#but a 'woman' with a pixie cut is less obvious than a 'woman' with a buzzed head

[freakurodani]

my hair is at an awkward stage and i kinda wanna shave it all off and go buzzed for a while

unfortunately, unlike other times where i shaved my head on a whim, i feel like my job has less freedom 😔

[venomous-ragno]

Writing advice...

... About military things from a soldier

Pt. 2 / ?: Women and relationships in the military

You wanna write a story with a militaristic setting, like CoD or R6S? You wanna create a female OC, self insert or character, but you don't know where to start, if women are even allowed in the military?

Well, lucky for you or not I know what that feels like and I've also got the combat / real life experience to help ya out!

Feel free to hop in my askbox or dm's and ask questions. I'll gladly elaborate and do my best to answer in full and plenty.

Disclaimer: My experiences and knowledge are mostly based on the German military, the Bundeswehr. They may differ from those of other countries.

Happy writing y'all! :)

Are women allowed in the military?

The answer seems obvious: Yes. Most militaries around the world do allow women to enlist. Some, however, do not allow women to join the special forces, such as the SAS, for example.

Certain branches report a higher number of female soldiers than others. The US army air force and sanitation in the German military are two examples I can think of.

Some countries do allow women to enlist but forbid them from partaking in "action", such as North Korea, Sweden, Norway, Bolivia and some more.

What about misogyny by male soldiers?

In my six years of active duty I've learnt that sexism rarely occurs, but when it does, it's straight forward and nasty. Most men don't care about your gender. They treat you like you're one of them, and oftentimes even forget about the fact that you're a woman. The few times I was talked down to for my gender was blatant and hateful though; but even then, some of these opinions didn't come from within the military, but from civilians. (Cue the old granpa who saw me travelling back home in uniform and just had to tell me that women belong in the kitchen, how in the good old days women were still women yadda yadda. Yeah, I had the same look about on my face like you now.)

Appearance is important!

As is in any military. I can't speak for them though, but in my experience, light and natural make up is allowed. Nail polish and lipstick are a hard no though, albeit the latter may be allowed for special occassions. If there's one thing my comrades have taught me it's that most men in the military got no clue about make up, so you'll probs get away with more than you'd think.

The exact rules however depend on your unit and what you do. Back when I was in sanitation I'd be working a pretty standard 9 to 5. Worked in the medbay and treated patients, kept the medical archive in order, pretty normal stuff. My superior allowed us to wear small ear studs. When I got deployed to another base I was almost lynched for wearing them. Really depends on the ones in charge.

As for hairstyles: Most units are fine with anything as long as your hair is up and out of your face. Now, we didn't have to use gel to keep stray hairs at bay. It wasn't that strict. Just don't use any flashy hair accessories and hair ties that match your hair colour. Oh, and your hair must be a) one colour and b) a naturally occuring one. The length doesn't matter as long as you're not Rapunzel. If your hairstyle is anything other than a pixie cut, you will have to wear a hair net under your combat helmet.

Do men and women stay in seperate dorms?

Seperate rooms? Yeah. Seperate dorms? Nope.

Sometimes you'd have couples who shared a dorm room. It's a whole process that your superior has to give his ok to, but I honestly wouldn't recommend it. Dorm rooms aren't exactly big. You need privacy? Well, that's too bad.

If you're lucky enough you get to have a room for yourself. Depending on what branch / base you're in, the rooms will be more or less furnished. Back when I worked at the ministry of foreign affairs, my room was pretty luxurious for milutary standards: TV, fridge, sofa, bed, desk w chair, a closet and a bathroom next door. That's definitely not the standard though. We usually had to buy and bring our own stuff, like blankets, fridge, decorations, whatever you'd need to make that cold room somewhat comfy. (Wifi is also not a given. Gotta get your own connection running.)

Flings, relationships, cheating spouses... How common is it really?

They do happen, though not as often as you'd think.

It's more common to hear rumors about who has smth going with who and these rumors can get BAD. As in reputation and career ruining bad. At that point there's gonna be an order from higher up to stop talking about these rumors and punishment can be quite strict. (Speaking of rumors...Hate to say it, but the more women a unit had, the worse talking behind others backs was.)

One thing that I always found particularly disgusting were relationships between higher ups and recruits. Yes, they happen. No, they're not allowed. These things are like open secrets. If found out and proven to exist, the superiors will be held accountable by military law. Outside of basic training it may be frowned upon if a superior were to enter any kind of relation with someone of lower rank, thought not outright punishable.

As for cheating... Well, I haven't enountered any cheating myself, nor heard of it (yet). Not saying that it doesn't happen, but at least over here in Germany it's rare. It's highly frowned upon and will open you up to rumors and... Not so nice treatment by comrades. Cheating on a spouse is punishable by military law. A soldier found guilty may be demoted in rank, suffer financial losses or even get dishonourably discharged.

[id-rather-be-an-outsider]

Pick Your Poison

Pieck Finger x Porco Galliard,

Pieck Finger x Zeke Yeager

word count: 1531

summary: Pieck is the receptionist for the science department at Marley U, Zeke is a professor in the same department. Porco is an intern who’s finishing up his degree to get on the faculty there as well. That is all. No story here, not at all.

a/n: I like college AUs, die mad. nothing horny here, just... aftermath. And just for clarity the behavior Pieck and Zeke exhibit as mentioned in this fic are NOT BEHAVIORS I CONDONE so if u do this I will berate you for it like a very disappointed mother

masterlist

“Fuck you.” I say as I put my clothes back on.

“You just did.” Porco says to me, “And don’t act like you didn’t like it.” He smiles like we’re in high school again and not newly hired university staff.

“I told you not to come over. Zeke’s gonna be here any minute.”

He scowls. “Oh, right, I forgot you’re only with him so your parents think you’re dating someone they like.”

I scoff. “Zeke is responsible! And mature, and thoughtful, and-“

“-Don’t forget using you for his own personal gain, purposely hiding your relationship from the general public so he can cheat on you-“

“Shut up.” I snap as he starts listing shit off on his fingers. “He’s only supposed to look the part, I never told him he had to act it.”

We rush to put clothes on in silence until he says, “Are you just expecting to date him until your parents die or something?”

I throw my hands up in the air. “Porco I don’t know! Are you expecting me to date you?”

“I’m just saying,” He deflects, “You know they won’t be satisfied with you and Zeke breaking up eventually. And considering you’re making attempts to hide us from him, you must know that Zeke feels the same way. And you’re catering to his feelings.”

“I am not.”

“Are too,” He insists, “And if I’m being honest, you need to figure it out. You know how I feel.”

I say, “And I told you, if you find someone you like better or are just interested in, you don’t need my permission to pursue them. Just don’t fuck me after that.”

“I know.” He says. “But maybe there is no one else who can pique my interest quite as much as you do.”

“You only like me because I’m unavailable to you, so it’s naughty and scandalous.” I roll my eyes.

“Maybe that was the case at first, but things change.” He admits, pulling on his shoes.

“What do you mean?” I ask, brows furrowed.

“What do you think I mean?” He counters. “We’ve been doing this, hanging out and stuff, for a long time. Don’t tell me you can’t think of one redeeming quality about yourself beyond just the sex that I’ve stuck around for.”

I can feel the heat coming to my face at his remark. “Well, not to be humble or anything, but I don’t really think about myself in that way all that much. So you’d have to tell me.”

“Oh, so you like it when I say nice things about you?” He says, standing up and walking over to corner me. “Didn’t know that.”

“That’s not what I said!” I argue.

He lowers his voice. “But don’t act like you don’t secretly like it. I know you too well for you to play me like that, Pieck.”

A knock comes from the door. My eyes widen. Zeke’s here. “Gimme a minute!” I call, then whisper to Porco, “You have to leave!”

“Off the back porch? But your neighbors will see me.”

“How else? And like they’d care, they have threesomes over there.” I punch Porco’s arm when he gets a look in his eye. “No. I don’t like sharing.”

“And I like it even less than you do.” He states, wrapping me in a quick hug and kissing my forehead. “See you later. Have fun with your Professor.” And climbs down the balcony as I run to the door.

“Zeke!” I exclaim, “I’m so happy to see you.” My warm smile falters when I see his face. He knows. I usher him in as I stare at the ground and close the door.

“I know that was Porco.” He says simply. Flatly.

“Y... yes....” I say, not sure exactly what to say.

“How long are you going to keep this charade up? Presenting me to your parents like we’re madly in love, meanwhile having him in your bed almost every night. Hm?” He asks me, not in an aggressive way, but definitely not gently.

I protest, “I could ask you the same, with all the panties I’ve found in your apartment.”

He sighs, rubbing his hand against his face. “Pieck, I only strayed when I suspected you and Porco. Not saying it’s an excuse,” He quickly defends, “But I think we both can agree the blood’s on both of our hands.”

“I didn’t start fucking him until I found the evidence against you anyways!” I scoff, knowing he’s full of shit. “And what about hiding our relationship from everyone and their mother?”

He looks surprised. “Well. Then I misjudged your relationship with him... partially. Anyways, why wouldn’t I? Everyone on staff thought you and Porco were together even before we started dating.”

“Zeke, you know all the rumors are just Connie wanting to feel included. He’s a temp worker for a reason.” I remind him.

“Well. What’s done is done, then. But... I have something for you.” He gets down on one knee, producing a small box from his pocket. He doesn’t open it, but I can tell what it is.

“Zeke, what is this...?” I ask, extremely confused as to why he would propose after confirming Porco and I were having sex behind his back.

“I won’t ask you that question, because it isn’t fair of me. But.” He pauses, intentionally making eye contact. “I can’t be alone forever. You know my... condition, makes me a ticking time bomb. If I were to propose to you, it would be under the assumption that we would end our scandalous behaviors and be committed solely to each other. I love you, Pieck. I know you feel something for me. But I also know you care for Porco. If you come to my apartment tomorrow and tell me you’ve cut that attachment off, then I’ll propose to you. If you tell me you couldn’t do it, then I want to part ways. I want to find myself a stable marriage. A loving marriage. One where I can raise my children with my wife, with the picket fence, with the house that looks like a cottage, and maybe a few dogs padding around. When I die, I want to feel like a piece of me is left in this world, not that the woman I married is going to forget me and run to the footloose rebel her parents never wanted her to hang around as a kid.”

I smile sadly and gently push his hand down. “I understand.”

He nods, putting the ring box away. “Thank you, Pieck.”

Zeke’s always been very precise with his words. That’s why he makes such a great professor. That speech is probably the longest spiel he’s been on outside of the classroom. As the science department’s receptionist, I’m better at listening than talking, myself.

I mull this over as I walk to Porco’s apartment, only knocking once before he opens the door. It’s almost like he has a Pieck satellite.

“That was a short visit. What happened?” Porco asks.

“He uh... well, he didn’t propose, but he posed the option.” I say awkwardly.

“And...?” He pushes.

“I turned him down. I told him about this hot intern who caught my eye, and that the university wants to hire them permanently after they get their doctorate.” I laugh.

He smirks, “Well, I sure am glad I managed to catch the eye of the cute receptionist in the science department. What do you think the faculty are gonna say about an inter-department relationship?”

“Oh, they’ve been shipping Piecko forever. I’m more worried about what my parents will say.” I half-joke.

He actually looks worried for a second. “What will they say?”

“Probably something along the line of, ‘You’re an idiot for giving up money like that!’ But I don’t mind being an idiot if it means I’m happy and in love.” I smile and hug him. “You know, Zeke’s vision of our life together was very cookie cutter.”

“Told you he wasn’t right for you. You, Pieck, are no cookie cutter kind of gal. But for curiosity’s sake, what kind of life would that be?” Porco raises a brow, patting the seat next to him as he sits down on his sofa.

“He wanted...” I pause to gather my thoughts. “Dogs, kids, a picket fence - the whole package.”

“Oh, dogs would never do for my Pieck,” Porco says dramatically. “Everyone knows you’d want an African Grey and a Komodo Dragon!”

“Don’t forget a Pixie Frog!” I add, now grinning from ear to ear.

“That too. And your fence would have to be scary, like fake heads on pikes and barbed wire to ward off your enemies.” He suggests.

“Exactly. Why have a protective barrier if it isn’t cryptic enough to keep intruders out?” I say in a tone implying that should be obvious.

“If only the science department knew they had such a weirdo running their front desk.” He jokes, “They’d hunt you down with Tiki Torches.”

“If they did, I’d curse Connie’s mom to be a giant monster, then turn into one myself.”

Porco leans in to softly kiss my cheek. “The faculty wouldn’t stand a chance against you.”

[mircallablue]

So, in the wake of BeauJesters seeming passing, I’m going to take a moment to be more than a little self-indulgent and explain why I love these characters and their unique dynamic so goddamn much, as well as why I’m so disheartened by the way the show seems to be taking them. Warning: essay ahead lol. This is just a rambly rant that I’m writing because it’s cathartic to vent a little bit of frustration, and I love these characters so much. (and I love the entire cast, every goddamn one, and every other character in the show too. This is about love, not hate). 

So, for a few brief and wonderful episodes in this campaign, I actually believed that I was being told a love story about falling in love with your best friend, and figuring out your sexuality, while also unlearning all of the untrue lessons that the world taught you about love while you were growing up, and in so doing, finding value in yourself. Which, for me personally, is just super relatable. Like, that ticks every damn box I have lol, which partly explains why I love BeauJester so much, and I know a lot of B/J shippers feel the same. I’ve shipped B/J from super early on, but I never in a million years really believed it would happen, for a lot of reasons. Mostly homophobia, biphobia and heteronormativity. But I enjoyed their dynamic nonetheless, even though I thought (and was often TOLD by other shippers) that it didn’t stand a chance in hell of happening. 

So you can imagine how VALIDATING it was when Marisha, both in character and out of game, confirmed that Beau had very significant romantic feelings for Jester. All of the crumbs we’d collected over the course of the campaign were finally coming together and all of the gaslighters who told us we were delusional suddenly had to acknowledge that there was something there. And once it had been acknowledged, it was OBVIOUS. Omg it was so obvious and I loved every second of it. It was so undeniable for the next few episodes, and in hindsight, that there was something building there between them, there was potential. There was definitely a connection between these two characters. And for a few weeks, it was great. 

Then Liam - out of character - mentions that Caleb is in love with Jester. And it is immediately, fandom wide, treated with more respect than Marisha and Beau. 

I know a lot of people get very very angry when this is brought up, but it is just the ugly, unfortunate reality that a lot of people in this fandom treat Jester like a manic pixie dream girl. Even the people who do not consciously believe her to be that (and I don’t think there are many that genuinely believe it), are perfectly fine /treating her/ like one, as long as it serves one of the straight men that they love so much, usually Caleb. And this is where the heteronormativity comes in. Because even though it was an out-of-game confession with no bearing on canon, Calebs feelings immediately took precedence over Beaus in terms of the fandom narrative. 

I personally have never liked the way Liam handles romance in game. He did pretty much the exact same thing in campaign 1 as well, where his sad boy pines after the happy girl from afar until he’s uncontrollably in love with her, and then with no warning he drops it like a bomb. He just happened to drop it out of game this time. The main reason I don’t like this style of romance is because of how (unintentionally) manipulative it is. You see it in bad romcoms all the time. The guy makes a public declaration of love that pressures the girl into reciprocating or looking like the bad guy. But the main reason I don’t like /this particular/ declaration is the timing. 

Liam - who has always said he likes things to come out in game - inexplicably decides out of game reveal something as major as Caleb being in love with Jester, right after Marisha IN GAME took steps towards Beau and Jester being together. And it completely changed the narrative. Suddenly it was “top table top table”, and that's if Beaus feelings ever got mentioned at all. It was not at all helped by the fact that a lot of cast members (sam) still pushed Fjorester HARD, even with Jester telling Nott to stop, which must have sucked for Marisha/Beau. But even as recently as episode 99, Beau was still flirting with Jester, and there were definite hints at Jester maybe having unacknowledged feelings for Beau.

Then the hiatus happened. When we return, Beau is throwing herself at Yasha, and there’s not even a song for Jester on her playlist.  And then Travis reveals (also out of game, like Liam) that Fjord has feelings for Jester (in a playlist heavily curated by known fjorester, Dani Carr). And even /that/ is treated with more weight by some fans than Beaus in canon confession. And Yasha is having all of these super convenient dreams where Zuala tells her its ok to move on, and Beau and Jester are barely speaking. And now Beau is calling Yasha her GIRLFRIEND? WHAT??? Did I miss 20 secret episodes that aired during hiatus or something???? Beau and Yasha have still, in 107 episodes, only had ONE meaningful conversation and yet their relationship is being treated as deep and inevitable. Sure, you can read into their other interactions if you want. But as a queer person, I am sick to death of my love needing to be represented as subtext.

And so it has become pretty clear that the cast has decided out of game to go in a different direction. And of course they are well within their right to do that. But I just can’t help feeling incredibly disheartened, and again, more than a little bit gas-lighted. It really does seem as if Beaus' feelings for Jester have just been scrubbed from canon - as if they never even happened. All, seemingly, to make way for a typical happy-girl-sad-guy relationship with either Fjord or Caleb, and a typical pair-the-spares barely-any-depth relationship between the two out lesbians because its easy.

For the entirety of campaign 2, BeauJester has been treated as one thing - inconvenient. Inconvenient by the fans, who prefer other ships and have treated BeauJesters terribly, and now it seems, inconvenient by the cast, who have seemingly discarded it and scrubbed it from canon. 

And one thing that really upsets me is the amount of genuine viciousness and vitriol coming from (some) BeauYasha shippers. I really wish BeauYasha was something I could get on board with, I do. And a lot of people who are sending me hate seem to assume I don’t want them to end up together. But I would be fine with that. But as it stands, they’ve literally only had one real conversation in 107 episodes, and they’re calling each other girlfriend? While literally having not spoken about anything like that? While one of those characters is supposed to have canon romantic feelings for another woman? Imagine that situation with any other characters and it would be comical.

I swear, the queer ladies in this fandom have been done dirty. All of us. Imagine if, in campaign one, Grog and Keyleth, in episode 107, started calling each other boyfriend/girlfriend in the middle of a battle. (I picked those two because they probably had the fewest moments together of any VM pairing). That’s pretty much what happened here, and we’re supposed to like it - be grateful, even - because it’s wlw rep? And I swear, the number of times I’ve been called lesbophobic in the last month is absurd - all because I’m not comfortable with a canon lesbians canon feelings being swept under the rug. All because I want wlw relationships to be allowed to have the same depth and growth as the straight ones. Yes, even if that relationship is B/Y. We should not settle for less. Imagine if they had done this with any other character's canon feelings for another. People would be angry.

And I know there are going to be a lot of people saying “It’s their game, they can do what they like”. 

True. I never said otherwise. But it is also a show. It is a product. They sell merch. It is something that they have taken the time and the steps to make sure that we care about. And this is what that looks like. 

I know what happened here isn’t technically queerbaiting, but damn if it doesn’t cut the same.

[saiilorstars]

Better With You (One shot)

// Seren’s Masterlist //

Fandom: MCU

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC

Chapter Summary: With no Valentine, Seren agrees to go on a date with an old friend, unknowingly setting herself up for disaster. When Steve answers hers call for help, he does everything he can to lift her spirits that evening. Being alone in the compound might help them finally be honest with each other.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother​ @anotherunreadblog​​ @maaaaarveeeeel​​ @stareyedplanet​ @perfectlystiles​

[If you’d like to be added to this specific OC’s stories/edits, send me a message!]

It started out as a game. It wasn't a game he wanted to play; it wasn't even a game he incited. No, that was what his "friends" were for.

Steve really considered for a good day or so about changing friends because the ones he had turned out to be very mean. To him.

"Oh c'mon," Natasha trailed after him one morning, "Valentine's Day is this Friday. You still have a couple days to get something together for Seren."

It was simply too early to deal with this. Steve headed for the kitchen for something to drink all while Natasha continued to make her point.

"A simple dinner would do it. Hell, a homemade dinner would be just as fine. We all know you like Seren, so just go and ask her out." Natasha leaned on the kitchen aisle, sending him a very wide smirk.

"Okay, that's not fair. Everybody likes Seren." Steve was fairly sure that there wasn't a single person who didn't like Seren Soul. She was an absolute sweetheart. Who could hate her?

Seren was always kind, a natural leader for the newest recruits. She took people under her wing, cared for and helped them. Plus, she was a bit of a sneak. Given her small statue and her big shiny eyes, it was always funny how people underestimated her only to get their asses handed to them. Steve himself had made that mistake a couple times and ended up on the ground, defeated while Seren smirked proudly. There was just something about her that drew people in, made them like her, love her.

He was guilty of the latter.

Natasha knew it, which was why she easily retorted: "Yeah, but nobody likes her more than you."

"Natasha."

"Sorry," she raised a hand then added, "Loves." Steve deadpanned her and her smug smile. "A date. A Valentine's date. Wouldn't that be nice?"

Of course but...me and Seren? That would never happen." And Steve deeply lamented it. Seren was way out of his league, a line that followed him through the decades it seemed.

"Who says?" challenged Natasha, half amused and the other half kind of irritated this was the reason those two idiots weren't together already. "You?" she presumed. "You know it's kind of last century to make the choice for you and the woman."

Steve rolled his eyes. "I'm not making any choice for Seren, I'm just reading the room."

"Well you're reading it all wrong!"

"I am not!"

Sam walked in on them before they could go further. "What's going on?" He asked slowly, now thinking twice about that glass he came in for.

"Nothing," Steve answered at the same time Natasha said "I want to get him a date!" Needless to say, the death glare Steve sent her way was well expected.

Sam, however, relaxed once he got the jist of the situation. "With Seren?" Natasha smirked smugly while Steve groaned. "Go for it," Sam snapped his fingers. "She'd say yes in a heartbeat."

"I am not!"

"Steve's in denial," Natasha said, rolling her eyes.

"That's rich," scoffed Sam. He came up to the aisle, planting an arm down. "You gave me the stink eye when I happened to flirt with Seren. It was all playful too and I still got the hint you were thinking of throwing me off the rooftop without the wings."

Natasha snorted into a laugh.

Steve did his best to stay stoic. He hadn't meant to make his disdain that obvious but when Seren had laughed at Sam, things turned red. Fast.

"Just ask her out this Friday. It's Valentine's day," Sam shrugged. "Flowers wouldn't hurt. She looks the type to go ga-ga over them."

"She is," Natasha was quick to confirm.

"As productive as this conversation has been, I'm going to go now," Steve announced. He couldn't bear the conversation and the tease anymore.

But it wasn't like simply leaving the room would afford him the peace he desperately wanted. As Friday approached, the suggestions and teases only got worse. He had to be extra careful not to let Seren hear anything. He was able to seclude her from the others whenever they happened to be together.

"Hey there, soldier," she surprised him on Wednesday when he walked into the kitchen for a quick breakfast. She was dressed in pajamas, her pixie ginger hair somehow messy, sitting on the aisle with a bowl of something that smelled pretty good.

"What are you doing?" He asked her in bemusement. "And what are you eating?"

She waved her spoon in the air with a joyful smile. "Wanda decided to make me a Sokovian breakfast. Isn't that nice of her?"

Steve smiled. "She's being thankful, Seren. You've helped her so much in these past months."

Seren shrugged her shoulders. "Just trying to be helpful," she said.

"You always are." Steve walked over to her, peering down to the bowl on her lap.

"Want some? It's pretty good!"

"I'll let you have your gift, thanks."

"So, do you have your plans for the weekend?" She seemed to ask casually though there was a little twinkle in her green eyes when he turned for the fridge.

"Not really, probably just stay in. You?"

"Don't know yet," she shrugged. "I know for a fact that everyone else has plans. Tony's going out with Pepper, obviously." They both paused to smile at each other. "Sam and Natasha are bar hopping."

"Bar what?" Steve paused again, if only to process the odd name.

Seren giggled. "Ask Sam later. Even Wanda and Vision are doing something. They're close, those two. So, it seems like you and I are the last ones."

"...we are..." Steve wondered of this coincidence was, in fact, a master plan of Natasha's but even she wasn't that good to set up something like this.

"Soo...you really don't have anything to do Friday?" Seren suddenly found her breakfast incredibly interesting. She wanted to control her heartbeat and keep it from reaching Steve's ears. At least try to be subtle!

"...no," Steve answered a minute later. He could've been a little brave and asked her to do something with him but the fear of her rejection or worse, her taking it as a platonic night, got the best of him.

He completely missed the disappointment marking her face.

"Oh," she swallowed hard. Don't you dare get upset. Of course he wouldn't ask you to do anything with him. She always did this to herself. She got hopeful that maybe things between her and Steve could go further than friendship. He was just too sweet to tell her 'no' to her face.

She just had to face the music. There was no way in hell Steve Rogers would ever look at her twice. She was too weird for his taste. After all, not many people could get over her unique origins. It was one thing to he friends with an alien, and a completely different thing to date one.

~0~

I have a date.

Four words. All it took were four words to puncture his heart so deeply. Steve didn't even know that was possible.

Seren had gotten a date. He shouldn't even be surprised. She was gorgeous beyond belief. It would take just one of her dimple smiles to get any man to ask her out, a man with courage anyways.

"It wasn't me!" Natasha was quick to say later on that day. She strode into the training room, intending on clarifying things before he made any assumptions. "If it was up to me, I would have set you up with her but you told me no."

Steve had found solace in a punching bag. Tale as old as time. "I know!" He grunted with one punch, then another. "Who's the guy?"

Natasha set her hands on her hips. "I don't know, some ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. The ironic part is, years ago he asked her out and she said no. Wonder why he would try again..."

Steve could care less. All he knew was that Seren was going out on a date on Valentine's day. That was enough to sour his mood for the rest of the day into Friday.

Seren didn't seem to notice. She was focused on looking her best for the evening, covering up any of her hesitance to go out.

"I am confused," she heard Wanda's remark. She turned to see the young girl at her bedroom doorway, head tilted with eyes sparkling red. "Why do you say 'yes' to an agent you rejected when you would rather him be Steve?"

Seren sighed heavily. "Can you please get out of my head?"

"I tried," Wanda raised her hands in front of her. "But you're so loud tonight."

"Shouldn't you be out with Vision already?"

"In a bit," Wanda nodded. "Why don't you just tell him the truth? I read his mind too sometimes—"

"Stop!" Seren exclaimed. "I don't want to hear anything from his head. Violation of privacy! You only get away with it because you're young. And he likes you."

Wanda smiled. "But nowhere near as much as he likes you. Think about that when you go out tonight."

Seren would rather not because it just made her hopeful again.

~0~

The last thing Steve expected that evening was to get a call from Seren during what was supposed to be her date.

What was more is that she sounded lile she was crying.

"I'm so sorry, I tried calling somebody else but nobody picked up," she explained rapidly, her words almost sounded meshed.

"It's fine but what's going on? Are you hurt?" He asked her, anxiously waiting for her response.

"Sort of, yeah," she sniffed. "The guy, he never showed up. The place is crowded and I tripped and I think my ankle got sprained. I'll heal in a couple of hours but I can't walk that well and the cabs are—"

"Seren, breathe," he had to cut her off or else she really would run out of air. "I'll be there quick, I promise." As soon as he had the place, he left the compound.

Rage coursed through his body at the idea that this man had left Seren in a restaurant as a trick. Who the hell did that? Who would do that to Seren of all people!?

He had to calm down even more when he found her leaning against the wall with her bad ankle. She had incredible healing but it still took time. She needed to put the ankle to rest!

Seren was overtly grateful that he'd come for her. She still apologized profusely for interrupting his night.

"I wasn't doing anything," Steve helped her from the wall.

"I should've just stayed at home," she sniffed. "I would've avoided the humiliation. He didn't show up as revenge."

"What?" Steve must have heard her wrong. There was no way someone would—

"I got his text. I turned him down, he turns me down...on Valentine's day." Seren leaned on him when he pulled her into a hobble of a walk. "Crazy world."

"Seren, I'm so sorry." Steve had to control his voice, make sure the strain of it wasn't so obvious because all he wanted to do right now was find the damn guy and, well, kill him.

"I think you're my favorite person right now—no, I'm sure of it. Can we please go home?"

"Of course." Steve wrapped an arm around her waist and helped her walk. On the way home, she explained the story of how exactly things happened and what led her to her sprained ankle. The more Steve heard, the more inclined he was to change course from home to wherever the hell this guy lived. The only thing keeping him from doing it was Seren. She was feeling terrible after such a night and the only thing she wanted now was to go home.

"I'm sorry for interrupting your night," she apologized yet again when they were in the compound. Steve helped her make her way to the couch.

"It's fine, I already told you that I wasn't doing anything anyways." He slipped a cushion under her ankle, ignoring (or at least trying) the heat in his cheeks when he touched her bare ankle. Despite spending a good amount of time outside in the chilly air, her skin was warm.

"You really didn't have anything planned?" Seren stared at him oddly.

He was surprised to see her calculating him. "You think I was lying?" he asked in surprise.

"Well not 'lying' but, I don't know, I thought maybe you just didn't want to say anything." Seren had gone about it at least a dozen times since she asked him about his plans yesterday. Maybe he was just trying to be polite and keep some of his life a secret from her. He was completely allowed to...

Steve smiled at her. "Seren, you should know by now my night life isn't all that, uh, active."

"I don't know, someone like you? Hard to believe, that's all."

"What?" Steve laughed.

Seren flushed and decided to look at her lap and keep quiet before she said something else. The night was already terrible, there was no point in making it worse by saying something that would out her.

Steve misinterpreted her silence for what he was sure had to be one of the worst experiences in her life. He hated seeing her like that. She looked incredible in her white dress and bright red coat. He could smell her sweet perfume too. He would've loved to have been the one to take her out.

"Seren?" He gently called her name.

Her eyes picked up from her lap. "Hmm? Sorry, I'm not very good company right now. You should just go do something else."

"The only thing I'm going to do is go into the kitchen and bring you some ice." Steve pointed her to stay in her spot, earning a small chuckle because, really, how would she go anywhere right now? He left her for a moment to retrieve the ice. He went through the drawers to look for a rag to wrap around the ice when he came across a few things that he thought might help raise Seren's spirits. After all, it was just them for the night. It definitely wasn't a date but he could pretend that it was something similar to it.

Seren had taken her coat off when he returned and, to his surprise, her legs were no longer on the couch.

"You got up," he accused her and had all the evidence in front of him to make the case.

She smiled innocently at him. "I just wanted you to sit with me." She'd gotten a stool in front of her and placed the cushion over it to then rest her ankle.

Well, she was making things easier for him that was for sure. Steve gave her a look for the little stunt but still handed her the ice pack. A second later she heard the microwave ding.

"Are you making something?" she asked. She sniffed the air a couple times before she realized what it was. "Popcorn!"

"I just thought you'd like to watch a movie or something..." Steve weakly explained. The idea was suddenly worse than he remembered it earlier. "If you don't want to—"

"I want to!" Seren was quick to say. She felt her cheeks blush when she thought that maybe she'd answered too fast. She endeavored to calm herself so Steve wouldn't notice. "I mean...that'll be nice."

"Great, I'll go get the popcorn!" Steve made a quick trip back to the kitchen. He had to stop himself getting so excited before he had to go back. It wasn't a date, it wasn't anything!

But it was also Valentine's day and it was just them. He couldn't help but just dream a little.

~ 0 ~

Seren convinced him that a movie called Groundhog Day would be good to watch. It came out in the early 90s so he missed out by a long shot. They sat together on the couch and in no time Seren had snuggled up to Steve. It was hard remembering how to breathe when she was practically on him. Only her sprained ankle kept her slightly away.

"What did you guys used to do for Valentine's back then?" She suddenly asked midway through the movie. Steve didn't hear her at first—he'd been trying to focus just on the movie and not the soft rhythm of her heartbeat against him. She tilted her head up to him, lips pulled into a soft smile for him. "I'm curious."

"When aren't you?" he countered, earning a chuckle from her. "You know I didn't do much for the day. I always helped Bucky pull some stunt for whatever girl he had around those days. But it was pretty much like what everyone does today. Dinner. Flowers. The cards. Those big bears seem to be just as expensive as they were back then."

Seren laughed. "They're ridiculous. Some of them are bigger than me."

"To be fair, many things are bigger than you," Steve quipped, smirking at her when she gasped incredulously.

"I expect that type of comment from Tony, not you!" She huffed and looked away, crossing her arms to complete the look.

"I'm sorry." He tried pulling her back to him but she swatted his hands away from her. He caught one of her wrists and realized her skin had gone cold. "You want a blanket?"

"What?" She blinked. They were in the middle of what promised to be a good banter.

"I'll go get one," Steve decided and got up before she could say anything.

She smiled after him. He was always so thoughtful. Stop! You can't get carried away!

"Ah, still troubled," she heard Wanda say, startling the hell out of her in the process. By the time Vision went through the couch, Seren was over the shock.

"You two are supposed to be gone for longer!"

"I thought it was too cold for Wanda," Vision said, motioning to the dress Wanda was in.

The ginger moved around the couch, revealing a plastic box full of heart-shaped cookies. "You should definitely let yourself get carried away."

Seren's face was flat. "Stop reading my mind!"

Wanda smiled and merely deposited the box of cookies on Seren's lap. "We'll get out of your hair. Come on, Vis."

"What is this movie?" Vision cocked his head at the screen.

"We can watch it another day," Wanda dragged him by the arm. "Hi Steve," she greeted the man on the way into the hallway.

"Wanda? Aren't you—"

"Don't worry, we won't disturb you!" Wanda winked at him, leaving him quite red.

Stop reading my mind! He shouted inside, hoping that Wanda heard him loud and clear. He returned to the living room and saw Seren chowing down on a heart-shaped cookie. She stopped when she saw him, her crumb-filled lips smiling at him. "Let me guess, Wanda and Vision?"

"Mhm!" Seren nodded, swallowing down before she spoke. "They're sugar cookies with the red sprinkles! They're so good!"

Steve laughed. "Right. Here." He draped the blanket over her lap.

"Take a cookie!" She offered him the box when he sat down. "I always remember having these when I was a kid."

"Really?" Steve mused. "Were they your favorite?" Something to jot down for the next year.

"Here!" Seren offered him a bite out of her own cookie.

Steve raised an eyebrow at her. It wasn't often they shared food and even then it was always simple things like candy in a bag or something he could just easily pick from. Still, Seren didn't seem to be thinking much of it so why should he? He leaned closer and took a bite like she offered. His eyes never left hers which helped her get away with her blush.

"How is it?" she asked quietly. Breathing became hard again. Even her eyes started flickering down to his lips. They had to be even sweeter now with the sugar from the cookie. Just one little movement and she could press a little kiss on him.

"Really good," he answered after swallowing. "I can see why they're your favorite."

"Mhm." She bit her bottom lip and turned her attention to the ongoing movie. She couldn't trust herself right now. "Let's, uh, watch the movie..."

"Sure," he nodded and made himself comfortable again.

Within the half hour, the cookies had finished and the box was discarded to the floor. Seren had found her spot with him, head resting on is chest with her arm splayed over his stomach. Steve felt the exact moment when she fell asleep. Her breathing changed and her weight resting on him increased. She was completely comfortable with him and that had his heart swelling. She didn't do this with anybody else, he knew for sure. It was hard not to be a little hopeful when things like this happened.

He couldn't bring himself to disturb her sleep to take her into her room. It wasn't hard to admit to himself that he wanted to keep her with him either. The movie had finished but he switched channels. What was he watching? He had no idea. He didn't care. He moved an arm over Seren's body and pulled the blanket higher over her shoulder. Her dress was beautiful but she deserved to be warm too. He even dropped a kiss to her bright ginger hair. Who would know?

It was only when she started shifting later on that he decided it was time to call it a night. As much as he wanted to keep her with him, she was getting to the point where she needed her bed instead. He began untangling his arm from her and her body from him but she groaned at him.

"Don't move," she murmured.

His eyebrows raised in surprise. "You need to rest," he said, presuming she was way more asleep than awake.

"I am." She brought her arm from his stomach to his shoulder.

"I think your bed would be more comfortable," he chuckled.

"You don't have a clue of what I want," she retorted with a slight edge in her tone. He paused. Now that sounded more awake. "How could you be this smart and yet so clueless?"

Definitely more awake. Steve pulled her arm from his shoulder, gently forcing her to sit more up at least to look at her. "Seren, are you alright?"

"I was," she shrugged. "And then I had a quick dream." She yawned and pulled the blanket tighter around her. "You were there..."

"I was?"

"Mhm. My date tonight was you. I wasn't stood up because you would never do that to me. And then you bought me a heart-shaped cinnamon roll. We shared it."

"W-we did?" Steve stuttered, flush blooming over his face. His heart was starting to race under his chest. "Uh, well, that..."

Seren chewed on her bottom lip. She was completely awake now and with lucidness came the fear of what she'd done. Her dream had been so sweet, so much better than reality. Everything would be better if she was with him. She would want nothing more than to have it be her reality. "I know what I said," she whispered, "I know it's weird—I'm weird being, you know, not human and all. You don't like me that way, I know."

"Wait a second," Steve pointed at her, eyes wide yet there was a little more hope coming to him. "You don't know what I want either."

"Huh?"

"You're pretty smart too, Seren. Connect the dots, won't you?" He encouraged her with a smile to just think. It was suddenly so easy and he couldn't stop the excitement that was crawling over him—he wouldn't stop it this time!

"You would...actually want...?" Seren shook her head. Unlike him, it being this easy was too hard to believe. "No, you don't have to play along."

"I will never play you, Seren. Do you know how much I get from everyone else for not telling you the truth?"

"If this is real then I'm pretty sure no more than me," she admitted. "Wanda won't stop reading my thoughts."

"And Natasha won't leave me alone!"

Seren brought her hand to her cheek. "So...you...we've been going insane for no reason?"

Steve nodded his head. "It would seem so." Maybe he owed Natasha an apology here and there.

Seren couldn't believe her ears. "Maybe this Valentine's day wasn't all that terrible then..."

Steve chuckled. "Maybe not," he agreed. He leaned down pretty quick but he caught himself and stopped, startling her with the actions. "Can I—can I kiss you?"

Seren's heart fluttered. Her lips pulled into a soft smile. "Yeah." Steve leaned closer again but was surprised when Seren placed a finger against his lips. He blinked in surprise, and a slight fear that things were wrong. "Happy Valentine's day," she whispered, pulling her finger off his lips.

"Happy Valentine's day," he murmured in return, finally kissing her afterwards.

[vln-vibes]

Watchtower Woes

Week 1 Day 4 of Maribat March

Special thanks to @little-kitty-kanny , @ethelphantom and @the-navistar-carol  for beta-ing for me

It was a normal day at the Watchtower, well as normal as a space station for superheroes could be. The Watchtower looked down upon their home planet, making it seem so big yet so small amongst the sea of stars surrounding them. Today it was just Wonder Woman, Black Bat and Ladybug on monitor duty.

“Sister.” 

Ladybug, otherwise known as Marinette Drake nee Dupain-Cheng (the 23-year old designer behind the Lady Luck designs by MDC company), turned to see Wonder Woman looking at her with concern. She and Diana were rather close as the Amazonian princess had practically taken her as blood sisters when she learned of a new Ladybug; seeing as her mother had once worn the mantle as well.  Diana had also been her business partner when her company first began to take off.

“Are you feeling alright? You seem to be under the weather”

“She’s right,” Cassandra Cain-Wayne added in “Your center is off, you seem uncomfortable.”

“I’m fine. It's been a little stressful with the upcoming line with Wayne Enterprises,” Ladybug sighed, finding herself massaging her temple, feeling a headache already developing. “That and the team has been acting strange lately, I’ve been trying to investigate the cause, but the Miracle Book isn’t saying much, and I can’t exactly ask Master Fu anymore”

“How so, Ladybug?” Diana asked, taking a seat next to her while Cass took charge of looking through the security footage for them, still focused on the conversation.

“Well, most of them have gotten dangerously overprotective of me. Just yesterday Roi Singe took a hit for me against Hawkmoth 2.0’s latest creation. I asked him about it afterwards, and he just said that nothing could harm me? It was rather strange, especially seeing as Ryuuko and Abeille got more ruthless afterward. Chat was also hissing at people who approached me,” she explained with a troubled look.

“Even as civilians, Viperion, Monarch, and Paon were coddling me: Mari are you warm enough? Have you eaten today? No, Mari, let me get you a natural juice instead of coffee. It’s been so frustrating having to deal with their constant  babying.”

“It’s honorable for your team to care for your well being” Diana commented, heavens knew  how the JL got  whenever one of their members was  ill or was unable to perform their duties. Ladybug’s eyes just seemed to water at the implication, wiping the tears before they even fell.

“B-But that could just mean they don’t trust my abilities… what if they think I’m not worthy of being leader or even worse… of being Ladybug?” 

Diana did her best to console the younger woman while Cass looked at her skeptically.

She had seen the sudden change in emotion Ladybug had gone through like whiplash, from tired to content to worried to saddened. As Diana combed through Marinette’s pixie cut, Cass continued to think of the things happening these past few weeks.

Tim had once asked Barbara if there was anything that could help with back pains, stating that Marinette had been experiencing some rather hard period symptoms.

She recalled Adrien purring along with Alfred the Cat when they had gone to Wayne Manor last week along with Tim and Conner. Even Ace and Titus were acting like her personal bodyguards, not too different from normal, though Damian admitted that it was a bit more overkill.

Just last month for the Wayne Charity Gala, during the ladies’ final fitting, she had complained to Steph that her own dress felt a little tighter than she expected... though not unbearably so, so she had just decided to leave her own dress as is.

Had it really been so obvious?

She needed to recheck whether Tim deserved the title of Detective after this. Cass stepped out of the room momentarily to make what was potentially a life changing call.

“Robin and Superboy, do you read?” she knew her baby brother, almost eighteen years old, would be hanging out at the Titans Tower in the east coast with Superboy, now sixteen, but seeing as it was a quiet day and the other Titans: Green Lantern (Milagro Reyes), Nightstar (Mar’i Grayson), Scarlet Flash and Kid Speed (Dawn and Don Allen), and Speedy(Lian Harper) would be on standby.

“Is something the matter Black Bat?” Damian responded almost immediately.

All Bats were rather keen on making sure their comms were on in case of emergencies, even when silenced, they’d have the notifications on to see who was trying to contact them.

“Do you mind coming to the Watchtower with Superboy, there’s something concerning Ladybug𑁋”

“Is she alright?” she almost giggled at how concerned her brother was before keeping her cool and responding.

“I believe she’s alright but perhaps not aware of her condition”

“We’ll be there in a minute”

Not even a full minute after stepping back in with a much calmer Ladybug, did she hear the announcement of Robin and Superboy’s arrival before the two skid into the communications room with the three heroines.

“Robin and Superboy? I wasn’t aware you boys would be passing by today,” Diana asked curiously as Damian just puffed up.

“Black Bat called about checking Ladybug’s condition” he said eyeing the scarlet hero to see if anything was amiss; other than her red rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks he found nothing unusual.

“My condition? Cass what are you talking about?” Ladybug asked confused and a bit protective.

“Superboy,” Jon perked at his name before turning to Cass “Can you hear the heartbeats in this room?”

“Uh sure…” to say he was confused was an understatement. He was rather familiar with their heartbeats, having known them for years at this point. He could hear Diana and Damian’s rather war drum like beat, Cass’ steady and rhythmic beats, Marinette’s calm and slightly faster than usual heart and then there was𑁋

Wait, what?

“That’s weird” he whispered to himself before focusing again. Sure enough it was still there a soft echoe of duhn-duhn… duhn-dun as the fifth heartbeat. But he had never heard it before… and it was coming from…

Oh duh!

“Holy schmoly! Congrats Ladybug.” He flew up to her and gave her a huge hug, conscious of his strength now more than ever. Ladybug seemed confused while Cass smiled at her.

“You’re expecting!”

Suddenly everything made more sense, Marinette thought in that moment of realization, as she felt Diana give her her own congratulations along with Damian, who wished to both brag and inform the rest of the family.

This was really happening.

“Can— can we see Doctor Mid-Nite or Doctor Thompkins, please?” she heard herself whisper. The group looked at each other, Diana contacting the Watchtower’s doctor while Damian called for Tim and the rest of the Bat Family to come as soon as they could; was that overkill? Perhaps, but no one that was even associated with the Bats could be anything less than dramatic. Jon was the one who called Conner who called Adrien to go meet them at the Watchtower as well.

Half an hour passed and Ladybug found herself lying on one of the Med Bay beds with Doctor Thompkins, the woman having to be pulled until they mentioned Marinette requesting her assistance, making the last few configurations to the ultrasound machine.

“Are you ready, dear?” the kind doctor asked.

 Ladybug lifted her uniform, which she learned she could do at that moment, nearly squirming at the cold gel spreading at her softening abdomen.

“As ready as I’ll ever be” she laughed nervously before taking a deep breath. She couldn’t help but close her eyes, unsure if she wanted it to be true or not, before hearing the curtain open. Tim looked disheveled, most likely having come out of a W.E business meeting he had mentioned yesterday evening.

“Mari, what’s wrong!?”

Duhn-duhn…. Duhn-duhn… duhn-duhn

Marinette had never heard such a life-altering sound, feeling the tears swell in her eyes as her husband looked dumbfounded.

“Is— is that?” Marinette could only nod before being enveloped in a hug by him. He whispered sweet nothings and reassurances to her as the beautiful sound echoed in their heads.

“God, we’re going to be parents, sunshine”

“So it would seem, moonlight”

“M’Lady what’s—!” Chat Noir had sprinted from the zeta entrance having heard the far too soft heartbeat coming from the monitor, the Bats not far behind him. Suffice to say that the Watchtowers usual quiet was interrupted for the rest of that evening as cheers and congratulations went around the Med-Bay.

They would later learn that she had been nearly three months pregnant by the time they found out, explaining her team’s odd behavior due to the animal characteristics of the Miraculous. However, the worst news was to come a week later on one faithful morning.

“Oh kwami, get that away from me!” Marinette exclaimed as soon as she came out of their room in their studio apartment in Gotham. The scarlet hero having to rely on Pegasus for travel to and from Paris for the time being. Not that her team even wanted her on the field in the first place at the time but she was anything if not stubborn, a necessity for the Wayne family.

That was how the coffee obsessed duo discovered that Marinette and baby were disgusted by the mere smell of coffee. Truly, it was the hardest part of the pregnancy.

Six months later, when Thomas Louis Drake-D.C was born, his aunts and uncle would continuously call him the ‘Second Coming of Christ’ for doing the impossible and getting his parents to cut off their caffeine addiction, much to their annoyance. 

For now they were just a family of three, looking at the infinite stars of their baby’s eyes.

My AO3

Ko-Fi

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Wait For Me || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY:  “I don’t know if I can do this. Not if this is who you are going to be. Not if this is what our future has to look like.”

CONTAINS: descriptions and discussions of self-harm, references to suicidal ideation

It was gauche, Deirdre thought now, to come bearing flowers whenever she had something to apologize for. But the flowers were pretty, and rare, and only grew one place in the world---a place Morgan may not ever come to, though Deirdre ached to take her. The fae world she held delicately in her heart wasn’t friendly to outsiders. But it had saved her life, and it had clothed her, and it had given her the strength to come back home to the person her heart belonged to. And She’d make a place for Morgan there. Deirdre wore a stolen sweatshirt, about three sizes too large for her, and shorts that covered nothing. In her crudely bandaged hand she held a bundle of flowers from the mirrored district, some of which were like mirrors themselves with their reflective petals, others as bright and pale as the moon. And a few, from the Lydia tree, striking red against the rest. She groped around the large sweatshirt pocket for her keys only to remember that she’d lost them in the forest--right along with her phone. All she felt there was the crinkle of the articles she cut. And so, she stood awkwardly in front of her own house, like a stranger--a beggar. In the days of her absence, the fog of rage and grief had lifted from her mind, and left behind a hollowed woman. What pieces she needed to pick up, where she went from here, she didn’t know. But one thing had remained true, and she always knew the place to start remembering herself. Deirdre lifted her hand and knocked against the frosted glass of their door. In the cloudy, skewed reflection, she could see a face that hardly looked like her own under all of her injuries. Stiffly, she tried to adjust her damp hair to look more the way Morgan remembered it, even if the ends had been singed in the fire. She was more bandage than skin now, and had about half a dozen jokes about being a mummy she would never say.

Instead she stood there, and waited.

Nothing good knocked on your door in the middle of the night unannounced. After almost forty years grappling with a curse, Morgan knew this better than most. So she held no hope, no illusions of her world getting one stitch better when she opened the door. Then she saw Deirdre, or what was left of her. What precious bits of skin she could see were swollen and streaked all the wrong colors. Blood crusted the edges of her bandages, and in her hand… a fucking bouquet of flowers. Morgan took her in with a long, terrible look; she couldn’t hide how sick, how wrong Deirdre looked with the stain of violence on her in its stiff, crusty, puss tinted glory.

“What the fuck,” she hissed, her voice cracking with sobs. “What the fuck was that? What were you fucking-- What is this fucking bullshit, Deirdre--” Morgan wanted to shake her, scream at her, knock those flowers out of her hand, show her exactly how much of an insult they were. But the woman before her was Deirdre, broken and small and finally home. Morgan shook her head, still burning with rage, and flung her arms around Deirdre and dragged her inside.

Resolve cracked. All the fancy words she drafted in her head on the way back home crumbled against her quivering lips, and Deirdre let loose a volley of apology and sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, my love.” She breathed Morgan in, held her back just as tight, just as desperate. She threw her flowers aside, they were dumb anyways. “It’s the—it’s the way the mirrored district works; it takes time away and I just—“ She trembled against her love, pain flaring in the places she was hardest held, and in the sore muscles that begged for rest—for once. Deirdre ignored it all, eager to be with Morgan again. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I’ve been so stupid. I’m so sorry. I love you, I love you.” She kicked the door closed urgently with her foot, keeping steady as they backed up blindly into their home. After all this time, after all her thinking, the only thing she could manage now was apology. “I’m sorry.” She pressed her lips firm against Morgan’s skin, peppering her in kisses as she mumbled more sorry’s. “I know it’s not good enough,” she pulled back, “but I am, I am.”

Morgan’s sobs shook her body. This was everything she had craved for weeks, but like some starved human given a five course meal, she was throwing it all back up. Deirdre’s touch burned, her soft voice made Morgan want to scream, and she did: tired and frustrated and bleeding with hurt. “You’re sorry,” she said bitterly, hating how fragile her voice sounded. “Now you’ve decided you’re--” She shook her head, trembling so violently her spine would’ve popped if she were still alive. Deirdre was always sorry. What did sorry mean after six days? “Stupid? Is that the word you--No! It’s not enough!” She pushed one of Deirdre’s hands away, but didn’t move to separate herself. “What were you thinking, what even happened to you, what is this?” She gestured wildly to Deirdre’s latest injuries, her face crumpling as new details caught her eye. Morgan couldn’t help but reach out for her face, even just a little, just enough to brush the patch of bare cheek she could. She shook her head again, uselessly scrubbing her hand over her eyes. “No, why don’t you explain what you’re sorry for now and why you didn’t feel like you could tell me or how I was supposed to know on my own. Tell me. If you are half as sorry as you say you are, you will fucking tell me!”

Deirdre knew now to be less startled by feeling Morgan’s anger against her—it was startling, yes. Something that she never should have let fester to begin with. But it didn’t spark the same bubbling panic it had the first time, or during her moments of immeasurable grief. “I’m sorry…” she mumbled again, face fraught with apology and concern as she looked at Morgan. Her girlfriend lobbied several questions, all good, all she was more than willing to answer. She started with the obvious. “For leaving. For not coming back like I should have. For sending pixies off to deliver you a note. For the way I’ve treated you recently. For the things I’ve done to myself, with no regard for you. For thinking it would have been okay to die on that driveway, for wanting it. For forgetting how much I want this life with you. For not being here to help you too. For running off the first time, and the second time, and this time. For going off and doing these terrible, stupid things, and then leaving you to find out through other people, or not all. I—I’m sorry, Morgan.” Deirdre breathed, eyelids fluttering as she blinked back tears. “I was—I couldn’t contact you, exactly. But I should have come home first, I should have told you. I should have done a lot of things that I can’t change right now, but I’m here, and if you’ll let me...I want to make things right. Please.” She shifted, wondering if Morgan would let her wipe her tears away, and then deciding she would try it anyway. “Do you want to sit, my love?”

Morgan squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t look at Deirdre, so desperate and pleading and soft. It made Morgan want to throw everything from the last two weeks away and forgive her so she could nest in her body. Deirdre wiped her tears and Morgan’s mouth fell in a silent scream. How could she skip to the end of this when she felt as raw and pummeled inside as Deirdre was on the outside? How long did she wait for her before she became pathetic? Morgan hid her face in her hands, nodding. She didn’t want to do anything, exactly, but she couldn’t stay standing in the hall. She stiffened her expression as best she could and led the way to the great room. She sat in the middle of the couch, hugging her knees. “Why should I believe anything you say right now?” She asked, her voice still wet and rasping. “I’m finally worth talking to, but why? Because I don’t understand. I would have done almost anything for you if you had just thought to--” Her voice squeaked with pain again. She shook her head tiredly. “I just don’t understand anything right now. What is this? What’s happening now?”

Deirdre fell beside Morgan, softly as not to disrupt the couch. She hovered anxiously beside her love, unsure how much affection Morgan wanted now, if any. She settled for resting her hand close to her, yearning for her touch. “I don’t know….” she confessed quietly. “I don’t know. And I know you can’t trust me but I can promise it. Everything that I just said, I can say it again as a promise. I mean it. And you don’t have to accept it, my love. I’ll still mean it tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day. I love you, I want our life together—I promise I do. And I’m sorry, I promise I am.” Deirdre breathed shakily, voice quivering. “You’re always worth talking to, you were always, I promise that. I just—I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking right, I guess. Lydia died and in my head I knew everything I had to do. Torture, pain, death...for Lydia’s peace and her justice. I have to do it. But I didn’t want—I didn’t want to bring that to you. You said you didn’t want to be complicit in what Lydia did and I couldn’t make you complicit in my acts. I thought it was right—I was right. I thought a lot of things, I know, but I just didn’t know what to do. I want Lydia back so badly...I want a good death for her, still.” She reached for her girlfriend, hand pressed against her knee. “But then I almost died again, and these fae they—“ She swallowed. “I saw what they did for Lydia. And it was beautiful, and kind and all this pain and anger I have...it hasn’t brought me anything, and it hasn’t brought Lydia back and I haven’t done anything right and I...I’m so tired, Morgan.” Her hand fell down, grasping the air. “What’s happening is that I’ve taken too long to remember what’s important. The thing I’ve always wanted is you, Morgan. And whatever I need to do to bring Lydia peace...I don’t think it means hurting you. I never want to hurt you, not ever. Not for this, not for anything.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”

Morgan slumped as Deirdre made her promises. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t who they were, but Deirdre wasn’t sick or choking on her words. They were true. It didn’t make sense, but she was speaking true. And the choice of what to believe, the woman next to her or the one she remembered, had been taken away. Morgan listened, weeping silently as she did. She understood these words, to an extent. She knew death. She knew loss. She knew bloodlust. (She was still trying to figure out what to do with her own.) And she knew that some pains demanded to take rule. But-- “But you did...” She said faintly. “You hurt me. And you never told me what I was doing wrong. You said I didn’t do anything but you wouldn’t even let me touch you at night towards the end, and then you just vanished! And then that...that note, that didn’t...what was I supposed to do?” She shuddered, whimpering. “I didn’t even do that to you when I died. I came back to you. I always came back. And I know you needed me, and she meant so much more to you than me, and I tried, I swear I tried. I wanted to be here for you! But you wouldn’t talk and I couldn’t do anything…” Morgan clutched Deirdre’s sweatshirt and tried to curl up tighter against herself.

“Because you haven’t done anything wrong. You hadn’t. I promise. I—“ Deirdre grimaced, memory slotting into place. “I didn’t want you to see…” she admitted, small and broken. But she could show Morgan now, not because she had grown any less embarrassed, but because she remembered sharing herself with Morgan was a safe thing to do. And it was the least she could do now. “Hey…” When she peeled Morgan off of her now, she offered explanation. “I need to take off my sweatshirt, okay? I’ll show you. I just need to take it off.” And she pulled up the fabric, wiggling out of its cotton hold until her body was bare and open. Crudely done bandages wrapped around her abdomen, covering the iron stab wound that would’ve claimed her life, if Athena had been any less arrogant. But she gestured to the bandages around her back that wrapped around her arms and chest as the pixies found it hard to secure. They weren’t expert medics by any stretch, but they never questioned her. It was simply what fae did for each other. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Morgan. I didn’t know how to say anything, I…” She trailed off, bitting down on her lip. “I’m sorry about the note, about whatever the pixies wrote. I should have just done it myself. I should’ve.” She sighed, and motioned that she was going to turn around now. Finally, with her back to Morgan, she looked over her shoulder and nodded. “You can take those off...I think all of these need to be changed anyway. But that’s—I was just trying to—“ Deirdre sighed. “I was scared, I suppose. I was hiding.” And underneath the bandages, she’d find the marks of a woman who had tried to seek repentance in an old technique yet found none. Where she couldn’t use her words, it was easy to turn to violence, even if that violence had to be leveled against herself. “I didn’t know what to say.”

Morgan searched Deirdre’s eyes as she spoke, desperate for some deeper affirmation. Are you sure I didn’t do anything? Are you sure I wasn’t being punished? But she had asked, Deirdre had promised, and what else could she plead for? Morgan squeezed Deirdre’s fingers as she stood. She couldn’t stifle her gasp as she saw how thoroughly wrapped in bandages her body was. Morgan meekly stood and undid the knots and unwrapped the bandages. The first few layers came off with ease, but as she got closer to Deirdre’s skin, the color grew brown, then red. There was a sucking sound as Morgan eased off the last layer, whispering, “I’m sorry, I can… I-I can…” Still half in the nightmare version of their relationship, she fumbled for the words that had been slapped out of her hands the most : help, heal, fix, soothe. But then she saw the ruin of Deirdre’s back and there was nothing left to say. Streaks of red sores crosshatched over each other so thick they swelled together in bloody spots in some places. Blood eeked out where the bandages had stuck. Morgan was silent for what felt like a long time, then at last managed, “May I get the first aid tub for you? I’d like to... you need to have these touched up for them to heal right, and you shouldn’t do them by yourself.” She stepped to the side and met Deirdre’s eyes sadly. They hadn’t solved anything yet, and she had more questions, but this much could be simple for them.

Though largely unaffected by the cold, Deirdre shivered. It was humiliating in a terrible way, but then, she supposed she ought to feel it. It was stupid in a thousand more; the desperation of a fraught woman. The only thing her pain had really done was change her body into one she hardly recognized. Deirdre looked up at Morgan, hoping to explain herself, somehow, not that there was much to explain. Instead she found her asking to get their first aid tub, and she shifted in her seat. “Are you sure you—“ she swallowed and nodded. “Yeah, that’s okay. That’s fine, if you want to. You know you don’t have to, right? But yeah, it’s fine. More than. Um—“ In truth, she hadn’t wanted Morgan to leave, some part of her worried she wouldn’t come back. But Deirdre trusted and she nodded, and she hoped they’d be able to get to the thing she actually wanted to confess sometime before it was too late—though it always was too late, wasn’t it? “I’ll be here.”

Morgan held up a finger for enough. “Of the two of us, I’m not the one who’s found ways around honesty,” she said, a solemn statement of fact. “I want this. Thank you.”

It was a while before Morgan padded back to Deirdre’s side. She set everything down in a daze and gave her back another look, still struggling to process the violence on display. “I am going to be as gentle as I know how to be,” she mumbled. “But if anything hurts worse, you need to let me know.” She frowned, fighting the urge to kiss Deirdre’s shoulder with comfort and went to work. Her hands tingled. They seemed to crave giving the tenderness they were finally allowed just as badly as the rest of Morgan craved receiving it. She made tender caresses on the brown, ridge lined scar tissue of Deirdre’s old wounds. She was so soft the movements were discernible to her only by her eyes. After over a week of loneliness, there was novelty in care this exacting and relief in the concentration it required too.

“Of course I hate seeing you hurt,” she said softly into the quiet. “And this is...incredibly extreme. I know what fae funerals ask of you, but there are at least two different occurrences on your back. I’d like the story when you’re ready for it, but this feels like you went back for more just because it’s something you could do.” She continued in quiet, then, “It’s not like I don’t know you sometimes turn to self harm when you’re destabilized. You could just have said. I don’t want this for you, even now, but I’m not going to judge you for it. Just, please stop, my—” Morgan stumbled over the endearment that usually fell from her so easily. It would not come. She sighed, her gentle voice turning tired. “Please. Try your best not to anymore.” She applied salve to the cuts, then a fresh roll of bandages. “You still haven’t said what it is you’ve done. You didn’t do all of this to yourself—“ She came around briefly to look at Deirdre as she wrapped up her body again and gestured with her eyes to the rest of her injuries. “I need to hear what happened. All of it.”

Deirdre frowned, feeling the truth and harshness of Morgan’s statements—and silences—worse than any pain she had put on herself. Even now, she lacked the language to explain the thoughts in her head, the grief in her body—the intensity of it. But she would try. “Six,” she corrected. “Six times, I believe. From what I could remember. You see my family...as a way to...it just—“ She hissed, not from pain—Morgan was unbelievably gentle with her—but from trying to pick apart the things her family told her to make violence okay, an unbiased fact. “Atonement...is not found the way I used to think it was. But it was familiar, and for a moment, it felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t know how to tell you how much pain I was in but this is….I don’t know,” she sighed. “I suppose you know now.” Deirdre slumped, weighed by fatigue, guilt and remorse. She pulled at the bandages on her wrists; iron burns. Her only thought was that Athena could have done much worse, and that she probably should’ve. She reached down and picked one of the articles out of her sweatshirt pocket. Amanda’s face, smiling in black and white, stared back at her. She placed the clipping on the table. “The girl who killed…” she closed her eyes. “The warden who tortured Lydia was close to this girl. Like sisters, in a way.” She opened them and stared down at the headline. This was only the clipping from her disappearance, old now, she wasn’t sure if her murder had been reported. “I wanted the warden to feel pain, like I have. But she—“ she tapped Amanda’s face. “—was innocent, truly. And young. And against everything I believe...I killed her. I needed information from the warden, I needed...Fates, I don’t even know. But I killed her and she didn’t have a thing to do with it.” She reached down and pulled out two more clippings of missing people; Roger Johnston and Joseph Wood. Names she had to hunt down in her memory, faces she had to fight to remember as they were and not as she’d made them. “Those men too. For no purpose, in fact, not even to terrorize someone else. Just because I could...just because it hurt.” she turned back to her injuries, which seemed like too little now. “The warden did this. I’m alive only because she wanted me to feel pain too. That’s the cycle we’re stuck in...pain begets pain. I felt so much of it—I feel so much of it—I don’t know where it goes. But not there, not on them. And not on me...but then where else?”

Morgan finished wrapping up Deirdre’s back and clipped them in place. She couldn’t help but brush her fingers over the spot and down her arm. She’d done a good job, worth affirming, and Deirdre’s body seemed to beg for comfort. “Sometimes the worst things we can do are ones that are most familiar,” she whispered. “But you can’t stay in that place, Deirdre…”

And then Deirdre explained how she had earned her injuries. Truly earned by the bloodsport rules of their world. Morgan dropped her hand and took the clipping, eyes wide with horror. The girl was young, practically Ariana’s age. She crunched it in her fist. “There really is nothing you won’t do,” she whispered. “She didn’t even know Lydia--none of them knew her, or so much as heard of her, much less had anything to do with what happened--and you destroyed them. Not even for fate, or for her. Just you. And I used to think you had more principles than me.” She looked away from Deirdre then, over at the walls where their skeleton paintings hung, the floor where the book of Mary Oliver poetry had fallen, the windows repaired and braced against their trauma, the snow globe (now just a tiny sculpture on a pedestal, without its glass dome) of a winter cemetery, a hope of a future that seemed to disintegrate the more Morgan watched it. “You know, that would’ve been a great question to ask the person breaking herself to try and help you. Before you destroyed yourself and everything you supposedly stand for. That would’ve been something great to figure out together.” She let out a long, shaky breath and shut her eyes. She couldn’t sit in their home and watch the life that had made her into a person again color with pain.

“I need you to swear to me that you understand that you are loved. Even now, you are loved. And none of this was necessary. You are the one who did this, to yourself and to us. You were loved through all of this mess, and a single word from you to clue me in could’ve made it stop. You are so loved, Deirdre,” she whispered, tears creeping over her lashes again. “But I don’t know if I can do this. Not if this is who you are going to be. Not if this is what our future has to look like. I don’t think I’d survive it.”

Deirdre closed her eyes, curling into herself. In her mind swirled a thousand explanations about the rules of the fae; how revenge worked. It didn’t matter what humans were trampled on the way, it didn’t matter how young they were. Lydia would understand, because Lydia was a fae just like her. But Lydia wasn’t here. “The warden took someone from me, I took someone from her. I should have killed her but I wanted pain…” she mumbled to herself, not offering her words as an explanation, but a trickled thought. She turned, and planted her feet on the ground, resting her arms on her legs. “It all seemed so clear at the time, all the things I needed to do, terrible as they were. Everything I was taught,” she sighed, shaking her head and pushing her inadequate explanation away. She couldn’t meet Morgan’s eyes, though she didn’t imagine Morgan was looking at her anyway. She knew what this house looked like before, like the set to someone’s life, but not hers. It was a home now, and she seemed to keep ruining it. “It would’ve,” she agreed, “in some other world, maybe I would have been smart enough to ask it sooner.”

The words that came from Morgan next were no surprise, she had imagined them on her way here. She had feared them. What would I do, she asked herself, if it was what Morgan wanted? She looked up and remembered the empty that her house once was, not a single book or decoration she cared about. No gifts, no cat tree in the corner. “If it’s what you want…” she began, “...then I won’t stop you. And I understand, I do, if it is. Because I love you too, Morgan.” She swallowed and turned to her girlfriend. “But I’m not giving up. When I said I wanted to be a better person, I meant it. When I said cruelty wasn’t a thing I wanted in our lives either, I meant that too. What I’ve done was wrong, and it’s not what I want. It’s never been what I’ve wanted. Because I am tired of it Morgan, these cycles of pain. I don’t want them anymore. I don’t want to hurt people like this. Not without cause, not like...not like their lives don’t mean anything. I don’t want that.” Deirdre tensed, though the desire to turn away flared up in her twisting stomach, she continued to look, determined. “But I do what I have to...sometimes. And most of the time I don’t understand what it is I have to do. I promise you that I will try, because that is what I want. But I can’t say this will never happen again, because I don’t know. My duty is to the greater good and I don’t—“ she swallowed. “No, there’s no greater good that involves death like that; senseless. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t know. If trying my best sounds good enough to you, stay and I will give you everything I can. But if it doesn’t….then please, let me take my things out. You should have the house, it suits you. I can stay somewhere else.” She finally broke her gaze, unable to find resolve or foothold in the idea of leaving Morgan. She didn’t want it, she would have done just about anything to avoid it...but lying was not something she could do to Morgan. She could not make guarantees where there were none. “We’ll—“ her voice cracked. “—f-figure something out about the cats. If you...think it’s the best thing for you. I want your future to be good, Morgan. The best it can be.”

For the first time since Lydia’s death it wasn’t the world that cracked in two, but Morgan. Part of her still bled inside, hurt and twisted and needing validation as much as a way to punish Deirdre until things felt fair. Another burned to sweep Deirdre into her arms saying, okay, okay, we’ll be okay. She looked at her sidelong, taking in her familiarity: her sad brown eyes, her trembling lips, her earnest voice, pieces of a woman Morgan didn’t want to do without. But she had looked that way before, and then she’d done this. Morgan continued to watch her and continued to think. There was no way to guess what circumstances they would be faced with, what they would be pushed to consider. Deirdre was offering so many promises, but they brought so little comfort in return. How was she supposed to do this, knowing this woman could drop her and run? And yet…

“If we do this…” she said slowly, reaching halfway for Deirdre’s hand.“If we do this, we have to be different people. Being like this, treating me like this cannot be our normal. You need to tell me things even if it hurts. Before you get yourself into some deadly mess. I get wishing you could join the dead better than most. But I cannot watch you destroy yourself. This needs to stop. And however rare your connection to Lydia was, we are supposed to have long lives. We need something better than this for our grief.” She shifted her body, angling toward Deirdre. “And we can’t pop back into what old shapes we had. I know...there was a time when you were all I had to cling to in this world. You told me it was okay if I made you my sole anchor. And I was scared because it seemed unfair to put that weight on you. You already have so much to carry. But I did it. And because of that decision I am still a recognizable version of myself at all. But what I didn’t reckon on was…building my existence entirely on you meant that whenever you break or leave me, I beak too. Every moment since you sprinted out of our home and practically died in my arms on our driveway has destroyed me. I am nothing without you, the way we’ve been doing this. And that is not fair. And it is not right. I need to do that much differently, for myself, and for us too. We can’t destroy each other so fast with our mistakes. You’ve done a lot, and I think even the strongest version of myself would be wrecked by now, but I fell apart so fast, and I’m still really broken...” Morgan’s voice broke as she remembered screaming and wailing in Lydia’s bedroom. She shuddered, shrinking in on herself. “And, I don’t know, maybe if I was different, some of what happened could have been different too. Does that make sense, what I’m saying?”

Deirdre’s gaze fell, her eyes stuck on Morgan’s hand. Her own fingers twitched. She stared, wondering if it would be okay. She remained silent for a moment before she met Morgan’s hand the rest of the way, held firm in her grip. She looked up. “I think it makes sense. It feels like it does.” She drew her lip in, scraping it across her teeth. She would’ve liked to imagine that she could carry Morgan on her own, but it was true that her own stability had been threatened. She didn’t know who she was, and she couldn’t ask someone to depend on an identity that she wasn’t certain of. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do it, Morgan. I never thought…” She sighed her words away and slumped. “I wanted to be enough. For someone.” Deirdre turned towards Morgan, running her fingers along the fabric of their couch, the same motions of comfort she normally shared with Morgan. “I can do that. I can do better.” But she didn’t have anything better to build her life on; her duty was a demanding thing, the fae had rules that often created more ruin than she wanted. Morgan was her shred of happiness, and she couldn’t imagine finding that any place else. She couldn’t even imagine where to start looking. “Can I--can we hold each other? Can we be doing that now?” Her voice was a soft plea as she gulped the rest of her anxiety down. “It’s just--It’s been so long. I’ve missed you, so much.”  

“It’s not about being enough,” Morgan said quietly. “I need some-thing, stars only know whatever that is. And you are someone. My most important someone, whatever else happens. The someone who made me as alive as I’m ever going to be. It’s just different.” She let the thought sit between them and hoped it stuck. She wasn’t sure if she had enough of herself left to try explaining it another way. She ached like her bones were just waiting to turn into putty, and her mind, tortured by its restless shamble from one thought to the next, deflated.

At Deirdre’s question, Morgan slumped, shaking as a sob broke free. “Yes,” she said, her voice whistling shrill. “Yes, please. Please...” She didn’t reach for Deirdre so much as she tipped over and fell against her. Whatever resolve or pride she had left washed away in the tide her tears had unlocked. She clung to Deirdre, careless and full of need. Morgan nuzzled into the crook of her neck and remained there, crying, until new words floated up and cracked through her throat. “I need to release you from the promises you’ve made tonight. I’ve already lost track of them and I don’t want you to be forced into being here.” She hiccuped a cry. “But I do need some, until I figure out how to trust you again. I need something until I’m a whole person again. I still need you…”

“I am a thin-ermng--” Deirdre mumbled, having just enough sense to realize what Morgan was trying to say, and how her self-deprecating thoughts didn’t play a role. She coughed. “I understand. That isn’t going to stop me from wishing I could be, though. I want the best for you, whatever I can offer and whatever I can learn to....You wouldn’t ask me to be something, I know, but I’m saying I would.” As silence drifted over them, Deirdre’s body began to quiver and her face contorted. She erupted in laughter, head raised to the ceiling. “Oh, Fates, that doesn’t sound romantic at all! That just sounds terrible.” She wiped away a tear, bubbling with a smile. Though the amusement was short lived, she offered the grin to Morgan, pulling her love tight into her arms. “I’ve forgotten them too, actually,” she chuckled softly, trying to hold Morgan as tightly as she could, with all the longing of the days she’d neglected. “But I’d be alright with that, all of it.” Working for Morgan’s trust again wasn’t as heartbreaking as she thought it might sound--to have lost it was terrible, was something she hurt for--but to work to love Morgan didn’t sound awful at all. She already did, and finding better ways to love was her honor and privilege. Horrible as it felt to have treated Morgan so poorly, loving her was no task at all---it was a matter of course. “I can work with that,” she smiled softly, “and that’s okay, whatever you need. I can do that. What do you want me to promise? I can do that now, put your heart at ease….I’d like to.”  

“I—release you—“ Morgan gasped, mumbling the words into her skin. “From every promise you’ve made tonight. I relinquish you.”

Time turned slippery as she cried, carried off by the current of her tears. After a while it wasn’t even one particular memory she was agonizing over, so much as her pain itself. Maybe if she screamed louder, it would spend itself, and the throbbing would end and her bones would settle. Maybe...

When she could speak more or less without gasping for air, Morgan said, “Will you promise you won’t leave me tomorrow like you have before? And promise you won’t hurt yourself on purpose until your body’s been completely healed for a week. Promise...p-promise me I’m safe with you. For tonight, for tomorrow.” She shivered and dug into Deirdre tighter. “I’m so scared,” she explained in a whisper. “I keep thinking the phone’s going to ring and you’ll throw me away and I won’t know how to get up this time. If nothing else, I need to know I’m safe here, like this, however we are, through tomorrow.”

For all the times Deirdre had held Morgan in her arms, there’d never been a moment so clouded by her own mistakes. Even the times before they started dating, sprung apart by Deirdre’s fear, it hadn’t felt so different. All Morgan wanted was to be with her, and though Deirdre wanted the same, she kept finding some way to twist it. She could’ve promised herself to Morgan for the rest of time and thought nothing of it, she could have sworn to stop tearing them apart. But these promises, just for tonight and tomorrow, were hopelessly Morgan—and heartbreakingly earnest. “I promise I won’t leave you, like I have been, tomorrow. I promise I won’t physically hurt myself on purpose until my current injuries have been healed for a week.” Deirdre shifted their bodies, just enough so she could look at Morgan. “I promise you’re safe with me, today, tomorrow…” she swallowed. The desire to say she would be safe everyday was strong, though it wasn’t what Morgan had asked—and it wasn’t something her girlfriend would feel comfortable holding in the form of a binding contract. Deirdre didn’t think it lessened the truth of her words though, even if she couldn’t say it. “Hey,” she cooed, momentarily lifting her hand away from holding Morgan to cup her face instead. “I lost my phone so you don’t have to worry about that part but how about this?” Deirdre smiled warmly, “I promise I won’t abruptly leave your side without telling you where I’m going.” She pulled her hand away, wrapping it back around her love. “I know that one’s a little bigger…” she leaned in and pressed her lips to Morgan’s forehead. “But you can let that go when you feel like you can trust me again. Until then, for as long as you need it, you can keep that. And anything else you want me to promise now.” She smiled again; promises could be dangerous for a fae, deadly even. But she didn’t imagine these would be hard to keep, or something she’d ever break. It was fine, and even if it wasn’t, she imagined that they’d figure it out. “Is that okay? You can ask for more, my love.”

Morgan whimpered as Deirdre shifted to lift her head. The vulnerability her softness inspired frightened her. Her urge to surrender was almost instantaneous, she barely knew how to keep from hurling herself into this woman, so comforting and painfully familiar. Morgan’s eyes pleaded with hers as they met, clinging to the words spoken and unspoken. Today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter. They couldn’t dare, even if whatever punishment fae magic might devise felt fair in this moment. But it was tempting, more than it had ever been before.

She was awed by the promise Deirdre volunteered. It was so kind, a gentle salve over one of the worst wounds on her heart. She itched to touch her face, to kiss her, and only just held back. “You don’t have to say where,” Morgan whispered. “I know sometimes you need to be away from me, or you don’t know where you’re off to. You can just say why, if that’s better. Either.” She hesitated, searching for any sign of reluctance in Deirdre’s expression, something to keep her back from hope. But there was only her tenderness, only her affection. “Thank you,” Morgan said, mouthing the words more than speaking them. She pressed her face back to Deirdre’s. She had almost forgotten the way her lips brushed so faintly against her skin and how much it felt like love. “Maybe after tomorrow,” she admitted. “We’ll have to see. But there are...I need to know some things, before I get too comfortable too fast. Even if I just want to lay down with you holding me...” If the universe was still in her, she would have reached for it for strength. But there was only herself and her want. Anything more would have to come later. “If I put you on my insurance, would you try therapy? I know we can’t talk about everything, but even just for methods around your self harm, or your idea of yourself, or us. I need to know if you would.” Morgan swallowed thickly. “I need to know if there’s anything else you’re keeping back from me. Because I can’t take more surprises right now, I need all of it, whatever’s left. And I know I can’t make you swear never to do this to me again, but you need to know there’s every chance we won’t make it if you do. I don’t even know if we’ll make it right now, but If you don’t let me stop you, if you don’t let me in enough to even try next time, we’re not going to get years you say you want. And I need...stars, I don’t even know. It feels like so much but I’m so tired… I wish I could sleep, I’m so tired.” She shuddered and clung that much tighter to Deirdre. “Tell me you love me again. Tell me it wasn’t my fault…”

“I don’t particularly think I’d ever want to be away from you…” Deirdre whispered with the same reverence as a promise. It wasn’t want that ever separated her from Morgan, though she knew she’d shattered her girlfriend’s trust. “Then: I promise I will never leave your side abruptly without telling you why and/or where I’m going.” She pressed her forehead against Morgan’s, slow and careful, offering just enough time for her to move away. It had been so long since they held each other, even longer since they’d kissed. But she didn’t dare close space between them as she once had; Morgan said it would be different, and while she learned just how different, Deirdre wanted to respect it. But even for all of the respect she wanted to summon, she couldn’t help the grimace that flickered across her face at the mention of therapy. The fae had their version of therapy, it involved mushrooms and torture, usually. “I went to therapy...actually. Group therapy, if you can call it that. It was…” she sighed; it was helpful, in a strange way. “Are you sure you want me on your insurance? I—well, you know money isn’t an issue for me...the only thing that would do is….well, it would be a commitment. Is that—are you okay with that?” Deirdre shifted, which in her position, amounted to wiggling stiffly. “I could go...yeah. I don’t know how much I could tell a therapist….I don’t know if they understand ancient banshee religious practices. But I would; I would go. If it would help, I’d do it.” And while the imagined embarrassment of having to sit across from a human and tell them all about how much she hated herself was a strange, stabbing kind of pain, it felt more like a step to her. She had tried being better on her own. She had tried it with Morgan’s help. If she could push her own pride aside and try it a little differently, maybe it would stick this time. “I….” Deirdre swallowed. “I’m sorry again, Morgan. And thank you...for letting me try. I love you. Everything that’s happened, the way that I’ve treated you, that wasn’t your fault. None of it has ever been your fault. I love you, I love you so much.”

Morgan soaked up the pressure of Deirdre’s forehead like fresh water. She still felt right. It was almost galling how much she could do and still feel so right. “You...what?” She asked, almost laughing with surprise. “When? Did you--group? Really?” Deirdre didn’t really strike her as the ‘play nice with others’ type. “Would you want to go again?” At the timid mention of commitment, Morgan rolled her eyes with a sigh. “I just mean--the American healthcare system makes enough money off of people without you paying out of pocket, first of all. And obviously someone supernatural would be ideal, maybe through some telehealth service since we probably won’t get lucky looking local, but for now, with what you feel able to talk about, I think it would be ideal. And…” She sighed stiffly. “Even if this didn’t work, I would want to help you. Do something for you. I’d want you to be happy and okay. So...it’s okay. No matter what happens, it’s okay. I’ll do this.” She offered a thin, sad smile, still in the process of reconciling the fact of her devotion with what they could make work in the wake of their mess.

Morgan sank back down against Deirdre’s chest as she made her assurances, sniffling quietly and nodding along. The thought of blame was the hardest to rewrite, and even as she felt the calm of Deirdre’s chest against her ear (no tensing, no gurgling, nothing that felt like a swallowed lie), she tried to replay their interactions and comb them for mistakes she could fix the next time around: when she’d gotten short and frustrated, when she fell to pieces, when she surrendered to Deirdre’s wishes after the first rebuff instead of the third. Maybe it was just that hard, admitting how helpless she’d been.

“It was...a thing for fae who don’t want to hurt humans anymore. They said…” Deirdre swallowed thickly, trying to shrug. “I think I’ll go again. They said they’d have pie for me this time. They only had donuts...which kind of suck as far as dessert foods go.” The food wasn’t the point, obviously, but as Deirdre navigated her own comfort with speaking of the topic, she found herself latching on to what was easiest to talk about; the food, the shitty chairs, the weirdly specific posters. “It felt nice,” she said eventually, “to talk to people like that. I kept thinking they would start laughing at me but they never did.” Deirdre shifted again, as if getting a better position on the couch would magically make talking about her feelings easier. She waited for her mother to materialize and chastise her for her behaviour, to say this was all some elaborate test and she failed terribly—there was always a breath held in anticipation for it every time she spoke of something forbidden. “I don’t think me not paying for therapy is going to ‘stick it’ to the American healthcare system.” She tried to laugh, but the sound came out as a shaky exhale. “If—if this doesn’t work out—which is…” A terrible thought to have. Exactly what ninety percent of her nightmares were filled with. The last thing she ever wanted to think about and even as someone who adored argument, it was a thought she felt horrified to entertain. “...a hypothetical I don’t enjoy considering. I don’t want to make anything harder for you. If it does...I can promise you I will continue to attend therapy, and you don’t need to have me stuck on your insurance. You could….save that for someone else, I suppose.” Or something. Deirdre didn’t want to speak more of it than she had to, but her mind had already worked out the logical steps they needed to take. Morgan would get the house, because she’d always wanted one; everything inside the house would be hers, save for Deirdre’s clothing and personal belongings; and Deirdre would continue to provide financial support, until the day she couldn’t. The only thing she hadn’t figured out was the cats, but every time she tried, her body was seized by sadness. And so, she left that one in the hypothetical space.

There were more important problems to solve, anyway. Like what to say now, if she needed to or could do more, what things had she forgotten to apologize for? It was a long list, when she’d taken mental stock of it, and she felt like she only spoke a fraction. But time, she realized, was what she had to leave the Fate of her most precious relationship to. She couldn’t force Morgan to love her like she had before right now, right away. She couldn’t soothe every issue with some promises just at once, like she hadn’t been gone for days. “Can I kiss you?” She asked quietly, blurted out as her mind drifted. “I know it’s been a while and I know I don’t—it’s okay if you don’t want me to. I understand, I can wait for...whenever you’re ready for that again. I just...thought I’d ask.” She flushed with guilt and embarrassment. “It’s fine if—you can just forget I asked. I’m sorry.”

Morgan couldn’t help the watery smile that spread over her as Deirdre explained where she had been. “You have a fae support group...?” She said faintly. For the first time this night, her voice lilted up with hope. She lifted her fingertips to tenderly brush along Deirdre’s cheek. The faeness of the group made the strange parts fit together, why Deirdre felt comfortable speaking at all, why she took the idea seriously in the first place. And it was why Morgan thought it might stick. Deirdre had a community. Maybe not a banshee community, but one who knew what it was like to be raised similarly, where wings mattered more than hearts. “That’s incredible. You should go, as much as you can. I’m so proud of you, for doing this for yourself.” She kept stroking her face, moving down to her jaw, as she thought about the rest of what Deirdre said. The habit was so compelling, she didn’t want to stop.

“I don’t want to think about there being someone else,” she admitted. “I don’t want someone else. I just…” Say these things to protect myself. Remind myself the woman who hurt me looked just like you. She grimaced, hoping that by process of elimination, Deirdre would understand. “We don’t have to keep talking about this in those terms, though. We shouldn’t. I don’t want to manifest that world. I want…” What she most wanted was for all of this to have never happened in the first place. She couldn’t quite visualize the steps between where she was and where the life she still desperately craved lay ahead of her: happy, vibrant, stable, and pledged to Deirdre. It was painfully ironic. Her whole life she hadn’t even dared to imagine that she could have anything so long lasting as to imagine stability. Having something good for a time, a year at most, was as promising as her reality got. And now that she could almost taste that new, better life, her foundations were in shambles. “...I want…” Morgan hesitated. Deirdre promised I’m safe. She promised she won’t leave. She promised, she promised… “I want this to stop hurting. I want us to be together without it being scary or hurting. I want to be able to hear you tell me something without having to question it. I want ‘us’ to mean something again.”

At Deirdre’s question, and the volley of insecure backpedals and qualifications that followed it, Morgan sat up in her lap. She looked long into Deirdre’s eyes, frowning with heartache at the swelling around one of them. These eyes knew her, understood her, pleaded with her. Even loved her. Morgan brushed back her hair, greasy and tangled. It was as though her grief had torn itself out of her heart and onto her skin. And somehow in the middle of that anguish, she’d had enough sense to try something more for herself. Her poor banshee was so strong. Even if her heart was stronger than she realized, it wasn’t used to carrying so much love or bearing the cost of it. Morgan’s lips trembled as she smiled sadly, then she reached up and cupped her face as gently as she could. “I love you. And I need some time. But you can have this--” She kissed Deirdre, tender, chaste and lingering. She parted, meaning to leave it at that, but the touch had only been a ghost of contact and that faint cotton tingle that was as close to softness as she would ever feel only made her body ache for what it had missed for so long. Morgan met Deirdre’s eyes. If she gave anything more, the promises for tomorrow would mean nothing. Her heart would be sunken too deep and it would be so much harder to pull back if they fell apart too quickly. She didn’t even know what she would supplement Deirdre’s place in her life with. The only thing clear was her want, however terrifying, however unwise. Please help me, her eyes said. Please. “A-and...and now you can kiss me back. Just once.” She whispered.

“It’s not a fae support group...it’s a murder support group...in which we’re all fae.” But the more Deirdre talked about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. it sounded stupid when Sundew took her, it sounded stupid while she was there, and it probably would have sounded stupid to her mother. Did that make it good or bad? As she listened to the hopeful turn in Morgan’s voice, trying not to shiver under her feather-touch, she thought it might have been good. It might have been okay. But she closed her eyes, and there was everything else, everyone else. The idea of a fae that felt bad about killing a human was ludicrous. As a child, every sentence she uttered ended with a glance at her mother. She waited for the hum of approval, the hiss of disapproval; the direction she needed to steer herself. Morgan thought it was good, and Deirdre did too, but when left on her own, would she still look for her mother’s eyes? “They meet often...I can—I suppose I’ll join them.” She lowered her head, Morgan’s pride was not as intoxicating an incentive as her mother’s, but it was gentler. Embarrassingly so. It was the warmth it blossomed, the stirrings of tender thought—her self-worth did not conflate, but it fluttered. Like wings in her chest, waiting for the right breeze to carry them off.

“I don’t want to either. But it’s—maybe it’s something we need a plan for too? To make it less—“ scary? It would always be scary. Terrible? The terribleness of it would not lessen with carefully considered steps. “—I don’t know,” she confessed. “I just thought I was being considerate, by offering. I can barely think about it. I don’t want to.” It occurred to her then that it would’ve been better to discuss a plan for staying together rather than parting. It was better to think about on all accounts, and more important. Those were steps she’d much rather lay out in her head, but they didn’t have easy answers—the solution was subject to the strange, volatile factor of time. “I’m sorry…” she said quietly in a moment, shifting closer to Morgan. “...that I ruined that. But I want us too, I want you to trust me again too, and I’ll work for it—I will.” She bit back a promise, though she would have offered them all out if she thought it would help. What good was a power like that, if she couldn’t even use it to properly explain to the woman she loved just how devoted she was? She was tired of saying she could promise things, if Morgan suddenly turned into such a creature that would bind Deirdre to her; she could do it. She wanted to just do it. But time—terrible, slow and inconsiderate—stood between her. She’d have to wait, for however long it would take. Each second, each hour, day or year—she would wait. “I am yours,” she sighed, “always.”

And she realized her mistake then, in asking for a kiss. Even when she could give them freely—a privilege she would remember to cherish—they were never enough. Too short. Too soft. Too hard, this time. Not right, that time. They were her favorite inadequacy; time after time she could try to get them perfect. Not enough love. Too much. She should hold Morgan tighter. She should kiss her longer. She never felt horrible for falling short, it was just a matter of trying again and again—some were good, some were great, some so instinctual she forgot them (those too, had their merits, she could kiss Morgan again, carrying the value of two kisses). But they were all strung together by a common thread; that she wanted more. Morgan parted from her and Deirdre chased her for the centimetres between—too soft, too short, not enough, come back. But this one could not be fixed with another, or another after that one. And Deirdre blinked, trying to reign her longing to no avail. She wasn’t so sure if she was looking at her desires in Morgan’s eyes, or Morgan’s own staring back at her. But she was such a terrible fool to think she could look at her, drink her in, and want just one kiss. The furrow of her brow alone demanded twenty. And her eyes—big, beautiful, blue—she wouldn’t even start to count how many they’d get in their name. Just once, Morgan urged her, and altogether, Deirdre crumbled. She pushed herself up, meeting Morgan’s eyes. She leaned in slowly, plagued by quivering breath. She held herself those missing centimetres away from Morgan, thinking there was something to savour in the lingering. But as she brushed her lips against Morgan’s, gentle even to her senses, she couldn’t kiss her. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled there, voice heavy with longing. “I can’t kiss you. Not just once. I can’t do that. Not in...any way that won’t be worse for us.” She pulled back, meeting Morgan’s gaze. “I want you, Morgan. Not just once.” She dropped her head, ashamed by her own dramatics—by the ferocity of her love and affection, and all that it wanted. Her mind was still reaching for Morgan, her body trembled with the need to; it had been so long since she had to stop herself from offering affection, she’d forgotten what agony it was. She lifted her head. “I can’t help you,” she said, “I can’t not want you enough to just—“ She swallowed. “I’m sorry. Not just once. I can’t do it once.” Deirdre brought her fingers to her lips, the feeling of Morgan there was already gone, and they burned to be renewed. She’d have to live with it for now, she’d have to wait.

Morgan had nodded encouragingly at Deirdre as she leaned in. She was terrified of what this would do to her, but she ached worse for one more taste of their intimacy. Her hands had slid up Deirdre’s shoulders in expectation. She’d closed her eyes and—nothing.

Morgan’s wide eyes flashed with hurt and confusion. “But—” Her voice cracked in her throat. She cut herself off, lips quivering, and listened. By the time Deirdre finished, Morgan’s body was just as tense with longing as her banshee’s, and her whole mouth trembled. Her hand went out automatically for Deirdre’s, ready to tear it away, to pull her right back in and show her what she’d really meant by once (so long as they didn’t fully part, it was only one kiss, right?) and soothe both of their hurts. But she stopped herself halfway, unsure now. “Worse how? Would it hurt…? Did it hurt before?” Had her kindness been cruel without her realizing? “I was gentle so you’d know I really meant it. So it would be just for you. I was scared, but I wanted to, and I wanted you to have it. And I thought that would be it and I’d be content, but as soon as I felt you, I wanted—” More. So much more. Enough to fill herself up and be sick on. One kiss had seemed like a balanced compromise, but maybe it wasn’t after all. Morgan shuddered and took Deirdre’s bandaged hands, looking earnestly into her terrible, pained expression. “I want you too…” She whispered.

“This is stupid,” she whimpered. “This is so stupid and unfair.” Physical affection had come so easy for them before. It was automatic sometimes, at others, as fluid and nuanced as language, composing poems on each other’s bodies of how much they loved and craved and cherished one another’s presence. “How do we fix this? How do we get to the part where it’s better? If you can’t...if even this isn’t good, we need to figure out something soon, right? We need...a plan, a-a rule, I don’t know. Something to hold onto.” She searched Deirdre’s eyes, finding her own pent up longing reflected back at her. She finally forced her lips to hold their place. “Aren’t you tired of hurting? Can you tell me what you need, what you think will help?”

“No, no! No, it didn’t hurt. That’s not it.” In her eagerness to dissuade Morgan’s worries, Deirdre wrapped her back up in her arms, in the same state that sparked the desire for more in the first place. “It was a good kiss, a really good kiss. That’s the problem…” She sighed, looking into Morgan’s eyes—big, blue, beautiful—and realized the number they would garner was indefinite. How did she ever think just one kiss would be fine? “Would you be okay with that? Would just one kiss be enough? Could you tell me you wouldn’t want more? If you can, I’ll do it. But if you can’t….then we’ve played this game before, Morgan. I don’t want to pretend like I don’t want you as badly as I do, I don’t want to pretend like I can give you just one kiss and move on with the rest of the day.” She pulled Morgan closer, sidestepping a kiss by pressing her lips to her cheek—the same way she’d skirted the definition of a kiss before. “You set a boundary for a reason; you want to feel safe, right? And you don’t right now, you said you don’t. I’ll still be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after that too and so on….and we don’t have to do this now. We can wait until you feel safe again, and it’s okay.” Deirdre smiled, gentle, though she pulsed with the pain of separating herself from Morgan. It was like she’d been peeled off, and half her skin was still stuck to Morgan—and she needed it back, she wanted it back, but she couldn’t take it. She knew the feeling well; the electricity that coursed through her body and the mind that throbbed with longing. She could work herself into a fever just thinking about it; those days, it had been so terrible...but it had been different. She felt strong justification in keeping her hands and lips to herself, now, she had no self-righteous idea to steady herself on. “It was selfish of me to ask, I’m sorry.” She breathed out, heady with the things she could not do. “I want you, Morgan, and I could have you right now that’s not the issue...but would it be okay for you? I don’t—kissing you just once is better than not kissing you at all, but I’m trying to do this right. For both of us.” Of all the things to feel nostalgic of, this was not one she imagined would ever flutter back across her body. “I am so tired, my love. Of hurting...of hurting people…all of it. But what I want is you, what I’ve always wanted is you. But I’ll be here tomorrow, and after that, and all of tonight too….and I want you, and one kiss isn’t enough for me and I’d only want you more. And I don’t know what to do, I don’t. But I can wait. I’ll wait for you.”

Morgan latched on tight to Deirdre as she was brought in and did not let go. “How could you do this? We can’t even kiss without hurting, how could you do this...?” She burrowed her face into the crook of her neck, pressing her lips earnestly to the patch of bare skin there. She trembled, trying to chase after the piece of her that had made this choice too. They were already hurt and agonizing and overthinking—wasn’t it silly not to get something out of it? Or was that just her imbalanced need, clawing for what it knew best? Was it the distance Deirdre had put between them playing cruelly with her body?

Whatever the reason, Deirdre was right. Especially because Morgan didn’t know the reason. How could she stop herself from making old mistakes? And yet how could she pull herself up long enough to do better if she didn’t take what she needed now? Morgan hung on tighter, nodding. At last she said, “Before, when we weren’t having sex for a month and two weeks, it was because you wouldn’t tell me how you felt. It was clear. I didn’t have to guess with myself whether it was time or not. If you told me and you wanted me, we could have that again. But I don’t know what the rule is now. I don’t know what to look for or wait for. I just know I want you right now and I’m so tired even more than I’m scared. I just want something good to hold onto.”

Morgan whimpered as she fought to steady her voice. She risked pulling back enough to see Deirdre’s face, so fraught and soft and horrifyingly hers. Morgan couldn’t figure out where the shift in her expression was, but she knew at once that this so familiar Deirdre wanted to be hers and all Morgan needed was to pick her up and say yes. Her heart would be impaled on another empty silence or dropped down a safety hatch that let her out of all her pain, all with one yes. It was that simple and that hard. “I can’t wait for you to not hurt me, it can’t be an absence. We need to make something, but—” But what the hell was that supposed to be? What did these other versions of themselves look like? “Is it when you’ve found a therapist? That could take ages. Is it when you’ve been to group for a few weeks? When I’ve balanced myself with something besides just you? Because I don’t even know where to start with that!I know...I’m the one who’s scared, but I don’t know when it’ll be better. I don’t know when it’s fine again and I don’t want to rush anything, I just want to feel something besides hurt for a minute, maybe five. Is that bad? Do we really just...have  to keep waiting, and hold each other because it’s the only thing we have left? Hope it doesn’t take too long?” As soon as the words left her, Morgan felt a sinking wave of realization: they very well might have to do just that.

���I’m sorry...I’m sorry…” If she once stopped to consider the repercussions of her actions, she wouldn’t have done anything. Amanda would be alive and Athena less heartbroken, yes, but Deirdre could’ve asked Morgan what good revenge looked like. Or...could she have? Maybe Athena was too young for Morgan too, maybe she didn’t see it like Deirdre did. The banshee shook her head, it wasn’t what she wanted to think about now, and it didn’t matter. Amanda was dead. She’d ruined the safety and trust she built with Morgan. “I’m sorry….” she mumbled. It wasn’t worth it, the things that she’d done. None of it was. “I can hold you tighter? Really tight. I can do that.” And she moved to try, except her arms locked at her sides and her throat seared. She tried to lunge out of the strange body lock, but her arms wouldn’t budge even as the rest of her body flailed. “Oh,” she slumped. “No I can’t do that….because that would be hurting myself….” But what was some muscle pain? Who cared if her body was already sore? She could do that much for Morgan, she always had, no matter the pain. She sighed and held Morgan at an appropriate level, enough that Morgan could feel it, but not so tight that Deirdre’s aching body would protest. “A week,” she mumbled, “seven days exactly. I’ll ask you how you’re feeling; if you feel safe now. If the answer is yes then...then it’s fine, we can have each other just like we want to. And if it’s not, then we’ll wait another week. And after another seven days, I’ll ask again. And if it’s still not, then we’ll take another week and so on until you feel safe, my love.” She looked at her, hoping the tenderness and sincerity was readable over the remorse that played in her eyes. “It can’t be a day….because there’ll just be more of this. But a week sounds good, I think. How does that feel to you? We don’t have to use anything else, just time.” A week felt both too long and laughably short, but even if it wasn’t by this week that Morgan felt comfortable kissing her again, then it might be by the next, or the one after that. And Deirdre found herself looking forward to the day. “I don’t know...whatever you need to feel to know it’s okay. If that’s being safe...or if that’s trusting me again...whatever it is, I can ask you in a week.” She searched Morgan for any hint that it was a good idea, or, at least, that her having stopped from kissing her was a good one too. It hadn’t felt right when she’d done it, but she was no stranger to the desperation that could trick Morgan’s mind. All she wanted to do was honour the boundaries Morgan was setting for herself; that wasn’t so bad, was it? “It didn’t last long…” she sighed, “the no-sex thing...we weren’t supposed to kiss either. But then we were, but it was supposed to be one or two...and then it wasn’t. And then it was everything else just shy of sex. But it was important to you, and if this is anything like that, then we should keep waiting. And I’ll be here. I’ll wait for you—for us. And I’ll try for it.”

“A week…until we check in and ask,” Morgan repeated slowly, her eyes locked onto Deirdre’s as if to ask, are you sure? It was fair. She would be the one to determine an answer, which was both a relief and terrifying. She could say fuck it right now and take Deirdre’s mouth with hers. They were both taut with wanting, they could take the relief for a few seconds, maybe a minute—until that made their bodies more glaringly aware of what else was missing.

Morgan’s features fell as she remembered the old no-sex boundary, and considered that even if Deirdre’s body wasn’t one walking wound, sex right now was just a fast track to a panic attack. It wasn’t just bodies fucking anymore, it never could be again. And the way she needed Deirdre in bed, the way she gave herself best, with her body in complete submission… Morgan felt like it would be another month at best until she could bear that again. “I remember,” she mumbled. “That one Saturday visit, I kissed you goodbye on your cheek and went into my car and cried all the way home. But then a few nights later you came to see me...and you were just so happy, like I’d never seen you before. I couldn’t bring you down from that when I could be a part of it instead. And I already wanted you so badly. I think it only took one kiss for me to sign off on a hundred. And the rest came after I was staying with you, I think. It was just so hard to be next to you, to lay with you without touching you. It hurt. I felt like I was giving in and maybe deluding myself into some terrible half-life with you. But it hurt so much worse, keeping everything back. That’s how I made those decisions.” Was hurt the only way to measure her life, even the things that were ostensibly good? Was she so curse fucked that even dead, she couldn’t touch anything without suffering having its way with it?

“I’m so tired of everything hurting,” Morgan whined, a child’s complaint. “I just want it to stop, just for a little…” But what was that quote her mother had liked? If you’re going through hell, keep walking? Morgan clenched her jaw and sank back down against Deirdre’s chest. This was really not a time she wanted Ruth Beck to be right. “Fine. You’re right. In a week we’ll check.” she said faintly. When her heart calmed and the ache had numbed her out, she would be grateful for the decision. Maybe. Hopefully. Morgan reached behind her for one of the blankets draped over the couch. “You need some rest,” she mumbled. Deirdre needed a lot of things, like a shower, and the rest of her bandages changed, but Morgan wasn’t about to walk another intimacy minefield tonight.  “Can we just stay here?” Can you just hold me? “Can that be okay…?”

“I don’t want you to make decisions out of hurt, Morgan.” But then what was this? What had she left Morgan to do now? Deirdre frowned; she knew that it wouldn’t be so bad to kiss Morgan. She knew that she was going to stay, and that she’d be here to build their foundation again, but Morgan didn’t. And was it wrong instead, to wield that longing and use it selfishly to fill the hole in her own chest? She wanted to take Morgan’s pain away; soothe her, hold her, love her. Was it wrong then, to give in if it was for those things? But it wasn’t her decision to make, she couldn’t pick what was best for Morgan. That had been her problem before, she thought silence would be better; she thought going off on her own and taking the weight of revenge would all be best. This was Morgan’s choice, and Deirdre wouldn’t take that away. “Back then, the only thing I considered was that I was happy, and that I wanted to be happy with you. I don’t think I even understood why you set those boundaries in the first place. But I’ve grown so much since then, and I know now.” And that made it worse, almost. She knew she didn’t want to kiss Morgan because kissing was fun, she knew she didn’t want sex with her because sex felt good—she loved her, and it was irrefutable now. “I love you,” she mumbled against her skin, staving off the searing desire to kiss her girlfriend. These were the kisses she didn’t even think about before, the ones that came by instinct, that marked her sentences and breaths—the ones she forgot about, and promptly chased with another.

Deirdre leaned up and pulled the blanket down with Morgan; wrapping one around them, and herself around the other. “I’d rather stay here anyway,” she smiled, “and can I hold you? Is that okay?” Though she asked, she already had been, and wasn’t sure she could even take not doing it. “Don’t say no to that one,” she mumbled, closing her eyes. “If it’s true, don’t say no, not just yet. Let’s have this...for a little while...for as long as we can…”

Morgan heard Deirdre’s brave, tender smile in her voice and peeled her face back just to see it. A fresh wave of desire shook her. Deirdre looked so sure, so perfect, even with her body ravaged; her affection for Morgan seemed to shine out of every scar and bandage. Morgan’s eyes burned, finally out of tears but no less anguished. She strained up to bring their faces close and pressed her lips to her girlfriend’s cheek. “No,” she whispered. “I need this too. Please hold me. I’ve missed it so much. I’ve missed you loving me. I’ve missed you.” Her voice tightened, so Morgan left it at that, keeping her face pressed to Deirdre’s as her girlfriend settled the blanket around them. When the seconds seemed to stretch and her awareness of how close she was to the corner of Deirdre’s mouth made the space between them feel like pins and needles, Morgan gave a small affectionate nuzzle that granted permission for more of the same, and settled back against Deirdre’s chest. With her mental fatigue and heightened nerves, she wasn’t able to let her head find the old spot where it fit. She shifted and shifted again, and at last surrendered to the idea that near enough was good enough. She could feel Deirdre’s arms for however long she stayed conscious, she could hear her breath coming out of her wounded body, and as ever, she heard her heartbeat. Slow. So slow you’d think it had stopped and gone away, but perfectly in time, always coming back.

[fipindustries]

list of comics i made so far

i already shared the list of all the novels i tried to write throughout my llife so i see no reason why not to do the same with the comics i tried to work on. no i should clarify, with my lists of novels there was a clear cut distinction between what was a novel and a short story so to parse one from the other was an easy task. it should be known that i wrote hundreds of shorts stories that i havent shared with anyone. now a similar situation occurs with my comics, i have done hundreds upon hundreds of little comics, short jokes, little skits and short lived strips through my life, so in order to give this list some weight and not make it longer than the bible the criteria i used was that it had to be something i did on a regular basis or that tells a self contained story with a beggining middle and end.

now without further ado, lets begin!

spike Vanderville (age 7)

you can tell i was way more into comics than i was into novels from a young age. done with pen and folded paper, it was the story about a young kid called spike, whose design was heavily inspired by bradley from sticking around, who had magical powers which allowed him to manipulate reality. it was a mix of harry potter and a series of illustrates short stories that came in a magazine in argentina. his best friend was a scarecrow with a pumpkin head that he had brought to life, his archnemesis was a fat bully.

curiously enough i was so passionate about this project even though i had no idea what i was doing and no talent that i actually did like three full colored issues of it. my family was really proud of me. sadly those comics are completly lost to time

andrew and the monkey (age 10)

this was the classical story about a boy and his best friend the talking animal. one page comedy strips done in pen and paper. nothing too clever, just a way for me to try lame jokes mostly stolen from spongebob squarepants. not much else to it. i tried to do like a revamp in 2014 but it was short lived, as you can see the jokes didnt get any less lame

FIP industries (age 17)

mostly done in digital. yes as you can see fip is something that has followed me my whole life in quite the variety of mediums. there were as a matter of fact multiple attempts to make this comic a real thing but time and again they would peter off as i saw that my skill was just not up to the task. i think i have talked more than enough about fip industries on this blog, one interesting thing is that if you follow the link you will come across a lot of proto ideas that i had before they cemented and took their definite shape in the novel (and even after the novel i kept retconning and retooling things over and over again, fip industries is an ongoing thing that will probably last my entire lifetime)

Disregarding Reality I (age 20)

the first iteration of disregarding reality, a humorous strip done in pencil and paper, a fairly short lived affair, lasting no more than 3 months. the entire premise of the comic was an MRA activist and a feminist live together, they are friends, they argue a lot. remember 2013 guys? back when this whole politics bullshit truly kicked off online? this was before gamer gate, mind you. but by that point i had seen more than enough of it on tumblr and i was like “someone should do some scathing commentary with wit and penache” and that someone had to be me. mainly inspired by commics like f@nboys and el goonish hive and a thousand billion others that were so popular back in those halcyon days.

i got bored of it pretty quickly and it wouldnt be until three years later than i would finally decide to re-start the project but until then...

Strangers in the forest (age 21)

here comes a rather productive era in my ouvre, ink and paper, based on a short story i wrote, its about an eldritch monster pretending to be human and a ghost girl, killed by her father. they have a dispute because the monster wants to eat the corpse of the girl but the ghost doesnt want to give up her bones because its the one thing that tethers her to the mortal plane. they eventually resolve their dispute. by this point i was actually, unironically trying my best to do comics which i felt looked professional.

Song of a nightmare (age 21)

another one based on a short story i wrote. ink and paper, a private detective wakes up in the middle of the night and sees a mermaid lying in bed next to him. he spends most of the comic trying to figure out how the hell is this possible. still one of my favourite ones and certainly one of my family’s and friends favourites as well. a rather poetic tale, strongly inspired by argentinian fiction and their propensity towards magical realism, i was reading a lot of cortazar back then.

Aika (age 21)

as you can tell i was on a fucking roll that year. ink and paper, this was a story based upon a simple and basic idea that i had in my mind for years and years. i always liked the concept behind the movie “the kid” where bruce willis mysteriously comes across himself as a kid. so of course one day i came up with the idea, what if you recieved a visit from your future self... but she was a woman?

this is probably the most aggresively trans story i ever wrote in my life, it is literally about a guy realizing they are trans and breaking down over it. here is the giant kicker, i did not realize at all what i was doing. i was completly unaware of what was going on here, i was still deep deep in the closet and not even realizing i was there. it really is astounding the honesty and the rawness with which i wrote this comic and it went all over my head. a perfect example of “im such a great ally lol”

oh also there is time travel i guess. my main impetus (beyond whatever my subconcious was forcing me to do) was my desire to make a complete clusterfuck of a story, i was a huge fan of homestuck, i had read fleek and demon, i wanted to do my own take on a hypercomplicated time travel puzzle plot. other things came out on top of it but i didnt noticed them. fucking hilarious

Hello Agatha (age 21)

a comedic strip about a wacky pixie dream girl having wacky adventures with her wacky friends, one of which is a man with a toilet for a head. what a gut buster, what a knee slapper!

there is not much to say about this one, wacky surreal comedy was always my favourite and so time and again i would try my hand at it but it is surprisingly hard to do!

The /co/ ventures! (age 20 - age25)

an ongoing project done in multiple mediums. i think i said more than enough about this in here and here. it was me practiscing comics, practiscing my humor and adding my tiny grain of sand to the 4chan culture. i am proud to say these comics were actually very well liked there and that i would be recognized without a name or signature of any kind, just on the strength of my style.

the vest kind of madness (age 22)

probably one of the projects in which i put the biggest amount of effort to make it look professional. traditional inks and digital colors. a crossover that i cant believe never happened in comics considering how obvious it is. Rac Shade, the changing man and delirium of the endless, the two flagship vertigo characters associated with madness. clearly a match made in heaven.

to this day im flabbergasted i seem to be the only one to think of this.

Disregarding Reality II (age 23)

another work where i have already spilled rivers of bytes explaining my thought process behind it. after having a no good, terrible, very bad day, finding my self aimless and without purpose, deep in denial and depression, i decided to give my self a big project to have something to get me out of bed every day. these three guys came from the depths of my mind to save me.

this time leaning a lot more on silly humor and surrealism than political commentary, still insanely proud of how much i managed to make this last, almost three years, well over 200 pages! and in here i found the inspiration and the creative energy to tackle all sorts of diverse projects of which we are about to see all about.

Mama Bird (age 24)

my masterpiece.

by far the best comic i ever did. a kid with a bird for a mom. hilarious, touching, heartbreaking. it was a concept that i had come up with when i was 21. back then it was supposed to be exclusively a humorous comic strip but then i found a dramatic angle for the story and that was when everything clicked into place. that was when i realized this was a comic i had to do. and i did it. it took me five months but it was well worth it. still insanely proud of this one

Soft boys (age 25)

a weird experimental little story where i decided to sit down and deconstruct one of the most popular superpowers. super elasticity. more akin to me just mashing my toys against each other than me trying to tell a serious story. i am actually really happy with some of the art here and some of the sequences presented. particularly the final one where a brick joke twenty pages in the making finally pays off.

Hexen Snatch (age 25)

a semi spinoff to my novel FIP industries, we focus on a side character that managed to survive after the events of the novel and how they’ll manage to survive further beyond that. insanely soaked by the magical world of pact by widbow i wanted desperatly to share my own take on magic, every page is accompanied by a little text where i expand upon the lore and the way magic is supposed to work on this world. i really like the prose on those snippets and the ideas they work almost more that the comic itself with which i was not happy at all when i was working on it. i didnt like the character design, i didnt like how the art in general was coming out, i didnt like the pacing of the story or how superficially we were getting to expore this world in the comic proper. i had to take a very long hiatus just to accumulate the will to finish the comic and once i did i feel it really petered off without much of a satisfying payoff.

on some level i blame the exhaustion and frustration that i came out of this comic with for the fact that i ended up quitting disregarding reality soon afterwards.

Maxplosive (age 26)

another project that has followed me across multiple mediums. came up with an idea for a videogame back in 2015. saved it on the back pocket for a while, used it as a story within a story on my novel fan.tastic, practisced a couple of animations with the characters and eventually decided that, if my skills at videogame making were not enough, i had at least more than poven myself as a comic artist so maybe that was the definitive medium in which this idea would have to exist.

the original idea was to tell the story in two parts, the first half would introduce the character and the videogame as if the comic was a playthrough of the game. all fun and childlike and innocent. then the second half was meant to explore the life of the main character as an adult, how being “a videogame protagonist” had ruined her body, her mental health and her life. i tried all sorts of weird stuff with the format here, using reciclable assets, static camera angles and generally presenting the whole thing as if it was a videogame.

sadly the project got too big for my breaches, i was fucking exhausted back then, swamped with a bunch of other projects, my job, other responsabilities, unsatisfied with the story and with no idea where to take it. eventually i got tired, decided to skip a day, then the day became a week and then the week became a month and by then i had to face the facts, i was just no longer able to continue the comic. and so i quit not only maxplosive but disregarding reality all together.

i still did the occasional comic here and then but it wouldnt be until the very end of 20-fucking-20 that i was finally inspired to tackle a new project, my newest one, my last one....

Lapsarian (age 27)

an interesting experiment, i decided to do the whole comic in one sit and then post it chapter by chapter on a weekly basis. a surprising result of this was that i managed to do in one month the same amoung of pages that would have taken me 5 months back when i started disregarding reality, is good to see that after al this time i still got it.

took me a while to get the hang of it again and find my own style once more but once i armed up it was smooth sailing for 40 pages all the way to the end. but what is this comic even about?

its... weird, with full disclosure and no shame, it is mostly a fetish story about big lizard creatures commiting vore. the milkman had already shown me that i could do those types of stories and no lighting would come from the heavens to strike me down so i said, why not as a comic? i like to think that beyond the fetish content it is still a decent story in its own right, an interesting feedback that i got from this is that people are suprised how earnest it is, one saying something like “this is the best pitch for a fetish that i was never interested in”

Conclussion:

looking back on this im surprised, turns out i was a lot more prolific and working a lot more regularly than i expected, in here are documented ten years of creative output that never seems to wane. it was fun to do the roundabout trip and see how my style, my technice and generally my work ethic evolved through the years. another nice thing to see is the multiple formats, the multiple tools and mediums i experimented with, i find myself constantly trying new things, new methods, new angles, new interesting ideas for how to make a comic (without even getting into what to make a comic about).

something i always knew about myself was that drawing is a fundamental part of who i am, it is something that just cant be taken away from me and that will always be a part of my life one way or the other, is good to see it so plainly, in black and white, on this list. here goes for what i might be able to do in the future

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 31: Jon

Fortunately for Jon’s nerves, Halloween week means Research is inundated with statements, mostly false ones, so the first week following Tim’s ill-advised adventure means they’re all helping out with disproving piles of utter nonsense, which in turn means none of his assistants putting themselves in harm’s way. They do get a live statement midway through the week, in the form of the exterminator who handled Jane Prentiss’ body, but as there’s nothing to really investigate regarding his statement, that’s harmless enough. Tim insists on sitting in on the statement, and against his better judgment, Jon agrees.

It’s probably a mistake, though, as over the course of the following week Tim begins having frequent headaches. They seem to pass quickly, at least at first, but they get progressively worse. Martin adds a box of ginger tea to their stash; Sasha keeps a giant bottle of paracetamol at her desk; Jon tries to reduce Tim’s workload as much as possible. Tim only accepts the first two. It worries Jon how hard Tim is throwing himself into the research, regardless of how much the others tell him he doesn’t have to make up for lost time. Even Jon Prime expresses concern, in a careful, hesitant way.

Martin Prime, on the other hand, is a lot less careful and a lot more blunt, telling Tim not to be a self-sacrificing idiot and to stop tearing himself apart trying to draw attention away from the others, because it won’t help anyone if he gets hurt, or worse. Tim laughs, but the look on his face and especially on Jon Prime’s face makes Jon hold onto Tim extra tightly that night.

In the long run, and even in the short run, it doesn’t help. Three weeks into November, Martin finds Tim crumpled in a ball on the floor in the depths of the shelves, clutching his temples and barely conscious. The mental image of Martin, pale and frightened, cradling Tim in his arms like an infant and striding across the Archives as if he weighs nothing isn’t going to leave Jon in a hurry. The doctor at the clinic can’t find any obvious cause for the headaches, but he recommends Tim go home and rest and Jon is only too happy to sign off on that.

He makes him stay home the next morning, too. Tim doesn’t argue, which tells Jon he probably really isn’t feeling all that great. He does promise to get rest, not strain his eyes, and definitely not go off on any unauthorized field trips—all of which Martin is very emphatic about. (Jon’s never actually seen Martin in full mother bear mode, and he decides it’s best for his sanity not to admit that he finds it weirdly attractive.) Martin makes him a cup of tea before they leave and reports, when he comes back to join Jon, that Tim’s fallen back asleep again.

The morning is fairly straightforward. Sasha and Martin work on their usual research work; Jon has a stack of statements to record. Mostly these days he only does the ones that are going to end up on the Discredited shelf, the ones he can record on his laptop, tending to leave the real ones for Jon Prime. Still, there are literally thousands of statements in the Archives, and Jon is prepared to bet even money that no more than ten percent of them are actually real. While that’s still probably enough to sustain both him and Jon Prime for the rest of their natural lives, even if they never get another live statement in, he does still have to record the others. He’d grumble about him and his stupid ideas if he didn’t now have seventeen months’ worth of examples of ideas far stupider than suggesting to his boss that he make audio recordings of the statements in the Archives, and not just his own.

Jon powers through about a dozen statements, narrating them into his laptop and supplementing with his team’s research. He’s just finishing a scathing indictment of a would-be writer who claims to have stayed in a cottage with a haunted lamp when the door cracks open and Martin pops his head in. He catches Jon’s eye and smiles, then waits until Jon signs off the recording before speaking. “Hey. Lunch?”

“Thank you, but I think I’ll do a couple more of these first.” Jon gestures to the rapidly-diminishing stack on the right side of his desk. “I’m on a roll.”

“Better than being on a sesame-seed bun. I’m going to call and check on Tim while I’m at it, unless you’d rather?”

“Go ahead. Ask him if he wants us to bring anything home tonight.” Jon offers Martin a smile. “Enjoy your lunch.”

Martin smiles back, his cheeks turning faintly pink. He nods and withdraws from Jon’s office.

Jon finishes two more digital statements and then pulls over the next one and begins to dictate it. Even before he gets done with the introduction, however, he can feel the static on his tongue and stops. Playback confirms his suspicion—this is a real one. Somehow, they missed it.

He skims the file. He remembers this one now—a claim of a still-living mummy in a tomb containing ancient dice and nothing else. Sasha, who, in her own words, “went through an Egyptology phase like every other girl in the nineties”, wrote out a list of every reason she could think of that the description of the tomb didn’t make sense. Even Tim’s charm wasn’t enough to get any help from the Egyptian government, and since all the names were fake except the statement giver’s, all Martin has been able to find out is that she’s currently training to be a teacher. Even with everything they know, it seems…unrealistic.

But as he flips a page over, it dislodges a sticky note from the back of the folder. Jon catches it as it flutters through the air. It’s Tim’s handwriting, and it glitters faintly, which makes Jon frown—not because he objects to glitter ink (although if they use it on anything official he doesn’t want to imagine what Elias will have to say), but because Tim’s only been using these pens for a couple of weeks, since he traded Charlie one of his old fountain pens for the pack. Which means Tim went back and added something recently.

Jon studies the note. The first words are scratched out, but the rest is easily legible: I think this one is real.

For a moment, Jon considers leaving the statement for Jon Prime to read, but he finds he can’t. Now that he’s started speaking it aloud, he has to finished. Damn it. With a sigh, he sets up the tape recorder, then checks to make sure his secondary recorder has a tape in it. He depresses the RECORD button on both and picks up the paper again.

“Statement of Donna Gwynne, regarding an unlicensed archaeological dig near the Red Sea in Egypt,” he begins.

He always sinks into the statements, at least when they’re real—which is good, because once he finishes, it’s hard for him to keep his contempt for Ms. Gwynne out of his voice as he dictates the results, such as they are, on the follow-up. Certainly he has no qualms admitting that he’s somewhat satisfied the woman is being forced into a job she’s stated repeatedly she hates the idea of.

“I feel anyone who brings me a statement about mummies deserves everything they get,” he concludes. “I’m just glad she doesn’t live in London. End recording.”

He presses the STOP button on both recorders, then hesitates. He started recording secondary back-up tapes after Michael’s visit, partly out of growing paranoia and partly so that he would have a record in case anything happened, and he’s never really stopped. He needs to let the others know about it, he just…hasn’t yet.

Sighing, he pops out the official tape and labels it, then sets it with the file before drawing the second recorder towards himself and pressing RECORD.

“Supplemental,” he says. “I’m…worried about Tim. His headaches have grown so severe over the last week that I actually had to make him stay home today. I’m sure they have something to do with these statements, with the research and all of it, but I don’t know how to prove it. And I don’t know why he’s looking into statements we’ve theoretically finished the research on. I’m…grateful, of course, that he spotted that this one was probably real, although I wish he’d left the note in a more obvious place, but I don’t know why he was even looking, let alone how he figured it out. There’s no supplemental research, no notes other than the single sticky note he put in the back. I can’t quite make out the first word, as it’s been heavily scratched out, except that it starts with a V or a W. The next two are also scratched out, but it’s a little easier to make out: The End, with a question mark. He wasn’t sure, but—of course, it’s fairly obvious. What else would mummies be? And there’s a parallel to—”

The door to his office opens abruptly, and a voice that does not belong to one of his assistants says, “Excuse me, do you have a moment?”

Jon almost topples his chair over backwards, despite the fact that the small part of his brain hanging onto rationality points out that an entity of fear likely wouldn’t be so (relatively) polite about interrupting him. A second later, the rest of his brain catches onto the magenta-tipped brown asymmetrical pixie cut, the string of black stars dangling from one ear, and the expression that manages to be somehow disdainful, sheepish, and concerned all at the same time.

“Miss King—uh—how did you get in here?” he manages, hoping he doesn’t sound like she almost gave him a heart attack.

“Sasha let me in.” Melanie King steps fully into his office and lets the door close behind her. “Are you all right?”

“Hmm? Sorry?” Jon tries to look nonchalant as he shuffles Ms. Gwynne’s statement to the bottom of the stack.

“You look like hell,” Melanie tells him.

“It’s been a rough few months.” Jon feels his old prickliness rising up in him, feels the need to puff up and bluster, but then he stops, collects himself, and really looks at Melanie. There’s a slump to her shoulders, a weariness in her bearing, and dark circles like bruises under her eyes, which look…well, haunted. “And if I look like hell, you must be in a far lower circle than I am. Are you all right?”

Melanie seems surprised that he asked, which, fair enough. “Fine. I—um—I actually need your help.”

Dread creeps up Jon’s spine, but all he says is, “Interesting.”

“All right, can you not be an arsehole about it?” Melanie snaps, visibly bristling. “I just need access to your library.”

“So talk to Diana. She runs the place,” Jon points out.

“Yeah, I don’t exactly have the academic credentials you guys demand, so apparently I need someone to vouch for me,” Melanie says. Jon sighs in annoyance, not at Melanie or her tone, but at the generations of stuffy, upper-class white men who equate university degrees with value. “And you’re basically the closest thing I have to a friend here.”

Jon can’t help but laugh at that. “We’ve spoken once, and we ended up screaming at each other—”

“Yes! And that’s more than I have with anyone else here.” Melanie tugs at her hair in frustration, hard enough that Jon’s afraid she might actually yank it out of her scalp by the roots. “Also, uh, Georgie actually has some nice things to say about you. That came as a surprise. You didn’t even tell me you knew her.”

It surprises Jon, too, enough that he blurts out the honest truth without thinking. “It was a long time ago—before she started doing What the Ghost. I didn’t think she would have anything nice to say about me, to be honest. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

Melanie hums skeptically at him. Jon almost tells her everything, but catches himself. “Look, what exactly do you need from us, anyway? Can’t your showbiz friends help you?”

“No,” Melanie snaps. “I’m, uh—most of them won’t talk to me anymore.”

“What happened? Did word get round you’d talked to us ‘credulous idiots’?”

“Not exactly. In my business, your reputation is all that you have. The industry is full of skeptics pretending to be believers pretending to be skeptics.”

Jon almost snipes at her that the word she wants is charlatans, but one look at her expression and his heart isn’t in it anymore. He thinks about the Primes’ description of her as an Archival assistant, the “painting” from Martin Prime’s statement about his journey back in time, the slightly wistful look in Jon Prime’s eye when he talked about her resignation. And then he looks at her now, determined and angry and despairing all at once, and he resolves, then and there, not to ever let her get to that point.

He’s the closest thing she has to a friend? Fair enough. They’re going to get closer to that even if he has to do all the work himself.

“And none of them are helpful,” he guesses.

Melanie starts to bristle at him, then sighs heavily. “Look, Ghost Hunt UK split up. I mean, not formally, but, you know, Pete was always a flake, and the others just…drifted away.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, as gently as he can. “I did notice you weren’t updating anymore.” It’s a bit of a white lie—the Primes told him that—but she doesn’t need to know, not now.

Melanie continues, rambling a bit about her attempts to get a new crew together, then her solo expeditions ending in disaster. Jon can’t help the noise of shock and concern that slips out of his throat when she mentions getting arrested; she evidently takes it as interest and gives him the whole story. “After that…”

“Your reputation went with it,” Jon concludes.

Melanie looks away. The set of her jaw suggests she’s trying to hang onto her resentment, but also trying not to cry. “Yes,” she says tightly. “Look, I have leads that I really need to follow up on, and as far as my colleagues are concerned these days, I’m the ghost.”

Jon nods. “All right. Come on, then.”

Melanie looks back at him, obviously startled. “What?”

“Come on,” Jon repeats. “I’ll take you up to the library and vouch for you. If all else fails, I can claim we’re borrowing you as an adjunct for a few weeks or something. U-unless you’d rather wait?”

“Oh,” Melanie says, sounding taken aback. “No, the sooner the better. I—just expected a bit more of a fight, to be honest.”

“Yes, well, I know what it’s like to be itching to follow up on a lead and have your every effort frustrated. And I believe I owe you for being…dismissive of you before.” Jon suddenly realizes he hasn’t turned off his tape recorder. “Uh, end supplemental.” He presses the STOP button and stows the recorder in his desk, then gestures for Melanie to head out of the office.

Martin is just hanging his jacket on the back of his chair when they emerge; he looks up and offers Jon a slight smile, which freezes when he sees Melanie. “Uh…heading to lunch?”

“Eventually, but I’m going to see if I can convince Diana to let Miss King here use the library,” Jon tells him. “Unless you’d rather.”

Martin laughs nervously. “That would have the opposite effect, trust me. Besides, I, uh, talked to Tim.”

Jon bites back the hot words he wants to unleash in Diana’s direction. “How is he?”

“Fine, he says, and I believe him, but he asked if I would—” Martin hesitates for no more than a split second, then flicks a finger very quickly in the direction of the trapdoor “—run something down for him?”

In other words, Tim has a question he thinks the Primes can answer. Jon nods slowly. “All right. Just be…cautious. I don’t want a repeat of last month’s incident.”

Martin shakes his head vigorously. “Nope. No incidents. Nope. I’ll be back up before you get back from lunch.”

“Right.” Jon offers Martin a warm smile, which Martin returns, before leading Melanie over to the stairs.

Melanie, for a wonder, stays silent until they’re back up on the main floor, then says, “Does ‘last month’s incident’ have anything to do with all those scars he’s got?”

Jon bristles at the implied criticism of Martin’s appearance. “Those are months old. Did you not see the worms when you were here last time? We had an…infestation. It came to a head a couple weeks after your last visit. He was badly injured.” His voice shakes slightly as he says it. Even close to seven months later, he still has trouble sometimes shaking the memories of the black terror of that night.

“I’m sorry.” Melanie actually seems to mean it. “He seems all right now, though.”

“As I said, it was some time ago and he’s had time to heal. Last month’s incident was…it didn’t leave physical scars, but one of my other assistants looked into something he oughtn’t have.” Jon pauses. They’re just rounding the landing towards the first floor—the library actually spans the entire height of the building, save the basement, but for reasons he’s never understood the only way in or out is in the middle—and it’s deserted this time of day. Sound has a way of carrying, but they should be safe enough here if he speaks honestly, as long as he keeps his voice down. “He ran into your Sarah Baldwin.”

Melanie stiffens, but when she speaks, she manages to sound derisive. “You were just looking into my statement?”

“I contacted you when we initially did the research,” Jon reminds her. She grunts, either in acknowledgment or impatience. “This was a completely unrelated incident. I told you, I owe you for being dismissive before. You were right.”

“I wish I was recording this.”

“All right, no need to be—” Jon checks his temper. “Look. She’s dangerous. Or at least she belongs to something dangerous. You were extremely lucky to walk away in one piece.”

Something in Melanie’s face shifts. “Related to…whatever was at the CMH?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think they’re separate, but…there were things we know now that we didn’t know then. We may have to revisit your case.”

“Just so you don’t ask me more questions. I’m still having nightmares about it.” Melanie shoots him a glare. “You’re in them now, too, so thanks for that.”

Jon winces. “Ah…yes. I didn’t know about that at the time, either. I suppose I owe you an apology.”

“What?”

“Look, do you want to do the library today, or come back to the Archives and interrogate me? I can explain more, but it’s not something I want to do on the stairwell,” Jon says impatiently. Elias Bouchard’s office is on the first floor as well, and the last thing he wants is Elias actually listening to this conversation.

Melanie stares at him for a minute, then sighs. “Library. The less I have to talk to you, the better.”

Which is fair enough, Jon supposes. “All right, then. This way.”

Rosie’s office, door open, is just at the top of the stairs; from the way she peers over her computer monitor at them, Jon guesses she at least heard their voices, if not what they were actually saying. Melanie glances over her shoulder as they pass. “Why is she staring at us?”

“That’s Rosie.” Just about anyone who has reason to pass her door calls her “Nosy Rosie”, actually, but Jon isn’t going to mention that in earshot; despite all appearances, he’s not a complete arse. “She’s Elias Bouchard’s personal assistant. It…behooves her to keep her finger on the Institute’s pulse, I suppose.”

“She’s a snoop, in other words.”

Jon can’t help a small, humorless chuckle. “Aren’t we all.”

Between the door to Elias’s office and the library, at the end of the corridor, there’s a room with an incredibly solid door, firmly shut. It’s one of only two interior doors original to the Institute, the other being the library’s, and as such it’s windowless. It’s also unlabeled. Melanie eyeballs it. “What’s in there?”

“Artifact Storage.”

“So…what, haunted dolls, cursed music boxes, weapons belonging to serial killers…”

Jon stops and shoots Melanie a look. She shrugs, completely unrepentant. “All right, so I’m curious. Sue me. Not like I’m going to ask to go in.”

“Good, because I wouldn’t let you,” Jon tells her firmly. “It’s not a museum. It’s more of a…science lab, I suppose. They keep artifacts in there, yes, but they also study them, attempt to replicate their effects or discover why they do things.”

“Hmm.” Melanie studies the door for a second. Jon’s about a step away from grabbing her by the elbow and dragging her away when she falls into step with him. “You go in there a lot, do you?”

“Not if I can help it.” Jon leads Melanie to the end of the hall and the ornate double doors of the library, then pushes one open and ushers her inside.

Melanie’s jaw drops, which is the usual reaction among employees seeing it for the first time, from what Jon’s been told and what little he’s experienced. Three stories high, with balconies ringing the upper two, it’s near floor-to-ceiling shelves, every one packed with books. Tables and chairs litter the ground floor, and here and there on the upper levels are smaller rooms for private study. A bored-looking junior clerk sits behind a curved, ornate wooden desk with her back to the dizzying drop, filing her nails; elsewhere, other library assistants sort, stack, and shelve books from carts and precarious stacks.

“I always thought it looked like the library from Beauty and the Beast,” Jon admits in a low voice. From the startled look Melanie shoots him, she was thinking the same thing. “Come on. I’ll try and track down Diana.”

“What can I do for you?”

Jon and Melanie both jump at the boisterous, barely-contained voice from behind them. Whirling around, Jon takes a deep, steadying breath. “Diana. I…didn’t see you there.”

“That’s unusual.” Diana smiles—almost leers—down at Jon. In height and in breadth, she can give Martin a run for his money, and she towers over the two of them. Melanie nips smartly behind Jon, and he throws her a look. “What can I do for you? New assistant?”

“Ah—no. Diana Caxton, Melanie King.”

“The ghost hunter?” Diana raises one impeccably sculpted eyebrow almost into her hairline.

“Y-yes,” Melanie manages to choke out.

Jon takes a half-step back so he isn’t looking up Diana’s nose. “Miss King needs to use the library for some research. I know she’s not the…usual student type, but I’m willing to vouch for her seriousness, as well as her right to be here. I’m certain she will treat the books with the respect and care they deserve. And the subject matter, of course.”

Diana’s eyebrow raises higher. “You’re not going to put this in your show, are you?”

She says this at a normal volume, and a number of nearby heads snap towards them. Jon fights the instinctive urge to shrink into himself and hide. Melanie, on the other hand, folds her arms over her chest and manages to meet Diana’s eyes. “No, ma’am. I just need to follow up on some leads to make sure I’m informed enough on my end to go places safely.”

She’s lying. Jon knows intuitively she’s lying, but he keeps his face carefully blank. Diana studies Melanie from her great height, then finally nods. “Have to run it by Mr. Bouchard first, but I’m sure he’ll agree. I’ll have a ninety-day pass set up for you at the front desk. Come by tomorrow morning and we’ll get you started.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Oh, Jon,” Diana says as Jon starts to turn away and lead Melanie back to the front. “Do tell Martin hello, will you? I hope he brightens your Archives as much as he brightened our library. We miss his smiling face up here. Tell him he’s welcome any time.”

“I—of course,” Jon says, not sure what else to say.

Melanie waits until they hit the landing to ask in an undertone, “Is Martin the one who said—?”

“Yes,” Jon says shortly. He’s going to have a talk with Martin about his self-esteem issues, not that he can really be throwing stones. But Diana seemed to genuinely mean it.

He bids Melanie farewell at the front door, then ducks into the canteen to grab a sandwich before heading down to the Archives again. Sasha’s there, making herself a cup of tea. She looks up and smiles when she sees Jon, but her expression turns puzzled. “Hi. I thought you’d be at lunch with Martin or something.”

“He’s…running something down for Tim,” Jon says carefully. Worry churns at his gut.

Before Sasha can respond, though, the trapdoor opens and Martin comes out. His face is pale and he looks shaken, which doesn’t help Jon’s worry. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing. I don’t know.” Martin carefully shuts the door and comes back over. “Tell you later.”

They don’t say anything else about it. Not then. But at the end of the day when they lock up the Archives, Sasha loops one arm through Jon’s and the other through Martin’s. “Mind if I invite myself over?”

“Yes, we can’t stand you and we’re thoroughly glad to get rid of you at the end of the day,” Jon deadpans, eliciting a tiny smile out of her. “Thank God you don’t live with us or we’d be constantly miserable. Oh—Martin, I forgot to ask, did Tim want us to bring anything home?”

“He said he’d put in an order at that takeaway place for us to pick up on the way.” Martin’s voice is unusually soft, and it makes Jon’s worry compound.

Tim looks a lot better when they get in the door, white boxes in hand. He greets them with a smile, which vanishes instantly when he sees Martin. “Oh, God, what? What happened? What is it?”

Martin shrugs out of his jacket. “Well, I asked them.”

“And?” Tim prompts, voice full of dread.

Martin sighs. “And they didn’t know.”

Tim blinks. “What?”

“They didn’t know. Had no idea what I was talking about. I’ve never seen Jon Prime look that confused.” Martin reaches for Sasha’s jacket, but she takes his instead and hangs them both up. “They were considering coming over tonight, but Martin Prime thought you might want to talk to us first.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s…probably not a bad idea.” Tim runs a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

“Let’s eat. Then you can explain,” Sasha suggests.

Dinner is largely silent, except for the scrape of fork on plate. Jon does explain the purpose of Melanie’s visit to the others, and Martin frowns slightly when he repeats Diana’s words, but doesn’t say anything. Once they’ve all eaten and cleaned up, they head back into the living room to talk.

Tim sits on the edge of the loveseat, elbows resting on his thighs and hands clasped beneath his chin. “Where do we start?”

Sasha nudges Martin’s ankle with her foot. “What were you asking the Primes about?”

“Tim told me to ask them about ‘the color of fears’,” Martin replies. “They didn’t know what I meant. I didn’t know what I meant, except…” He looks up at Tim. “Except I think it has to do with your headaches.”

“It does,” Tim confirms. He takes a deep breath. “It’s…something I’ve been noticing lately. Since the Trophy Room, really. When I was there…when Daniel Rawlings looked me in the eye? His eyes were glowing. Like there was a light inside them. Right proper spooky. And when I got back to the Archives that day…I thought you’d put special bulbs in or something, at first, but I blinked and it went away. Then I was talking to you, Jon, and your eyes were glowing, too.”

“My what?” Jon touches the corner of his eye gingerly, like he can feel the luminescence.

Tim manages a small grin. “It’s not…it went away when I blinked, too, and I thought I was just imagining things. But it’s been getting…worse. Random flashes at first, but when the exterminator came in…he glowed for a second, too. After I sat in on that, it started getting stronger.”

“Hence the headaches,” Jon says. “Tim, why didn’t you—”

“I wasn’t sure. And…well, I wanted to experiment a bit. Because, see, here’s the thing. Rawlings’ eyes—when they glowed, they were this deep indigo, but the Archives, and your eyes and Sasha’s—and Martin’s lips once or twice—they glowed green. The exterminator was kind of green, too, but it was kind of a greenish-yellow, really, and the next day I—” Tim flushes and looks up at Martin. “I was watching you, and—your scars started glowing. Same color as the exterminator did, but your mouth was still the darker green, it’s how I could tell they were different colors. So…I started thinking, maybe that meant something?”

“Oh, God,” Martin says softly. “The marks.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking,” Tim says. “I—I’ve been sort of trying with some of the statements. It’s hard to see with them, really, because everything in the Archives glows green just about, and if I try too hard I get the headaches. But sometimes I could…pick out different colors in them, kind of. Sort of. Mostly. I-I thought maybe if I could look at them and see the fears’ marks…”

“You’d know which ones were real,” Jon completes. Tim nods. “You still shouldn’t have done that without telling us.”

“I know. Especially…well, I thought I could handle it. I’ve been getting better at only seeing them when I try to, and I thought I’d—give it a shot. I walked back into the shelves yesterday and just…let loose with my eyes. I tried to See what was on the couple of shelves nearest.” Tim sighs heavily. “But it was—it was overwhelming. There was just so much. It was like—like standing in the middle of a room made out of mirrors, and someone was shining all sorts of different colored lasers at them, and they were just bouncing off and refracting and amplifying and going everywhere. Like I was drowning in color, or like it was screaming at me. I can’t really explain it, but it was too much and, well, that’s when you found me.”

Martin exhales heavily. “Christ, Tim, that scared the hell out of me.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried that without warning you all. I-I really didn’t think it would be that bad.”

Jon bites his lip. “Is that how you knew—that statement, Ms. Gwynne’s, about the mummy?”

Sasha frowns. “The one that reads like the plot of a knockoff of a Brendan Fraser film?”

“Yes. I went to record it today and—it came out distorted. I didn’t see the note until after I realized it didn’t work on the laptop, but…Tim thought it might be real.”

Tim nods. “Yeah. I looked back over some of them. Started off with the ones we knew were real, and then I started looking at a couple that we weren’t sure of. That one…I wasn’t sure, but I think it’s the End?”

“Makes sense. Mummies. Death,” Martin murmurs.

“It was white. I mean—when I looked at it hard enough, it glowed white. Or at least I think it did,” Tim says. “Made the green kind of…pale, anyway. The other ones we’ve marked as being Terminus statements were the same color. But the problem is that the green of the Eye is so strong, it’s hard to really be sure what other colors there are, except if I’m looking at a person who’s been marked. That’s why I was asking about the color of fears. I-I was kind of hoping the Primes would be able to confirm what I’m thinking, but—”

“But they had no idea,” Martin completes. “Which means that, unless I just explained it very badly, Jon Prime can’t see those colors. Can’t see the marks.”

Jon rubs his temples. “I suppose it’s good to know that I don’t have to consider that, but…why? Why can you see the marks when the rest of us can’t?”

Sasha gets a faraway look in her eyes, and there’s a faint sound of static as she says, “Because that’s what’s important to Tim. Knowing when danger is coming, what danger is coming. You said yourself, Tim, you’re going to help and you’re going to do whatever you can to protect us. The Eye gave you the ability to Know what entities are around, or have got hold of someone or something, because it knows you’ll lean into that and use it for good as long as you can, up until it’s got a tight enough hold on you that you can’t get away, even if you want to.” She blinks hard, and the static fades as she puts a hand over her mouth. “Oh—oh, God, sorry, I—”

“It’s fine.” Tim manages a smile for her, but there’s a look of distress in his eyes. “It’s good to know.”

Jon’s distressed, too. “Tim you should have told us. Jon Prime’s been working with us on control, if we’d known you had powers already we’d have—he should be helping you, too. You can’t—” He takes a deep breath. “Promise me you won’t keep this sort of thing to yourself anymore.”

Tim reaches over and squeezes Jon’s hand. “I promise. No more unauthorized research, of any kind. I won’t even check books out of the library without telling you what I’m after first.”

“I appreciate that.” Jon smiles and squeezes Tim’s hand back. “Now then. Someone get a notebook and pen. We need to write down as much of this as we can.”

[soyforramen]

Are YOU the babysitter?

“Veronica?” Jughead slurred, his hand swaying as he pointed towards her.  “Are you the babysitter?”

He shifted forward, off balance, and Betty stumbled.  She shifted his arm further down her neck, praying this was the right apartment.  Jughead cackled, a strange sound of glee.

���Charming,” Veronica said dryly.  She opened the door and stepped back.  “And you must be Betty.”

“Hi,” Betty grunted.  “This is Kevin and Fred.”

She half-dragged, half-walked Jughead towards the couch.  Behind her Kevin helped a far more lucid Fred.  As she crossed the threshold the stench of camphor incense attacked her and she fought back a sneeze.  

“Should I ask what happened?” Veronica drolled.

“Penny Peabody and the flaming disaster,” Jughead said, his head lolling back and forth.

“We got ambushed,” Fred clarified.  

When they reached the couch, Jughead refused to let her go.  Betty tumbled on top of him, unable to break his grip.  At Veronica’s sly look, Betty fought to extricate herself without too much embarrassment; unfortunately, she fell to the floor.  Disheveled and covered in ash she yanked out her hair tie and pulled it up into a messy bun as she glared at him.

Veronica cooed something in a language Betty didn’t recognize, but from Jughead’s snort it was obvious he knew what she’d said.

“Be nice,” he said.  He pointed to Betty.  “She is.”

Betty blushed and stood, purposefully ignoring Kevin’s gleeful look.

“Do I want to know what you did to him?” Before Betty could protest her innocence, Veronica held up a hand.  “I’m sure he deserved whatever it was, I would just like to know to sate my professional curiosity.”

Betty knew Jughead kept more underground company than just her and Archie, but she’d been lead to believe he was, for the most part, a loner.  And yet he’d trusted Veronica enough to direct Betty to call her and ask for refuge, even in this state.  

As if reading her mind, Veronica held out her hand.  “Priestess of Delphi, Cassandra, Sibyl of Cumae - despite what Dante claimed there was no sexual ecstasy in reading his future or his person -, Saint Hildegard of Bingen.  Just a few names I’ve gone by.  But you can call me Veronica.”

Betty hoped Veronica couldn’t tell how badly her hand tremored as they shook hands.  Those names were only heard in whispered prayers.  Such a famed prophetess had been chalked up to fairytales and children’s nursery rhymes.  Betty herself had put the fabled woman in the same make-believe category as Bigfoot, pixies, and ever getting the last of streaks off the windows. To be in such a presence…

“Do tell.  What spell did you cast to make our dear Forsythe fall all over himself?  I’ve seen stronger witches than you try and fail.”

“A basic protection circle,” Betty stammered.  “Though I might have gone too heavy on the -“

“Cedar?  Vampires are naturally adverse, though it does little to explain him.  Gaelic, Egyptian, or -“

“A mix of Incan and Shinto.  It’s something I’ve been working on but I didn’t ever think I’d have to use it against a demon.  My intentions were more for physical harm, bullets, assaults -“

“-and trains by the look of it.  Did you tweak the structure or the -“

“Both, actually, and I’m wondering whether it was using the North Wind instead of the South to bind it -“

“-which would explain his intoxicated idiocy-“

“-or whether it’s because I used oxen spit instead of sow’s blood-“

“What about the binding? Did you use -“

Kevin cleared his throat and the pair turned to him.  Veronica looked irritated to have been interrupted, but Betty realized Fred was looking whiter by the minute.  As she rummaged through her satchel, Veronica leaned against the couch.

“How in this universe were you able to draw it so quickly?  It takes me ages to prepare the lines.”

“You’ve got spiders in your windows,” Jughead said lightly.  “They’ll have made you curtains by tomorrow.”

“Oh that’s simple enough,” Betty said, ignoring his aside.  She reached further into her bag and pulled out a rolled piece of plastic no bigger than a cutting board.  She passed it to Veronica, and when it was unfurled it cast long, strange shapes on the carpet.  “I cut it beforehand and then spray the mix on it when I need it.  The spraycan’s preloaded so all I have to do is make sure -“

“Ladies, this is fascinating, but I’m in a metered spot,” Kevin cut in.  He turned to Fred and in a faux whisper said, “I swear, she’s always like this.  Get her talking about magic minutiae and she’ll go on for hours.”

Despite his pallid skin, Fred wore an amused smile.

This time, Betty and Veronica both blushed.  While Betty went about crushing herbs, Veronica went out of the room to fetch a spoon and a glass of water.  Handing both off to Betty, she turned to Fred.

“And who are you, again?”

“Fred Andrews.  Archie’s father.  I’d stand, but,” he motioned to his head, still a mat of blood and hair.  

Veronica shook her head.  “Quite understandable after the beating you both took.  But how were you ambushed?  I thought were’s were nigh impossible to sneak up on.”

“A lesser demon made a deal with the devil,” Jughead sang out from the couch.  He began to sing the phrase to himself, and Betty pressed his hand to quieten him.

“I suppose that explains it.  What’s harder to explain is how we’re going to treat those burns.”

“Aloe root, marijuana, and rosewater,” Betty said.  She scooped the mixture into the glass and stirred.  “It’s never been tested on a wound made by a demon, but -“

“It’s a brilliant mixture for burns, none the less.  There may be a grimoire somewhere that deals with that sort of thing, though it’s been an age since I’ve had to heal anyone,” Veronica said.  She opened a locked cabinet neatly filled with jars, powders, and leather bound papers.  “Not that it’s a pleasure to meet you, but why is the human here?”

Kevin shot Veronica a dark look.  

“He’s been my best friend since we were born,” Betty said.  

“Practically her familiar,” Kevin added.

Jughead threw a cushion in his direction.  It sailed the wrong way in the room, narrowly missing a lamp.

“Manners, Torombolo, that’s a turn of the century Tiffany’s and I hate to see it ruined by your jealousy.”

Standing, Betty handed the glass to Fred.  “I’ve never made anything for a were before, or even for anybody other than a witch or human.  But, in theory, it should work -“

“Her potions always work,” Kevin corrected, “in theory and in reality.”

Betty preened at the praise.  Fred took a sip and cringed.  

“I’ve had worse,” he said when Betty tried to take it from him.  “Cheers.”

In one go, he’d finished the potion.  Soon after his eyes closed and a light snore was heard.

“Found it!” Veronica trilled.

She set the large book down on the table and directed Fred to go lay down in one of the closed rooms to rest.  With Jughead still humming the strange tune, Veronica and Betty got to work with Kevin acting as their aide.

[chasseurdeloup-retired]

Fairy Contentious  || Morgan and Kaden

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Downtown PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: There’s nothing awkward about finding a dead body between sometimes friends

Try as she might, Morgan still missed her humanity from time to time. Zombie personhood was alright, more than alright on some days, but in the heat of July, she missed the sweat on her back, the tanning and freckling of her skin, and the sharp, palpable comfort of a dive into cold water. She missed dollar soft serve from Whataburger. She missed spiked slushies. She missed having more of the world to share in. Lately it seemed like death had taken more than just her heartbeat, but was eating away at the world she had left too. There was Bea, and the human her sisters had sacrificed to bring her back. There were all those guards at the Ring and the woman whose body had turned shallow and empty beneath her hands. There was Erin and whatever she was getting up to her head in. There was the mummified pixie at the carnival. And then there were all the people she knew, people she loved better than most others, with blood on their hands. Was there any escaping it? Morgan turned down another block downtown, thinking more of her momentum than what shops she was nearby, aching for a burn, for something outside of herself to remember life being good and free and in her reach. What she saw instead was Kaden. Morgan stopped in her tracks and locked eyes with him. This is what she got for using binary words in her thoughts, wasn’t it? Morgan’s hand lifted in a hesitant wave.

This whole ordeal with Regan was more than taking its toll on Kaden. Maybe less the ordeal and more the lack of sleep that came with it. Closing his eyes brought nothing but worse case scenarios and for the most part, when he tried, he still couldn’t find sleep. Not to mention, the less he slept, the more hours in the day he had to try and find her. He’d searched plenty around her place and that had been a bust. So had the locator spell. So had all the hunters in town. So many leads and nothing concrete. Wandering the town was as good an attempt as anything else. Granted, he had no idea how long he’d been walking by now, if he had even seen her at all or if he was even paying attention anymore. He was so lost in thought he nearly ran into someone. “Sorry,” he mumbled, not meaning it. As he shuffled out of the way, he saw Morgan just behind them. Of course. “Hey,” he said flatly. Even if he’d wanted to convey any emotion, he couldn’t pull out any energy to display them. Funny he ran into a zombie while he felt something like the walking dead. At least what he assumed it felt like. Pretty numb, a lot of pain. He wanted to make a biting comment or five but he was just too tired to find any worth saying. “You good?” was all he could manage to say.

Morgan couldn’t remember the last time ‘you good’ hadn’t been a loaded question. She folded her arms over herself, fiddling with her sleeves as she tried to come up with an answer. She still didn’t feel completely right after what happened at the Ring. She would do it all again, but the weight of death was different than the weight of the retribution she doled out from time to time. “I’m fine,” she said at last. “You?” It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t doing so hot. There were shadows around his eyes thick as a ditch and a wasted, hangdog look, sunken and tired. “Looks like it’s been a heck of a time.” Normally she would have asked if she could do anything to help, but the words caught in her throat.

“I’m fine.” The words spilled from Kaden’s lips before he had a second to think about his answer. He was really fucking far from fine but he really didn’t want to explain it. Least of all to her. With a sigh, he ran his hand through his hair, pushing the mess out of his way. Of course she caught onto him quick. “Haven’t slept much this week. That’s all.” Sure, that was true, but he was holding back the real reason. Part of him wanted to get this over with, but he also wanted to know if she was ever going to fucking acknowledge what had happened in the woods the other day. What had really happened, not the fairytale ending bullshit version she was harboring. Right. Doubtful. He should just fuck this and walk away, cut his losses. He needed to find Regan. This was just a waste of time. Then again… Putain. He sure as shit didn’t want Morgan’s help right now. But it was selfish and stupid not to get all hands on deck at the moment. “Regan’s missing. And also about the size of a pixie.”

It took all of Morgan’s willpower not to snort with laughter. This was a real pickle for Kaden and his distress was real. Also, there was a chance that Thumbel-Regan would come out of this traumatized in ways your average licensed therapist wouldn’t know how to cope with. But Stars, a tinkerbell sized medical examiner? Did she have a tiny lab coat? Or a tiny turtleneck? Morgan couldn’t help but snigger in the back of her throat. Mad as she was with Kaden, it wasn’t enough to kill the image in her head. “That uh, does sound like a wee problem, yeah,” she said, working her face into a more serious expression. “Do you know, uh, if she can fly? You guys didn’t happen to work out a hand clapping signal by any chance?” She cleared her throat. The universe was offering her a gift and she definitely didn’t want to turn it away. “Where have you looked so far? Maybe we could try by the butcher? Or the farmer’s market? Maybe she’s following her death spidey senses.”

Kaden rolled his eyes the second he caught that all too familiar look. The one that meant biting back laughter. He saw it on Blanche’s face enough the other day to recognize it. Granted, Morgan was doing a better job at reeling it in than pipsqueak had. It was annoying as shit all the same. “Fucking hilarious. Yup. It was fucking hilarious. Less so now when birds and squirrels are trying to eat her. But fine. Whatever, Morgan. Guess you only care when zombies are in danger.” He’d had no intention of actually mentioning the incident with whats-her-name the zombie but it sure fucking spilled out anyway. “Are you going to fucking help or are you going to keep making--” Before he could finish snipping at her, she brought up some decent suggestions. “I don’t know where I looked anymore. I just keep watching the ground. She can hover a bit so I guess I should look everywhere.” He rubbed his face. He was so stressed and so fucking tired, he wanted to just collapse into it, but he was determined to not give up. He could stop when Regan was safe. “I’ll look there. Fine.”

Morgan’s grin faded. “Seriously? I help save your ass in a diner, tell you what I am, help you with your denial girlfriend, and you think I only care about myself? Or my species? Is that a real thing or do you really just not get what it might’ve been like to see you cut into a woman just like me like she was a rabid animal? After, may I remind you, I pulled her off you, told you to run, and let me handle it.” It was like they hadn’t seen even close to the same thing. Like they hadn’t even been in the same place. Morgan shook her head. Kaden could be incredibly decent, often enough that she bristled uncomfortably at her initial distaste for him and the fear, the bitterness, she still held in some shrunken part of her. But this was not one of those times. This was the kind of moment that made her wonder why she didn’t just plant that bitterness and let it grow over everything else. Still, she straightened herself up as tall as her tiny body would allow and pointed in the direction. “You wouldn’t find a cheese fry if I jammed it up your nose with that much sleep deprivation. I’ll help clear that area with you.”

Kaden ground his teeth as he held back a comment about a good chunk of that sounding like self preservation. Whether that was true or not, he didn’t have the fucking energy. He was not going to waste what he had left on her. Until she kept going. “I cut into her like a rabid animal because that's what she was!” he said, reeling back to face her. “She was gone! There was nothing left! She was going to kill me! It nearly did! A few times! And you did not have it handled! If I ran, what the fuck was to stop her from killing whatever human walked by next? Or do you even care?!” So much for not wasting his breath. One thing he could say was the anger jolted him with energy. Mostly he just wanted to use it to punch something. Or storm off. But it didn’t seem like it was going to work because she was insisting on following him. “I told you I’m fine. But if you want to come I can’t stop you. Public fucking place.” That wasn’t quite true, he could stop her. Just not in any way that was remotely acceptable.

Morgan had turned to lead the way but no. That would just be way too easy and make too much sense. She clenched her fists at her sides. There were things that mattered more than this. Hypothetically, these things included Thumbel-Regan. But Kaden’s words cut into her fresh, reminding Morgan what had been so awful about that day beyond Ashley’s ruined body. “She was just starving. And I was trying to help both of you, dumbass. If you didn’t have your head so far up your arsenal, you might’ve figured that out.” She stormed ahead of him, fists clenched, and started for the butcher’s. This was a mistake; she should’ve just stayed home.

“She was just starving?! There’s no just starving from zombies. Starving gets humans killed.” Kaden continued as he followed after her. He really couldn’t figure out what about this was so hard for her to understand. Even if she did have noble goddamn intentions, she didn’t have it handled. That zombie was going to kill someone, even if it wasn’t him. “And you met her before, right? Seems like she didn’t want your fucking help.” He was considering telling her the same right now. But she wasn’t wrong about him being exhausted. Maybe not about the rest of it, but she had that much correct. He was ready to collapse. He almost wanted to ask if they were there yet.

“Of course that’s all you care about,” Morgan grumbled. She kept walking, fists clenched, trying not to think about how right Kaden was about the last part. Ashley had been lucid when she ran away from her and Rio. All those animals wouldn’t have lasted very long, but enough for her to do...something. She could have dug up a fresh body from the cemetery if she was desperate, or pounced on a deer. The smell from the woods was intoxicating sometimes, it would have been impossible to miss. So why had she been back at square one so soon. You shouldn’t have done that, that’s what she’d told Morgan. But Kaden couldn’t know that, right? Morgan pressed on ahead, crossing the next block, when she caught the smell. Death. Still soft, ripe death. Morgan came to a stop. They were still downtown, what was she smelling, some unlucky bird? “Wait.” she said. “Maybe…” Regan would be pulled to it too if she was nearby, right? “Do you smell that?” She looked around them, feeling a familiar sharp twist in her stomach. It couldn’t be too far.

“Oh, not dying? Other people not fucking dying? Right. What a fucking terrible thing to care about.” All of Kaden’s hopes for an apology were shot to hell. Not that he was holding out too much to begin with. Why the fuck she wanted to spend so much time defending a monster, he didn’t understand. Sure, she was a zombie, too, but not like that. And if she had tried to help earlier and failed… He had to wonder how many other people were in danger or if this had happened before. How many times had someone pitied a zombie only for them to slip back and take a human life? Was it only a matter of time until that was Morgan? Fuck. Not what he wanted on his mind right now. He stared ahead as he followed her. The scent hit him before he saw anything. That was death and decay alright. No mistaking it. “Of course I smell that. Hard to miss.” Especially with human senses, he thought. Still, there was no denying that carcasses and cadavers were siren songs to a banshee, in a way. “You can sense death, too, right? Not the same way but you know,” he asked as she guided them towards the source of the stench.  

“We’re people too,” Morgan grumbled. But of course Kaden wouldn’t see it that way. Maybe Deirdre had been right all those months ago. Maybe telling Kaden she died really had been stupid. She couldn’t help but smirk dryly at his question. “If you mean sense it the way I used to be able to sense fried chicken and waffles from two blocks away, then yeah, sure.” It wasn’t the same kind of comforting, soul-pulling call she understood the banshee death pull to be. A dead body called to Morgan’s insides like it wanted to devour everything she was and claim her for itself. Ravaged, held, and erased into a relief that came from no intelligence whatsoever. Morgan salivated as she turned down an alley and peeked around a dumpster, a common enough spot for finding felled birds and-- “No. Fuck...fuck, no, no…” She turned around and started to walk right back out the alley, clutching her stomach, but she couldn’t get the sight out of her head. The scales on the girl’s arms were scraped raw and crusted with blood from the mangled mess where her hands were supposed to be. And her face...her face was a ruin of burns and iron. Morgan had only been able to tell from her hair that it hadn’t been Mina. Morgan clamped a hand over her mouth, grimacing as her insides reached back for the body. She sank to the ground and dumped the contents of her bag, trembling. She had a snack in there somewhere to keep from eating roadkill in public, but she couldn’t make her fingers work the tupperware lid. She couldn’t stop seeing that girl. She had one eye, overexposed from her melted lids and staring up pitifully, dead and empty towards the street, towards the river that might’ve been her home. Morgan’s eyes filled with tears, too thick to see through, and let everything in her hands fall.

Kaden’s stomach churned at the thought of comparing decomposing flesh to food. And the combination of chicken and waffles. There was no reason any of those things should go together. That’s not what churned his stomach when they turned the corner. There was no mistaking that was a dead body sprawled out in front of them. It was strange to find one downtown and without Regan nearby, at that. Unless, she was. He paused to listen for any small screams or calls out to him. But he heard nothing but Morgan’s muttering as she turned away. Kaden stayed in place, finally allowing what was in front of him to really sink in. That wasn’t a human body, it was something else. Inhuman, the scales alone gave it away. His mouth pulled into a thin line as he assessed the situation. He looked for webbed fingers but couldn’t find her hands. The slits on the side of her neck were still easy enough to see. “A nix,” he said. A very mangled, very tormented nix at that. He crouched down to get a better look. Marks where iron instruments had surely burned into her, lacerations covering her body, and it looked like whoever did this had tried to split her legs again. It was hard to say how long the body had been there, not too long if he had to guess. Still, it was cold, it’s not like they’d missed the moment by mere minutes or anything. His cold assessment of the facts were easier to process, they were there, unchanging. What it all meant, how he felt about it, that was harder. Something he didn’t want to touch. The sound of something hitting the pavement made his head jerk back to see Morgan again. She’d dropped.. tupperware? Odd. “You alight?” he asked as he stood and turned to face her.

Morgan was gritting her teeth, trying to hold her body still. Snacking usually helped, gave her appetite something to fixate on, but she wasn’t usually this upset when she passed death during her every-day life. She tried breathing, maybe that would be a good distraction. “Need...food,” she said. “She’s...I can’t...after what she’s been through...I can’t…” Couldn’t destroy her any further. Couldn’t treat her like stuff. There was nothing natural about what was left of her body, nothing balanced about a death like that. Tortured, butchered for parts, left with the garbage to be...what? Ignored? Mistaken for someone’s film class final? Morgan sat back, banging her head against the side of the building. That wasn’t doing much good. “Can you open it? It’s not human, I just need…” Some relief. To not feel herself wanting for the soft candy of her insides. Stars, it was probably sweeter than anything she’d had yet too… And if she hadn’t been brutalized, Morgan wouldn’t have been able to imagine them with half as much detail. She grimaced and dug her shaking hands into her knees. “Just do it, just open it!”

It took a few seconds for the pieces to click together as Kaden watched her. Shit. Dead body. Zombie. Even after arguing with her back and forth about zombie rights and how often she took sheer glee in reminding him of what she was, he sometimes still forgot. Had to wonder if it was on purpose. Likely was. “You can’t what?” His brow furrowed as she explained further. Shit. He had to go over there. Open the container for her. He took a deep, shaky breath as he steeled himself to follow through on her request. There wasn’t much out there that scared Kaden. Truly scared him. Being bit or turned by anything undead was one of them. But he had to trust his friend. Bolting and running sounded easier, even in a dead end alleyway. Still, he walked forward and reached out for the tupperware, hand shaking as he pulled it towards him. He fumbled for a second as he tried to rip the lid open. This was fine. They’d both be fine. This was probably unwarranted fear. He held the container out to her for her, trying his fucking best not to look at what was in there. Even if it wasn’t human, he didn't want to know.

Morgan took the tupperware and shoved her dead flesh salad into her mouth by the handful. The flesh slid down her throat easily, offering its subtle flavor between the bits of diced brain. Her stomach settled and with the animal rage in her stomach had settled down more into an agitated grumble, she could make more room for what she’d seen, for trying to figure out what to do. They couldn’t just leave her there with the garbage, right? Then again, they couldn’t exactly call this in to the police. Regan was the size of a pixie and the number of incorrect to dehumanizing conclusions she might manage to come to were enough to make Morgan feel sick all over again. She couldn’t take her home, at least not by herself. She barely had the restraint to walk away and keep herself from making a meal out of her body. Morgan tried to breathe, tried to make each bite last longer. Distraction, that was the thing. As long as she could distract her body, she could be okay. “Thank you,” she said at last. “You didn’t manage to...I don’t know...notice if she had any stuff with her, did you?”

Kaden let out the breath he hadn’t intended to hold as she ate the contents of the container. It was fine. She had control. They’d be fine. There was no need for this to turn into-- It was fine. Kaden rolled his shoulders back and shook off any of the nerves he had before, like he could will his pulse back to a normal, steady rhythm. If only it were that simple. The distraction she offered to everything going on was more than welcome. “Any stuff? Uh, no. Not sure. I didn’t check.” He walked back over to the body and it all hit him again. Different this time. The more he saw it, the harder it was to just focus on facts. His mind tried to piece things together, make connections, as much as he wished it wouldn’t. He bend down and tried to feel around her clothes where there might be pockets, something left behind. It made him feel less like a hunter or even a cop and more like a petty thief. His stomach sank like a pit as the reality of this hit him a little deeper. This was a dead nix. Yes. He knew that. And on another level, what was this? A dead fae. Alright. But what did that mean? It meant someone killed a fae. Didn’t just murder them, no. Tortured them. Her. Putain. He was jumping to conclusions, there was no way to say this was a hunter who did it, but it was hard not to wonder. And if it was a hunter, that likely meant that it was a warden. And if it was a warden and they were nearby. And if Regan was nearby. And if they found her before he d-- Kaden realized he was sitting on the ground next to the body no longer searching it, just trying to keep the world from collapsing in on him as his breath quickened, shallow and ineffective. Calm. He had to be calm. He had to think clearly if he wanted to help or be useful or fucking anything. Why couldn’t he do that?

Morgan waited. And waited. She couldn’t remember what the nix had been wearing, it had to be something right? Maybe she at least had a wallet stuffed in her back pocket, something to give her a name, that could help them treat her like a person again. Then again she wasn’t, not anymore. The person was gone, this was just her remains, her body, her story. That wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t nothing. It deserved some dignity, some small, stupid scrap of respect. Morgan chewed slowly. “Kaden?” She called. “Kaden--? What did you find?”

Morgan’s voice snapped Kaden out of his panic. A little. It was still a bit of a struggle to keep getting air into his lungs. But he needed it to reply. “Nothing,” he managed to push out between shallow breaths. “Nothing yet.” Okay. Alright. If there was a warden nearby he’d deal with it. Later. Right now he was examining the body. Like any of this mattered. Come to think of it, why was he doing this? Because she asked. Right. But why? How was this going to help them find Regan. This was just a dead fae, what did it matt-- A thought creeped into his head. One he had to push away. Desperately. He couldn’t even imagine that right now. This wasn’t Regan. It wasn’t even a banshee. The body in front of him, she didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Finding his hopefully still alive fae girlfriend, that’s what mattered. But he had a sinking feeling if he didn’t try, Morgan would. To likely disastrous results. Alright. Looting the fucking body it was. He checked around for a purse or some shit like that, nothing. Front pockets of what was left of her shorts, also nothing. Fuck. He’d have to turn over the body. No time like the present. He swallowed back any disgust and pushed it over. There wasn’t a whole lot of solid flesh or scales left, like it was picked clean after a good bit of flesh burned off. He expected to find more of the same, may even more decay on the other side of the corpse. Shockingly enough, there was something in her back pocket still there. A phone. With a wallet attached to the case, one of those small things that held cards. He figured there wasn’t going to be much more useful than that. There wasn’t much else to identify her by anyway. “Uh got this,” he said once he walked back to Morgan, holding out the phone to her.

Morgan took the phone and flipped through the cards attached. She didn’t know much about hacking electronic passwords, that was more of a Winston thing. But she had a student ID from the university. Not another one of her students, thank god, but she was practically the same as them. Morgan pulled it out and passed it to Kaden. “Meet Coraline Adams. Would-be class of ‘23 at UMWC. Liked the Little Mermaid, maybe ironically--” she passed over one of her credit cards, which had a much faded sticker of princess Ariel in the corner, “And had a really nice phone. That’s it, that’s all that’s left of her.” She worried the slice of eyeball she was still chewing on as she spoke. This was so pitiful, practically nothing. At least with Emma there had been a funeral, there had been things  to do, there was the sad copy of her stories consigned at the local book store. But Emma had been human. Coraline wasn’t. “Do you know who might’ve done this?” She asked quietly. “Someone who’s capable of treating some poor college kid like this? For being fae?”

Kaden crossed his arms as Morgan went through the fae’s things. This was a far cry from any normal post hunt sort of moment. Or any time he came across a dead body on a hunt. If it wasn’t human, it got left behind, at best it was there to help inform them who or what had been there. Had to say, he kind of preferred that right about now. But this wasn’t a hunt. At least, not like that. Kaden shook his head at her question. “I don’t know any wardens in town, no.” He really should. Given, well, everything. But something about having to be two faced to colleagues sounded hard. Or shitty. Something like that. “I mean, can’t say for sure that it was-- But if I had to guess.”

“Yeah, well, they do make it their business to do a double-take at anyone with an Irish accent and cut down whoever makes their killer instincts go off,” Morgan said bitterly. “No matter how young they are, no matter how wrong it is. They see someone spooky and suddenly they don’t get to be a person anymore. I kinda figured that much out too. We don’t even know if this girl has a family who’s missing her right now, but it’s just another day at the hunter office.” She held out her hand to have the cards back. Suddenly, she didn’t like the idea of Kaden getting to hang onto them. “We can’t just leave her body there. Well, I can’t, but I also can’t get too close without...you know. But she shouldn’t have to stay there.”

Kaden let out a huff and shook his head. “Well then. Good to know how you really feel.” Why was it every time they were around each other lately, he questioned why he considered her  a friend at all. He couldn’t even begin to figure out what he was feeling about any of this, but he could feel the anger over her comments. And the exhaustion settling back in. The rest, well, he didn’t know what that was. He considered not taking the cards back. Fuck her, if he was just some mindless killer, why give them to him? Whatever, he took them, put them into his pocket. Which in hindsight, not a great idea. Regan may not be around just yet but he’d have to dispose of them before the medical examiner was back in full swing. Which, speaking of, the body. “We can’t. We can report it. Send her to the morgue. Not that Rickers or Regan will find the cause of death but it’s an option.” A shitty option. “Otherwise, we can burn it.” It was the safest option, really. One she probably didn’t like. “No matter what, we can’t do anything now. In broad daylight. Unless we’re involving the law.” Which didn’t sound like a great plan. But it was all he could figure.

“Is there something else I should be feeling about this too?” Morgan asked. She finally brought her eyes up to meet his. She’d never had the best control of her expressions at the best of times when she was alive, you would’ve thought dying might make it worse. But the face she showed Kaden was slack and impassive. Maybe it was the emotional exhaustion, maybe she was getting too used to this, but Morgan managed to stuff everything down. She wanted to dare him to tell her something different. To come up with one reason to justify any of this. “At least stash her for me, so she doesn’t wind up in a landfill. I’ll figure the rest out myself. You probably shouldn’t be too involved anyways with...everything you’ve got going on.” His job with the police department for one thing. His girlfriend for another.

“No, fine. Just jump to whatever conclusions you want. Can’t stop you. Every hunter’s a mindless killer with no fucking reason for any action they take. Of course.” Kaden was so sick of this kind of conversation. How it never ever seemed to sink in for any bleeding hearts seemingly ever. It wasn’t that he thought what happened there was okay. He didn’t. Torture wasn’t hunting. Neither was collecting trophies. Hell, he was pretty fucking wary of wardens himself as of late. But that didn’t give her the right to paint it all with a broad fucking stroke. Right to his fucking face, no less. That wasn’t the point now. “I’ll come back for her. Later. I’ll cover her up for right now. That’s the best I can do.”

“Can we put our bullshit aside for just five seconds, Kaden? This is not about Ashley, this is about a girl almost Blanche’s age whose remains are currently by a dumpster. I would take care of this myself if my stupid zombie body wouldn’t treat what’s left of her like a freaking happy meal, but them’s the breaks.” Morgan felt herself somehow getting more tired and more angry at once. She stopped, clenching and unclenching her hands and sighed. “Forget it. You have a tiny girlfriend who is definitely not in this area, otherwise she would be trying to perform an autopsy with a stick. You have a nice job you shouldn’t be risking, and you have no idea why I’m actually upset so just...give me her stuff and I’ll handle this. I’m sorry you got dragged in, but you can go now.”

“And I wasn’t fucking talking about Ashely either. But fine.” Kaden took the cards and phone back out of his pocket and tossed them at Morgan to catch. Fuck her. She didn’t know him at all or anything going on his head. Clearly. Apparently not breaking down right then and there or calling her out for her own words meant he had zero capacity for emotions. Whatever. It was always the same. “Right. Call me if you need something killed. Cause I’m sure that’s all you think I do. If you see Regan let me know.” He turned and walked out of the alley and back towards the city center. He wasn’t sure if he had it in him to stay focused on the actual reason he was there in the first place, but with a new threat of a warden wandering around, he’d have to fucking try.

[theresnosafeharbor4myships]

Chapter 9 of my Caryl fic Through the Storm is here! This fic takes place during & after ep 9x16 “The Storm.” Chapter 1 can be found here, chapter 2 here, chapter 3 here, chapter 4 here, chapter 5 here, chapter 6 here, chapter 7 here, chapter 8 here.

Through the Storm: Chapter 9 - Unhaunted (also on 9L)

“You have a place in my heart no one else could ever have.”  - F. Scott Fitzgerald

________________________________________

Aaron and Siddiq said goodbye and headed towards their respective homes as Daryl pulled his jacket tighter around himself and trudged through the snow, head down to keep the falling flurries out of his eyes.

They’d made good time on their trek to the Sanctuary—it should be called Perdition, he thought—and most of the animals had survived well with the exception of one of the younger horses.

The return trip had done them in though. Leading the nine horses and two donkeys to the river they’d crossed not two days before had been easy. Making them cross it? Impossible. The lead mare wouldn’t step down onto the solid ice, and the others obeyed her obstinacy. They’d spent an extra three days trekking the long way round. To top it off, the snow had started up again not halfway through their return trip.

The Kingdomites, grateful to have their animals safely returned, had offered them a few horses to get home on, but he’d refused, preferring to cut through the thickest part of the woods and over the creek instead of trekking the long way round yet again. Aaron and Siddiq followed his lead, and they’d made it home in less than two days.

He’d pushed hard through the snow, desperate to get back to Alexandria and make sure all had gone well in his absence. He couldn’t imagine the facewalkers hunting them in this weather, but with Lydia—and Carol—at Alexandria, he needed to be sure.

Carol…  If he were being honest with himself, he’d rushed even more to get back and see her, to make sure she hadn’t left. He hated even thinking it, but the last time he’d left those gates with her inside, he’d returned to find her gone.

The memory still haunted him.

Didn’t matter that he’d found her again, that they’d kept in touch the past several years as she’d moved on with her life while he’d isolated himself in the woods with trees and a dog for company. The fear, no matter how ridiculous it seemed at the moment, ate at him.

He bounded up the steps of his house with a quick glance next door, where no light shone from inside, no flicker of firelight lit up the front room. His heartbeat quickened. He’d check on Lydia, then search for Carol.

He threw open the front door, a blast of warm air hitting him as he shut the cold out behind him. He heard noises coming from the kitchen—Lydia was cooking?—and he traipsed in that direction after hanging up his jacket and crossbow.

He rounded the corner to find Carol peering over Lydia’s shoulder at a tray of cookies sitting on top of the stove. In unison, they looked up at him, and for a moment his mind transported him to another realm, a place where he’d returned home to find his gorgeous wife and wayward daughter awaiting him, a safe place where love blossomed and they were happy and the dead stayed dead and none of them had scars from people who’d claimed to love them.

The realization that this wasn’t that place sucked the breath from his lungs, and he froze momentarily, watching them watch him.

“Carol’s just…teaching me how to bake,” Lydia explained in that frightened, anxious way of hers.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “She’s the best one to do it,” he complimented. “Her food’s kept me alive for years.”

Carol gave him a half-smile and Lydia relaxed with his words.

“I’m sure it’s the other way around,” Carol countered. “but no one here makes war-time cookies like I do.

“Everything okay?” she asked him pointedly.

He nodded as he approached the kitchen island and leaned over it to snag a hot cookie from the tray. “Yeah. Lost one of the foals, but all the rest made it back to the Hilltop.” He saw the worry still full on her face. “We all made it back safely.”

Carol nodded, the tension in her easing, and she turned back to Lydia, who watched them with keen eyes.

“You still want me to take these with me?” Lydia asked Carol.

“Yeah. Maybe we’ll leave a few here for the cookie monster.” She eyed Daryl munching on the treat he’d snagged, and he stared at them deadpan as Carol continued. “But I told Michonne you’d be bringing them.”

Daryl watched the two of them, awkward in movements together but comfortable in speech, tie up the majority of their cookie batch in a large cloth.

Lydia gave Carol a tentative smile. “Thanks.”

He hated the skittishness he saw in her—the way she hunched into herself, the apprehension in her voice, the furtive glances, the unsure movements—knowing it came from a lifetime of fear, of that fear being carved and beaten into her.

For all that Carol had lost though, she’d already reached out to the girl in ways he wouldn’t know how. Lydia wore clean clothes, and her skin looked healthier. Her hair had been washed and…cut?

He glanced at Carol, noting how much shorter her hair was, too.

“You cut your hair,” he stated simply, his eyes darting from one to the other.

“Michonne came by the day after we got here with clothes, shoes, and some toiletries for Lydia,” Carol began, giving Lydia an encouraging look.

“After I washed my hair, I wanted it cut. Michonne helped.”

“Looks good,” he told her honestly, if uncomfortably. If the girl didn’t need so much caring and gentleness, he’d have withheld the words. As it stood, he knew what kind words from others—Carol, Rick, Michonne, Hershel—had done for him, and he couldn’t not do that for Lydia.

“And you?” he wondered, eyeing Carol’s stylish cut.

He’d never admit it to anyone, but he’d loved her hair short and curling around her face. It’d looked soft and inviting, so pixie-like he’d wanted to run his fingers through it eons ago at the prison. And afterwards. But over the years she’d let it grow to nearly her waist, and while Henry had attributed the reason for the length to the safety she felt, he’d seen it as part of the façade she’d only recently realized she’d worn.

But now…now it hung at about half of its previous length. Maybe it was his imagination, but it looked full and healthy, lighter and shinier.

“Thought it was about time for a change for me too,” Carol explained, lifting one hand to run it through her locks.

“Yours looks good too. Like it.”

His face flamed at the admission, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lydia’s gaze dart back and forth between him and Carol.

“I’m…gonna…head on over to Michonne’s. Thanks, Carol.”

Lydia glanced at Daryl as she passed him, and he nodded a goodbye.

“How’s she doin’?” he asked after he heard the front door close.

“As well as can be expected,” Carol answered, cleaning up the few remaining items from the baking session. “Michonne’s been showing us around, introducing Lydia to the rest of the community. Judith seems to really like her, and I think she likes spending time with the kids, too. Michonne invited her over for dinner, and I offered to help her make cookies for them.”

“Thanks.”

Carol finished wiping down the island countertop, then stopped, braced her hands on the edge of it, and peered openly at him. “You don’t have to thank me,” she said gently.

“Want to.” He picked at the nails of one hand, needing her to understand what it meant to have her here, to have her helping with Lydia. “After everything…I know it can’t be easy. I know it’s easier to run away and be alone.” He started fiddling with the cloth that sat on the counter in front of him. “Hell, if anyone knows that, I do. But…she needs this place. Needs people like us. People like you.”

That last sentence came out softer, gentler than he’d intended, and his heart pounded wildly as Carol rounded the island that stood between them and placed her hand over his, stopping his nervous behavior.

They both stared at the touch, his skin set aflame by her warmth, her closeness. For a second, he forgot to breathe.

Until he noticed that her hand was missing the ring that’d graced it for all those lonely years he’d spent in the woods.

He inhaled slowly, not wanting to make it obvious that she’d stolen his air, and dared to look up at her.

She stared a moment longer at her bare finger before lifting her gaze to his, and he couldn’t help wondering what she was thinking, what had prompted her to remove the ring so soon. He’d hoped, prayed she’d stay here with him—them, he corrected himself—that she’d never run back to the king or the Hilltop or that creepy house or anywhere else that he wasn’t ever again.

Now…maybe…maybe…

The thought nearly bowled him over, but he stood stock still, unsure what to say or do. Waiting for her.

She must’ve seen the wonder on his face though, because she gave him a small nod and a slight smile and withdrew her hand. “Mind if I stay awhile?”

Forever, he wanted to scream. Stay forever.

Instead, he could only stare in awe at the woman who’d commanded his house in his absence. Who’d looked after the child of the woman who’d killed hers and did it because it’s what the girl needed. Who’d left a fairy tale behind for all the raw and traumatic memories this place conjured up in her and made it look easy.

It took him several seconds, until she’d walked into the living room and turned to look at him, before his systems kicked in again and he trailed after her.

“You were gone longer than we expected,” she said, tucking her foot under her as she plopped on the couch. “What happened?”

He left some space between them on the couch—space he hated but desperately needed—and sat, hoping she couldn’t see how tangled up, confused, elated he felt at the moment.

“Ain’t much to tell,” he began.

But he’d take this over the silence of the woods any day. Every day.

[neurodiversenerd]

I'm A Nonbinary Girl.

Tw: mention of transphobia and depression

Hey guys, obligatory coming out post for wrath month.

I want to be honest with all of you and say I'm a nonbinary girl.

I'm autistic, so I already feel some disconnect with my assigned sex because a lot of gender is social. Most of you already know that sense of gender is internal, so it would make sense that I'd feel this way when my brain is already non normative. A lot of autistic AFAB people like myself have shared similar feelings in their testimonies in the book Aspergirls by Rudy Simone.

I'm not sure if I always felt nonbinary. When I was really young, I loved being a girl. I wanted to be a princess and wear only dresses, and I didn't mind fitting into that box. For a while, I never thought about my gender. I was just a girl. 

When I was 12, I realized that I liked girls. I had been bullied when I was younger, before I came out, because people perceived me as queer. I was terrified. I'd only recently learned that being gay was acceptable and not something to be feared, and I didn't know how to think of myself. My whole life I'd fit into gender norms and now I was the one thing girls weren't supposed to be.

I learned more about queer culture, about how people perceived women who love other women, and the summer before seventh grade I made a choice. I chopped off my hair and went into school with a pixie cut. Being seen as queer was my choice this time.

And I realized that I loved being seen this way. I loved being androgynous yet still feminine. I loved looking pretty but looking butchy too. It was the first real time I'd stepped out of gender norms.

In eighth grade and late seventh grade, I learned about nonbinary genders. I had never thought before that it was possible to have multiple genders, have none, or maybe even have one in between or even completely outside boy or girl. I met out nonbinary people there and unlearned a lot of really toxic and transphobic myths. 

At first, I didn't really think their labels applied to me. But when I tried to picture my gender identity at the end of the year, if only out of curiosity, I saw it as a rectangle filled with mostly pink with a little purple on the bottom. A girl, but not quite. 

That summer, my parents signed me up for a music camp. It wasn't just an ordinary music camp. It was specifically for girls and gender nonconforming people, and we learned how to play rock music in assigned bands. On the first day, we got lanyards with our name on it, and the leaders of the camp told us we had to choose pronoun buttons. 

i don't know why, but I panicked. What was I supposed to pick? I felt uncomfortable using just she, but felt like a faker if I chose they. I ended up getting both buttons. It felt right for a few days until I turned it back into the staff when it stopped feeling right.

But that should've been the end of it. 

i still had feelings that I was mostly a girl, but not quite. On occasions, I would see myself as fully female. I would be okay with only she, and knowing I was a woman. On other days, I felt more androgynous. 

In ninth grade, the feelings kicked in again. This time, I had real dysphoria for the first time. During the first semester I tried to make my voice sound deeper and I wore clothes that made my chest less obvious. I didn't like my curves, or my femininity. I tied my hair up in hopes that I would look more masculine.

i thought for a while I might be a trans boy or genderfluid. Sometimes, being a girl was alright. But others, I couldn't stand it. Even then, I got those feelings. You know the ones. Almost a girl. But not exactly. 

During winter break that year, I was really depressed. I wanted so badly not to be a girl anymore, but I didn't come out or commit to a label because I worried that I was faking. That I was only doing harm to actual trans and nonbinary people. That I was being cringy and that I was a girl looking for attention by feigning being trans.

My dysphoria faded, but when kids at my school asked for my pronouns I told them any would work. Sometimes my dysphoria would come back. Later that year, I realized I liked the label genderfluid best, and began to love my masculinity and my femininity. Strangely enough, I felt that I almost became more feminine because I hadn't really embraced that in a long time. On my masculine days, sometimes wearing a dress gave me the best feeling.

I came out to a couple friends, and began to look at more genderfluid pride posts. At the local queer pride dance, I made a button for myself. The genderfluid pride flag was the pattern. 

At that dance, I encountered a demigirl. I'd met them before at a different event. They wore dresses and had long hair, but they used gender neutral pronouns. I liked the idea of that. Being femne, but not necessarily female.

I never did come out as genderfluid to more than a few people. Over the summer, before tenth grade, I decided again that being a girl was fine. I was cis, I told myself. 

But someone in my family came out, or attempted to come out, as nonbinary. This person was not me. Some of my family reacted pretty badly, and told them not to use labels and that they were really cis and looking for attention. They thought nonbinary people were special snowflakes who just wanted to be better than everybody.They thought the whole concept of a third gender was too far.  

I got really depressed again. I told myself that since I'd introduced that person to the possibility, it was my fault they were nonbinary and that it was my fault they had dysphoria. I should've been mad at some of my family members for being transphobic instead.

 I got through it, and the start of the second semester was a lot better. A few months later, I started using they/them pronouns. I liked it. It felt right. I only really stopped because I got insecure, and the whole faking worry came back. Apparently I seemed pretty androgynous, because some boy called me an it on the bus. I told him I was a girl, but to be honest, I didn't mind.

At the end of the year, I was pretty much sure of what label I would use. Nonbinary girl. I'd first heard of it when Rebecca Sugar came out, and I was surprised that was something you could identify as. 

i chose the label I did because I feel that I am a girl, but mostly. Like I'm a woman and another identity at once. My nonbinary identity is less pronounced than my feminine one but it's definitely there. You could probably call me bigender if you wanted to. There are times I fully feel like a cis woman, but most of the time nonbinary girl fits. I guess that technically makes me fluid or flux. I don't want too many labels, though, so nonbinary girl is fine. I don't like being called just nonbinary because femininity is still a core part of me.

I'm now 16 and headed to my junior year of high school. I don't plan on coming out to my family, but I will switch my pronouns from just she to both she and they. 

I am a nonbinary girl. I am a lesbian. 

This might change later, or I might decide I don't like to identify like this anymore. But this is who I feel that I am. I've spent so long feeling guilty, worrying that I was a trender, and being anxious about which label that I ignored my truth.

It's taken years to find, but here it is. 

I'm a Nonbinary Girl. 

[the-knights-who-say-book]

Tower of Ink

Dinah had been printing so long, sometimes she forgot she used to do other things.

Once she’d had a different job, one that was not at the top of this tower, above the smog that lay over the city like foam on waves, always moving. Once she had gone out in that weak gray sunlight. On the ground.

It had been so loud down there. The clicking and rumbling of wagons coming down the streets, the hissing and screeching of the steam that powered them. Bells ringing. Machines clanking. People yelling. So unlike the muffled quiet up here.

What had she been doing on the streets?

She remembers holding another girl’s hand. They had laughed together, dodging around wagons and other pedestrians. And they had sat together, in quiet nooks in the noisy city.

She remembers a smell that wasn’t the oily, grimey stink of the streets. It was hot wet air, bleached clean through copper pipes. They were twined together in the basket formed by twisted pipes against the side of a building. A faded blue dress lay rumpled over her thighs. She remembers their clasped hands in the dip between her knees.

Rema pressed her lips to Dinah’s ear, her cheek, giggled into her hair. “Show me what you’ve written,” she begged. Arms looped together. One girl’s leg over the other’s. Their hands and bodies like puzzle pieces, like interlocking gears.

Dinah slides reams of yellow-white paper into the press. Her pace is brisk. Line them up. Crank the handle. The press comes down with a groan. All her weight on her hands as she stands on tiptoe, pressing the handle down the last few grunting inches. Hair sticks to her damp forehead. Her vision ripples. After years at this job, she knows the telltale sign she needs a break.

She leans against the warm metal of the press, unhooks the flask from her belt and downs water gone unsatisfyingly warm. Swaying less, after a moment she goes back to the handle, begins to crank it up.

Dinah always had stories to show Rema. She wrote them longhand on paper thin and shiny as onion skin. Her handwriting made each letter look like a spindly, twitching, many-armed bug.

She wrote stories about her neighbors, mostly. Sometimes she exaggerated, but mostly they were true. She liked to write about the everyday happenings of the people around her. She liked to make them sound like they were out of a newspaper.

City Shocked By Local Man’s Rejection of Father-in-Law’s Advice

Absent-Minded Woman Has Watered Same Plant Three Times This Morning; Plant’s Reaction Yet Unknown

Unanimous Poll Declares Rema Lockworth Most Beautiful Girl in the Country

Rema laughed and laughed.

The sheets come out thin and flat and covered with thick columns of type, the ink so dark the words seem to bump under her fingers. It smears a little. That’s fine. Her hands are always splotched with ink.

She holds a sheet up to the angled light from the window to check for imperfections in the paper, but her gaze is drawn to her hands instead.

She’d kept her hands clean once. She’d scrubbed off the ink when she was done writing. The idea seems like a strange, distant luxury.

Rema liked stories about fake people, fake things. Dinah would try to write that, sometimes. But her stories weren’t the exuberant fantasies Rema liked to read. Her stories always ended up being about mundane things, even if she wrote them about peculiar people.

“Perhaps,” Rema had said with an almost apologetic smile after Dinah read aloud her story about the Magical Queen Who Presided Over Tax Reform Debates, “you should be a reporter.”

That was right. She had been a petty mechanic.

Dinah stared absentmindedly at the roller that had screeched to a halt, wiping her hands with a rag that only smeared the ink and grease around her hands.

Fetching and carrying parts. Doing the small things that had to be done so grand mechanics could do the big things. Oiling and shining. Not the dainty, precise mastery of a pixie mechanic, crafting tiny toys with spinning wheels and wind-up curiosities. Or the rough, show-offy skill of a grand mechanic servicing steam wagons and ships. Just a grease-stained girl under everyone’s feet, pockets full of screws and cogs.

Rema used to help her scrub her hands and face after work. She would press their noses together with that little smile, eyes closed, and breathe in the lavender-wax scent of soap. Dinah loved that moment. The memory touches her lips and makes them smile.

Her first time using a typewriter had left Dinah breathless. The cool, round keys, subtly concave to fit each finger. The hard, heavy clicks they made beneath her hands. The type bars punching the paper as if they were vexed and in a hurry, dammit. Each little letter precise as the cog in a great machine.

She felt like a grand mechanic.

This roller is particularly prone to complaints. Dinah has taken it apart twice this week. It’s quick work to do it a third time. She refits each piece holding it to the printer, screws them tightly, coaxes them to get along.

The other machines around the tower chug along with their work. Each finished paper slaps against the pile as it slides out. The upbeat rhythm is lost in the clamor of all the machines steaming at once.

Dinah presented her first typed story with pride. It was just two paragraphs about the rescue of a lost dog. She had been slow typing on the borrowed machine.

Rema exclaimed over it appropriately. So professional, with hardly any errors! She could imagine it with a plate-print image of the dog right next to it, with a caption and everything. Just like a real reporter.

Dinah let this go with a smile. She was still a petty mechanic, and no plans to be anything else. She liked the typewriter because it was practical, and because she doted on all machines.

Rema had honey-gold-red hair and her eyes were a deep warm brown. Crooked teeth showed when she smiled. She liked to sit half in Dinah’s lap and gesture expansively with her hands, play with Dinah’s loose curls, tug them out from her cap.

Now, Dinah finds herself touching the curls at the nape of her neck, blinking away the memory of Rema’s bright smile.

Reality taps her shoulder in the form of the pile of papers toppling over. She was fixing the lever. The print run isn’t finished. There is work to do. She shakes her head and gathers up her tools.

They had been together for several years, she remembers now. She should have been moving onto the rigorous training to be a grand mechanic by the time the Rust Ball came around.

The Rust Ball was an exhibition held every five years, and Rema was enchanted by the first one she would be in the city for. New dresses and dancing and eating pastries dusted with sugar and oozing honey! It was all she wanted to talk about.

The great square had been cut off from traffic. Swept, lit with lanterns, swathed in sparkling gold. Baskets of roses hung from every window that overlooked it. Long tables for the exhibits were set up in the middle of every street that branched off the square. Dinah was kept busy day to night helping to prepare. She knew Rema was impatient with her absence, but being at the beck and call of her elders was part of being a petty mechanic.

“So be something else,” Rema said in one of their rare moments together that week. “Apply for a reporter’s job. They get to have lives.”

But that was a fantasy of the mundane kind that Dinah might write but would never live.

She wasn’t going to wear a gown to the ball, and Rema’s fixation on what color, fabric, and style her dress should be ground on her nerves when they did get time together. She started avoiding Rema during her free time. Just until the ball had passed, she told herself. And then they would go back to normal.

The typewriter has been clacking away as Dinah works on other things. When the light through the window reaches the glow of midday, she wipes her hands as clean as possible, stuffs half a sandwich in her mouth, and goes to check on it.

The tentacles are reluctant to show her. They hover around the paper, blocking her view, fussing with the corner of the page.

“Stop that now. Let me see.” She waves the tentacles away — they draw back and curl inwards indignantly. The article she pulls from the typewriter takes up the whole page, headed with: THE THIRTY-FIRST RUST BALL ARRIVES.

Dinah wore her best mechanic suit (black overalls with many neat pockets and no obvious stains over a good black shirt, a black jacket with the sigil of her master mechanic), shoes shined and cap at an angle. Her black curls stuck from one side like the probing arms of a sea anemone.

Rema wore a full-skirted dress of pale pink. Her hair was loose and wavy and her lips were tinted redder than usual. When she threw her arms around Dinah and called her “my handsome mechanic girl,” Dinah blushed and grinned like she’d just won blue ribbon in the exhibition.

But she got frustrated explaining to Rema that she couldn’t leave the table for long, and they both parted a little bitter. When she did finally leave her station — when the ball had gone on into the velvet night and the dancing square was lit with orange lanterns — to find her beautiful tailor girl and get a honey pastry, she saw Rema dancing with a girl in ebony black embroidered with whirls of gold. They spun around and around, and Rema never looked up from her face to notice Dinah standing there, plummeting, frozen, watching them.

When she wandered back to her grand mechanic’s table however long later, mouth sticky with sugar and some amber-colored drink, she got scolded with a snarl and contemptuous anger for taking too long.

Dinah announced quietly that she quit. She left the ball.

“Oh,” Dinah says distantly. “Has it been five years since the last one?”

The tentacles wave and gesture emphatically, but cannot really answer.

The girl in black and gold was named Elliot di’Allo. She was a pixie mechanic. She didn’t write at all, but she read the same kind of books Rema loved. She tinkered bookshelves to bring you the volume you named or described and designed tiny swans that sewed buttons onto fabric with their beaks. The embroidery on her dress had been real metal, meticulously drawn and twisted and shaped and sewn on.

She and Rema got married a few months later. Both brides wore white, with sleeves of silver ribbons crafted to fall like thin lace straps.

Dinah attended the ceremony with her fingers tapping her knees the whole time. She had been practicing her typing. No workshop would take her until she typed fast enough. So she’d drawn a keyboard out on her desk, letter by letter, so she could practice at home.

Letters spun around her head. She typed out phantom stories instinctively whenever her hands were free.

After the ceremony, Dinah bided her time in the corner of the reception until it wouldn’t be astoundingly rude to leave. But when she put her hand on the door, a boy in the black livery of Elliot di’Allo’s family stopped her and requested her presence, with a bow, on behalf of Lady di’Allo.

She wondered, as he led her down a hall, what Elliot could possibly have to say to her, until the boy opened the door to a study and Dinah realized he meant the newly-minted, newly-married, Lady Rema di’Allo.

Dinah scans the article, gaze weary. “Adequate,” she tells the tentacles, which draw back sharply, like the gasp of an offended old woman. She tosses it onto the pile of articles for the next day’s paper. “Do something light. The fashion of the ball. Expected styles. Something about accessories, hair styles, etcetera.” She turns her back and almost lifts her rag to her eyes before remembering it’s filthy.

“I heard you quit the mechanics’ guild.”

“Yeah.” Dinah shoved her hands into her pockets. The suit she wore to the ball was still the nicest thing she owned, so she’d worn it again. “Still doing some freelance work while I interview for jobs, though.”

“I heard—well, Elliot said a friend of hers who owns a printer’s workshop interviewed you. I’m… I’m glad you’re trying to write.”

Dinah stared at her, unwilling to come up with a diplomatic answer.

“I wanted you to have this,” Rema finally says.

This was a typewriter. Old, used, its gilt designs flaking off. The letters on its keys were worn. Some of them were rubbed clean off.

“So you can practice. And write at home.”

“Thank you,” Dinah said flatly. She wasn’t ungrateful. But she wasn’t happy, and she couldn’t fake it.

Rema accompanied her to the door, and the boy carried the typewriter for her, and then she took it, an ungainly, blocky weight in her arms. She didn’t bother glancing back as she descended the two wide steps into the street, clutching the typewriter to her chest.

It took her a few weeks to give the typewriter any attention beyond using it to practice, memorizing the placement of letters and punctuation. She couldn’t waste money on paper until she was getting paid.

But the night she got the entry-level job at a tiny workshop typing up senior writers’ revised articles, she came home to the typewriter, took out her tools and brushes, and began working on it.

She stayed up until the morning hours retouching the letters, the flaking paint and gilt; she fixed sticky keys and the uneven bottom so it would stop wobbling.

Her first solo article was written in that haze of tired bitterness as soon as it was done and dry, on the first ream of paper she set into the machine.

Wedding Between Lady and Tailor Sets Fashion For Future Ceremonies

It was crisp and neutral. Had the writer of this article even attended? Had she known either bride? It was hard to say. She took it with her to work. Her boss decided it was a good filler piece, and said she would take a look at any of her future articles.

It was good job. It was a good life. Even if it Rema wasn’t in it.

At night, Dinah wrote mostly-true stories about real people and real things. And when she got tired of that, she worked on the typewriter.

What Rema had never understood was that the imagination Dina never applied to her writing had always gone into her physical work. Her mind showed her pages of typed articles in elegant fonts, so she carved new letterforms and replaced the old ones. Her thin budget demanded more efficiency, so she took it all apart to modify how much ink it used. And her fancy wondered why she should stop there, so she began to add things. Keys for decorative flourishes, modifications so she could add accents, a lever that when flipped tilted the letter forms to approximate italics.

When her wrists began to ache from the position they held while typing, she began to imagine appendages that would type for her.

Several promotions and a new job later, Dinah wipes her forehead on her sleeve, checks the daylight, and wraps the piles of news in brown paper. Sheets and sheets of her stories, folded into quarters and tucked into each other like two girls slotted together with tangled legs.

It’s a good life, she tells herself. And it almost is.

[cardiaceyes]

I’m trying to be good

Ships: Sam/Lara, Jake/Sherry, Claire/Badassness Fandom: Tomb Raider/Resident Evil Chapters: 1/4 Summary: A TR/RE crossover because I can.  Read on ao3

Excerpt:

Claire softens, smiling before leaning forward to place a kiss to her forehead. Sam looks away for a moment. It reminds her too much of what her mother used to do for her on bad days. The older woman taps the jacket draped around Sherry’s arm and smiles.

“Put it on, it’s lucky. You remember that, right?”

Sherry nods, and Claire smiles again squeezing her shoulder before disappearing with Hisao to an office like promised.

Sam takes note of the Jacket as Sherry puts it on. It’s well worn, faded, but not beyond recognition. It’s simply old. Sam can understand the sentiment.

Lara’s hiding away in their flat more than likely. Sam doesn’t necessarily mind, but she’s so fucking bored it takes every ounce of her to stay put. To continue to converse and make connections for the sake of her father, who hasn’t been able to look at her properly since-

Sam lets out a breath of air, slumping in her seat at a random table. She slowly sips on her drink and wishes she didn’t have this dumb, tight, black dress on. She’s already discarded her heels. It’s so goddamn uncomfortable to breathe, but she’s nothing if not a dutiful daughter so her father will get off her back despite having not right.

She doesn’t remember if this is a charity event or a publicity stunt but honestly, she doesn’t give a shit anymore. It’s for her father, so why should she care? She knows there are very important, big named people here, that could benefit the company and give money to whatever charity her father randomly chose for the night. As long as someone gets the help they need that’s not rich, right?

Glancing around she sighs. There’s a man from Sony Entertainment across the way, she can recognize a few celebrities, faces from important organizations and high paying businesses. There’s even a man or two from the government, from a division she’s never heard of. It’s suspect but if her dad gets arrested? Oh fucking well.

And then. Then she spots a woman, two actually. A blonde and an auburn-haired older woman. Sam’s head tilts in interest for a moment, she didn’t recognize them before. Odd. The blonde has shorter hair, a pixie cut, but blue eyes. She wears a red dress and smiles at the other woman like a child does to their mother. After the auburn-haired woman says something, the blonde disappears through a couple of doors towards the parking lot, Sam knows.

The woman left shifts uncomfortably for a moment. She’s older, in her late 30’s maybe? She’s wearing darker jeans, black boots, and a silk red shirt. What hangs on her arm is a red leather bikers jacket. That is curious.

Sam continues to sip on her drink, wondering what importance she has when bright blue eyes must feel her watching and turn towards her. Sam chokes on her drink, coughing in surprise. She can’t hear her but she knows the woman chuckles because as Sam regains her breath and looks back towards her the woman is making her way over. She feels slightly uncomfortable, she has when talking to anyone here, but she doesn’t have a chance to get away or find her father to talk to her because the woman stands on the other side of the table.

“I’m sorry,” the woman sounds amused, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Sam awkwardly waves her hand as she breathes. She tries to play it off as being fine, but the woman must be able to tell it’s not because she tries not to laugh.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam croaks, finally able to talk properly as she pauses for a second, “I’m good, I’m good I swear.”

The woman chuckles again before gesturing to the chair across from Sam. Sam debates for a moment before she shrugs and nods, the woman takes the seat, placing her jacket beside herself on said table. There’s no purse in sight.

“I really don’t want to talk to anyone here,” The woman admits, “at least. Older ogling men. You seemed like a safer choice.”

Sam snorts, “I won’t hit on you or harass, so I’m a little better.” There’s a pause, and Sam realizes what that implies, “okay. Just don’t tell my dad I said that.”

The woman laughs this time, hearty and entirely amused. Sam feels a little better. See? She can interact sometimes.

“Don’t worry,” the woman shakes her head, “I won’t. Your closeted secret is safe with me.”

“Good.” Sam nods taking a drink, amused herself.

It’s silent for a moment as the woman looks out towards the sea of people around them, looking for someone, in particular, Sam thinks. Sam, however, hates the silence and it’s obvious the woman isn’t going to find whom she wants.

“I’m Sam.” She offers.

“I know,” the woman smiles at her, Sam blinks confused, but she isn't given a further exploration.

Which means, she probably knows. Probably saw it on the news at least. She doesn't point it out or bring it up, much to Sam's relief. It's been two years but she doesn't know if she could take another person asking. She's still healing.

“I'm Claire,” Claire offers her hand, to which Sam shakes.

“I've never met you,” Sam comments gesturing to her father.

“I've never met Hisao,” Claire avoids the word dad, Sam isn't sure if she's relieved, “but I was invited. I'd almost say I don't know why, but it's good publicity for him and my work.”

Oh. There's something interesting. So she's not a guest, friend, she's here for work. What kind of work?

“Really?” Sam inquires, sitting up and pushing her drink aside, “how's that?”

Claire raises a brow for a moment.

“Have you thought about Journalism?” Sam shakes her head but doesn't answer. “I'm Claire Redfield.”

Sam pauses, brows furrowing. Sounds familiar but...not quite enough to shake her brain.

“The only Redfield I know of is Christopher, a founding member of the B.S.A.A.” Sam nods as Claire raises a brow.

“How neat,” Claire means it, “he's a tough guy, isn't he? Tall. Brooding. Doesn't know when to not get himself into trouble.”

There's a suspicion that forms at the back of Sam's mind, something itching and connecting that she ignores for favor of this conversation. She can tell there's fondness there but she doesn't understand the extent of it.

“Anyways,” Claire continues, “I'm here on behalf of TerraSave.”

“Isn't that...a human rights organization?”

Claire brightens up at the mention, leaning forward on the table. She's fully engaged.

“We are,” she nods, “we primarily provide aid during bioterrorism and medical-related tragedies.”

Sam nods.

“So why did dad-”

“A couple of years ago,” Claire frowns, “we reworked ourselves. It came to light our director at the time hadn't been entirely honest, it put a lot of pressure on us. So we did internal investigations and we're better now than before. From what I understand, he did something similar, so by showing solidarity or getting multiple praises and, or, good words from people well known…”

Sam nods in understanding, “he gets positive publicity. Yeah sounds like dearest ole dad.”

Claire nods with a sigh, obviously tired before even interacting with anyone here, but. Alas.

Something connects with Sam, and she blinks in surprise.

“You're Chris Redfield's sister!”

Claire smiles, opening her mouth to speak-

“Director Redfield,” her father greets, sweeping towards them.

Claire stands instantly, smiling like she wasn't just exhausted, and shakes his hand. Her smile is charming and disarms her father instantly. It's rather amusing.

Sam, however, is a little shocked. Director?

“Mr. Nishimura,” Claire greets happily, “it's nice to meet you.”

Hisao looks from Claire to his daughter. In question.

“Sup, dad?” Sam tries.

“Have you-” Claire cuts him off.

“She was wonderful company. She kept me from leaving, you should be proud she's a smart and wonderful girl.” It's so worth it as Hisao blinks, huffing slightly, affronted she'd think he would think anything less.

He does. Often. Sam thinks.

“Of course,” he nods, “where's Sherry? I would like to meet her again, not so much her boyfriend.”

“She went down to make a call,” Claire smiles, “you know. Government agents and all.

They laugh like it's an inside joke and Sam doesn't get it. It's obvious by how they talk Claire wasn't being completely forthcoming. Sam, however, doubts she was lying.

“Yes, it's nice to finally meet you,” he admits, “now. Shall we talk?”

Claire feigns thinking well enough for her dad to sweat momentarily.

“Of course,” she nods before turning back to Sam, “look out for Sherry, please? Blonde, blue eyes, too friendly. Might come in with a brooding and redhead-”

“I'll keep an eye out.”

Claire looks grateful, then she turns, and walks away with Hisao who continues talking almost instantly.

Sam exhales, deflating against her chair. Looking about she finds no one else of interest, no one else that she hasn’t talked to yet.

She spends the next twenty minutes on her phone, texting Lara who continuously tells her to get off the phone so her dad won’t get onto her. That she’s not there to say something, and that. That is something that always bothers her.

Ever since- ever since that goddamn island Lara’s almost treated as though she can’t do anything. No, that’s not fair. Treated her as though she wants to do everything for her. It makes her feel borderline fragile and it’s so frustrating but she doesn’t have the energy to argue about it until it sticks with Lara. So she simply stops replying and puts her phone on silent. Hopefully, Lara will believe she’s listening.

She can see Claire and her father across the floor in a secluded corner. It looks serious because he has this look in his eyes, arms crossed, actually listening, and his lips are pressed into a thin line. She knows it must be serious because she does the same thing. Claire seems to be talking, though, a little annoyed. Sam wonders what they could be talking about.

Something about Claire though...Sam can’t really put a name to it. So she does the only logical thing she can, she reaches into her purse to pull out a tablet and googles Claire Redfield from TerraSave. A headline shows up first.

TERRASAVE, HUMAN RIGHTS OR TERRORIST RIGHTS?

Sam’s face twists in disgust, but she knows well enough to read it. There’s usually at least a speckle of truth. As she does, she finds the article is more geared towards TerraSave with some honest criticism about how quickly they respond to disasters. However, even the writer agrees that this is more due to a conflict between TerraSave, the B.S.A.A., and governments not allowing them on sight instantly despite good relations.

There is, however, a spot in the article about Claire that piques her interest.

Apparently, Claire wasn’t wrong. The old Director of TerraSave had money in his pockets from some very suspicious people, but this revelation was brought about after an incident on a Russian Island and a high ranking member. It doesn’t go into too much detail about it, but it does say that shortly after the old Director was given the boot Claire very reluctantly took the job.

Claire has publicly stated that she’ll keep it until the board finds someone better. TerraSave has thrived under her leadership, but she remains adamant that if someone better suited came along she’d give up the reigns.

Sam goes back and clicks on another article, more suited to older news.

RACCOON CITY: THE TRAGEDY AND THE SURVIVORS.

The most Sam knows, before she reads, is Raccoon City was once a thriving city before it was destroyed. It was destroyed on government order- news which has only come out the past couple of years -and thousands died. She knows vaguely of what actually happened.

TerraSave was formed during the years after the incident and initially helped actual survivors of the incident find their lives and families again. Only a handful of people actually survived.

Claire, at a TerraSave press conference about their rebranding, claimed to be a survivor so she knew how it felt to be a victim.

Sam turns her head as she hears the door open from across the room again. She finds the blonde Claire was with before, coming inside and almost instantly spotting the jacket Claire left. She does her best to smile but Sam can tell it’s half-hearted for unknown reasons. She approaches slowly as Sam sets her tablet back in her bag.

“Is this-”

“Are you Sherry?” Sam asks. Sherry nods, Sam smiles, “Claire’s talking to my dad. She told me to look out for you.”

“Oh! You’re Hisao’s daughter! Samantha!” Sherry lights up as she slides into a seat, grabbing the jacket and placing it on her lap.

Sam blinks.

“You know my dad?” Claire mentioned it to her father but-

“Yeah!” Sherry nods and offers a grin that still doesn’t meet her eyes, “It’s- a little complicated but I saved his life.”

Sam blinks in shock, “How?”

Sherry laughs, “That, unfortunately, is classified. It pertains to an assignment I was on. I work for the D.S.O.”

Sam blinks again in confusion. The what?

As Sherry opens her mouth to speak, her phone rings. Sherry sighs answers it almost immediately. Sam can’t tell what’s being said but she can tell it’s confusing because Sherry covers an ear and leans forward as it might help.

“What? Jake, slow down- you’re going to have to I can’t understand you. Are you okay? Where are you?” There’s a long pause, “Okay. There’s a group of FBI agents here I’ll- wait. What? No. Okay. I’ll grab Claire. No! Don’t try to- ugh! Jake!”

Sherry’s out of her seat in an instant, moving as quickly as she can to Claire and Sam’s father. Sam almost instantly follows her out of curiosity.

“What’s-”

“I- I just need to get to Claire. It’s important.”

Sam believes her, so Sam does what she does best. She pulls Sherry behind her and bulldozes her way straight through the crowd not relinquishing her hold on Sherry’s wrist. Sherry mutters a thank you but doesn’t say much more until they’re where they want to be.

Claire turns, confused and concerned, her eyes settling on the younger woman instantly. Hisao, however, looks offended and confused. But before he can say anything Sherry talks first.

“It’s Jake,” Claire’s face softens, “he says- h-he was following someone on his way out. They were suspicious. He said they have a bomb and a weird looking canister.”

Claire looks towards the FBI sitting across the room, gazing at everyone else. Sherry places a hand on her wrist to stop her.

“He said they were wearing uniforms,” her head jerks towards the agents, “he was going to try to take them out too.”

“What are they doing here?” Hisao finally speaks up, meaning the agents, “I didn’t invite them. There’s no investigation.”

“I’m not sure,” Claire looks around the small crowd of people around her, “but I know one thing. Tonight’s going to get ugly, and we have people to protect.” Her head turns to Hisao, “do you have a private office we can all talk in? Away from the crowd?”

“Uh- I yes.” He nods, frowning, nervous.

“Alright. I need to contact my brother or Director Valentine,” He swallows but nods, Claire turns to Sherry, “see if you can get Jake back on the line and tell him not to do anything rash. Stay here with Sam, both of you keep an eye out on the crowd and if you can’t get back to Jake send me a picture of anyone suspicious I can send it to Chris. Maybe we’ll get lucky.

Sherry looks concerned, huffing lightly and just staring at the older woman.

Claire softens, smiling before leaning forward to place a kiss to her forehead. Sam looks away for a moment. It reminds her too much of what her mother used to do for her on bad days. The older woman taps the jacket draped around Sherry’s arm and smiles.

“Put it on, it’s lucky. You remember that, right?”

Sherry nods, and Claire smiles again squeezing her shoulder before disappearing with Hisao to an office like promised.

Sam takes note of the Jacket as Sherry puts it on. It’s well worn, faded, but not beyond recognition. It’s simply old. Sam can understand the sentiment.

“Jake? Are you still there?” Sherry calls into the phone before sighing and looks at Sam.

“No luck?” Sherry shakes her head, “try one last time. If he doesn’t answer we’ll do what Claire wanted. By the way, can I ask what’s probably happening? She said to call her brother, B.S.A.A. right?”

Sherry freezes for a moment before nodding.

“Yeah. From what Jake described it sounds like a bioterrorist attack,” Sam blinks, “the sad thing is. I don’t know how or when they’ll attack, so without Jake being my eyes I can’t do anything until it happens. Authorities won’t get here quick enough either.”

“Have you been in a few attacks, yourself?”

“Something like that.” Sherry gives a smile that makes Sam’s stomach churn.

Tonight is going to be a long night, isn’t it?

[readingwebcomics]

Analyzing Questionable Content: Pages 201-250

Marten’s closer, Dora. Of course she’d go for his first.

Okay, I’m just going to be upfront and honest with you guys. I’m just really not feeling it for this batch of comics, and that’s part of the reason why I had taken the previous week off. That’s not to say this batch is bad or anything, it’s just... I feel like I have a lot less to say about it than I should. So I apologize ahead of time if this feels too short or if it’s much more dull than usual. I’ll try hitting the high points and give you the proper character analysis I can muster here - the fact that what you see right now, with Marten and Dora going on a date and Faye’s reaction to it, will provide quite a deal of character insight.

For example, right here. Not even a single page later and Faye’s genuine irritation over the situation is showing, despite what she has to say about the situation.

Ignoring for the moment the stupid contraction thing (which, if memory serves, will thankfully be dropped after this batch of comics), do Faye’s eyes look... different to you guys? I don’t know, it feels like Jeph’s making an attempt at a slight tweak in his style here and I mostly notice it in Faye’s eyes. I could be looking way too deep into it though, I’m willing to accept that.

They have some light banter, part of which includes Faye continuing to press on the fact that Dora is hyper-sexual and will jump Marten’s bones the second she gets the chance, Faye goes on and continues her nice streak with Marten by offering to make him dinner. Now, I could take this time to point out the obvious, that Faye is clearly doing this much for him not just out of a sense of guilt over how she’s treated him but also bolstered by the fact that, even if subconsciously, she does NOT want Marten to be with another woman and is vying to keep his attention on her... But Faye doesn’t give us a chance to ponder that for very long.

I don’t blame her, the rims of cans are fucking horrifying. Not as bad as the edges of an outlet box, but thin slices of metal ain’t fun let me tell you.

Despite this, there’s really not much to say about the outcome - we learn that Faye’s last name is Whitaker and that this city has a “punching intern” for the local hospital.

That... can NOT be legal. Then again, if this city held itself to any standards of legality I’m certain the Irony Cafe would be closed already due to false advertising. Plus, this is taking place in America and Faye isn’t freaking out more about not being able to afford the hospital bills than the fact she was injured, so maybe that’s the trade-off to having a halfway decent medical facility.

Oh, and when everyone gets back home, we get a bit more insight into the mechanics of Pintsize.

That raises some questions. If this is unique to this particular platform Pintsize’s AI is housed in, how was he able to taste the cake mix in his previous body? If this is universal between Anthro PCs, then why didn’t Marten already know this if he’s been with Pintsize as long as has been implied thus far? I mean I get it, Jeph’s using this as an outlet to create some lore behind the funny robot people in his comic’s universe, but... I dunno, it just feels like this makes Marten seem more incompetent than anything if he didn’t know this about his own Anthro PC. Maybe if he helped explain it alongside Pintsize to Faye to showcase that he knew about this as well? I dunno.

The next day, Steve gives Marten a call:

Faye, your irritation over the situation isn’t exactly subtle. Also I’ve said it before but I’ll keep saying it - sarcastic Marten is best Marten. I like this Marten a lot.

And so, as a wise Skeleton once said... DATE: START!

We’re already off to an amazing start with Ellen kicking off! And, oooh, it looks like she tripped and injured herself in the initial play! Can she recover, folks? Well before we find out, we have another comic involving a drastic art shift deliberately invoked from Jeph:

In all seriousness, the art shift isn’t... bad, per-se, it just looks so drastically different that it catches me off guard. As is what usually happens with Jeph in these situations, it takes the next comic for him to reel himself back and find a happy medium between his original style and the new one he wants to experiment with:

Marine Biology is not for the weak of heart. You knew what you were getting into when you took on that major, Ellen. But yeah, while I’ll get more into detail as to what I think about the art shift at the end of the post, I’ll say here that I like it as a natural evolution. It seems like every time Jeph improves, the face is the bit that gets the most focus every time. Remember just last post when I was complaining Jeph wasn’t talented enough to portray the silent emotion he wanted to in Faye’s face? Now, I feel like he probably could.

The date goes well enough, and the evening comes to a close:

My bet is that Steve’s like the Pied Piper of arachnids. I’d believe it were that the case, at least. Also it was mentioned to me that Marten probably did have the eye-shine like the rest of the cast did, but his eye color just made it harder to spot. In this page, that becomes clearer - still hard to see, but much easier than previously.

Oooh dear. Steve’s in some hot water now. Also I just realized that as of yesterday I’m as old as Steve is. Good God, I’m an actual full-blown adult. Christ.

...I’m going to put off thinking about that for too much longer as we move onto the rest of this batch, okay? Okay.

Anyhow, Dora invites Marten into her apartment for some coffee where she cuts right to the fucking chase:

It’s probably for the best you read the conversation yourself, they’re pages 226-228. I say this mostly because I really don’t have anything to add or comment on here - Dora’s a smart lady who gives good advice here, makes it clear that while she’s interested in Marten she wants him to be happy, and all-in-all is one of the coolest people ever. Go Dora!

Go... Dora. Oh. Well, I still think you’re cool. Let’s give this woman some time and cut back to Steve and Ellen!

I have some things to say about this situation that I’ll touch on a little bit later. Marten gets home and makes it clear to Faye that nothing happened between himself and Dora. While quite clearly relieved, she’s a touch confused.

So I’m not the only one who feels strangely sad whenever I eat a s’mores Pop Tart? Oh who am I kidding, I’ve got depression, I’m always fucking sad. And hey, speaking of sexy times, Pintsize throws his proverbial hat into the ring!

Honestly, I kind of knew I should’ve kept track of that pink Anthro PC, but would you believe me if I told you they never got a name? Also could AI fuck over IM? My bet is that 2004-speed internet wouldn’t exactly make it smooth. But man, imagine having sex over the ‘net on Fiber.

...too much? Too much.

The night ends, Steve parts from Ellen telling her he needs a couple of days to sort his head out, and Faye comforts Marten...

...in, erm, a very Faye way... oh hey, Faye, Fae! I wonder if that was intentional on Jeph’s part. Probably not, Faye isn’t quite a Maniac Pixie Dream Girl. For one thing, she’s better written.

If memory serves, I think Dora mentioned she was a blonde previously? Either way she’s crystal clear with it now. Also, while I complimented Jeph before on his faces... I’m not going to lie, he could stand to improve drawing skirts. I don’t blame the guy, I imagine skirts are fucking hard to draw.

Oh, and here we begin an annual tradition of Questionable Content:

I’d like to start a petition for all Questionable Content fans to go by the fan-name “Turkeys” now. You with me, fellow Turkeys?!

...no? Eh, fair enough.

Here we get some interesting information. At least, it gets interesting in the wake of what comes up later - the timescale is more-or-less confirmed here that this takes place around the early to mid 2000s, likely 2004 or so since that’s when the comic was written. I always assumed, considering we have walking AI around, that the universe of Questionable Content took place in the near future... but rather, it seems more like it takes place in an alternate version of history where our technology is slightly ahead of the curve. And yet a lot of pop culture phenomena remained as it did in our version of history, if what they’re saying is true. Again, this doesn’t get super relevant until later comics where we see just how far advanced the technological level in QC has become.

Ellen drops by the Coffee Shop for some advice:

Faye’s gotten a LOT more open recently. Back near the beginning of this comic she would never, never openly admit to giving into any kind of carnal need, and now here she is candidly talking about private shower times.

And while they’re discussing things at the Coffee Shop, Marten and Steve are having their own conversation back at the apartment:

Now here I need to put in my two cents. The characters make a point of saying how they don’t really think the age difference is that big of a deal. Were she legal, which she will be in less than a week, there’s no real problem with an 18 year old dating a 24 year old. I know this is entirely a matter of personal opinion and I fully expect people to disagree with me here. I also suspect this is going to make me sound like a prude, but... yeah, I think there is a problem, there.

Ellen’s a freshman in College. She’s JUST turning 18. While she’s shown to be intelligent enough to get into college early - and good on her for that - she lacks the emotional intelligence or maturity to really strike out into a relationship with someone six years her senior. And Steve, for his part, is too old to get anything out of a relationship with someone so much younger than he is. There’s no real connection there, the difference in emotional maturity is going to make itself evident before too long and the relationship is more prone to self-destruct.

Like I said, feel free to disagree with me there. If you feel like there’s room for a relationship in such an age gap, let me know. I wouldn’t mind starting a conversation or changing my mind, but that’s where my mindset is there - it just wouldn’t work out.

Remember that last line Dora said. It’s going to get much funnier later, to the point where part of me wonders if that was deliberate foreshadowing on Jeph’s part.

And here we welcome Ellen’s roommate, Natasha. My oh my, characters are building up, ain’t they? Just give it time, guys. It gets so, so much worse.

(Also am I the only one stuck on that first panel? Just... I know they already made the joke about her dual-major but there’s something so surreal to that I kind of can’t escape it)

And now, to round out our batch of 50:

Wow. It seems like Dora’s a touch more insecure than she lets on, huh? She seems so cool and in-control of herself that moments like this where it’s surprisingly easy of her to accept that she may have weirded the object of her affections out are much more blatant.

Now that we’ve reached the end of the batch, let’s do our usual beginning and end comparisons:

Like I said before, Jeph has clearly put more detail into the faces. He’s taking steps in the direction of “realistic cartoon” if that makes sense, further details in the wrinkles of their clothes, their bodies looking more defined, that sort of thing. I can’t really decide if I like this newer style better than the older one, but it’s no question that the newer style is a technical improvement. Nice work!

So what’d I think of this batch? Eh... plot happened, I suppose, but it feels like not much ended up happening. I dunno, for my money this felt a lot slower than the last batch... but then again, last batch had Amanda drop by for a visit, so that may have something to do with it. Either way, we have outright confirmation if we didn’t think so before that Dora is super into Marten, but it’s also made clear she’s not going to step in between the dance he and Faye are partaking in right now. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is entirely up to personal opinion, I suppose. I dunno, I feel like having Dora as a potential wild card offered the possibility for drama to shake up the dynamic going on, and without her I fear the dynamic may stagnate.

I mean, I know exactly how the dynamic’s going to go because I’ve read it, but you get the point I’m trying to make here.

Anyhow, you know what time it is now - data analysis time! In this batch of 50, we have...

Marten: 34/50 – 68%

Faye: 29/50 – 58%

Dora: 24/50 – 48%

Ellen: 15/50 – 30%

Steve: 12/50 – 24%

Pintsize: 11/50 – 22%

Natasha: 2/50 – 4%

Miéville: 2/50 – 4%

 Grand Total:

Marten: 200/250 – 80%

Faye: 192/250 – 76.8%

Dora: 75/250 – 30%

Pintsize: 61/250 – 24.4%

Steve: 34/250 – 13.6%

Ellen: 18/250 – 7.2%

Amanda: 12/250 – 4.8%

Sara: 7/250 – 2.8%

Jimbo: 5/250 – 2%

Turing: 4/250 – 1.6%

Raven: 3/250 – 1.2%

Miéville: 3/250 – 1.2%

Scott: 2/250 – 0.8%

Natasha: 2/250 – 0.8%

Ell: 1/250 – 0.4%

Personally, I won’t be satisfied until Jimbo overtakes Sara in his number of appearances. You can do it, Jimbo! I BELIEVE IN YOU!

...erm, in any case, tune in next week for the thrilling next installment of QC! You ready for more backstory on our main characters? I know I am! See you then.