hand once more. “Come on. We can get a little further tonight.”

Never could I have imagined that it would be so difficult to cross the county. Never could I have guessed that it could take this long, or that it would be this full of danger. Never could I have expected exactly who I would have at my side, nor how much I would want her there.

I take her hand, and we go.