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everlarkficexchange · 4 years

Text

the song of my heart (plays in you)

Written by: @thelettersfromnoone

Prompt 108: Everlark fall for one another over a blood transfusion. It happens not once, but twice. His blood runs through her veins, and now hers runs through his. What are the odds they would save each other’s lives? [submitted by @mandelion82]

Rated: Teen and up; mentions of: car wrecks, physical and mental trauma, amputation.

Tags: One-shot, Soulmates, Time Jump(s), Blood-Oaths.

Word count: 2342.

Notes: Unbetaed. All mistakes are my own. Thanks to @javistg and @xerxia31 for being amazing hosts for this exchange ❤️

“The blood [of the covenant] is thicker than [the] water [of the womb].”

“Mama, tell the story again?” Grey eyes peek up shyly through dark eyelashes, fingers curling the folds of her mother’s nightgown. “ ‘bout the dream-people?”

“It’s late, darlin’,” Mama murmurs with a soft smile. She presses a kiss to her daughter’s brow. “Papa will tell the long version tomorrow, hm?”

The girl’s lower lip pops out in a pout- papa is the better storyteller, but she wants to hear the story tonight. She snuggles against her mama’s belly, whispering a ‘night-night’ to the baby they say is growing in there.

“There once was a boy who was called to war, to fight for a king in a land far from home. Though he survived many times in battle, one day, an enemy struck him, and he was hurt, something terrible. At death’s door, his friends brought him to a healer’s house, who saved his life. As he recovered, he grew to love the healer’s daughter, and she grew to love him. In time, when he was recovered, his king came calling on him again. Before he left, the boy and the healer’s daughter made a blood-oath. They drew their own blood, and held their wounds against one another. They vowed that, from that moment until they met again, the song of their blood would call out for one another, no matter how far.”

Her little hand reaches over to mama’s, pressing their palms flush. “Like this?”

“Mhm,” Mama interlaces their fingers, kissing her daughter’s knuckles. “Just like this. Every night, while he was away, all they needed to do was close their eyes, and they could feel one another’s feelings, and see through one another’s eyes.”

“Till forever?” The little girl’s eyes are growing heavy, a yawn coming in spite of her best efforts. “Mama, it’s til’ forever, right?”

Mama doesn’t answer straight away. When she does, it’s soft as a butterfly’s flight; “Till forever, until they found each other again.”

The little girl’s breathing evens out, eyes slipping shut.

(She’s always wanting a happy ending.)

She’s twelve and using the computer unsupervised the first time she looks it up on a whim. She is meant to be researching poetry, but that quickly becomes dull.

Instead, the rabbit hole of the web sucks her in.

According to the internet page that comes up, a Blood-Oath Soulmate is defined as a myth, steeped in legend: a couple who, when faced with separation, make a blood-oath that allows them to see, hear, and feel one another across the thousands of miles.

The origin, exactly, is unclear. It’s a myth with several cultural variants- in her own region, Twelve, and in the northern regions of Åtta, Tio, and Tretton, the war is won, and the boy returns to the healer’s daughter. By contrast, in the southwest, they say the boy earned a glorious warrior’s death, and the girl grieves but honors his memory. In almost all the other regions, the myth is drawn out, many side-adventures and evils hinder the boy’s path home, and by the time the boy finds his way back to his love, amidst a continent of misery, they both are old and grey. It’s not clear where the myth started, some say it’s a retelling of an old Sumerian tale; others, that it comes from Viking oral lore. Some, still, argue that they all are true, that the same fate spreads itself throughout time, throughout the world, in different ways.

All modern experts, essentially, concur on the matter of the story’s implausibility. The human body replenishes its blood count within weeks, one discussion board points out.

It was just a myth to make humans feel their love could be impermeable, or withstand the tests of distance and challenges, claims another. Or, one user with a profane avatar states, the modern meaning is just guess-work and the cultural context and any kernels of truth will forever be lost.

And everyone knows there’s no such thing as a soulmate.

Kat feels her stomach clench as she quickly exits the browser, lonely in the wake of her father’s death, and her mother’s subsequent depressive episode, and still clinging to her mother’s hushed telling of a love that is palpable down to the bone.

(She can’t decide if knowing it’s ‘just a story’ hurts or helps more. The veneer of childhood is always treasured for a reason.)

She is seventeen when it happens.

A flash of a medical room. Harsh fluorescent lights. Thick, strong hands trying to block the light out. Starched sheets, scratching skin. A pinch of a needle and stifled shout-

She wakes covered in sweat.

Something is wrong, niggles at the back of her mind. Her pounding heart beats out wrong, wrong, wrong. She pushes it away, presses the thought down. She manages to lull herself back to sleep, a deep, imageless thing, but the wrongness sticks with her.

The next night is nearly identical, except the stranger’s hands are tearing off the bedsheets. A stump of a knee rests where a leg should extend. A panicking voice, a nurse, shouts for help as the struggling and screaming begins-

“Where’s my fucking leg?!”

Kat wakes with a jolt, strangled gasps as she pushes her own blankets off, hands grasping at her limbs, the phantom terror and horror bringing bile up her throat.

What was that?

A dreamless sleep doesn’t find her again, her eyes bruising with nights of nightmares and days of exhaustion. The hospital, the scratchy sheets, the nurses and medications and injections.

One week, then another.

She’s in Civics class when it occurs to her.

The blood drive, at the beginning of May. She’d turned seventeen, and finally weighed enough to donate blood.

Could it be…?

She sleeps in, one Saturday morning, when they are fitting a prosthetic on her stranger; crutches and halting steps as those beefy hands grip support bars.

“Just a step further,” a voice encourages.

Shame and frustration, and a deep, croaking voice lashes out of the throat-

“I can’t!”

You can, you can, you can, she tries to will the stranger her confidence.

The figure stills, and for a moment, she thinks they can hear her.

“I’m done,” they say, and in spite of the disappointment on the nurse’s face, a man in a white lab coat agrees, and helps them back into a wheelchair.

Kat feels the sinking failure, the desperate yearning to help this person, this stranger. There are only nurses and doctors, in her dreams. She knows what it means to be lonely, even when there are people around; what it means when you wake up in emotional pain, but have no one to share it with.

She wants to tell her stranger it will all be all right, but the weeks pass and she can only confide her secret to herself. They wouldn’t believe her, even if she could say it in person.

Where is your family? she tries to ask.

They never seem to hear her.

(Waking becomes harder, but she can’t confide in anyone that she wakes wishing she could live in her dreams without them thinking she’s gone mad.)

They are kneading dough, seated at a wood table in a cluttered kitchen. The prosthetic is fitting to the leg, tender today but not sore, exactly. She can smell the flour and feel the silky-smooth texture between her fingers. Smoothe jazz music is playing, from a radio over on the counter. She feels a hand squeezing her stranger’s shoulder.

“Looks good, Pete.” It’s a gruff voice, but not unkind.

“Needs to rise,” her stranger- ‘Pete’!- retorts. They don’t look up, but she can feel a flush on her ‘Pete’s’ cheeks.

“We got some coursework from the school, then.”

(She doesn’t realize this is the last she will dream of her stranger.)

The dreams evaporate, after eight weeks, as abruptly as they had begun.

In the aftermath of her first dreamless night in over a month, she wakes to the dawn breaking with no images from her stranger.

‘Pete’.

She tries to will herself back to sleep, compel visions back from the brink. It’s the first night she thinks to try and remember the names of the doctors and nurses, or the location of the hospital. The nametags are foggy in her memories, a nurse Jackie or Jenny and a last name they had abbreviated to, ‘A.’

The internet doesn’t help her any more than her own mind can. ‘An amputee named ‘Pete’ who likes to knead dough and is doing high school coursework at home’ doesn’t do much in a White Pages search.

She writes it all down, then, each snippet and sound she can recall. She keeps the journal under her mattress, knowing her mother won’t bother, and her baby sister wouldn’t dare to look.

Like a madwoman, she rereads her own accounts, adds notes to it every morning, hoping the dreams will start again. But every morning, the dreams seem more as if they were fantasies, and her journal reads like fiction.

A year passes.

Her dreams now are either blank, or memories of ‘Pete’.

She could blame it on her family friend, and his stupid insistance that she attend Prom; or maybe the girlfriends she eats lunch with, who guilt her by saying that everyone needs a life outside of school, and after-school jobs.

Kat had only driven into town because she needed a damn dress. Two weeks later, and she would have been exhausted from Prom as she crossed the school stage, collecting her high school diploma.

Nothing pans out the way she imagines it will, though.

She’s alone in the car when a truck in the oncoming lane overturns at a curve in the road.

Pain bursts on her head. Flames against her skin. Crushed metal, and broken glass. In the distant fog of wailing sirens, she can hear first responders attempting to call out to her.

The only thing she remembers seeing clearly, between the accident and the hospital, is smoke rising into a blue, cloudless sky, through a shattered windshield.

“You lost a lot of blood, Kat,” the doctor says, tone not unsympathetic. “We had to do a transfusion.”

“Oh.”

She blinks, a haze of morphling in her preventing her from fully comprehending. Some broken bones. A neck brace. Burns on her face and arms, but not as bad as they first had thought- she won’t need skin grafts.

All small mercies.

Her sister and mama are there, balloons and flowers and hugs a-plenty. Get-well-soon cards from several classmates and family friends.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” her mama murmurs, as the doctor leaves.

“Okay.”

Mama runs her fingers through Kat’s knotted hair, while her sister clings and tells her how much she loves her.

She’s not numb, not beneath the morphling. But she’s so damn tired and her skin itches under the bandages.

(She can’t comfort her family while they try their hand at comforting her.)

She is washing her hands in the hospital room sink, when she feels a jolt, a compulsion; a chill down her spine and gooseflesh down her arms. She looks in the mirror, and feels in awe, feels a foreign elation. A burst of affection, a warmth.

She can’t reckon with it, can’t justify it.

It’s just… her own face. Sloppily braided dark hair. Healing stitches on her cheek, and forehead. Silver eyes, surrounded by a bruise, set in a narrow face. She gulps, leaning in closer, and trying to grasp the sensation. Out-of-body, might be the right term- dissociative, she’d read about once, for Health and Wellness.

There’s a knock on her door, the nurse doing a check, and as Kat turns, the warmth dissipates.

The nurse comes in not long after, checks her vitals and asks a series of questions.

“My name is Katniss Everdeen.”

That warmth in her chest is back, the hair at the base of her neck stands straight.

She scrubs her hands over her face, focusing on the simple questions the nurse is asking.

“I’m eighteen years old. I’m graduating from PPH12 in Sommen in one week. I’m at Merchant Memorial Hospital.”

In the bathroom that night, she stares at her own reflection, and wonders if maybe that feeling of someone looking over her shoulder- more like looking through her eyes- if maybe….

She fogs up the mirror, and writes her room number. She stares at it, for a time, before scoffing at own ridiculousness, and wiping it away with her towel.

She only has one day left before being discharged, though she’ll miss graduation and the parties that would entail. She can’t say she is particularly disappointed; she’s never been a party person.

She’s awake when the door to her shared hospital room opens. She pays it little mind. The curtain around her bed is pulled taught, her roommate jabbering away on their phone about the food service as if this were fine dining, rather than a hospital. Kat is reading a get well card, this one signed by the whole senior class and class advisors.

There’s a thrumming in her veins, but that might be them weaning her off of the morphling.

Curtain rings scrape against metal, and she barely glances up, the nurse rounds due any minute now. Normally, though, the bubbly nurse who does the day-shift is already bustling with an overwhelming enthusiasm that makes Kat question how exhausted the nurse is at the end of the day.

Maybe it’s a different nurse or a doctor or mama, or-

The blue eyes that are boring into hers are ones she has only seen in her dreams; she can finally see blonde curls framing them, familiar thick, strong hands brushing through the curls.

“Pete?” she croaks, certain she’s finally lost her damn mind.

His eyes widen at the sound of his name, lips parting.

“I found you.”

A tone of surprise, as if he’d driven all this way, but in expectation of disappointment.

“Peeta,” he introduces himself, edging closer. His hand carefully takes hold of her own. “And… I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Katniss.”

(Her name has never been spoken as sweetly, and her heart has never felt so full.)

#thelettersfromnoone #mandelion82 #prompt 108 #Springtime Edition 2021 #submission

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kyugens · 2 years

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I want to hear more about your thoughts on Tsunade's teaching style. How would you say it compares to Jiraiya's and Orochimaru’s? Thanks!

unprompted – always accepting!

Such a great question! I love that you took the time to send me this, and I'm happy to answer! The idea behind Tsunade not being a good mentor ( read not believing in the praise = success motto ) is connected directly with her more toxic personality traits and untreated trauma. I wrote about this once, how her inability to love and be loved affected her relationship with her apprentices – it pretty much applies here too. It's not that she can't love Shizune, Sakura, or even Ino but that she refuses to! She refuses to let her affection blind her because she knows it would be a disservice to them. They asked her to teach them ( with Shizune being the exception because she didn't have a choice on the matter, and neither did Tsunade, a whole thing for another time ), and that's what she's going to do. They'll train chakra control until they pass out from exhaustion and are going to read her medical journals from dusk until dawn. They will fight and learn from each other's mistakes ( mainly Sakura and Ino. that's another thing she does: use their competitiveness to inspire their rivalry and breed animosity, because that's ultimately leading to their improvement ). It doesn't matter that your hands have been burnt from all the extremely difficult techniques, or that you're hallucinating and having nightmares from reading so much because Tsunade also wrote the worst years of her life in those pages with so many details and graphic depctions. And it doesn't matter that you broke your arm during yesterday's spar. Because life as a Kunoichi is anything but forgiving, and Tsunade, more than anyone, knows that. At any given moment, their loved ones' lives are at risk, and they could lose everything just as she did. Going easy on them, or trying to inspire love out of them for her techniques or even herself– from the way she sees it, will do nothing in favor of either Sakura or Ino. But knocking their butts to the ground and SHOWING them just how incapable they still are of protecting other people AND themselves – that should do the trick. And for Sakura? It did. But for Ino, probably not so much. And again, Shizune didn't have another option. All in all, Tsunade's default is extremely-tough love. She's probably broken and mended more bones in her apprentices' bodies than she did during the two wars she participated in. It's not what they want but what they need. Can it be qualified as abusive? Very likely. But it's not like she's keeping them hostage and forcing them to do anything. Ino left, and Shizune, at some point, also managed to put an end to it. And how it compares to Orochimaru and Jiraiya's teaching style, well... For starters, I don't think that either of them is as harsh on their students as Tsunade is on Sakura. Sasuke is naturally talented, and Naruto, regardless of how little he knows about the theory behind jutsus ( read he's not book smart ) still has access to a pretty large chakra reserve he inherited from the Uzumaki and to Kyuubi, so if he tries enough times he'll eventually get it right by sundown ( literally how he learned the rasengan! and it's a very fancy jutsu). Everything Sakura had going for her was her own determination. Tsunade is not as close to Sakura as Jiraiya is to Naruto, because she makes sure of that. But still, their relationship isn't the same as Orochimaru and Sasuke's – she doesn't have an ulterior motive to be teaching Sakura. Nevertheless, with Sakura specifically... I think she relates to her a lot, and should Sakura ever decide to stop their training, Tsunade would be very upset with it. But don't think she doesn't care for Sakura! She does! For Shizune and Ino as well! She will do anything for those girls – except let them know just loved and appreciated they are. It is... some kind of self-preservation instinct in some ways. What if other people learn just how much they mean to her and try to use it against her? Ah, there's so much to talk about it. lmao But this is enough for today. Thank you again! I loved writing this. <3

@super-kame-love

#[ ooc ⋅ answered ]#[ headcanon ] – tsunade.#tw untreated trauma #tw child abuse #not- that exactly #but kinda #anyways #thank you!!#i love writing about tsunade and her lil murder babies #[ long post ]#superkamelove

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nclson · 2 years

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** important headcanons to consider !

can they use chopsticks : yes, he’s not like awesome at it but foggy can get by. mainly he can get by because his older sister bullied him relentlessly about having to ask for the fork of shame at their local chinese takeout place growing up and sheer stubbornness let him learn.

what do they do when they can’t sleep : my man pretty regularly gets some sleep issues due to medication, but he’ll wander his apartment for a while, make tea ( exclusively the pomegranate or grapefruit one ), and find something easy to read; most of the time it’s whatever repair manual or hockey journal his dad has sent that he thought fogs would find interesting.

what would they impulse buy at the grocery store : gum, pens, magazines. nothing crazy, just stuff he see’s at the checkout line, except for pens. foggy loses pens chronically, my man puts them down and they fucking disappear? every so often he’ll see a nice pen and impulse buy it, telling himself that this time it will not go missing and this time it will become his pen and so well known for being his pen that his great grandchildren demand it as an heirloom. it never works.

what order do they do things in the shower : ( brief tw for foggy having to do things in a certain order due to ocd ) first, he washes his hands in hot water in the sink, then he gets in the shower and washes his hair twice before dropping some conditioner in it, then he washes his limbs and chest as well as stomach and back, then he washes his conditioner out. after that, he washes the rest of himself and after he gets out he washes his hands again. that’s when he brushes his teeth.

what’s their coffee order : okay with my man it totally depends: if he’s in a void of paper work and court preparation or talking to judges it’s a black filter coffee with six sugars stirred solely with one of the wooden stirrer things because spoons give him the creeps sometimes. if it’s any other time though, he’ll order whatever the seasonal drink is with extra creamer and whip.

what sort of apps would they have on their smartphone : a whole barrage of awful and credible news sources, a braille dictionary, snapchat to communicate with the youth in his life, instagram on which he solely posts pictures of dogs he meets around new york and rates them on a scale of one to ten ( one being punisher-esque, ten being downright cuddley ), subway surfer, order app for the local boba place, that self care app that offers breathing exercises.

how do they act around children : this guy grew up with one older sister and a younger one and then, when his dad remarried, another younger one. he didn’t love helping out with his older younger sister too much since she was only a few years younger than him, but he loved hanging out with his step sister because that girl was fifteen years younger than foggy. chilling with that toddler was his favourite excuse to get out of anything and everything; he taught her how to skate and throw a proper punch, and in return- now she’s in high school- she teaches him terrible new age slang to annoy everyone around him with. also, now he has about five nephews and two nieces that he adores! they endlessy turn up at the office or his apartment when their mums or even foggy just needs a break from their lives.

what would they watch on tv when they’re bored and nothing they really like is on : fogs is a real sucker for podcasts when there’s nothing to watch on tv. not necessarily true crime ( leaving the office in the office and all that ) but just podcasts where someone is rambling that he can leave on low over the speakers whilst he bustles around doing whatever. if you want super specifics though, my man casts a show from youtube to his tv called ‘ lizard lick towing ’. he loves it, he thinks it’s like being with his uncles, foggy loves how batshit insane it is as well.

tagged by @ascnsion !

tagging @diaboluse , @sevenbulletsavior , @wintershieldedheart , & you !

#* playing 21 questions ( dash games. )#* i’ll always be around ( meta. )#please tag me if you steal this bc i love to see it!

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kleptonancydrew · 3 years

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Nancy Drew and Education

So apparently the Clue Crew is full of teachers? Who knew. Well, as a former homeschooled student, current teacher, and (hopefully) future homeschooling parent/teacher I have been planning on integrating the games into lessons for a long time. Below the cut I have just a few of my many ideas (some more fleshed out than others). Feel free to use, adapt, or add your own!

SCK:

- Braille

o How blind/vision impaired people navigate the world

§ How we can make it more accessible for them

o How do braille books and printers work

- ASL

o Memorizing the alphabet and basic signs

§ Build up fluency

o How HOH/deaf people navigate the world

§ How we can make it more accessible for them

o Connections of ASL to other signed languages

§ French Sign Language versus British Sign Language

- Dangers of gas leaks

o What to do if you smell or hear gas

- Inequalities between mens and womens sporting opportunities

o See Women’s Soccer

- What are performance enhancing drugs

o What is the difference between #steroids and the steroids your doctor might prescribe

- How drug running is a gateway crime

- Why blackmailing people isn’t good

- More reasons to never move to Florida

- Why you shouldn’t go to an actual high school part one

STFD:

- Television in NYC

o Soap Operas

o How television sets work

o Role of director

o Teleprompters

o Props

o Agents

- Theatre in NY

o Broadway

§ Learn a show

o Carnegie Hall

- Dangers in the ways we obsess over celebrities

o Paparazzi

o Stalkers

o Respecting privacy

- NY taxi system

- NY regional accents

- NY as a center for immigration – salad bowl

o Ellis Island

- History of NYC

o Geography of NYC

- Typewriters

- Towers of Hanoi

- Encoding

- How to make chocolates (with or without poison)

- Read along:

o New York the Novel (Edward Rutherford)

o The Power Broker

o All of a Kind Family

MHM:

- San Francisco Gold Rush

- Earthquake and Fires in San Fran

- Golden Gate Bridge

- Angel Island

o Asian (Chinese) Immigration to the USA

- Chinese Zodiac

- Fortune telling (and why it’s not okay)

- Bed and Breakfasts

- San Francisco today

o Technology boom

o Overpriced everything

§ How this hurts established residents

§ Homelessness in San Fran

- Bandits in the American West

- Hauntings in American buildings

- How to remove and install tile

- Renovations – refurbish something

- Antiques

o Visit an antique shop

- Importance of fire safety

- How to install lighting fixtures properly

- How to fix a dumbwaiter

o How not to be a dumb waiter

- Tangrams

- What is the Victorian period

o Significance of Queen Victoria

- Read Along:

o Little Brother

o Paper Son: Lee’s Journey to America

o Angel Island Gateway to Golden Mountain

TRT:

- The French Revolution

o Marie Antoinette

o Women and the French Revolution

o Worldwide effects of the Revolution

o Historians of the French Revolution

- Writing history

o How we can focus on different events in history, how we can be sympathetic to certain people, how we can fulfill different spaces in the historical narrative, criticism of history as a field, entering history as a field

- Wisconsin Dairy industry

- Alarm systems and how they work

- Fingerprinting

- Elevator safety

- Ski lifts

o Skiing

- Vandalism

- Taking care of libraries

- Latitude and longitude

- Keeping records of good events and bad events

o Nothing you do will ever stop me from loving you

- Some people keep different sleep schedules

- Journalism

- Making translations

- Why France has different holidays – to keep the ski lodges from getting too full

FIN:

- History of theatre spaces

- Use of film at theatres

- Magicians

o Houdini

o Learn a ‘magic’ trick

- Library of Congress

- Demolition – wrecking balls

o What’s involved

- Plaster casts

- Historic register of buildings

o Visit a local historic building

- Price of concessions and movie tickets today

- Nickelodeons

- Celebrity stunts for attention from press

o Celebrity endorsements

- Jazz music

o Dancing

- Kidnapping stories

o What to do if someone tries to grab you

- Rubber vs. electricity

- Art/artists of the 20s

SSH:

- Numbering systems (particularly ones not based on 10)

- Cultures of South America

o Maya

§ Cultural understandings

§ Connections to what appears at Beech Hill

o Aztec

o Inca

- Myths of lesser civilizations because of European preconceptions

- Why do countries have consulates/embassies in other countries

- What is amnesia and other medical memory issues

- Provenance and why its important part one

- Roles and responsibilities within a museum

o Visit a museum

o How to be critical of a museum and how knowledge is presented to you

- Modern art

o Make your own

o Visit a modern art museum

- Periodic Table of Elements

- Positive and negative molds for casting

DOG:

- Prohibition

o Speakeasys

o Amendments to constitution

o Drinking age restrictions

§ Comparison of USA to European countries

o Connections to modern drug policies

- Recognizing and photographing local birds

- Dangers in the forest – ticks and other pests

- Why water sources are important

o Flint water crisis

- Visit a state park

o Importance of maintaining public land

- Alcatraz

- How to care for dogs

- Noise pollution

o Light pollution

CAR:

- History of carousels

o Visit a carousel

- Lathes

- Harmonicas

- Band organs

- Writing messages with lemon juice and other hidden inks

- How to iron

o How not to iron

- How to make a sundae

- How amusement park rides are designed

- Soldering

- What is parole

o Welcoming those who have been in prison back to society

o Problems with the American prison system

§ How it disproportionately affects minority groups

o What can be done in prison reform

o Abuses in prison

o Making mental and spiritual help and guidance more available

o Making sanitary products available

o Prison for profit hurts everybody except the prison owner

o Educational opportunities for those in prison

o More half-way help

o Juvenile sentencing reform – more out of system help

o Respecting humanity of prisoners

o Ending the death penalty

- Depression

o How to get help

o How to help others

o Dealing with loss

DDI:

- Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest

- Orcas and other whales

o Whaling industry in Northwest and Northeast

o Things whale products were used for

o Visit natural history museum with whale exhibition

- Visit an aquarium with a good reputation

o Problems with places that do not take care of their sea life – particularly large sea life like whales

- What is a chowder and how is it made

o Try or make chowder

- Crabs

o Restrictions on different types of crabs – what type is local

o Try a crab dish

- Importance of different knots

o Get some rope and learn how to tie different knots

- Know the NATO alphabet and letter flags

- Boating knowledge

o Go on a boating trip – know the port and starboard sides

- Learn how to kayak

- Try to learn how to skip rocks

- Visit a lighthouse

o Importance and histories of lighthouses

- Smuggling – what is it and why does it happen

- Shanghaiing

- Chess

SHA:

- The continuous oppression and mistreatment of Native Americans

o From Mayflower to Pocahontas to Trail of Tears to Dakota to DAPL to Reservations to food deserts to voting rights to much much more

§ How to support current Native voices and concerns

o Why Native Americans are not a costume

o “Possession” of Native American objects and land

§ Arrowheads and native jewelry

o Broad overview of regional Native American groups – using their own voices

§ Special focus on local Native American groups

· Is there a local museum/educational resource that is either Native created or known for respecting Native voices

o Current Native Americans of note (ex: politicians, activists, artists)

o While the previous focuses on Native Americans in the modern day USA – also discuss First Nations from Canada and Native Groups from more southern areas

- Why temperature and pan matters when baking (show what happens in the oven when it goes wrong)

- Magnets and how different metals react differently to magnets

- How to take care of a horse and other farm animals

o Visit a local farm

o Try horse-riding

- Dangers of rattle snakes and scorpions

- Lassos and how to use them

- Legends of outlaws in the American West

- Ghost towns

- Flower stitches when knitting/crocheting

- Petrified wood

- How to make a campfire

- Picking fruits and veggies when they are ready

- Flower language

- Read Along:

o Native American folk tales

o Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

o Gone Away Lake

o Black Beauty?

CUR:

- Where are the moors

- Different regional accents within the United Kingdom

- British foods

- Latin

o Learn fun phrases and prayers

- Ancestry and genealogy

o Map your own family tree and recognize family crests

o How adoption has historically been a binding and irrefutable concept for lineage

o Find places your family lived

o Leaving a history for your descendants

§ Write a story book for them

o British Royal Family

§ Why incest is bad

- Parrots and their intelligence

- Secret passages in old buildings

- Alchemy

o Connections to modern understandings of science

o Historical understandings of elements

- Astrological signs

- Witch trials

- Legends of lycanthropy and other monsters

- Importance of not taking other peoples medicines

- Runic alphabet

- Feeding your pets a healthy diet

- Typing practice

- How to embrace the idea that home taught students are evil geniuses

- Forges and melting points of different metals

- Carnivorous plants

- Succulents

- Constellations in different places

- Read Along:

o The Secret Garden

o The London Eye Mystery

o Beastly

CLK:

- Great Depression

o Causes and effects

o Who was hurt

o Who was not hurt

o Areas of America

§ Dust bowl

o Famous people and literature

o Homelessness and poverty

§ Bread lines

§ Soup kitchens

§ Anti-homelessness architecture

§ Connections to mental illness and veterans

§ How we can help those who do not have homes today

- Early Telephones

- Shakespeare

- History of Nancy Drew

o Mildred Wirt Benson

o Edward Stratemeyer

- Fishing – why different fish respond to different bait

- Orphanages in the early 20th century

- Gas prices and accessibility of cars through time

- How to make pie

- What is jurisdiction and what is significant about crossing state lines

- How do banks work

o Safety deposit boxes

- Identify theft

- How to use a sewing machine

o Sew an item of clothing

- Mini golf – why and what

- Mirrors and their usefulness

- Stamp collections

- Radios and call signs

o Comparison to modern internet forms

- Telegrams

- Read along:

o Shakespeare

§ Midsummer Night’s Dream

§ Others

o Pollyanna

o Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

o The Grapes of Wrath

TRN:

- Trains

o Steam trains

o Visit a train museum

o Take a train ride (if not a normal event)

o Importance of transcontinental railway

o Trains around the USA today

o Trains around the world (TGV, bullet train)

- Abraham Lincoln

- Mark Twain

- How to make a good burger (you leave off the PB&J)

- Slugs

- Periodic Table of Elements – abbreviations

- Gemstones

- History of Mining

o England (Newcastle upon Tyne)

o American West

o Appalachia

o Company Store

o Health issues for miners

o Danger of mines

o Current issues for mining

- Dancing the Hurley Burley

- People who collect creepy dolls

o History of porcelain dolls

- Embroidery

o How to

o Patterns/symbols

- General Stores in the American West

o Sears

- How to make taffy

- Find a well maintained and beautiful tomb and research who is entombed

- Focusing light through a magnifying glass can start a fire

- Read Along:

o Murder on the Orient Express

o Mark Twain books

DAN:

- All lessons in French

- How using different ingredients and different amounts of ingredients can affect the outcome of your cookies

- Paris métro

o History

o How to read/follow a métro map

o RER

- Montmartre and other Parisian neighbourhoods

- History of Île de la France and Square de Vert Galant Parc and Pont Neuf

- WWII and the French Resistance

o Cross of Lorraine

o Vichy France

o Abuses of the French gov’t in this period

- Paris and the fashion world

- Beauty standards and the rejection of natural beauty by society

o Dangers of weight and figure standards

o You are beautiful as you are

- Catacombs of Paris

- Famous French Dishes (from this region)

o Or Bretagne since I know and like them better

- The French Café

- Moulin in France

- Tea and how hot leaf water can taste so bad but still be good for you

- Buildings of Baron Haussmann

- Paris History

- Decoders

- Importance of vitraux historically, culturally, and religiously

- Read Along:

o Little Kids

§ Madeline

§ Babar

§ Petit Ours

§ Plume

o High School

§ Hunchback of Notre Dame

§ Les Mis

§ Dale Van Kley

CRE:

- History of Hawai’i and her native people

o How the USA screwed them over and continues to do so

§ Land colonizing today

o Listen to voices from Native Peoples

- Pearl Harbor

o USS Arizona

- Native myths and legends

- Local flora and fauna

- Surfing

- How to make bead necklaces

- Snorkeling

- Entomology

o Find some local bugs and identify and observe them

- Horticulture

o See if you can graft something

o Watch a carnation placed in water with food dye

o Regrow a fruit or veggie from the leftovers

- Go looking for seashells – see how many complete shells you can find

- Be aware of pesticides and the dangers they offer

o Dangers of organic food too

- Make something with pineapple in it

- Fishing – different kinds of native fish

- Volcanos

- Hula

ICE:

- Wolf sanctuaries – respecting wildlife and their place in the wild and not the domestic

o What to do if you see a wolf in the real world

- Fur trapping in Canada history

- Regions and Capitols of Canada

o Visit Canada?

- How the Canadian government works

- Use of French language in Canada

o Unique features of Canadian French

- Ice fishing

- How to cook omelets, salmon, etc.

o How to not add paprika cause like ew

- Fossils

- Radiation

o Marie Curie

- How to be a good maid

- Snowballs/ice balls

- Ice skating

- Winter weather safety

- Avalanches

- Saunas

- Birthmarks

- Fax machines

- How to not lie about bird watching

- Frozen water safety

- Modern offenses against First Nations by Canadian Government

CRY:

- Culture of the Arawak and Caraïbe

o Voodoo

- Mardi Gras in New Orleans

- Hurricane Katrina and aftermath

- French Influence

- Eyes and their parts and functions

- Teeth and their parts and functions

- Alligators in the Southern USA and how they are dangerous pests

- Graveyards/cemeteries and how to be comfortable in them

o Modern burial practices

o Why are they above ground in Louisiana?

o Places where they are running out of space for the dead

o Historic violations of final resting places

- Ventriloquism

- Lizards and how to care for them

- Rube Goldberg machines

- Curio shops

- Crystal Skulls

VEN:

- International crime

- Organized crime

- Scopa

- Italian basics

o Learn an Italian aria

- Italian food

o Not just spaghetti

- History of Venice

o Current issues in Venice

- Carrier pigeons

- Micro-dots

- “Observing the architecture”

- Try to make gelato (or just get gelato, either way you get gelato)

- Disguising yourself – put on an outfit and try to get me to not recognize you

- Picking locks

- Secret codes

- Solfege

o With hand signs

o Learn a song in solfege

- Carnivale

- Learn how the sausage gets made

o How to deal with food poisoning

- How to secure your living space against burglars

o Glass breaks, motion sensors, keypads, magnets, and more

- Read Along:

o Heist Society

o The Prince

o Merchant of Venice

HAU:

- Irish lessons (as much of this in Irish as possible)

o Why the Irish language is important

- Geography of Ireland

o Provinces and counties

- Irish names

- Why Ireland has disliked and should dislike the UK

o Historically

o Famine

§ Emmigration

o Easter Rising

o Troubles

o Present-Day

- Importance of alcohol in Ireland

o Uisce beatha

o Guinness

§ Guinness world records

- Irish music

o Irish instruments

o Learn some Rebel songs

- Ogham runes

- Irish foods

o Something with lamb, who cares what

- Don’t use friends for land development

- Bogs

- Chemical Reactions

- Rockets

- Inventions and secrecy during WWII

- Religion in Ireland

o Pagan traditions

o Christianity

o Catholic/Protestant tensions

- Irish wedding traditions

- How printing presses work

- Irish castles

- Sheep sheering/raising sheep

- Irish legends

o Fae

o Leprechauns

- Don’t drive and talk on the phone

RAN:

- Why blackface is problematic? (the fact that this needs to be said is problematic in and of itself)

- Scuba diving

- Sailing

- Bermuda Triangle

- Bats

- Primates and their intelligence

o Problems with animal research

o Koko

o Jane Goodall

- Island resort culture

- Metal detectors

- Pirates

o And the Caribbean

o Their abuses

o Different kinds

o Modern day pirates

- How do walkie-talkies work

- US mistreatment of island territories

- Read Along:

o Bloody Jack (Meyer)

WAC:

- Edgar Allan Poe

o Stories

o Baltimore

- Piano

- Victorian Dining traditions

o How to set a place for fancy dining

o How to fold napkins

o Table manners

o How to serve someone at a fancy dinner

o How courses might work

o How to use your silverware

- Why you shouldn’t go to an actual high school part two

o Just fyi – that’s not how uniforms work

§ Have a school inspired dress code for a week

- Bullying and why you absolutely will not be a bully

o How to respond to bullying

o Importance of talking to adults and counseling

- Logic puzzles

- Research the founding of a local school

- Stringed Instruments

- Plagiarism

o Turnitin

- Making sandwiches – like a good deli style sandwich

- Photography scavenger hunt – make a digital (or physical) yearbook

- Squirrels

- Orthographic projection

- DNA/RNA

- Saving every major project on three different thumb drives

- Getting along with roommates

- States and Capitals

o Countries and capitals of the world

TOT:

- Tornados

o Technology used to observe tornados

- Meteorology

- Prairie dogs

- Life on the great plains

- Great Plains Native Americans

- Small towns in the Midwest honestly be like that

- Defensive driving

- Make a disaster kit

- Know what to do in various natural emergency situations

o What is the local alert protocol

o What do local authorities recommend

- How to maintain and fix a car

- How to fix a broken device

- What is tenure

- How to budget

o Go to the grocery store on a strict budget (however much you come in under budget is your candy budget)

- Read Along:

o Little House

SAW:

- Basic Japanese phrases

o Learn to count

o Writing in Japanese

- Sudoku, nonograms, renograms

- Japanese ghost legends

- Japanese culture

o Tourism

§ Ryokans

o Space – everything small

o Politeness/formalities

o Hot springs/baths

o Tatami and paper walls

- Japanese cultural dress

o Kimonos

o Lolita? Fashion

- Japanese names

o Last name first

o How to address others in Japan

- Martial Arts

o Ninjutsu

§ Traditional tools

- Japanese tea ceremony

- Schools in Japan

- Teaching English as a foreign language

- Japanese subway/train system

- Pachinko and Japanese gaming

- Japanese vending machines

- Robotic animals

- Bento

- Japanese foods

- Origami

- How to fake a haunting

CAP:

- Basic German phrases

o How to make a German word

o Connections of German to English

- German food favourites

o Especially cakes

- Storytelling as a cultural entity

o How memory has worked differently in different times

- Glass blowing

- How castles provided for the local community

- Bavaria in Germany

o Cultural dress

- Glockenspiel

- How to make board games

- Monster stories of central Europe

- How to monitor security camera remotely

- Read Along:

o Heidi

ASH:

- Arson

o Watching how different accelerants burn a piece of paper

- All politicians are at least somewhat self-serving

o But write a letter to a local politician anyway

§ Different ways to contact elected officials, and why some don’t work

- How to make ice cream

- How a police investigation works

o Problems with police departments around the world – specifically USA

o Ways that police work unfairly targets minorities

§ If Nancy is innocent how many others are

- How to use matches and lighters safely

- Why you should not return to the scene of a crime – particularly a fire

- Making sure smoke detectors work properly and the system is connected

o We might not go to school but fire drills are still important

- What is a mass spectrometer

- Who to call if you’ve been arrested

- What to do if you get pulled over

- How the media can skew the truth and make their own narratives

- Sound mixing

- Be careful with what you say/post/record

o Keep receipts and clarify when possible

TMB:

- What not to do at an archaeological site

- Ancient Egyptian History

o Pantheon, notable figures, relevant events

o Pyramids, sphinx

o Pharaohs

- Modern Egypt

o Arabic alphabet

- History of archaeological digs in Egypt

o Why they’ve been problematic

- Dangers of the tombs

- Mummys

o How they are put together

- Tomb raiders

- Importance of water in the desert

- How to piece together a broken artifact

- How to gently brush off an artifact

- There is no such thing as a dictionary for ancient Egyptian

- Aliens did not build the pyramids

- Senet

- Desert life safety

- How mirrors can be used to light a room

- Read Along

o Rick Riordan

DED:

- Nikola Tesla

o All his fun stuff

o Tesla Coils

- 3-D printing

- Gummy fingerprints

- Faraday Cage

- Basic electric concepts

o How to build a circuit board

- Chemical safety

- How a lab might work

- Valuing different skills within academia

- Ultraviolet light

- How motorcycles work

- Freelance photography

- How to use academic databases

GTH:

- Slavery in the United States

o Origins

o ‘End’

o Civil War

o The connection to “southern culture”

o Continued abuses of Black people in America

§ Importance of recognizing Black voices and what they are saying

§ Listening even when it’s uncomfortable

§ Checking privilege when you have it

o Jim Crow Laws

- Plantations

- Gone With the Wind

o The good and the bad

- Civil War spies – female

- Carbon monoxide poisoning

- Burned out houses are not a safe space

- Do not go digging through people’s coffins – rest in PEACE

- Understanding that your family can be flawed

- If you don’t want to get married, if you’re not happy in a relationship, end it

- When a member of your family is sick you take care of them

- Make a will, just in case your cousin kills you

- Bachelor and bachelorette parties should feature activities that everyone is comfortable with

- Read Along:

o My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier

SPY:

- Scotland and their identity

o Celtic Nations

o Independent Scotland

o Call a Scottish person

- Unicorns and other mythical creatures in Scotland

- Scottish food

o The appetizing parts

- History of spies

- Biowarfare

o Code Orange

o Other teenage stories dealing with anthrax

o Current events and concerns

o Historical biowarfare (smallpox blankets)

- Ziplining

- Archery

- How to bug someone

- Tartans and plaids

o Kilts

- Augmented Reality Glasses

- Record players

- How to reset a circuit breaker

- Read Along:

o Gallagher Girls

o Code Orange

o Little House (Martha)

o Little Brother (Doctorow)

MED:

- Don’t meet your heroes

- New Zealand

o Maori culture

- Survivor style game shows and realism

- I’m not saying Aliens can’t exist, I’m saying they def aren’t involved here

- Kayaking

- Submarines and what they can do

- Turtles

- Earthquakes

- Be careful with rope bridges

LIE:

- Provenance and why it’s important part two

- Greek art and how it was originally painted vibrantly

o Abuses of Greek art through the ages

- The British Museum and the issues with that

- Greek pantheon

o Legends and notable figures

o Religious traditions

- Iliad and Odyssey

- Art forgery

- How to fire clay pots and pottery

- Memorizing lines for a play

o Staging for a play

o Role of a director

- Theatre

o Lights

o Curtains

o Fly system

o Sound

- Greek alphabet

- Historical importance of the Greek language and culture

o Alexander the Great and Hellenization

- Olympics

o Historic and modern

- Greece and the European Union

- Make something with pomegranates

- Read Along:

o Iliad

o Odyssey

o The Thief

o Percy Jackson

SEA:

- Iceland

o Culture

§ Naming traditions

o Language

o Music

o Food

- Shipbuilding

o Historic and modern ships

- Ice caving

- Northern Lights

- Tides

- Snowmobiling

- Poetry

- What is xenophobia

MID:

- Some games just shouldn’t be made

- American witch trials

o What actually went down

o Misconceptions

- Treating people with albinism as real people

- Arson is bad

- Herbal remedies and how they can interfere with modern medicine

- Witchcraft and how not to

- Salem MA

- Ignorance promotes fear and hatred so we do our best to learn about others

#Nancy Drew Games #Clue Crew #Teaching #Education #Nancy Drew

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phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess · 3 years

Text

Did you hear about the Fraktz haunting in New South Wales (1995ish)?

It has gotten a little folklore-y and probably sensationalised over the years, but the basic premise is that Dina and Hans Fraktz were one of those overly helpful religious types, and were raising their three kids (Curtis - 11, Angie -8/9?, Louisa-May - 3) just about the same.

They lived in Albury, NSW which is in Australia in a dept of housing place, not much room but they made do and were always grateful to god about it. Enough that, as the story goes, it catches the attention of some demonic entities.

Belphorn bets that Lucifer can't corrupt the whole family in under a year, and of course the overachiever that he is, the head of hell says 'Hold my beer mate' and goes to work.

It starts as every horror movie starts, weird noises, bad dreams, smell of decay, something in the corner of their eye, etc. Louisa-May is the most sensitive, and of course, gets taken first after promising something to her 'imaginary friend'.

The paediatrician isn't sure what to do when her frantic parents present at the clinic with a toddler that keeps cackling maniacally and contorting in ways bodies shouldn't. They rationalise it's probably ehhlers-danlos sydrome or a varient, and this needs further observation. A referral for a specialist is provided, and that's that apparently.

Of course with a 'sick' child, the stress and tension in the house is high. Dina and Hanz are having whispered not-arguments so the kids won't hear, and Hanz pretends to ignore that Dina's gone back to smoking ten a day to keep herself calm. In the same way she turns a blind eye to his fermented grape juice dinners... and breakfasts.

Curtis shows the stress by acting out at school, getting detentions frequently and just skirting away from suspension by technicality alone. His friends distance themselves, he has no energy for footy anymore, and he can barely concentrate because something is always just behind him. He screams himself awake, begging it to just leave him alone, he'd do anything to just be left alone.

"Anything?" the shadow asks one night in late June, detaching from the wall. There's a few variations of the pact that the demon makes, but they all boil down to 'you can't be scared of us, if you're one of us' and Curtis is so tired he accepts.

The next morning Curtis is muttering in ancient sumerian under his breath, with bloodshot eyes and a strange echo to his voice.

Hanz speaks with their local minister about an exorcism, or some sort of spiritual guidance. A bake-sale to assist in medical care is organised, and a prayer night held for the two Fraktz children.

Nothing seems to change. Dina can only turn the crucifixes in the house rightside up so many time a day, and starts to just walk past them now. Who cares anymore?

Morning and Evening prayers go by the wayside, and even saying Grace falls out of fashion because its horrifying to hear it babbled back in dead languages, or one of your children shrieking at the holy words burning her ears...

By September, Dina's exhausted. Something's scurrying in the walls at night and she knows its not rats, it can't be. She checks on Curtis and Louisa-May to make sure it's not either of them climbing the walls again.

Hanz won't get up anymore, so she tends to wander the house with a flashlight trying to find the noise, and ignoring the lingering sensation of something breathing on her neck. She ignores it, because their minister said acknowledgement gives it power.

Something has written an ominous message across her kitchen wall in what is either blood or thick jelly, and that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. Dina bursts into tears and starts yelling for whatever was doing this to get the FUCK out of HER HOUsE because she JUST WASHED THAT WALL and WHO DID IT THINK IT WAS to go doing something like that?

Something knocks a few jars over, and four slash marks appear on the bench. Dina's scared but still angry, she screams at the air, turning in every direction. "What do you want? Tell me, and I'll do it, just leave us alone!"

By the time Hanz stumbled into the kitchen, swaying and dizzy from his skinfull, Dina wasn't there anymore. Well, at least, her body was.

Hanz would tell his neighbour, the minister and his church group about finding Dina walking on the ceiling and singing an old lullaby to the sleeping Louisa-May in her arms. She reportedly screams at him when he asks what in god's name is she doing?

Terrified, Angie asks her father if she can go stay with her aunty (Meryl) in Woodonga, just a town over. Hanz readily agrees, and drives her there himself, before again seeking assistance from the church.

The minister, clearly not ever having been prepared for such things when he'd accepted the small town position, was at a loss and offered platitudes. Using comparisons to Job to try and help Hanz feel that his faith was merely being tested, and not that God had abandoned him...

For the first time in his life, Hanz began to doubt in the power of the Lord. He left a few journal entries around October 1995, many of which contained the phrases "I feel like I'm going mad" and "I know I'm not crazy, but it feels like I am", as things spiralled out of control.

The main barrier to accessing help, is that Dina, Curtis and Louisa-May were perfectly capacble of acting like themselves when people came around. So Hanz came off as having some sort of mental health episode, and the minute they left, things deteriorated again.

At his wit's end, Hanz locked himself in his bedroom and begged the lord for help. Sobbing and pleading, clenching his hands so tightly in place that his nails pierced the soft flesh between his fingers and the crucifix imprinted on his palms.

It was not entirely clear what happened after this point, as the tales all like to make interesting claims but the key point is there were no actual witnesses, except Hanz and the already 'taken'. But by the next morning Hanz had been subsumbed by the entity as well.

Despite being with her aunty, Angie continued to have nightmares that she would shriek herself awake from, well into late November. Her aunt and two adult cousins would take turns reading to her, distracting her, and reminding Angie about Christmas coming up soon so she had something to look forwards to.

They also took turns sleeping on the floor by her little bed in the guest room, so that there was always someone to point out there was 'nothing there and nothing can hurt you' when Angie woke up distressed. [Her older cousin Deliah has a book about the ordeal, and I think it might be in e-reader, but you can google it if you want.]

So Christmas rolls around, and excitement for Santa overlays even the deepest fear of shadows, which seems to breathe some life back into little Angie. Her aunt is relieved, but is still fighting to get some in-home supports for her brother, his wife and their other two children; she knows something's wrong, but suspects it might be something in the old council pipes...

Angie struggles to keep her eyes open as the countdown begins, and just managed a solitary enthused 'tooooooooot' from her party blower before falling asleep on the couch against her other cousin, Javin. The adults laugh uproariously and take photos, for when she's old enough to be embarrassed by such things.

Oddly enough, the new year seems to have snapped the rest of the family out of their funk, as if 1996 has a power all of its own. Things seem to slip back into place as if people had not been puppeted by a demonic entity for nearly 12 months...

Down in hell Lucifer was fuming and Belphorn was far too smug.

But what could be said about the bet? Lucifer was bound to lose, because he didn't possess all the Fraktz.

#i made this #its bad but i am proud #sorry #Joke

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spencers-renaissance · 4 years

Text

The Colour of Waiting is Purple

Summary: Spencer's just trying to get home as quickly as possible when a bad decision to take a shortcut down a back alley leaves him broken and bleeding into the night. // Hotch thinks it's a new case when his phone rings at 3 in the morning. It isn't.

Tags: whump, hurt/comfort, physical assault, major character injury, hospitals, dad hotch, hurt spencer, angst with a happy ending, eventual fluff

TW: graphic descriptions of violence // physical assault (no rape/non-con)

Pairing: Gen, Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid

Word Count: 3.7k

Masterlist // Read on AO3 // Bad Things Happen Bingo

Disclaimer: I'm sure there are some medical inaccuracies here, everything I know comes from google, whump tumblr blogs, and my embarrassing obsession with medical dramas. I also have no knowledge of the US medical system aside from what I know from the aforementioned sources so excuse any issues there.

Spencer doesn’t think anything of it when he leaves work at his usual time, the clock pushing midnight and the offices deserted. He packs his few personal belongings up and turns off his lamp before nodding to the janitor, the only other person to be seen, and taking the elevator down to the ground floor where there’s a little more sign of human life at least.

As soon as he steps out into the crisp winter air, he feels the exhaustion of working close to 18 hours straight on far too little sleep hit him. They haven’t even been working a case, he just gets so caught up in his reports and consults that he doesn’t notice the hours whizzing by until he looks up and the bullpen is deserted, dark except for his desk lamp.

Inevitably when spending the day at the office dealing with banalities, he finds something that captures his interest. It tends to send him on a trawl through the internet — or, occasionally, to another part of the building — looking it up in every journal he buys a subscription to until that itch is scratched.

The others always gently touch his shoulder or call out to him as they leave, which he tends to hear about 50% of the time, and Hotch especially tries to make him leave at a more sensible time, but he can’t help the way his brain works. Once it latches onto something it’s not letting go until it’s satisfied.

His feet carry him to the Metro station while his brain absently thinks over his most recent fixation, and soon enough he’s at his stop and back in DC. The streets are slightly more lively in the city, and the noise and light snap him back to reality enough to remind him of his bone-deep fatigue. He usually walks down the main streets to get to his apartment building, occasionally catching a bus if he’s earlier than usual or a cab if he’s later, but tonight he’s just longing for a quick microwave meal, a shower, and his bed. So, he dips down an alleyway and takes the shortcut home.

It’s stupid.

He knows pretty much every statistic there is to know about his city, and at the forefront of his brain are those concerning crime. DC has one of the highest crime rates in America, and a person’s chances of being a victim is 1 in 18, and although it’s slightly lower in Adams Morgan which is one of the safest, violent crimes are still 36% higher than the national average. This is decidedly increased when you take stupid risks like walking through the backstreets in the dead of night when you’re on your own.

Sadly, this does not occur to Spencer before he’s deep in the back streets of the city, being slammed ruthlessly against a wall by two men he didn’t see coming.

He’s winded immediately, and before his brain can catch up with what’s happening, a knife is being held dangerously close to his neck. All his self-defence training, all the moves Derek had spent hours teaching him when he’d first joined the BAU fly out the window and he can only breathe heavily with what he knows must be a terrified expression on his face.

“Well, well, well,” the man holding the knife leers, his arid breath hitting Spencer’s face, “look what we have here.”

The other man doesn’t speak. He’s stood slightly further back, arms crossed as he stares Spencer down. Although he’s physically the lesser threat right now, something about him has ice pooling in Spencer’s stomach.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen, you fucking pansy,” he continues, pushing Spencer further into the wall, pain blossoming across his body, “you’re gonna let us look through your gay ass purse, and we’re gonna take whatever we want from it. And then, you’re gonna let Paulie here do whatever he wants to you. He’s had a real bad day, and a pathetic little queer like you is just the punching bag he needs, you hear me?”

It’s all Spencer can do to nod his head frantically. He wants to open his mouth, to negotiate, to talk them down, but this is nothing like when he’s faced with the FBI’s most wanted. He’s in control there, he’s on his turf, his playing field, it’s his game and he knows every rule, every bylaw, every exception.

Right now, he’s completely at these men’s mercy.

“Paulie, take his bag.” The man doesn’t take his eyes off Spencer’s face, scanning his expression and body language for any sign he’s about to bolt, for any reason to put his knife to work.

He tries to calm himself down a little, enough to catch his breath at least. He’s taken countless beatings throughout his life, he knows how to survive, just… please, don’t let it be anything more. It’s all Spencer dares to hope for.

The other man steps forward and snatches his messenger bag, unceremoniously dumping the contents of his bag on the pavement. Spencer’s just grateful that he doesn’t have anything in there that hints towards his career. He knows this type: they’re intimidating but they’re easily scared. Right now, he’s a weak twenty-something on his way home, he’s not a threat to them, but who knows what they’d do to him if they realised he’s a fed?

They take his wallet and his phone before they rummage through his pockets to find some spare cash. His badge is tucked in an inner pocket in his blazer and his Quantico ID is still hanging around his neck, hidden under his scarf, blazer, and thin overcoat; he’s so glad he never took it off.

An icy tear drips down his face as he stands there, pressed against the wall, awaiting his fate. All he wants right now is to be back at home. No, that’s not right. All he wants right now is Hotch. As soon as the thought of his father-figure crosses his mind, the tears start flowing faster, desperate to feel safe again, knowing Hotch is the only person to really let him feel that way.

The man holding the knife has turned to watch Paulie sift through his bag and rummage through his pockets, but as soon as his steely grey eyes return to Spencer’s face, his face splits into a shit-eating grin. “Aw, are you crying?” he mocks, starting to laugh. “Are the big bad men making you feel scared? You gonna run home to Mommy?”

He knows that it’s exactly what the man wants, but he can’t stop the tears from devolving into full-blown sobs at his words. The whole terrifying experience, the implications, the realisations of what might be coming for him in the next few minutes start to catch up to him and he’s violently shaking as he cries uncontrollably.

“You’re pathetic,” the man spits, releasing his grip on him slightly, letting Spencer’s shaky legs collapse under him and send him crashing towards the ground. “He’s all yours, Paulie. I’m gonna enjoy this.”

His position is quickly taken over by Paulie as the other man leans against a dumpster close by to watch the show, and Spencer looks up at the intimidating man with fear blazing in his eyes as he hangs in purgatory, knowing the hell that’s about to rain down on him.

Paulie doesn’t take long to get started and he doesn’t hold back, his sturdy, black boots kicking him relentlessly in the stomach and his thighs before moving up to his chest, slamming the toe of his boots into each individual rib. Spencer can hear the other man laughing maniacally over the sound of his own bones breaking, over his own choked pleas for mercy, but it’s like Paulie doesn’t hear either of them. His face is blank as he gives Spencer the beating of his life, and it only makes him more terrifying.

He quickly gets bored of kicking Spencer and bends down to yank him up by his scarf, only to land a hard, brutal punch on his jaw, then his cheek, then his nose before dropping him down again, this time so his back is vulnerable, at the mercy of Paulie’s cruel feet.

The torture continues for a few more minutes, and Spencer doesn’t know how no-one hears his desperate cries, but they’re left alone in the alley as he coughs up blood and feels his bones break under the tread of Paulie’s boots. He’s deprived of air as his chest is stood on, as his windpipe is crushed, but finally, finally it’s over.

“I’m bored,” Paulie grunts, giving Spencer one last brutal kick to the base of his back before walking over to the other man. They both saunter off down the alleyway, not casting a single look back at Spencer lying curled up on the ground, surrounded by his own blood.

Soon, the men have left, and he’s alone with only his ragged, painful breaths for company. He can hear the hoots of a bachelor party just a street over, but no-one’s coming to save him. No-one else is stupid enough to venture down the backstreets of DC. Not with crime rates like those of their city. Not in the small hours of the morning. Not alone.

He doesn’t even have his phone to call for help.

⭐️

Hotch expects it to be work when he picks up the phone at 3am. By the time he’s sat up in bed and sliding the bar on his phone to answer it, he’s already half in work-mode, ready to call Jessica and drive Jack over before racing into work to beat the others on the team. He can already taste his first coffee of the day.

“Hello, is this Aaron Hotchner?”

It isn’t work.

“Uh, yes,” he says hesitantly, shifting upright a little further, sleep-addled mind trying to guess who the caller could possibly be, “speaking.”

“Hi, my name is Mary Kutner, I’m calling from George Washington University Hospital. I have you down as Spencer Reid’s emergency contact, is that correct?”

Hotch’s heart plummets, and he leaps out of bed immediately, ready to get dressed as the shock wakes him up. “That’s correct. What’s happened?”

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge much information over the phone, sir, but we’ll need you to come to the hospital urgently.”

He isn’t usually an emotional person, but he can feel tears springing to his eyes already. Spencer is a surrogate son to him, and knowing he’s hurt without knowing what he can actually do about it is an atrocious feeling. Please don’t let me watch another member of my family die, is all he can think as he tries to gain enough composure to reply to the nurse on the other end of the line.

“Can you tell me his condition?” he asks, somehow managing to get the words past the lump in his throat.

“He’s currently in theatre, sir,” Mary replies as gently as one can in such a professional tone. “If you come down to the hospital and report to the ER a doctor will be able to tell you more. I’ll need you to bring identification with you, please.”

“Okay,” he breathes, trying to keep as calm as possible, “okay. Thank you for letting me know. I’ll be right there.”

He throws the phone on the bed as he finishes throwing his clothes on. He packs two bags: one for him (mostly filled with things Spencer might need) and one for Jack, pulls on his coat and shoes before creeping into his son’s room and lifting him out of bed gently, carrying him down to the car.

Jack is a heavy sleeper — he frequently wakes up the next morning tucked in his room at Jessica’s, sometimes in the car on the way — and he’s endlessly thankful for that now. Explaining why he’s dashing out of the flat with a panicked look on his face to a seven-year-old is a conversation he’s glad to avoid.

He rings Jessica on the way who, used to his early morning calls waking her up, has no problem with looking after Jack.

Somehow, he manages to make it to the hospital only forty-five minutes later, and he didn’t even have to park illegally. Thank God the hospital is at least a little quieter in the dead of night.

“Hi, I’m Aaron Hotchner, Spencer Reid’s emergency contact,” he explains shakily to the woman at the front desk, laying down his FBI identification bag down as ID. He could use his driving licence, sure, but… if knowing they’re FBI agents will make any difference to Spencer’s care then he doesn’t give a damn if this could be construed in some way as abuse of his position. He’d rather lose his job than lose his son.

“Oh, hi Agent Hotchner,” the woman says with a tone of recognition, glancing at his ID before typing something into her computer, “I’m Mary Kutner, I spoke to you on the phone. Dr Reid is still in surgery but I’ll go and find a doctor who can explain the situation to you.”

He nods absently, face stern and pinched as furious anxiety toils inside him. He feels like the last forty-five minutes have been a daze, and now the bright lights and noisy machines and bustling action of the Emergency Department at a major trauma centre are slowly snapping him out of it, the implications of ‘urgent’ and ‘surgery’ and it being the middle of the damn night finally catching up to him.

Some number of minutes pass by — he’s too anxious and caught in his head to keep track of the linear passage of time right now — before he’s approached by a young doctor, wearing a mask carefully constructed of confident professionalism and reassuring compassion.

“Agent Hotchner?” She’s clarifying uselessly, she knows it’s him. He knows she probably has to confirm for some stupid HIPAA rule, but he just wants to know what happened goddamnit.

“Yes,” he replies shortly, “what’s happened to Spencer?”

He doesn’t miss her almost perfectly concealed wince, and he feels his stomach sink further. “He was involved in an assault on his way home from work. A passer-by found him in a back road not far from the hospital and called for an ambulance. Luckily we got him into surgery quickly. Upon admission’s initial assessment, he had a ruptured spleen, a collapsed lung, a double kidney contusion, and he suffered a pelvic fracture along with multiple broken ribs, a fractured jaw and cheekbone, and several severe breaks in his left forearm, wrist, and hand.”

Hotch stares at the doctor in disbelief as she lists Spencer’s injuries: he feels like he’s going into shock. How could anyone want to hurt the sweetest person he’s ever met? How could anyone be so brutal? He’s worked with serial killers for nearly two decades and still, nothing could prepare him for this. He sits down in the seat behind him as the world spins, his brain trying to piece everything together.

“Are you alright, sir?” the doctor asks, sitting down in the seat next to him. “Do you want a glass of water?”

“What?” He turns to look at her before her words sink in and he realises what she asked. “Oh. No, I’m fine… I— is he going to be okay?” As soon as the first tear spills down his cheek, he can’t stop them from falling one after another, dripping down his face in his most public display of emotion since Haley died.

“He’s going to need a lot of care,” she reasons, “he’ll need to stay in hospital for at least a week depending on the outcome of the surgery, but we have every reason to believe he’ll make a full recovery.”

“What’s— what’s the surgery for?” He feels like he’s having an out of body experience.

“They’ll address the internal bleeding first by either fixing or removing the spleen and making sure we didn’t miss anything else on the scans. The surgeon will also assess the damage to Spencer’s kidneys and make sure they aren’t contributing to the internal bleeding. They’ll address the pelvic fractures and the collapsed lung as well. You need to understand that Spencer may need further surgery and he’ll definitely need very close monitoring over the coming weeks and months.”

“What about his broken bones?” Hotch asks. “How bad is it?”

She sighs. “They’re bad,” she admits. “The pelvic fractures are likely going to have a big impact on his mobility, and he won’t have the use of his left arm for a long time. We’re looking at a long recovery, Agent Hotchner. But we have every reason to believe that he will eventually recover.”

She pats him comfortingly on the hand before getting up. “Someone will fetch you as soon as he’s out of surgery.”

It’s not until she’s halfway across the waiting room that he realises she never even told him her name.

It’s close to 8am by the time a surgeon walks over to him, still dressed in scrubs. There’s a smudge of blood on his shirt and Hotch winces at the knowledge that it’s Spencer’s.

“How is he?” he asks, leaping up. He doesn't want any screwing around. He just wants to know if Spencer’s going to be okay.

“He’s stable. The surgery went well. Unfortunately, we had to conduct a full splenectomy to stop his internal bleed which does put him at risk for serious infections, but otherwise, it’s good news. His kidneys will need support but should heal in a timely manner, and we were able to set the rib that punctured his lung and reinflate it, although we’re going to keep him on oxygen to be safe. His pelvis was severely fractured but we managed to reposition the displaced bone fragments and inserted a screw and metal plate to hold them together.”

“Oh, thank God,” Hotch sighs with relief. The worst, immediate threats have been dealt with, and it settles a small part of the anxiety he’s feeling.

“He’s in room 338 if you’d like to go and see him. He should be waking up shortly.”

⭐️

Wasting no time, he races up to Spencer’s floor where a nurse lets him onto the ward and leads him down to 338. He pushes the door open apprehensively, swallowing his emotion at the sight of the man he considers a son lying in a hospital bed. He’s lost count of the number of times he’s been rushed to the hospital, but it’s never been like this. It’s always after a case: Spencer knows the risks of the job, they all do, and he puts himself deliberately in harm's way for the sake of others.

This time, though… this time he was just walking home from work. This time he had no say in the matter.

His left arm is in a cast and his face is bruised and swollen, chestnut hair matted and tangled. Opening the bag he packed, he pulls out a comb and gently teases out the tangles until he can comb through the curls completely unobstructed. There are undoubtedly more knots at the back of his head, but those can wait until he’s woken up at least. It just makes him feel like he’s doing something.

It’s only when he sits down in the chair by his bed that he realises it’s Thursday morning now; he’s supposed to be at work today, they both are. No-one except Jessica knows what’s happened.

The first thing, he supposes, is to ring Strauss.

Once that’s out of the way and she knows that neither he nor Spencer will be in today and he’ll inform her of the latest updates as soon as possible, he messages Rossi. He’s the only one who will be able to remain objective enough to inform everyone, and he’s enough of a dad to the team to help manage everyone’s emotional responses.

Just as he hits send on the message, his head snaps up at Spencer’s quiet whimpering as he comes around.

“Hey, hey, Spencer,” he says as soothingly as possible, “it’s okay, I’m here. You’re in the hospital. Are you in pain?”

Spencer blinks his eyes open blearily, wearing such a pained and vulnerable expression that it goes right to Hotch’s gut. He nods in response to his question, his good hand reaching to hold Hotch’s.

“Okay, there’s a PCA pump right here, I’ll turn it up a little. Is that better?”

“Yeah,” he whispers, tears springing to his eyes. Now he’s not in as much physical pain, Hotch knows this is pure emotion, and he thinks that’s somehow worse. Spencer’s been through a horrifying physical ordeal, but the emotional recovery is going to be just as gruelling and last years. If there’s one word he’d use to describe Spencer, though, it’s resilient.

He shushes him gently, bringing a hand to his hair and caressing it lightly. “I’m here,” he repeats. “You’re safe. I won’t leave you, okay?”

Spencer nods and relaxes into his touch, eyes fluttering closed as he calms down a little.

“You rest now,” he murmurs. “I’ll be here when you wake up. Everything’s going to be okay.”

They’ll deal with the fall-out later. They’ll deal with the team coming to visit, with the paperwork for his sick leave and the frustration of government bureaucracy. They’ll manage their way through processing the trauma of what happened to him, the physical, mental, and occupational implications of the assault. They’ll stay glued at the hip while Spencer’s interviewed by the police, while doctors explain to him just how serious his injuries are.

Right now, though, Spencer will sleep and Hotch will sit by his bedside watching the rise and fall of his chest, listening to every steady beep on the heart rate monitor, searing the living breathing proof that Spencer is alive into his mind. Spencer will sleep and Hotch will cry silently over the cruelty of the world, he’ll grieve for the man he said good-bye to 12 hours earlier, knowing he’ll never quite be the same again.

Spencer will sleep and Hotch will be there, holding his hand, waiting for him to wake up again.

taglist: @criminalmindsvibez @strippersenseii @suburban--gothic @takeyourleap-of-faith

#criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds writing #criminal minds whump #whump #spencer reid whump #aaron hotchner #hotch #spencer reid #aaron hotchner & spencer reid #criminal minds gen #criminal minds gen fic #criminal minds angst #tw violence #tw assault #tw beating

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sneezyminniejo · 3 years

Text

I’m Not Going Blind

Namjoon is a photic sneezer, has been his entire life. It was very normal for him to sneeze once or twice in the morning when he turns his lights on and occasionally throughout the day if any bright lights hit his eyes.

Eventually Namjoon got curious about why he would suddenly sneeze when exposed to light, so he decided to do some research. He had learned that the common term for it was the photic sneeze reflex and snorted when he found out the scientific term was autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthalmic outburst syndrome or ACHOO Syndrome for short. He was also extremely glad that he was fluent in English as the majority of the articles he had found were in said language.

At some point during his research, BTS' manager called him saying that something urgent had come up and he needed to come to the company building right away. Because it was simple research that he could easily get back to later, Namjoon didn't bother exiting out of the web browser and just let his computer fall asleep after he left.

Around thirty minutes after Namjoon had left, Jungkook had entered the room wanting to use Namjoon's computer because it had some higher tech editing software than what was on his own computer. He woke the computer up and was a little confused at the page he was looking at. It was some sort of scientific or medical website in English and the only word he was able to confidently make out was 'syndrome'.

Jungkook knew that he probably shouldn't be snooping into whatever Namjoon was looking up, but curiosity got the best of him. He opened up papago and had it scan the website for a translation. His heart dropped to the pit of his stomach when he read that it affected the eyes, bright lights can easily worsen the disorder, and one of the symptoms is sneezing. Jungkook's hyung had some rare incurable and untreatable disorder and he hadn't bothered to tell anyone. Jungkook decided he would do what he could to help his hyung out. He also decided to let the others know their leader was sick so they could all help take the load off their stressed leader.

Knowing that all of his hyungs except for Namjoon were at the dorm, Jungkook was quick to call a family meeting. They were quick to gather, but were very confused when they saw that Jungkook called the meeting and their leader was absent. "Kook, why did you call a meeting and where is Joon?" Seokjin asked. "Manager-nim called Joon for an urgent meeting." Replied Yoongi. All eyes went back to focus on the maknae. "Actually I called this meeting to talk about Namjoon-hyung. I think he's sick."

Hoseok was the first to respond. "You sure about that Kookah? I haven't noticed anything different about him that would suggest he caught a bug of some sort." Everyone muttered in agreement with Hoseok.

Jungkook looked down at his lap as he began to explain. "I went to use Joon-hyung's computer because he has better editing software than me, and he was last reading some scientific medical journal thing that was about a rare syndrome." Jungkook paused before continuing. "I got curious because he has no reason to be looking up rare medical disorders and I put it through papago to translate. It's a condition that affects the eyes, is worsened by bright lights, and one of the symptoms is sneezing. Look at the symptoms list, he fits nearly all of it" Jungkook began crying at this point as he showed them the symptoms list. "It specifically affects the red blood cells in and around the eyes. The article said something about a hemolytic response."

Jungkook waited for a response from his hyungs, but was met with silence. After another moment, he could hear one of the members curse. "Shit, that's not good Kookah. Why do you think he kept it from us?" Jimin asked worriedly. "Maybe he's afraid we'll make him step down as leader or something." Responded Taehyung. The six men spent a couple moments looking at each other before all nodding in agreement. They then spent the next several minutes discussing how to take some of the stress off their leader so his condition will hopefully not worsen as quickly.

Namjoon arrived at the dorm about an hour later. The meeting with management hadn’t been fun as he had been informed that one of the janitorial staff had been caught snooping in his studio and they needed him to move to a new one that had a better and more intricate security lock. Just as he was opening the door, the sun reflected off something that was near the door and went directly into his eye. “Heh-itshh, hi-tscciew.” He ended up kind of stumbling his way into the dorm. He muttered a couple of curses under his breath as he tried to maintain his balance. The other six heard Namjoon stumbling about after sneezing which seemed to only reinforce Jungkook’s suspicions.

At some point during the trek back to the dorm, Namjoon's contacts had started to bug him, so the first thing he did after getting into the dorm was head to his room to take out his lenses and grab his glasses. Once he was more comfortable, he decided to join the others in the living room only to be met with questioning looks.

"So how was the meeting?" Hoseok asked. Namjoon sighed as he talked about how a staff member was caught sneaking around his studio, so he's getting a new one.

Jimin was the next one to speak. "Hyung, did you get new glasses? I don't think I've seen you wear those before." Namjoon was quick to respond. "Yes I did. Last month. My prescription got worse enough that my old ones were causing too much eye strain and headaches." He paused for a moment. "Are you guys hungry? For lunch I was thinking of mak-" before Noon could finish his sentence, Seokjin cut in. "Don't worry about making food. I've got it." Seokjin got up and went to the kitchen to get started on lunch.

Namjoon didn't complain about Seokjin taking over lunch prep even though it was his turn to make lunch. The rest of the day was filled with Namjoon doing his usual things, but the other six were secretly doting on him, now convinced that the leader had some kind of illness.

The following day, all of the members had a photoshoot, and Seokjin made sure that Namjoon wore sunglasses when leaving the building. However, it had not occurred to them that camera flashes might be bright enough to cause symptoms of whatever was ailing their leader.

It only took a couple flashes before Namjoon doubled over. "Hek-tschh, hih-tiew." After the double sneeze, Namjoon shook his head as of trying to clear the irritation out of the way. The motion did not go unnoticed by the other members.

"Are you feeling okay hyung, those didn't sound particularly good?" Taehyung asked with minor concern etched into his voice. "I'm fine Taehyung-ah. It was just a couple of sneezes, nothing to worry about." However the others were worried, their profession was apparently aggravating the leader's condition, so Yoongi decided to hold a family meeting when they got home.

Yoongi told everyone about the family meeting on the car ride home. Namjoon was thoroughly confused as everyone but him seemed to know what was going on. They all gathered on the couch and gave each other expectant looks. Eventually Jungkook broke the silence.

"Namjoon-hyung, we know you're sick and hiding it from us." Namjoon was shocked at the statement and it took a moment to formulate a response.

"I'm not sick. I'm perfectly healthy. What makes any of you think I'm sick?"

Yoongi decided to answer this question, "Jungkook saw the research you were doing yesterday on some rare disorder that causes blindness or something, and told us that you had the symptoms listed in the article."

Namjoon began laughing in response to what he was told, and the others looked a bit hurt that he wasn't taking his illness seriously. "Seriously guys I'm fine. I'm not going blind. It's true that I was looking up a kind of rare disorder that I have but it's nothing serious." The others stared at him in blank confusion. "Did you use papago to translate the article?" Jungkook nodded. Namjoon chuckled a little and decided to continue explaining.

"I was looking up something called the photic sneeze reflex. All it means is that I sneeze when I'm suddenly exposed to bright lights." Hoseok sighed a bit exasperatedly before jumping up from the couch.

"Well now that we know that you're not sick and we got worried for nothing, I vote we make popcorn and have a movie night." Everyone nodded in agreement, so Jimin went to heat up the popcorn.

A few minutes later the seven members were huddled up in the living room gearing up for a mini movie marathon.

#BTS #sickfic #sneeze

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shining-red-diamond · 4 years

Text

Ch. 20: A Path

Cast of Characters//Ch. 1//Ch. 2//Ch. 3//Ch. 4//Ch. 5//Ch. 6//Ch. 7//Ch. 8//Ch. 9//Ch. 10//Ch. 11//Ch. 12//Ch. 13//Ch. 14//Ch. 15//Ch. 16//Ch. 17//Ch. 18//Ch. 19//Ch. 20//Ch. 21//Ch. 22//Ch. 23//Ch. 24//Ch. 25//Ch. 26//Ch. 27//Ch. 28 (coming soon)

Words: 1.6k

Pairing: ATEEZ OT8 x OCs

Genre: Adventure, Pirate AU

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: mentions of deadly traps, bug attacks, blood, and venom

A/N: Italics means they’re speaking Korean

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” Phoebe asked as she rushed over to help him up.

“Yeah,” he nodded.

Grace-Anne then kneeled down to get a good look at the stone staircase. The open itself was about as wide and long as a large cardboard box with a descending stone staircase. Each step disappeared more and more into the dark underground, and the cold dampness cut through the jungle’s humidity. Pulling out her flashlight, Grace-Anne switched it on and shined it down the staircase. Nothing out of the ordinary except for a few dead snakes, but she felt uneasy about immediately taking the steps down.

A rock sat idly next to her, and it was immediately serving as a guinea pig. She tossed it down where it could still be visible by the light beams. Landing on a stone in one of the steps, it sank down halfway, and a spear shot up from the middle of the stone. The rock was split into two pieces before falling away somewhere.

“Do any of the notes say anything about this?” Grace-Anne asked as she stood.

Hongjoong was already ahead of her and reviewing the notes on both the map and the journal.

“Yes,” he nodded once he found the page. “Any of the stones with a golf-ball sized hole in the center has a deadly spear. Have your flashlights ready.”

One by one, the crew switched on their lights just before descending down the stone steps, tip-toeing over each holed stone. The air seemed to grow colder and more dense, and a soft blue glow could be seen up ahead. When they reached the bottom, a foul stench attacked their noses as they turned a corner.

“If I see one more corpse,” Dinah threatened, “I will kick a stalagmite.”

“I don’t think it’s a dead body, we’re smelling,” Grace-Anne replied as they walked a little further. “It smells more like mud after the rain.”

The sound of a river rushing could be heard overhead. Hongjoong used his flashlight to read the notes again. “The blue light tells us that’s where the next piece is.”

“What is that light anyway?” Mingi asked as they strolled closer to the light.

“Yeah, there doesn’t seem to be any electrical fixtures down here,” added Yunho.

An opening marked where the blue light was hiding, and once the crew walked in, the light turned out to be what seemed to be twinkling blue clusters sticking to the wall and reflecting off of clear quartz fragments blooming from the ground to the ceiling. With this kind of light, the crew switched off their flashlights.

“Glow worms, of course!” Dahae recognized. “Their bioluminescence gives off a sort of blue or green light.”

“But where’s the diamond piece?” Seonghwa reminded her as the crew looked around. “It could be anywhere here.”

Jongho was about to try to move a quartz piece to investigate any nook and cranny, but Dahae stopped him with a gasp.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“These aren’t just any of the regular glow worms you hear about,” she explained. “These quartz’s have minerals that provide this species with their nutrients, and they’re aggressive if they’re touched by any other living organism. Touch the crystals, and a few of them will attack.”

“They’re not poisonous, are they?”

“They just give you deep cuts, but the bleeding is bad no matter where the laceration is.”

“Found it,” Taeran declared as she looked up something in the ceiling.

Surrounded by clusters of the glowing blue, a shining fractal seemed trapped in another microvine structure surrounded by crystals. Beside it was a sort of lock code identical to a lock combination, but rusted into the ceiling.

“What’s the code?” Dahae asked.

Hongjoong flipped through the journals and notes a few times, scanning each page individually in case he missed it. He found something on the exact lock, but no direct answer as to free the diamond.

“There’s a riddle,” he shrugged as scratched his head. “‘Not a full circle, not an angle, not even a cute angle, only a straight path will you find the key.’”

“What path?” Dinah exasperated. “The only way out is the way we came in, and even then it’s deadly.”

“And we can’t exactly pry open the little binding it’s in without touching the surrounding crystals,” Grace-Anne added.

“Maybe it’s talking about the sun, hills, and a path on a hill,” Seonghwa guessed.

“We’re in a freaking CAVE!” Dinah retorted while motioning towards their surroundings.

Taeran stared up at it and recited the riddle. Circle, angles, path. Circle, an angle, a cute angle, path. A cute angle stuck out to her. Did it mean an acute angle?

“Wait a second,” a lightbulb went off in her head. “It’s not a regular piece of land at all. It’s geometric angles. A full circle is three-hundred and sixty degrees, a cute angle is an acute angle that’s forty-five degrees, and a right angle is ninety-degrees. What we’re looking for is the straight ‘path,’ and it’s a straight line. One-eighty degrees.”

“1-8-0 is the code?” Phoebe asked.

“It has to.”

“How are you going to reach it?” Dahae wondered. “The ceiling is taller than Yunho and Mingi.”

…

Finishing up in the bathroom, Celestia took one last look at herself in the mirror, double-checking for any fly-away strands of hair before standing back and seeing her pregnant self. Her stomach wasn’t as huge as a typical pregnant woman’s, but she still found it cute despite feeling like a bloated fish some days. Baby girl kicked, and the mother-to-be smiled.

“You’re so gorgeous,” San commented groggily as woke up.

“Hi, handsome,” his wife replied as she waddled back into the room.

The curtains were opened just slightly to allow some sunlight in, but not enough to disturb San in his sleep.

“How are you feeling?” Celestia asked as she eased herself on the bed.

“Better.”

“You look better, too. Your color is back. Are you sore?”

San shook his head. “I can move more freely, but it only stings when I move my back a certain way.”

“Dahae said it’ll be like that for a bit, but you’ll be back to exploring our next destination.”

A smile nearly bloomed on the young man’s face, but abruptly stopped. He wanted to see the new site, but Celestia couldn’t go anymore when she’s days from delivering.

“I don’t want you to be alone,” San shook his head.

“I won’t be alone,” she promised. “The girls will rotate out on who stays with me at each stop.”

“But what about when it’s time for you to give birth? We would have to flag down an ambulance or something to get you to a hospital if needed.”

San had wanted his wife to give birth in a medical facility that was safe, and she and the baby would receive proper care; but Celestia had put her foot down on having the birth on the boat since Dahae would help with delivery. However, she was becoming more open to having the aid of a medical facility if things were to go wrong.

“I’ve heard you can’t plan for how a birth is going to go,” was all Celestia could say. “But we can be prepared.”

San just smiled and kissed her on the cheek. “Such a clever woman, you are.”

Celestia scoffed playfully before asking, “Are you hungry? Grace-Anne left us some breakfast.”

“Can you get up?”

“Watch me.” Immediately she scoot to her edge of the bed, sat up, and rolled to one side to stand. “Cake.”

San giggles as the love of his life waddles out of the room and towards the kitchen. Celestia found her meal of eggs and Greek yogurt covered in plastic, and San’s bacon and omelettes were in the same shape. She removed the covering and put them in the microwave for about a minute while she retrieved both of their drinks.

A fit of childlike giggles erupted from San back in the bedroom. Celestia thought his medicine was making him loopy until he started baby-talking and cooing in his mother tongue. Was he looking at the ultrasounds and somehow talking to the baby? It wasn’t until she returned with their breakfasts when she saw what had happened.

“Angel, we’ve got a little stowaway,” San smiled as he was now petting a Siamese cat sitting on his stomach. “Isn’t she cute?”

“She is,” Celestia smiled as she set the food tray on San’s nightstand. “Hi, kitty.”

She held her hand to the feline, palm open and face up; and after a couple of sniffs, the cat licked her fingers and rubbed her face against Celestia’s hand.

“Friendly, aren’t you? How did you get on here?”

“She must have wandered up the landing gear from outside,” San guessed. “I managed to sit up, because I had to pee; and when I came back from the bathroom, there was a super cute cat sitting on your side of the bed.”

Celestia gave the purring cat a few more scratches behind her ears before thinking for a moment.

“What’s the captain gonna say?” she asked as she sat on the edge of the bed.

The captain had a thing with animals on the ship. It wasn’t that he didn’t allow it, it was that everyone had a job to do and wanted everyone to always stay on task that getting a pet for one crewmate or for all to share seemed impossible. Everyone, including Dahae, had begged Hongjoong multiple times for a furry friend, but he always said no.

“Well,” San thought, “I mean we already have a baby on the way, so he might say our new friend has to go; but since you’re going to be here on each stop, maybe she can help keep you company.”

As if excited by his idea, the cat leapt off of San’s lap and tip-toed to Celestia’s bump. She began to purr as she rubbed up against it. It was as if she now knew there was something precious being nurtured and developed in a protective shell.

“I think we might have found our guardian for Baby Choi,” San jokes with a chuckle.

Tagging: @not-majestic-bluenicorn @actuallythatwaspromise @barsformars @philosopher-of-fandoms @daybreakx @lilhwahwa @hongism let me know if you’d like to be added or removed

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dreamingofscully · 4 years

Text

Grey Canyon 7/?

Rating: Current Chapter: PG, Series: up to Mature Categories: Western AU / MSR / WIP WC: 1450 / Total WC: 7.3k

Updated on Mondays and Fridays.

Thank you to @ceruleanmilieu for the beta ❤️ Tagging: @impulsive-astrophile @baronessblixen @suitablyaggrieved @gillywitch @today-in-fic (let me know if you want to be tagged when I post!)

all chapters in order: ao3 / tumblr

CH 1 / CH 2 / CH 3 / CH 4 / CH 5 / CH 6

CHAPTER 7: “New York”

Grey Canyon, Colorado 1885

Lunches in the dining room or kitchen, and dinners in her room had become customary. He brought her more journals, which she read into the night, staying up far too late and waking bleary-eyed and happy. It had been nearly a year since she’d been able to keep up on any new medical developments. Even though she knew she’d never get the chance to pursue a career in the field, reading about others’ work gave her a taste of her old life, reminding her of why she’d wanted to be a physician in the first place.

As happy as the articles made her, the darkness within her deepened by the same degree. That Mulder had known she’d want them made her pause and feel guilty. His friendship had been a comfort, something she didn’t know she needed. But how could friendship stay strong when it was one-sided? She tested him, poked fun at his stories, but walled herself off from anything deeper. Sooner, rather than later, she felt it would not be enough.

Would losing his friendship, an unbearable thought, be worse than sharing a part of herself that she’d buried so deeply, she felt belonged to a completely different person? Could she be the woman that she once was? The possibility of her former self re-emerging thrilled and terrified her.

It was dinner. He sat across from her, telling another story, trying to convince her of something mad. For once, she was only half-listening, lost in her thoughts of where this connection between them was going. She’d never been able to pretend very well, though, and Mulder noticed.

“You’re not listening, Dana,” he said. He wasn’t upset, even though she felt he had a right to be. “Story’s a bit too far-fetched, even for me I admit.”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Mulder, I was just distracted.”

“Anything you care to share?” He smiled at her, his eyes soft and gentle. He never pushed, never tried to force anything out of her. Sometimes she wished he would.

The same old conversation, she thought. ‘No, I’m fine’, is your next line, Dana.

She found herself, instead, telling a story of her own.

“My father, he… was a captain in the navy, during the war,” she started, not quite believing she was telling him this. If she went far back enough, things weren’t so bad. “He’d distinguished himself, made a name for himself, despite being an immigrant.”

She looked out the window, at her own warped reflection in the frosted glass. The lamp painted her face in grotesque shadows. Her hands found the edge of her napkin, fraying the edges.

Swallowing, she continued. “He was able to use his influence to help his children get into good schools. I excelled. We were very close. I think… he was proud of me,” she paused, blinking back the threat of tears. “He died, about a year ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Mulder said, his hand reaching across to cover hers, stilling their restless movements.

“I’d been accepted into medical school, a rare thing for a woman,” she looked back at him. “New York—it is the very best and the very worst, at the same time.”

Mulder nodded, squeezed her hand, his focus giving her courage. She trusted him, not knowing why she should. Her father told her she’d had good instincts about people, recognizing almost immediately who had integrity, and who did not. Looking at Mulder now, she knew him, almost as much as she knew herself.

“My brothers. They didn’t do so well in school. They… got involved with different sorts of people. It was a vicious circle—they could not please their father by being smart or hard-working, so they tried to win him over by bringing home money obtained from more dishonest means. My father was aware of how these… groups preyed on those who were less fortunate. Their relationship only got worse. When he died…”

Dana withdrew her hand, clenched them underneath the table. It hurt to say the words, to allow the reality of what had happened to enter the air of this room, to add to the weight on Mulder’s already heavy shoulders by sharing her burden with him.

“Because I was an unmarried woman, they took control. I had no other recourse. They would not allow me to go to school. Instead, they said I was to marry.”

“But you wouldn’t,” Mulder leaned forward.

“The person—” she stopped. “I do not like to speak harshly, to judge, but the man they wanted to give me to was just the sort of person you would expect, given their type of dealings. I suspect I was meant to be payment. Their younger sister in exchange for more power, more money.” She spat the words out like venom. The anger she’d felt when she’d first realized what her brothers intended came back with equal strength.

“I thought I could reason with them. Perhaps I could be a doctor for their ‘organization’. I would have done anything, except they would not listen. They use violence and intimidation to do what they want, I could do nothing. There was no one else after Papa...”

Dana breathed heavily and covered herself with her shawl, overcome with a sudden chill, though the room was not cold. There, she’d done it, for good or ill. She’d run from her family, abandoned her life while he had chased ghosts for ten years in hopes to bring his own back together.

“So you find yourself here, in hiding? Playing school marm and nursemaid to a bunch of —”

“Mulder.”

“I’m sorry, I just...”

When she looked up at him again, his face, normally filled with amusement and softness and passion, was now like a stormcloud, staring off into the darkness of her room. It reminded her of his outburst in her room late at night, what seemed like so long ago.

“Your mother?” he said.

“She… could do nothing. She felt my choice to be a doctor was a mistake, that I should accept my duty to the family, and be a wife. That I should accept it without complaint,” she said. Guilt rose up inside her, thinking about her mother: they would not hurt her, would they? “I don't have a family any more, Mulder.”

He rose from his chair and paced. She could feel his anger coming off of him in waves, while she shivered in place, unmoving.

“There must be something—”

“I have learned to live with my fate, Mulder.”

“I don’t accept that,” he said, waving his hands around her modest room. “You deserve so much better than this.”

“Please, sit.”

He looked at her, saw her.

“You’re cold.” He brought over a quilt from her bed and laid it across her shoulders, rubbing his warm hands along her arms before crouching beside her. She let out a shaky breath, imagined she could see the water vapor apparating between them.

“I can see your mind working. Trying to think of something to do. Please, Mulder. It is too risky.”

“Are these people really that dangerous?”

She nodded, silently pleading with him.

He looked at her, reluctant but steady, then cupped her face. “I do not agree. But I promise.”

She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning into his hand. Warmth spread through her chest at his touch. She was so tired, but the weight of her secrets had been somewhat lightened, and his promise lifted her spirits. She chanced a smile when she opened her eyes.

“If all of this hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have met. Perhaps this was all meant to be, fate… destiny,” she pressed her lips into his palm, and brought his hand down to her lap. “I will not pretend though. It was terrible, and difficult, and I have not shared everything.”

But I will, was her unspoken promise.

Mulder caressed her hands with his own, remaining close. The warm lamplight enhanced his features: his stubbled jaw, full lips, strong nose. She couldn’t help it, her hand rose to his mouth, caressed his bottom lip with her thumb. He froze, searched her eyes, his anger disappearing under her touch, replaced with something else. Something she recognized, that he’d awakened within her these past weeks as well.

<i>Yes</i>, she thought, willing herself to speak the words aloud, for her thoughts to reach into his mind.

Suddenly, he blinked, and shook his head. She dropped her hand back to her lap as he stood up, taking his things and moving to leave.

He turned before opening the door. “Thank you, Dana,” he said, his voice like sandpaper. “For telling me.”

“Good night, Mulder.”

He smiled, meeting her eyes with a shy smile. “Good night.”

#grey canyon #my fic #xf fanfic #xfiles fanfic #xfiles #x-files #msr #mulder and scully #au #wip #historical au #western au #xfiles au #western

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thessalian · 3 years

Note

🍁, 🌻, 🌳, and 💫 for Jallira. 🌿, 💐, 🌾 and 💫 (yes, twice =P) for Alisaie.

Jallira

🍁 Where does your OC go when they need to have some time to themself? Would they ever have their own “comfort corner” filled with all the things they like? Do they have a favourite spot outside that feels like its theirs and theirs alone?

The predominant problem with this question is that it assumes that Jallira is ever alone. Which she's not. After all, she's Force-bonded twice-over, at least for awhile longer - the solid-set Force-bond with Mae, and a near-instinctual but far lighter bond with Ami that's basically a Miraluka mother's way of keeping a metaphorical eye on their child, literal ones not being an option. While Jallira does have time to herself - she has her own meditation space in the quarters she shares with her family, and there's the lab - there really isn't a time that she's ever alone. Honestly, even without the Force-bond stuff, she's Miraluka; it's hard to feel alone when your standard vision is basically the living Force.

🌻 What little things do they notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them?

Well, quite apart from her family and the little things they do to make a day nice (which are many in number and expansive in scope and could fill a book), honestly it's just those moments where something she did or said makes someone smile. Whether it's one of her attempts at humour working out or providing someone a nice treat, brightening other people's days makes her day brighter twice over; with the feeling of having contributed some good to the universe in general and that person in particular, and the whole "I am an empath so someone being happy around me resonates with me in a positive way" thing.

🌳 What is your OC’s favourite way to relax after a stressful day? Do they have a favourite book to curl up with? A hobby? Or do they have a nice bubble bath and have an early night to bed?

Jallira still has ... issues ... with relaxing. She doesn't deal with idle time well, and in fact being obliged to not do anything in the cause of 'relaxation' actively stresses her out. Reading's out for a variety of reasons - mostly that she really isn't into fiction - and when she does it, it's generally recipes, how-to crafting guides or medical journals. She knits and does a variety of crafts on the theme of perfume / soap etc, but her favourite way of relaxing is cooking. Which is why she still doesn't understand it when people insist she takes a 'cookery vacation'.

💫What is your favourite fact about this character and why?

Honestly, my favourite thing about Jallira is just how she turned out, in the end. I know how big and vague an answer that is, but at the point of her introduction to shared RP, as a character, she was this broken bird of a glass cannon who barely saw herself as a sentient being. Other people responded to her in ways I hadn't expected, and running with the things they put in front of her turned her from a potential angst generator into this beacon of hope and good intentions. Her character development was nothing short of epic, and it was so much fun to have her take those first tentative steps into being a person, and let the character form from almost nothing.

Alisaie

🌿 What way does your OC show that they care without using words? What way do others show your OC that they’re cared about without using speech?

I could be really snarky here and flag up that she speaks sign language. But I won't. Not entirely, anyway. Seriously, Alisaie's way of showing she cares is a combination of picking up on their unspoken cues of things they like and ensuring they have a lot of the things they like, and offering more or less the entire world as a gift. It's that thing Remi said about how she lives life to the full and encourages everyone around her to do the same ... except she really only does that for those she likes. If she cares about you, she will make damn sure there are no limits or barriers to your enjoying everything the world has to offer beyond your own personal preferences. (That and hair-ruffling and pats on the back/arm ... or more hugs and smooches when Remi is involved.) As to how people show they care about her without words being involved ... from what I can tell, mostly it's gifts of shiny things, hugs, and making sure she gets healed when combat invariably involves her getting beaten to shit. That's not even taking into account resurrections and rescues from the Shadowfell.

💐 How does your OC handle being unwell or forced to rest in bed? Who cares for them and in what ways? Does your OC enjoy being doted on or are they a terrible patient? Reversed: is your OC good at taking care of others who are ill or in need?

This is a world wherein Lesser Restoration exists. But put it this way: she wouldn't rest in bed unless she was put there, and while she would probably not bitch at people, she would probably refuse any help anyone let her refuse because she doesn't want to waste people's days on fussing over her. Of course, that doesn't apply to her, and assuming this was something Lesser Restoration wouldn't fix and/or she couldn't find someone to bully into casting it, she'd be bringing soup and tea (spicy in both cases to encourage sinus clearance), probably try a few People-specific remedies, and tell stories and sing songs to entertain the poor bedridden patient. She likes to fuss; she doesn't like being fussed at.

🌾 Describe your OC through the eyes of someone absolutely head-over-heels in love with them

...I'm sure this is something you should be writing, my dude. (Okay okay okay, lemme see if I can get a Remi-thing going.)

"Just ... I mean, yes, she's beautiful, and I could tell you exactly what she looks like, but that's not ... enough. It's not just the face and the ... you know. It's that everything she looks like on the outside only reflects a little bit of what's inside. And yes, the outside drew me first, but... " *helpless shrug* "Look, she's beautiful, okay? In any way you want to take it."

(IT'S NOT MY FAULT THE PERSON I KNOW IS HEAD-OVER-HEELS IN LOVE WITH HER IS NOT LAST OF THE GREAT WORDSMITHS.)

💫What is your favourite fact about this character and why?

That she's loved. That's basically it. That in whatever way, the players and their characters loved her enough to take Rules As Written and shake them until she was allowed to stay with them.

#TOR!Lira #Alisaie #PROMPTS FOR THE PROMPT GOD #WORDS FOR THE WORD THRONE

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unstoppableforcce · 4 years

Text

a new dawn

—CHAPTER 6: collapse

pairing: Poe Dameron x reader (modern au!)

previous part | next part | masterlist

a/n: i just want to say that this was hard to get through to write but everything is up from here. I’ve tagged some warnings, just know that it’s darker than my normal writing and sorry for the wait

He couldn’t sleep again. The rain was back.

He wasn’t sure if that was the exact reason why, the heavy guilt sitting on his conscious giving the rain a run for its money, but he was also sure that whatever it was didn’t matter much. He couldn’t sleep.

Pulling away from your naked body strewn over him was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, but you had to work in the morning, the last thing he wanted was to keep you up.

So now he was back awake at 4 a.m., back in his kitchen, and he was beating himself up again and again… It was an all too familiar position.

But there was no phone in hand, there was no calling you for reprieve from the onslaught of memories beginning to scream in the back of his mind when you were in his bed. You were meant to be the solution to all of this and yet here he was, in the same place he was before he got you back.

No better. Possibly worse.

The rain was echoing against the fire escape right outside the kitchen window and the screams and shouts were echoing in his head. He could see the windshield wipers fighting through the torrential downpour, he swore he could even smell the smoke from the cigarette in the back seat—

“Poe?”

His head snapped up from where he held it in his hands to find you, still half-asleep, lingering in the doorway from the bedroom to the kitchen.

That was right. He was here, in his kitchen, and you were here.

He wasn’t over there. There was no Humvee.

He was here. He was here with you.

It didn’t matter how many times he repeated it in his head, it wasn’t working. His breathing was picking up to a near rapid pace before he even realized it—

“Poe?” your tone was much more cautious this time as you began crossing the kitchen floor.

You were wearing one of his shirts, the one you had pulled off of him just a few hours ago as he attacked your throat with kisses… It was an effortlessly good look on you. You used to say you liked them because they smelled like him. He liked when he found one you had recently worn and it smelled like you.

He liked you. He liked you a lot. The smell of you, the look of you, all of you.

He liked you and he loved you. Those were two different things and he did them both.

He liked the way your coffee made the apartment smell every morning, he liked that the smell of it alone made him want to get out of bed. He liked how smart you were, you read medical journals and spent all day doing things at work that he could barely quantify yet you never made anyone you were in conversation feel dumb in comparison. Though he often did, but that was more his fault than yours. He liked that you rewatched the same shows over and over, even If you knew it all by heart, because you didn’t have the time to get invested in a new show.

He liked you for all the little things. He liked that it made him always want to be around you. He liked that he never got tired of you.

But the love he felt for you was different. You were the only one he ever wanted to tell about his good news, you were the first person he wanted to see every morning, you were his person. Through everything he had gone through, you had been by his side the whole time, except for… well that was all his fault anyways. Besides, you were never really gone, and you were back now, that was what mattered.

You were back now.

You were in his kitchen—he was in his kitchen. The shouting he could hear wasn’t real. The memories ripping through his head were only memories.

He wasn’t in the Humvee; he was here with you.

What had he been saying again?

“Poe?” You were in front of him now, brows furrowed inwards as you were still cautious with every step.

That was right. He loved you. He was in love with you. You were his person and he loved you.

So why was he going to ruin it all again? Why was he lying to you?

Why couldn’t he just get better?

Why was it all so loud in his head? Why was the rain against the windshield all he could see?

You took a final few slow steps towards him and grabbed his hands before he could bring them to rub over and hide his face. “Poe, what’s going on?”

You had said it specifically that morning in the shower, you said that you weren’t sure you could do it all over again if he wasn’t going to put in the work. It was the only thing you asked for. You didn’t even want birthday presents, you didn’t want whipped cream on any dessert… He was losing his train of thought again.

That had been happening more and more recently. His focus wasn’t what it used to be and maybe that was all his fault too. Maybe the meetings would make it better, maybe not, he wouldn’t know until he made it into one of them would he?

The soft tips of your fingers managed their way into his hair again.

When the two of you were first dating, his hair had been much shorter, buzzed from his most recent tour. He wondered how he caught you for the long-run so early on when clearly it was the curls you were obsessed with—

“Poe, you have to talk to me…”

The shouting was getting clearer, sounding like it was behind him and not in his mind. It took every ounce of will and rational mind he had left not to look over his shoulder back to the living room to search for the source. He knew it was in his head. It was in his head. It was a memory…

He opened his mouth, he wanted to talk to you, so where were the words?

Did he deserve to say anything to you? He sure as hell didn’t deserve you, he knew that for sure.

Your grip on his head grew slightly tighter, almost like you were trying to ground yourself to him. It wasn’t working.

The rain was getting louder. Every drop sending a spurt of tension through his chest until it was getting harder to breathe.

He needed to tell you and he couldn’t talk.

“I love you.”

He knew that. Of course he knew that. That was the problem. You loved him, you’d do anything for him, and he was lying to you.

Trading grips, he was holding your hand now instead of you holding his, and he was holding it much tighter than you were holding his.

“I love you.” He repeated back to you, the only words he could manage.

“Poe, I don’t know what’s happening, but you have to talk to me—”

He shook his head, finding a second of silent reprieve as he shifted his stare from your feet to your lips. “Nothing is happening.”

Another lie. What the hell was he thinking? He was just digging the hole deeper and eventually he wasn’t going to be able to get out.

But this time he could tell it wasn’t passing over your head.

“I… I don’t know, I just couldn’t sleep.” He sighed, gripping your hand now like his life depended on it. “Don’t worry about it.”

You didn’t move, you didn’t waver in the slightest. “I’m going to set up an appointment with someone I work with—”

“No, you don’t have to—” He shook his head, trying to stand up straighter, to feign some confidence but you gave an exhausted sigh in response.

“Poe, I know you’re not going to the meetings.”

He snapped his eyes back to yours, he hadn’t even realized that he had been avoiding your stare until he couldn’t look anywhere else. You didn’t even look disappointed, frankly, you looked like you knew all along.

It wasn’t sickness anymore. It was emptiness, cold and dark, like a hole in his chest. Ironically, he knew the sensation all too well.

“I have been—” What was he doing? Doubling down?

Now it was a sigh of disappointment that escaped your lips. “I ran into Oddy the other day, in the E.R…”

He scoffed, using the hand he wasn’t using to hold yours to wipe the beginning of tears from his eyes. Of course Oddy would need to go to the E.R., all the guys you used to work with went to see you there when the VA doctors were falling behind. Of course he knew that. Of course…

He tried again to make his voice work but he couldn’t, all he could do was stare.

“I wasn’t checking up on you, but we got to talking and he said he hadn’t seen you since your last tour—"

He pulled his hand away from yours, he didn’t know why, but he could feel his skin stinging. And it wasn’t because he was mad at you. How could he be? He was mad at himself; he always was but this was just worse. It was so much worse.

“Poe—”

“I didn’t—I don’t know, I just—I didn’t want to—” Was he really crying now? Get a hold of yourself—

He fought in a war… He flew fighter jets… He couldn’t even make out a sentence, tears coating his face…

“Poe—” You sounded sad, was that his fault?

Of course it was his fault. This was all his fault.

“Please don’t leave me again…” He choked out, bringing both hands back to his face.

“Oh, baby no.” You reached out for him again, but he pulled away, leaning back into the counter, practically flinching back from your touch now. “Poe no—”

“I couldn’t get out of the car.” He mustered, still forcing distance between the two of you. He needed to catch his breath, he couldn’t. “I couldn’t—"

“Can I?” You extended your hands towards him again, waiting for an acknowledgement but he couldn’t manage one, so you held back. But after a few seconds of heaving breaths, he finally reached back for your touch.

He actually collapsed into it.

Both of his arms fell over your shoulders and before he even realized it, his knees felt weak and you were holding him up while he sobbed into your hair.

“I didn’t mean to lie—”

Even your chuckle was somber. “Poe I don’t care about that—”

“I lied to you—”

“I don’t care about that, baby.” You sighed, rubbing at his back as he held tight to you. “It’s okay—”

All he could see was the rain—

No. He had to break out of it, he couldn’t break down right now, he couldn’t do it…

It was a torrential downpour, had been for the past few days and showed no signs of letting up.

No. He gripped tighter to you, but it didn’t make a difference now, it was a slope slicked with torrential rain of his memories and the tears streaming from his eyes… No. He had to break free of it, he had been down this path before and it was something that took months to come back from after…

It was hitting him like a crashing wave smothering him into the sand. Every time he thought he could get back up and out of it, it crashed over him again, pummeling him into the sand.

He was drowning in it.

“We’ll be coming up on the camp soon, Dameron, how’s it going back there?” Snap’s voice echoed over the radio from the front Humvee.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much rain—” He went to respond but the man in the passenger seat quickly interrupted, grabbing the radio back.

“I have, in your mother’s panties—”

He looked away for one second to join his squad in laughter. Then the whole ground shook and rumbled, the Humvee flipping over on itself.

He didn’t know then that the front car had driven over an IED, setting off a whole barrier of explosives in the road. He didn’t know then that when he looked away that he would never look up to see the front Humvee again.

All he knew was that everything hurt, his whole squad was shouting in one ear and the other ear was ringing. All he knew was that he was strapped into a Humvee that was tipped on his side and that the man in the passenger seat wasn’t moving.

All he knew was that they were in compromised territory and he could hear gun fire.

He pulled himself out in the rain, falling into the mud alongside his squadron. The gunfire still echoed but he had no clue where it was coming from.

All he knew was that when he was able to make out the shape of the front Humvee through the rain, that it was upside down and on fire.

He never thought he’d ever see a fire burning through the rain.

He also never thought he’d hold his best friend in his arms as he took his last breath, but those were two images permanently burned into his skull.

“Snap!” He futilely shouted as he pulled his friend from the wreckage, two more of his squadron members helping to grab the other soldiers.

The fire caught the sleeve of his uniform, but he squelched it out quickly and tried to get a pulse from Snap’s neck. There was one but it was barely there.

Someone called that they were radioing for help, someone ordered the shooting to stop, everybody else’s shouting was incomprehensible… it was all just shouting.

Snap wasn’t shouting. He could barely manage a whisper. His lips were just smacking together—

“Snap!” Poe shook him with bleeding knuckles, he couldn’t find a singular injury to staunch, they were all over… “Please Snap, hold on.”

The rain kept pouring. He took his last breath in his arms.

And it was all he could see. The dead look in his eyes, it was there almost every time he heard the rain.

It was still raining. He was still sobbing. He couldn’t catch his breath…

Was he on the floor?

He could feel the cool tile beneath him but he didn’t remeber collapsing. You must have lowered him to the floor...

He blinked through the tears, trying to calm himself down still, and found you kneeling by his side, two fingers pressed to his neck the same way he had pressed his to Snap’s neck… Your other hand was continually brushing through his hair, long and languid stroke back through his curls.

It should have been soothing, but nothing was right now.

“I—”

“Shh, Poe, it’s okay…”

Your hand reached up from his neck to wipe away his tears as his head leaned back against the cabinets in the counter.

“Don’t—” His sucked in a heavy breath. “Please don’t leave me…”

From your grip on his hair, you pulled his head forward into your chest and cradled him there as his hands found their way back to you.

“Poe, I’m not going to leave you.” You pressed a kiss to his hair. “I’m not going to leave you.”

The rain was still there. But he had you to hold him for now.

That had to do, for now.

——

->tags: @somuchrandomshxt @itsamedeemoney @blushingwueen @grincheveryday @tommy-holland @shakespeareanwannabe @mad-hatters-teapot

#tw: trauma #tw: ptsd #tw: anxiety #tw: anxiety attack #star wars #star wars imagine #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron #poe dameron imagine #angst #poe x reader #modern au

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enkelimagnus · 3 years

Text

History

Bucky Barnes Gen, 2375 words, rated T

Jewish Bucky Barnes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Episode 4 The Whole World is Watching

Bucky and Zemo find themselves talking about Sokovia, about family, and about where they come from.

TW: antisemitism mention

Read on AO3

Part 29 of Making a Home - the Jewish Bucky series

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

"Were there Jews in Sokovia?"

Zemo came back to himself an hour or two ago. He’s resting now, a damp towel on what must be a pounding headache. If Walker had been a supersoldier, Zemo would be dead. The shield, sent flying like that by someone on the serum would have broken his neck with the force of its slamming into his temple.

He wouldn’t be laying there, drinking glass after glass of something probably not recommended for someone with a concussion. He’s dosed himself on painkillers as well. Hopefully, he won’t die before the Dora Milaje arrive. If he died under Bucky’s watch, he doesn’t think he would ever be forgiven.

Bucky’s been staring at the windows for a while now, just… waiting for Zemo to start talking again. He grew bored of it. Even if the windows are beautiful and make him lose time in memories of his childhood shul and on the necklaces they all wore.

"It was an Eastern European country. Of course there were,” Zemo answers in that almost amused matter-of-fact tone of his. The same kind he used when he talked about Marvin Gaye. Now Bucky gets Sam’s “He’s out of line, but he’s right.” His voice is hoarse though, a clear sign of what he’s just gone through. Bucky finds himself slightly satisfied by that crack.

"Where was your family from?" Zemo asks. Perhaps it’s the same sort of question that led to that conversation in the plane. Bucky didn’t need to tell him he was Jewish after that.

"Romania."

Zemo nods quietly. "Ah. Not far, actually. Is that why you found a hiding place there before I flushed you out?"

That’s an interesting question, and Bucky shouldn’t be surprised he’s asking it.

"Not really." He didn’t know his family was Romanian until a couple of months in, until a mother’s lullaby triggered an avalanche of memories. “Followed some memories there.”

“What did they do? Your parents?”

Bucky huffs and turns towards him. “Why do you want to know?” He asks, jutting out his chin. He doesn’t know if he wants to talk to Zemo about that. But Zemo’s the only one who has ever asked. Steve didn’t need to. And no one else has spent long enough with Bucky to wonder.

“I am curious,” Zemo shrugged. “This is not a trick. I have nothing to gain by having this information. Your parents are dead. They cannot be used as leverage.”

“You sure know a lot about leverage, huh Zemo?” His answer is sarcastic, poking. The ghost of the tension from earlier in the day, the one that made Bucky let go of his tight leash of control to break one of Zemo’s expensive cups, hovers between them for a moment.

“I am a criminal,” Zemo hums. “A killer. And a Baron. Of course, I know a lot about leverage, James.”

At least he doesn’t hide from the truth. Bucky guesses that those eight years in solitary gave him time to self-reflect.

They both fall silent for a moment again. Zemo sips his whiskey. Bucky wishes he could get drunk. The minutes tick by. The Dora Milaje could come any time now. It’s hanging in the air with the tension, with the silence.

“You didn’t answer my question, James,” the man’s voice comes from the couch where he’s lounging. “What did they do?”

“My da worked in a journal in Romania. A Yiddishe one,” Bucky explains. “Worked in a printing factory in America. My ma helped sell the papers on the market. When she moved here and had us, she didn’t start working again until everything crashed and da died. I was working, but it wasn’t enough. We were four kids, and there was Steve, and his ma too, until she passed.”

He stops talking. He’s saying too much. Way too much. Zemo doesn’t need to know those things, he shouldn’t be talking about those things. It’s too personal, too intimate. Even Hydra didn’t know. Why is he telling Zemo?

Because Zemo’s going to the Raft. He’s going to be buried there and never come out, and he won’t be able to tell anyone. You could tell him what Steve tasted like, he wouldn’t be able to talk.

“What did your parents do?” Bucky asks, turning the question back on Zemo. It’s not the same, of course not. Bucky’s pretty sure he could find all the information about Heinrich Zemo readily available online.

“My father was a Baron and a businessman,” Zemo replies anyway, evenly. “He was also a sitting member of Hydra’s European branch.”

Bucky’s eyes snap to Zemo. He can’t see him, only the back of his head. Is he smug? Is he happy he got to push one of Bucky’s buttons this way?

“You didn’t meet him, I believe,” Zemo continues. “At least as far as I am aware.”

Bucky doesn’t reply. What is there to say, thanks?

“My mother was a housewife. She was a Baroness. She did charity events, talked to people, was beautiful at my father’s side. That was what they did. As for myself, I was, as you know, in the army. Before my service, however, I studied in Oxford, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, before interning in Berlin for two years. Only then, after much partying and drinking, did I settle and join the ranks.”

Bucky leans against the counter, huffing. “You wanna talk about yourself a bunch today, don’t you?”

“I was going to follow that with a question on your own Curriculum Vitae, James.”

“Why? Wanna hire me?”

Zemo chuckles, a puffy sound immediately followed by a sharp intake of breath. Pain, perhaps. That’ll teach him.

“Humor me?” he asks and for some reason, Bucky shrugs and decides to do so.

“Top student in Washington High School until ‘33, graduated early, started working. Making girls’ dresses. Working on the docs in the evening too,” Bucky recounts, sighing softly. “Got drafted. Deployed in ‘43. The rest you know.”

“No college despite being a so-called top student?” Zemo asks. Bucky can feel the airquotes in his voice.

Bucky huffs loudly. “We didn’t have that kind of money. We could have, without the crash. Could have gotten a scholarship, but it wasn’t… Da passed, and I had to make sure there was food on the table.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.

“I’m sure you’d be able to afford some sort of degree now.”

“Not an option.”

He’s not going to start explaining all the way Hydra fucked him up, how his attention span is shorter than it’s ever been except when a mission is involved, how his brain flips through languages constantly. How he would have issues handling the workload, the students around him. Crowded lecture halls would be terrible for his brain.

He doesn’t know what he wants to do after this.

Maybe just read books and go on runs and eat kugel and drink vodka. Those sound like good things to do.

"I saw Sokovia fall," Bucky says after a moment. "I was in Austria."

Zemo’s curious loose attitude shifts as Bucky says that.

“It made a big cloud,” Bucky keeps going. He doesn’t know why. “I barely had my mind, but I knew what I was seeing was world-ending. Catastrophic. Horrifying.”

“I was in Novi Grad for a chunk of the battle, before the city rose. And then I ordered my unit to run. To save their families if they could.” Zemo’s voice is quiet, tight with horrible grief. It’s been nine years and it’s still intense. Bucky guesses he hasn’t had anyone to talk about it with. It’s strange that it’s with him. “I was on the road to my father’s property when the city fell. Chunks of it fell around me, like terrible lethal snow.”

Bucky understands that. He remembers days on the front line in France, where the bombs falling from the sky almost looked like rain until they hit the ground and exploded and killed. Sometimes, at night, the lights in the sky were painfully beautiful.

“I have German citizenship, because of my mother’s own German citizenship. My father insisted I claim it, so I interned at the Bundestag for a couple of years in my twenties. Perhaps he was a visionary, perhaps he knew that one day Sokovia would come to fall and I wouldn’t be able to be Sokovian anymore. It’s strange.” He hums. “To know I do not have a home anymore.” There’s a pause. “Do you know what that feels like?” Zemo adds after a moment.

Bucky hums. “Borders change, political regimes fall. By all accounts, I’m American, but I spent more time in my life speaking Russian than I did speaking English. And yet, the Soviet Union has been gone for over thirty years. And I only learned that ten years ago. The America I grew up in is gone, too. So… I’m nothing. I’m nowhere.”

“Do you know what the strangest part of all of this is, James?” Zemo asks. “Sokovia is gone. In dust. There are no places I can go that still look the same as they once did. There are no buildings still standing. Their stones will one day be in museums, without context. It’s like it never existed, really. Memories are good, but they only last one lifetime, if that long.”

“In a hundred years, those memories will be gone,” Bucky finishes for him.

Zemo finishes his glass. “I’m the King of Sokovia,” he says then, and Bucky immediately wonders if they shouldn’t try to seek some sort of medical assistance.

“I’m royalty. The last living royal of Sokovia. I’m the King,” he explains. “King of ash, King of a memorial. King of the dead.”

“Yeah, I doubt Wanda Maximoff would accept you as King,” Bucky quips, and Zemo chuckles.

“Ah, the Maximoff girl,” he mutters. “Do you know just how many times her head was in the visor of my rifle?” He asks, and Bucky can hear the smirk, the predator’s grin in his voice. “When I was with EKO Scorpion, watching her and her anarchist friends… Do you know how many times I could have killed her?”

“Why didn’t you? Bucky asks with genuine curiosity.

“She wasn’t dangerous then. She was just a girl, an idealistic teenager. She hadn’t met Hydra yet. I had no reason to end her life.”

He shifts on the couch, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from God knows where on his person. He tosses it over to him. Bucky catches them, and the following lighter. He doesn’t ask why Zemo doesn’t take one. They’re cheap, from a Slavic brand. The tobacco blend is familiar to Bucky. His handlers used to smoke it.

The lighter is familiar too, a Zippo. It clicks and sounds like the hundreds of thousands Bucky has heard in his life.

“The Maximoffs were Sokovian Jews,” Zemo says after Bucky pulls the preliminary drag of his cigarette. White plumes wave over his face for a moment. “Wanda and Pietro wore the marks of their heritage for years on the front lines of their revolution.”

Bucky frowns a little. “I don’t remember it from the images, afterwards.”

“I can only guess they took it off when they joined Hydra,” Zemo points out. Bucky takes a hard long drag and the taste is like a ghost of Soviet pride. “Von Strucker was an antisemite.”

Bucky chuckles at that. Of course he was. “What a surprise,” he mutters sarcastically.

“He was not one of the hidden ones either,” Zemo points out. “He was quite loud about his opinions when he believed himself in the right circles.”

“You sure seem to know a lot about von Strucker’s views, Zemo,” Bucky says quietly.

“He was a Baron of Sokovia too. I saw him several times a year, for official occasions of the royalty, and informal meetings at my family’s estate for most of my life. He and I were not that far apart in age, I must admit we shared toys once upon a time, in palaces like the one Karli and her friends now occupy.”

The world is small, especially the kind of world Hydra, the Soldier and the Avengers lived in. Bucky doesn’t exactly believe that he never met Zemo’s father. He doesn’t know if he would remember it if he had. Unless he was given the man’s name in some way, he probably was nothing but another higher up, another possible handler, another persona had to obey.

“So your government knew Hydra was in Sokovia?” Bucky asks, pulling more on his cigarette, trying to parse out a timeline of events.

“The government was Hydra,” Zemo replies, his voice heavy. “It had been for decades. Truth is, I never knew Sokovia without Hydra encroaching on it like a tumor.”

Bucky shifts, humming quietly. Zemo’s hatred of Hydra is surprising now that he knows his father was. “Why aren’t you Hydra, then? If your family was?”

Zemo shrugs. He has that sharp intake of breath again, probably accompanied by a wince.

“When the main Hydra branch fell, in 2014, I was only 35,” he mutters. “I was getting invited to the parties, of course, as the heir of the Baron, but… I guess I was too green for these people. Contrary to Wolfgang, I didn’t share a lot of their ideals. Perhaps I did, as a youth, believe some of their lies… It is impossible not to take in some of your parents’ philosophy.”

Bucky huffs, shaking his head. “So what? You met a poor Jew once and it changed you?” He asks sarcastically.

Zemo shakes his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. I don’t believe it was a singular event.”

He wouldn’t be the first rich kid to find some cause to care about as a rebellion from the parental authority. Bucky doesn’t say anything more about that. It’s not good to dwell on these things. What is going to come from confronting it anyway?

“Either way, let’s both be thankful I am not Hydra, yes?” Zemo shifts, standing back up slightly, to rest in a better direction.

Yeah. Let’s be thankful.

Sam comes in then with his computer and Bucky takes the opportunity to see himself in the bathroom, thinking everything over.

#jewish bucky barnes #bucky barnes #helmut zemo #marvel #fic #mine #jbu

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purplesurveys · 3 years

Text

1185

survey by xflirtykaosx

Alphabetti Spaghetti (3/3)

Please believe. - P

How many pages did the last book you read have? I don’t even remember the last time I opened it; but if I have to guess, it’s probably anywhere between 600–800 pages.

What do you like on your pancakes? Soaked in butter, with peanut butter and maple syrup on the side. My dad will also sometimes mix bacon into the batter, and it always turns out delicious.

Do you like small parties or large parties more? I love going to any kind of party, but I like large ones just a little bit more just because it’s easier to blend in and go unnoticed for the most part. I usually feel pressured at smaller parties.

What was the last exam you passed in? I have no idea. Maybe a history exam? I remember taking a Rizal exam right before the pandemic started and I never got the results for that since classes were canceled shortly after. I’ll never know if I actually passed that test haha.

Do you think paw prints are cute? Yesssssss.

How much would you pay a neighbour to do your lawn? We have someone in the village who does that, and my mom usually gives him a tip of I would guess around ₱100.

Ordinary pens, scented pens, gel pens or felt tip pens? Ordinary. The other ones write horribly.

Are you a people person? I’ve grown to be one over the years. I do like my alone time, but I have the most fun with a person or two or ten around me.

Do you put pepper on your scrambled eggs? No. I never use pepper myself, actually.

Who, except yourself, has the nicest pet? Angela’s, at least one of her dogs are. Hailey is super nice and she doesn’t really care what you do with her hahahaha.

What's your favourite piece of clothing? Right now, probably my IVP sneakers since they’re my newest purchase. Other than that, my mom jeans are always super reliable.

What place have you gone to that you never would again? Police stations that I had to visit to cover stories for my journalism classes. Maybe it’s other people’s passion – and I thought it was mine at one point, too – but once I found myself in places like that I slowly realized that I didn’t have the fire for journalism I once thought I had.

What do others seem to have plenty of and you have little or none? Nice photos of themselves. I’m very camera shy.

Is pink a nice colour, an okay colour or icky? I personally love pink, so.

Give me a description of a great film plotline? ...I don’t feel like it :(( I also haven’t watched/rewatched any films in a while, so my memory is a bit rusty.

What do you have in your pockets? Nothing I’m wearing right now has pockets.

Do you listen to podcasts? Not really. I’m part of the minority that finds podcasts a little boring.

Have you ever played Poker? I’d guess I’ve tried playing it one or two times, but I’ve never understood the rules and I probably just did some random moves when I did try it.

Do you have a pond in your garden? No.

How about a swimming pool? We don’t.

Do you like Poptarts? I loooooove Pop Tarts and I wish we had more flavors here :( and that they weren’t so expensive.

Do you write notes on post-it notes? Sometimes; but lately I’ve mostly just been making to-do lists on my laptop. Writing takes too much time considering how hectic my job is.

Quiet darling, shh. - Q

Do you ever use the word quaint? Very rarely. I never really get into situations where that word would be most fitting to use.

Do you know what quantum physics is? I know of the term from watching The Big Bang Theory, but I don’t know what it refers to.

Are you a quiet or loud person? Depends on the people I’m with, my general mood, and my level of comfort.

Do you usually ask a lot of questions? I never do. I feel like that’s a weakness of mine, too. My mind never wanders too far, and I’m only able to recognize good questions when someone else raises them.

What's your favourite quote from a film? “Rome. By all means, Rome.”

Favourite quote from a song? “Now I’m told this is life, and pain is just a simple compromise so we can get what we want out of it.”

Are you quick witted? In what aspect? Not always; but yeah, I guess it comes out sometimes. I’m pretty good at witty or funny comebacks, especially with people I’m comfortable with.

Do you find the word queer offensive? Er, no?

Roses are Red and Romance is dead. - R

Do you listen to the radio often? I used to, since I once drove to school everyday and I liked having the radio on - especially in the morning, since there was a morning program I was hooked to. But now that I’m at home 24/7, I don’t really tune in anymore; I don’t even have the slightest clue what songs are trending rn.

Do you prefer rain or snow? We only get rain, so.

Have you ever ran into someone and injured you or them due to it? Fortunately no, for both circumstances.

Do you listen to rap music? K-Pop groups always have their own rap sub-unit, so yeah I’ve definitely been more exposed to rap these days.

Do you find pet rats gross or nice? Why? I guess it’s cute when they’re pets, since I’m sure they’re harmless. Not so much when they’re big black filthy rats that are house pests and probably carrying a lot of diseases.

Have you ever been to a rave? No. I’d love to experience it once.

Are you somewhat of a rebel? Nah.

How about reckless? Now this hits the spot more, especially when it comes to money lol

Do you prefer red, black or purple dresses? Black, then red, then purple. I don’t wear a lot of the latter to begin with.

Do you know how to reload a gun? I don’t; I’ve never even held a real gun before.

Do you remember your first best friends Mum's name? I don’t think I ever met her mom. Our friendship was super short-lived and didn’t go beyond preschool.

Do you have a good or a bad reputation? Idk, you’d have to ask other people for this I think.

What song do you request most often on the radio? I’ve never requested a song to radio stations.

Do you prefer rice or tofu? I need rice for literally every meal, otherwise it won’t feel filling. I like tofu too, but I only have it occasionally when it comes with some dishes.

Have you ever held a rifle? Nope.

Do you know a Robert? What's he like? I have an uncle-in-law named Robert. He’s very nice, and super intelligent; he’s from New Zealand but currently lives with my aunt and their family in Vietnam. Since he’s from a different country, he has lots of fun stories and different perspectives to share at family reunions, which makes me always want to sit at whichever table he’s at so that I can be part of interesting conversations.

Do you like rollercoasters? No.

Been to Rome, Italy? Nope.

Are Roses your favourite flower? They’re one of them.

So sweetheart, lets fan. - S

Do you feel safe in your neighbourhood? Yeah, I mean that’s kind of the whole point in living in a gated village. I’d be pretty alarmed if I ever hear of a crime happening here.

Whose the Patron Saint of your Country? St. Lorenzo Ruiz. I actually didn’t know that for a fact, so thanks for the Google search and impromptu lesson!

Do you put salt on your fries? Yessssssss, I need my fries to be very salty. Unless it was already seasoned with something else, I’d find it boring if it wasn’t salty enough.

Do you think we are all born the same? In some ways, yes; in some ways, no. I know everyone is born as humans worthy of love and respect, but when it comes to factors like privilege then that’s when circumstances start to get all different.

When did you stop believing in Santa? I never bought it. I used to always get frustrated that I was never allowed to meet Santa (none of my relatives ever played as him), and that he apparently just likes to leave gifts at midnight. Not seeing a Santa made me doubt and eventually I just kinda stopped buying it by the time I was like 5.

Do you think the name Sarah is pretty? Erm, it’s fine but I find it a little common.

Is Saturday your favourite day of the week? Fridays are, but Saturdays are a very close second.

Have you ever watched Saved By The Bell? Opinions? Nope.

What about the Saw films? Opinion? I haven’t, but I know they’re my eldest cousin’s favorite so it must be a good series.

Are you easily scared? In certain ways. I hate jumpscares for one, and I easily get offended by them.

What's your secondary language, if any? English.

Name all the things you can see from where you're sitting? The entirety of my bedroom.

What's the last sentence you spoke out loud? “JAY KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY”

Have you changed your default settings on your computer? Some of them just to change some aspects of the appearance, but I didn’t do a complete overhaul.

What year did you turn seven in? 2005.

How important is sex in a relationship how important is sex from 1-10? For me, probably like a 3 or 4.

What is your favourite shade of blue? Sky or royal.

Shade of Purple? BTS purple, I guess? Hahaha.

Favourite shape? I don’t have one.

Do you know a girl called Sharon? Nope.

How about Shari? Nope.

Do you shave your arms, legs, pubic hair and/or somewhere else? I shave, but not all of these areas.

When was the last time you were sick? May 2020 was the last time I felt like death.

What's the worst side effects you've had due to a medication? I’ve never gone through side effects from a medication.

What does your signature look like? A very lazy scribble of the first and last letters of my whole name.

Do you like silk? What do you own that is silk? It’s okay, but I never actively search for it. I have one set of silk pajamas but that’s it.

Do you sip or drink hot drinks fast? As much as possible I don’t like getting in contact with hot beverages. I wait for them to cool down considerably before I take my first sip.

How about with alcohol? Sure, I like to take them fast so that I don’t feel the nasty burn on my tongue.

Do you have sisters? How many, what ages and what're they called? Nina is turning 21 this year.

Is your grandmother older than sixty five? Both of them are, yeah.

Do you slam doors often? Nope.

Have you ever slapped someone in the face? For what reason? Yes. Because he had slapped me first. I was in so much shock that my first and only instinct was to hit back.

Do you snack a lot or just eat big meals? I like letting myself go hungry then reward myself with a very generous serving to eat in one go.

Do you smile more often, or frown? Smile.

Are you wearing socks? No, I haven’t worn any in a while.

Do you say sorry too often? Yes.

What's a sound that always soothes you? This. I always play it before turning in, or when I need to calm down.

Do you carry a lot of spare change? How much is on you now? Not so much anymore, since I’ve been increasingly going cashless.

Do you own a swimsuit of the Speedo brand? I don’t think so.

Do you like sunflowers? They have a personal meaning to me, so yes. It’s not my ultra favorite, though.

#survey #surveys #i just realized the author never wrapped this up :(#so i guess we're stopping this at S hahahaha

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