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sie-werden-nie-vergessen · 3 years

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“Ruth and Ephraim as a couple” headcanons/AU, ft “Sarah in Boston”

@shapeshiftersandfire, so here it is. I finished way earlier than I anticipated, but I just started typing and here it is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muFFeiBUffQ (this song is required listening when reading these headcanons. It IS Ephraim and Ruth’s theme song. I recommend starting it at 3:14 because that point of the song is the section that really gives me Ruth and Ephraim vibes)

First off, there is SO much covert flirting. SO, SO MUCH FLIRTING.

Ephraim is definitely having an identity crisis on the way home after the card game.

He gets home and Deodat asks him how the party went and he just kind of stands there like an oaf.

“It went fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“No Yes”

“...okay”

Deodat doesn’t believe him but he assumes that maybe Ephraim was just rejected by a date or something. Little does he know…..

“Fire Meet Gasoline” is a very good analogy to their relationship.

Because not only would it be passionate

But their relationship would probably also develop very quickly

They wouldn’t rush things, per se, but the “crush” phase is definitely very short for them

They’re both very outspoken and confident, so they very quickly open up about their feelings rather than beating around the bush.

They’re both very passionate people in terms of personality, and even when Ephraim is open-minded enough to fall for Ruth, they still inevitably clash with their opinions

They don’t fight but they definitely debate.

But in a healthy way. The debates can get heated but not in a hostile way. They’re just both very opinionated and they get very passionate about their opinions and their different thought processes.

“I know I’m right!” “Yeah well I know that I”M right!” “Well I think I’m right because xyz” “Well my reasons are abc” “...that’s a good point. But I’m still right ;)”

So it probably looks like arguing to some people, but they both know that it’s all in good humor so neither Ephraim or Ruth are actually hurt by it or anything

They actually think it’s a good source of entertainment.

They once got into a heated debate about the correct color of socks in the middle of the new Mill Valley department store just to see the reactions of the cashiers

The aforementioned cashiers were horrified

Ephraim was arguing in favor of brown socks, and Ruth in favor of gray.

They ended up buying both colors.

Ruth now buys him brown and gray socks for a gag gift every Christmas (were gag gifts a thing in 1898? No clue, but I like the idea so I’m running with it and not researching something for once).

Ephraim keeps her a secret for a long time, for obvious reasons.

Ruth doesn’t mind this because she understands his reasoning behind it.

She takes it as an opportunity to introduce him to her family and friends.

Ephraim gets along great with her brother Charles, and almost immediately the “future brother in law” jokes start.

Ruth is surprisingly embarrassed by this.

Ephraim teases her for days about that fact.

“Finally! I finally found something that embarrasses you!”

Ephraim goes to her performances and cheers her on (he always brings a bouquet too)

He sits in the front row right at the bottom of the stage and claps the loudest when she comes on stage.

Ruth is big into theatrics and has an entire setup of smoke cannons and mood lighting that announce her entrance.

She steps into this cloud of smoke and raises her arms dramatically and announces herself

Ruth loves to wear the color red because it looks so striking against her pale skin, but she secretly loves lighter shades of blue even more (they just don’t give off very strong “mystical” vibes, so she sticks to dark reds when she’s in the spotlight)

She works as a fortune teller and does card tricks as well

She loves to hear the ridiculous rumors and urban legends surrounding the “mystical powers” of albinos and then she incorporates that into her routine

“ALBINOS CAN READ MINDS” okay, well now she does mind reading as a new trick

In reality she’s just a very analytical person so it’s easy for her to pick up on small body language or vocal cues

Ephraim always asks her to tell him her fortune and it inevitably turns into some sappy “well I think you’ll end up marrying an amazing circus performer who just so happens to also be the most beautiful woman in Pennsylvania” thing

Ephraim definitely agrees with her “fortune”

He tells her about Sarah pretty early on in the relationship. He doesn’t want to hide anything from her.

He isn’t sure how she’ll take it, especially considering the fact that he was complacent in Sarah’s abuse for years until he really got out into the world and realized that everything he “knew” about albinism was wrong.

Ruth is definitely shocked but she assures him that he’s not some sort of monster, because he realized that what his parents trained him to think was wrong and he was able to grow from that.

One day when the rest of the family is out, Ephraim sneaks Ruth into the mansion (with the help of Sylvie and Lou Lou, of course) and she goes down to the cellar to meet Sarah.

Sarah is absolutely floored that there are others like her.

Of course she knew, because Ephraim told her when he returned from college and made amends, but when she sees it infront of her eyes it’s still a shock.

Ruth and Sarah hit it off instantly, of course.

Ruth promises to take Sarah to see a circus someday

Sarah can’t wait to see the elephants.

A few days after the secret meeting, Ephraim decides to tell his family about Ruth.

He tells Harold, thinking that maybe Harold would understand

But Harold just rats him out to Deodat and Delanie

They’re furious, of course

They don’t tell Gertrude because they claim that it would give her a heart attack

And tbh, it might

Gertrude figures it out anyways from the deranged yelling that comes from downstairs

“After all we’ve done to hide Sarah, and now you do THIS?!!”

“Mother, there’s nothing wrong with her.”

“She’s a circus freak!”

“By choice. She enjoys working in sideshows. That doesn’t make her a bad person.”

“Are you sure she isn’t just trying to mooch off of OUR money?!”

“She’s very wealthy, Mother. She works because she enjoys it.”

Deodat has more or less the same reaction.

Harold just can’t believe that Ephraim would “betray” the family in that way.

Ephraim tells Ruth the next day, and they decide to take Sarah away and leave for Boston.

Charles helps with the legal side of things, and pulls a few strings with his lawyer friends in Pennsylvania to have Sarah legally emancipated from her parents.

The trio moves to Boston and temporarily lives with Charles and his wife Louisa.

Louisa is smitten with Sarah from the start and insists on baking her ridiculous amounts of gingerbread.

(For no reason, really, but Louisa just has a thing for gingerbread. Sarah doesn’t complain)

Sarah gains quite a lot of weight in those first few months, and for the first time in her life she weighs a healthy amount.

Ruth takes her clothes shopping often, and she insists on buying Sarah the nicest and newest fashions (even though she grows out of them so quickly now. It’s as if 18 years of growing have finally caught up with her at once).

Sarah hugs Ephraim for the first time after she and Ruth return from their first major shopping trip. Ephraim almost cries, and Ruth grins so hard that her face hurts.

Ephraim wasn’t sure if Sarah could ever forgive him, but that was proof enough for him.

Ruth gives Sarah her first diamond necklace. It’s the one that Ruth wore the day she met Sarah. Sarah had said that it was the prettiest thing that she had ever seen, and Ruth saved it for her until they reached Boston. It was an informal adoption gift, really.

Ephraim and Ruth eventually buy a nice brownstone in Boston. It’s a few streets away from Charles and Louisa’s home, and there’s a large park across the street.

Sarah loves to sit in the park and watch the swans and ducks on the pond.

Sometimes Ruth and Ephraim go with her, but a lot of the time they let her go alone. They know that she’s been through a lot, and that sometimes she needs time alone to process everything.

Sometimes she comes back with tears in her eyes, but no one mentions it. Ruth brings her a cup of tea or a piece of gingerbread (Louisa is always sending over fresh gingerbread) and offers her a shoulder to cry on, if she needs it.

Ruth takes Sarah to meet her fellow albino circus performers. For once in her life, Sarah feels truly accepted and understood when she stands in a room surrounded by people like her.

There are so many children in the room, and they’re all so loved by their family members, regardless of their albinism. It makes Sarah sad at first, but she’s also happy to see that they were raised in loving households instead of abusive and hateful ones.

For their first Christmas together in Boston, Ephraim buys Sarah a Kodak No. 2 Bullseye Camera. When the first Kodak Brownie camera is released a few years later in 1900, he buys her one of those as well.

He tells her that she can use it to document her new life in Boston.

The first picture she takes is a picture of a sleeping Ephraim.

He’s sitting in an armchair next to the Christmas tree, surrounded by wrapping paper and plates of half finished cookies.

Once the picture is developed, she puts it in her new photo album that Charles and Louisa gave to her.

When Ephraim woke up, Sarah asked to take a picture with him.

Of course he obliged.

She keeps that one in a frame by her bedside.

Sarah has a whole pile of her “treasures” that she keeps beside her bed, but that picture is at the center of it all.

Ephraim notices it one time when he’s helping Ruth collect the laundry, and it touches him more than he can say.

For her gift, Ruth arranges for Sarah to take some writing classes at the local women’s college.

Sarah is thrilled. She starts to write stories other than horror.

She still loves scary stories, but she finds a new love for children’s stories and romance novels.

Little Women is her favorite (Ruth is delighted! It was her favorite book too!)

In 1900 Ruth and Ephraim have a son. They name him Eli, in reference to Sarah’s middle name (Elizabeth).

Sarah is the proudest aunt you’ve ever seen.

Ephraim and Ruth go on to have more children, but Sarah has a special bond with little Eli. He is the first baby that she ever held.

The odd little family on Pearl Street is probably the happiest family you’ll ever see.

Sarah eventually marries the son of one of Ruth’s circus colleagues.

His name is Thomas, and he’s a quiet man.

He loves birds too, just like Sarah.

He and Sarah go bird watching often.

They go on to have a large family. 2 out of the 5 children have albinism, but they love all of their children the same.

They live a long life.

Neither Ephraim, Ruth, or Sarah ever return to Mill Valley. They’re more than happy to let the past remain in the past.

Bonus: Harold In Boston Headcanons/AU

Once Ephraim does reach out to Harold, and he’s surprised to learn that Harold has also distanced himself from their parents.

Gertrude died in 1899, and shortly after that Harold’s fiancée Violet died of tuberculosis. With his ties to Mill Valley significantly loosened, Harold took an extended business trip to Philadelphia where he eventually opened his own publishing company. After the mercury scandal at the mill, Deodat and Delanie are essentially ruined and Harold is free to pursue his own interests independent of the mill.

He goes to visit Ephraim in 1900 to congratulate him on the birth of his son.

It’s tense at first, when he see’s Sarah. He isn’t sure how she’ll react to him.

She’s wearing a white lace dress with small puffs at the sleeves, and pale blue ribbons at the cuffs and waist of the skirt.

Her hair is in a soft gibson girl-esque style, and Harold realizes that it’s the first time he’s ever seen her in anything other than the old gown she always wore back in Pennsylvania.

“Hello Sarah”

“Hello Harold”

He isn’t sure what to do at first, but Ruth quickly introduces herself to abate the awkward silence.

He’s never met Ruth, but he quickly understands why Ephraim likes her so much.

After he meets the baby and pleasantries are exchanged, he wanders off into one of the upstairs rooms of the home.

(Sarah left the room once Ruth brought out the baby. She loves Eli, but she feels awkward being everyone all at once, as if she’s intruding on something she isn’t, of course).

He accidentally goes into Sarah’s room, only to find her at her desk writing.

Her room is nothing like the dark basement she used to call home, and Harold is thankful for that.

“So, you still write?”

Sarah jumps in her chair a little, before suddenly whipping around. She’s still not good with loud or sudden noises, even after 3 years of safety.

Harold cringes when she jumps. He hates that he still scares her.

When she composes herself, she smiles a small smile. “Yes, I still write.”

Harold asks what she writes about these days, and she tells him that she writes children’s stories.

It’s a sad irony, considering the mercury scandal, but Harold doesn’t tell her about that yet.

She had left Mill Valley before the worst of it, and he knows how much she loved those children.

After they talk for a while, Sarah eventually invites him to sit with her.

They sit side by side on her bed and she shows him her notebooks.

He’s surprised by how much she’s grown since he last saw her. She’s a little taller now, and she’s gained a lot of weight. Her face isn’t hollow anymore, and her eyes are bright now. Her hair is shiny and thick, and she truly looks happy.

She only shakes a little when he’s so close to her. Harold still scares her a little, but Ephraim promised her that no one would ever hurt her again.

Sarah trusts Ephraim immensely, so she’s willing to trust Harold too

Still, it’s a little hard for her to have him in such close proximity.

Harold notices her discomfort and moves a few inches away (still close enough to see her notebooks, but far enough that it gives Sarah a safe buffer). Her nerves calm down once she has a “safe zone.”

Harold finally works up the nerve to say something.

“Sarah, I-”

“I know. Ephraim told me.”

“He did?”

“He did”

“Well...that’s...that’s good.”

The next thing that Sarah does shocks Harold to his core.

She reaches out, her hands shaking, and grabs his hand.

“I know that you didn’t mean it - what you did to me -...not really, anyways. I know you’re different now.”

Harold squeezes her hand in return, and she stops shaking.

“Thank you”

Sarah smiles

“Of course”

Ephraim happens to pass Sarah’s bedroom on his way upstairs and nearly dies of shock at the site of them. Harold doesn’t notice Ephraim, but Sarah does.

She bursts out laughing, because Ephraim genuinely looks horrified, shocked, and immensely confused.

“He said that he was sorry!,” she explained in a half yell in Ephraim’s direction.

Ephraim is still in shock, so he doesn’t say anything.

Harold is also in shock, but because of Sarah’s laugh.

The man genuinely didn’t think that it was possible, and yet here she was laughing.

When everyone recovers from their respective shocks, Harold is invited to stay for dinner.

This dinner invitation turns into a long term stay, and eventually Harold moves his business to Boston.

He buys the brownstone next to Ephraim and Ruth’s home.

He remains a bachelor all his life, never having truly recovered from Violet’s death.

Harold definitely earns the title of “World’s Greatest Uncle” in regards to Sarah and Thomas’ children.

By 1980 the neighborhood block is so full of Bellows descendants that it’s unofficially renamed Bellows Square

Ruth and Ephraim’s house becomes a local historic landmark, considering the fact that Ephraim went on to become one of the country’s early geneticists who (humanely) studied genetic disorders and medical conditions.

The house later becomes a museum in the early 90s, having been restored to the same state that it was when they once resided in it.

Sarah’s Kodak No. 2 Bullseye is put on display, but the crowning achievement is her collection of photo albums and notebooks. She went on to become a children’s writer and illustrator, basing many of her books on her experiences in Boston.

The old Bellows Paper Mill is torn down in 1948 to make room for new housing following the G.I. Bill and the post-war Baby Boom.

None of the surviving Bellows are sad to see it go.

#ephraim bellows #sarah bellows #ruth vedette #headcanons #au #ruth is my own character #harold bellows

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aileysmirnov · 5 years

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◇◆Ailey Villains Gallery: Scarecrow◇◆

Scarecrow's face claim: Adrien Brody

Secret vs Scarecrow! How did they met?

Ailey (Secret) and Scarecrow met 'thanks' to Batman:

One night in Gotham, Scarecrow infiltrated the Iceberg Lounge with the intention to Kill some of Penguin's Henchmen.

With a more "upgraded" (and letal) version of his fear gas.

Just as a way to send a message to Oswald who had stolen some of his gas and now was selling it for a very high price on the dark market.

To prevent Batman from intervening, Scarecrow convinced Riddler and Dr Pig to create a "distraction" (if murdering almost 11 people between the two and then make an "spectacle" about it, can be called like that) for the Bat.

And unfortunately when the "Caped Crusader" realized it was a trap (thanks to one of Riddler's "funny" riddles) he was already too far from the building.

Too far from stopping Scarecrow.

He analyzed all of his options pretty fast: he couldn't send Damian, he was with him, Dick was in Blüdhaven, He already send Tim after Riddler and Steph after Pig, Cass and Barbara where in another state with the Birds of prey, Duke and Kate where teaming up to solve a crime involving a new rising homicidal cult and Jason…he wasn't in good terms with Jason…again…and he losed his track at least 2 weeks ago.

And so…he reluctantly took the phone and dialed the number of the one person he could think of.

Ailey was doing the usual: shouting angrily and throwing a tantrum towards her employees (like the good little tyrant she is) for a last minute cancellation of 4 of the stellar models for the upcoming Winter collection of SVELLYO. When all of a sudden she received a call from the one and only: Bruce fucking Wayne.

—B! What a perfect timing! Is not bothersome at all!—she remarked the words sarcastically annoyed a tone that sounded like the venomous hissing of a snake.

—Listen Ailey, I don't have time for thi-

She cut him off

—What a coincidence! Neither do I, B's man! Byee~

—Ailey…—He didn't shout at her but his more menacing (than usually) tone, make her feel like he did; it was a voice tone that Bruce normally just used when he was with Joker and when he used it. Oh boy, You just knew the man ain't taking any shit.

—Listen to me. And listen. C A R E F U L L Y. Scarecrow is in the Iceberg Lounge it's 2 minutes away from you by flying. I need you to go after him and prevent whatever he's up to against Cobblepot.—He said a little more ""nicer"" (if it's even possible) this time, but still with a hint of frustration in his voice.

—yeah…well…I also need this little favor, B—Bruce was about to fucking lose it in that moment, there where lives in danger and this CHILD was just thinking of herself!! But before he could lash out at her with a "I'm dissapointed" speech; Damian took the phone.

—He said he'll do it, you have my word. Now…Go! —Robin said without thinking twice

—Thank you, my zelenyy*! I'm on my way! —and with an Angry Bruce Lashing out at every single thing on earth on the background, Ailey hanged up, wrote a quick note to his secretary, asking him to give all of her employees a rise (including him, of course) and sprinted out to SVELLYO's roof top; without a word to the perplexed staff.

Once she stood there.She could feel the cold night breeze hitting her face and without any doubt she jumped abruptly from one of the highest points in the city.

Her eyes opened at the middle of his falling, adrenaline and renewed energy cursing trough her veins, her blonde hair replaced with a glowing rose gold, a metalic blue growing in her gaze and her outfit conveniently transformed on an all black bodysuit with slight hints of gold on the bottom of her sleeves.

His whole body defying gravity, flying through the night sky with the same grace and glory of a swan and leaving a subtle trace of light glowing pink as she passed by.

She arrived at the Iceberg Lounge back entrance at least 5 seconds earlier from what Batman had predicted.

Penguin's henchmen where all gathered in what appeared to be a small cellar on the very back of the casino, they were complaining about an out of the blue"meeting".

Secret (Ailey) assumed it was Scarecrow's way to get them all in the same place and avoid any unnecessary complications.

With extreme caution she stood and watched near the skylight, trying to fade away her own slightly glowing nature with the moonlight.

Her eyes searched quickly inside the room, ans she soon spotted atleast 6 gas tanks oddly put in some of the poorly lighted corners of the cellar.

But no sign of the maniac

Or so she though until the abrupt pain in her neck and the obscure presence behind her sooner than later make her realize; she wasn't alone.

She could feel the infernal pain from the toxin filling his lungs and cutting her breath and her vision becoming a little bit dizzy.

—You should know better than spying on people, dear…It might not end up being what you expected—his voice was deep and unforgiving, a condescending tone and the weight of countless sleepless nights leaked through every word.

She tried to speak but only felt her throat closing.

—Now, now, dear…all will end up soon. —His tall and lanky figure covered by worn out clothes to match his own psychotic aesthetic made him look intimidating. And without any glimpse of empathy he proceeded to toss her body aside with a kick like if she was a filthy dead rat, and continue to watch expectantly to the ignorant henchmen above.

He was waiting, waiting for one of them to foolishly reveal where his beloved toxin was and after a couple of minutes one of them casually mentioned a secret basement where the most important items waited patiently for whoever was able to afford his almost ridiculously expensive price.

Crane smiled wickedly to himself…he had just what he wanted…almost.

He activated the slightly hidden tanks of fear gas and watched in admiration as some of the henchmen faces started to change into a horrified expression.

—Head's up, asshole!—He didn't even had time to process the situation properly, when Secret's hands where at both sides of his head, the tip of her fingers illuminated and emanating Rose gold strings of pure energy attaching themselves to Crane's mind.

And at that exact moment he remembered: the pain, the panic, the fear.

The very first time he tested his toxin, was on himself: he was laying in to that dirty old shack for what felt like an eternity; he screamed and begged and yet the hallucinations didn't leave him, his mind was racing with the most horrible thought it could possibly even consider, everything so real and yet so distant. He felt hopeless.

And the delicate strings clinging tight around his mind. Lord, what a bittersweet nostalgia! He felt the same, the same way as the first time, he could hear the screams, the voices, the endless discontent. But couldn't find anything around him…just…hollow and for some strange reason…that scared the shit out of him.

Ironically it had been years since the last time Crane felt genuine fear.

When Crane woke up, he was already in that horrible place: a worn out cell from Arkham

But strangely he didn't feel any kind of anger or frustration. No…he felt…elated in the best way possible almost like if he had reborn!

And so…he stood there; staring blankly at the small window with an almost devilish smile across his face.

Waiting for the next encounter

◆◇◆◇

Ailey felt so proud of herself, she had successfully managed to knock out Scarecrow, control the gas leak and save Penguin's henchmen! All alone! And even took the liberty to recover all of Crane's toxin samples Penguin had!

She couldn't wait to see Bruce's face, Oh that man owed her BIG TIME!

When Bruce and Damian finally arrived at the Batcave, he was welcomed by her.

She looked like a 10 year-old who approved one of his test and was proudly showing off the paper to his parents.

Wich made Bruce smile…a little (even if he doesn't admit to it)

—See? You can trust me, B!—she said handing him the samples.

—So you send him to Arkham? Hmm…honestly I didn't though you'll made it…but good job…I guess…?—Damian admitted, while taking off his mask.

—Well, I'm glad I'm not THAT disappointing, sir! —Her tone expressing the sarcasm and slight frustration and offence in every word. Which Damian only replayed with a faint little smile.

—…Good Job, Ailey…—Bruce spoke for the first time since they arrived

—…and thank you for your help…—He completed with a slightly more """friendly""" tone (which just means less stiffness in his voice but still maintaining his authoritarian tone)

—yeah…well…don't thank me yet…we had a deal!—She said while playfully floating around him and touching the ears of his Bat-suit; Bruce could only do as much as to touching the bridge of his nose trying to contain his very obvious nuisance.

—…What do want? —He said sighing heavily.

—Nothing much, really! I want You, Damian, Dick and Katy modeling for SVELLYO winter collection catwalk, next week! —

◆◇◆◇

OMG! That was fun! I was going to put a small and cute little drawing of Ailey touching the ears of the Bat-suit but I still haven't finished yet! So yeah…I will edit it once I have it done!

Anyway! I loved writing this, and I will be uploading more content for Ailey, wich now she has her official anti-hero name! And is called

🥁🥁🥁🥁

Secret!

Shout out to @melyaliz / @insideoflit for the name idea! I honestly struggle so much with names 😅

Thanks to @Shiro.GURu (on insta) for helping me with this! Love ya, girl <3

Tagging: @lobodesaturno @snowflake2sstuff @lord-carstairs @weam0theblueblues @morefarthanaway

#batfamily #bruce wayne #batman #OC #scarecrow #antihero #dc comics #damian wayne #robin #jonathan crane #ailey #greek mythology #adrien brody #edit #hedcanons #imagine #villian #lol bye

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worryinglyinnocent · 5 years

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Fic: Everything Money Can Buy (11/12)

Summary: The Greatest Store in the World AU. When misfortune strikes and leaves Emma Swan and her son homeless just before Christmas, the ever-resourceful Emma has a ready solution. They’ll move into Mills Department Store, a place they can only dream of affording to buy from. It’s not easy, having to deal with a perpetually grumpy doorman, a nasty assistant manager, and an extremely suspect Santa, but Emma and Henry soon learn that the kindness of strangers is something money can’t buy.

Swan Believer centric, with eventual Swan Queen and background Rumbelle and Dwarf Star.

Rated: G

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[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five] [Six] [Seven] [Eight] [Nine] [Ten] [AO3]

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Eleven

"Here's to not working on Christmas Day, and a great deal of sympathy for everyone who is."

“Cheers."

Belle chinked her glass of cranberry punch against Alistair's. Knowing that he didn't drink, she'd raided her mother's recipe books for something suitably festive and non-alcoholic and had pulled together the punch from cinnamon, cranberry sauce, and boiling water.

"You know, if I had my way, Christmas Day would last for about three weeks," Belle said. "One day off is not enough, and normally I can't enjoy the respite if I know I'm going to have to go back to work and deal with people behaving extremely badly tomorrow. Sometimes I can't decide which is worse - pre-Christmas panic or post-Christmas sales."

"If all the shops in the country shut for a week before and a week after Christmas, that would be perfect," Alistair mused. "Not only would everyone be forced to get organised and buy their presents earlier instead of leaving it till Christmas Eve, we'd also have enough time to just about recover before people started shopping again in the New Year."

Belle laughed. She was having a wonderful Christmas Day so far. She and Alistair had spent the morning preparing a miniature Christmas feast, and she had given him his present. She’d intended to give it to him at the party last night, but after he’d invited her over for Christmas dinner, she’d decided to wait so that he could have it on the day instead.

He had gone very red when she’d presented it to him, mumbling about not having anything to give to her in return, but she’d pointed out that she was getting Christmas dinner out of him, and he’d eased up a little at that point. The turkey and roast potatoes were cooking nicely in the oven, and now she and Alistair were sitting on the sofa, watching the lights on the Christmas tree twinkling.

"This is wonderful," she said. "Thank you so much for inviting me. It would have been a lonely Christmas Day on my own. I'd have spent most of the day asleep."

"It is good to have company," Alistair agreed, and Belle felt a huge pang of sympathy for him.

"I'm sorry, you must be missing Bae."

Alistair nodded. "I am. I called him this morning and left a message, thanking him for my gift. Hopefully he'll call back later. I'm sure he will, he's good like that. We spent about an hour on the phone last Christmas, but it's not the same as seeing him in person." He paused. "Belle... I have something to confess." He'd gone a bit pink around the ears, and Belle raised an eyebrow, wondering what he could have to say that made him so sweetly nervous.

"What's that?"

"I didn't just ask you here to keep me company, you know. I... I think I would have asked you anyway, even if Bae was coming. Well, if it was all right by him."

Belle smiled. "I would have been very happy to accept no matter how many other people were coming.”

The only thing that could have made the scene any better would have been the addition of a nice sprig of mistletoe hanging from the light fitting above them, so that Belle could have an excuse for kissing her host.

Well, she didn’t think that she really needed an excuse, since they’d kissed in the basement yesterday, but still, it was the principle of the thing.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked presently. Belle decided that there was no point in beating about the bush. If you don't ask, you don't receive, after all.

"Mistletoe," she said. "Or rather, the lack of it."

Alistair smiled. "A terrible decorating oversight on my part. But I'm sure that we can use our imaginations."

Belle leaned in, her nose bumping against Alistair's as they met in the middle, giggling a little before their lips finally met. It would have been a perfectly freeze-framed Christmas moment if a car alarm hadn't started up a few streets away, making her jump.

"Perfect timing," she grumbled, glaring at the window. "Although, I suppose, Christmas Day's probably an opportune time for theft, since there's no one around."

The distant car alarm continued, and Alistair's brow furrowed.

"That alarm sounds familiar," he said. "I really don't think that it's a car alarm."

Belle felt a rush of ice flood through her veins as she too recognised the distinctive alarm.

"It's the internal alarm at Mills."

For a full minute, the two of them just looked at each other in fear. They both knew that Henry and his mother would be in the store, and whatever had happened to set the alarm off, the police would be arriving in due course. Belle hoped that the alarm had been set off for a genuine reason and the police's presence was really required, but that still didn't shake the fact that the police would arrive and find a homeless mother and son trespassing in the store. On Christmas Day.

"Let's go." Alistair paused only to switch the oven off - Christmas lunch could wait until they'd made sure that everything was all right at Mills. They grabbed their coats, speeding out of the flat and through London's almost empty streets, praying that they would get there before Regina or Zelena did.

They were rounding the final corner towards the yard entrance when they met Leroy and Astrid coming from the opposite direction, also at a run. Leroy was jangling a huge ring of keys, looking for the correct ones to let them into the yard, only for them to find that the gates were already open.

The four of them raced in and stopped short at the scene that met them.

In hindsight, Henry realised, sounding the alarm was probably not the best idea he'd ever had, because all it had served to do was to draw attention to himself, and Killian, with no thought for discretion now that the game was up, was now bounding over the display cabinets towards him with an agility that the puffy Santa costume belied. Not having long enough legs to be able to vault over the obstacles in his way like Killian, Henry was stuck weaving in and out of the counters on his mission to reunite with Mum, who was charging after Killian with a roar of 'GET AWAY FROM MY SON!'

Smee was nowhere to be seen, taking advantage of the confusion to escape with the loot. The alarm was so loud and shrill that Henry thought his ears would start bleeding soon.

Ultimately, he knew that he was going to be cornered, and he closed his eyes as he realised that he could go no further. He'd only had a short life and it didn't take a long time for it to flash before his eyes.

Killian grabbed him, throwing him over his shoulder.

"You're coming with me as insurance," he snarled, taking off towards the exit after Smee, before starting to shout for his colleague, calling him every name under the sun and some that Henry hadn't heard before and wasn't sure were even English.

"Stay back!" he shouted at Mum as she raced after them, waving the bolt cutters. "One more step and he gets it!"

Mum took a step back, and Henry took advantage of the moment of quiet to kick Killian squarely in the chest, making him swear with the pain and drop the bolt cutters. Mum launched forward again now that he was unarmed, but Killian was nothing if not determined. Not even Henry's wildly flailing fists and legs could stop him as he ran through the store out towards the yard.

"Smee, you faithless rat!" he was yelling. "Get back here!"

They raced out into the yard, Mum catching up with them and lunging at Killian just as they got down the steps towards the unmarked white van that was standing waiting by the bins. She caught his waist, succeeding only in pulling his trousers down, but it was enough to make him lose his balance, and enough for Henry to fight his way free of Killian's vice-like grip. Mum got to her feet in a flash and crash tackled Killian again, yelling at Henry to make a run for it as Smee, on the point of getting into the passenger seat of the van with the sack of jewellery, dropped his prize and came over to help his boss, loyalty once more winning out on seeing him being pounded by an extremely irate mother.

As much as Henry wanted to stay and help Mum, he knew that she was only in this precarious position because she was protecting him, so he legged it towards the open gates, grabbing the fallen sack on his way. It was heavier than it looked and dragged along the ground.

"Get back here, you little brat!"

Looking over his shoulder, Henry felt his eyes bug out of his head as he saw Zelena scramble out of the driver's seat of the van and come after him. He had a head start on her, but she had longer legs and could run something fierce when she wasn't wearing high heels. They were engaged in a tug of war for the sack when Belle, Gold, Leroy, and Astrid arrived on the scene, rushing into the yard before pulling up in confusion. Zelena didn't see them, too focussed on wrestling the sack away from Henry.

Leroy and Astrid wasted no time in going over to pull Smee off Emma and Emma off Killian. Belle was on her phone, hopefully talking to the police.

Gold came over just as Zelena succeeded in pulling the sack away from Henry.

"Yes!"

Her jubilation was short-lived as Gold yanked the sack from her flailing arm and opened it, raising an eyebrow as he looked inside.

"Part of your Christmas bonus, Zelena?"

"Yes, no, of course not, give me that! Thank God you've arrived, Gold, I was just in the process of apprehending these two jewel thieves; as you can see, Killian and Smee have been nobly assisting me."

"What?" Henry exclaimed, unable to believe the litany of lies that Zelena was now spinning. "That's not what happened!" he said, desperate for Gold to believe him. On the one hand, he knew that Gold had no reason to like or side with Zelena, but on the other hand, he'd only known Emma and Mum for a few days; they hadn't exactly been the picture of innocence whilst he'd known them.

"Right," Gold said flatly, refusing to relinquish the sack. "Well, since this is evidence, I'm sure that the police will take good care of it when they arrive. I'm very curious as to why the goods are in Santa's sack though, and why Santa himself is still in costume. Well, after a fashion." Killian's trousers were still around his ankles, and he had given up trying to fight off Astrid, who was now sitting on him. Leroy had Smee in a headlock, and Mum was standing off to one side, bent double as she caught her breath.

Satisfied that there were now enough responsible and trustworthy adults on the scene to handle everything between them, Henry left Zelena and Gold arguing and ran over to his Mum, throwing his arms around her and then springing back when she gave a little uff of pain.

"Are you all right?"

"Just bruised," she said. "And a bit winded. Haven't run an obstacle course like that since the van got towed in Birmingham." She straightened up and held out her arms for Henry. "What about you? Are you hurt?"

"No. I'm ok. Zelena's trying to make out that we're the thieves."

"Zelena? What's she doing here?"

"Driving the getaway vehicle from the looks of it."

Mum looked from the van, to Zelena and Gold, to the police car that had just pulled up in the yard. Henry hadn't heard the sirens over the blaring alarm that was still sounding out of the store.

"Right," she said. "Right, this might take some explaining..."

#Swan Believer #Swan Believer Fic #rumbelle #Emma Swan #Henry Swan #Belle French #Mr Gold #background dwarf star #Fic: Everything Money Can Buy

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thelamppoststation · 5 years

Text

Future’s Past by TheLampPost

In 2008, a year after James managed to get off that godforsaken rock, he receives a visit from a young woman with blue eyes and blonde hair. She hands him a locket and a letter, then demands answers to questions that he didn't even know existed. Post season 6 (Suliet) - This story is also partly set during the DHARMA days.

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Chapter 3: Truth and Tea

Aylesbury, England - April 2008

The sound of a woodpecker hammering its beak against the side of a tree carried through the open window, intruding upon a stale conversation, that for the past half hour had been dominated by unimaginative splashes of silent exasperation. Dr. Stanhope asked a question, Theresa would answer, Stanhope would ask a follow-up question, or another question, Theresa would answer, etc…

"And how have you been sleeping lately?"

They'd been going back and forth like this for months now, getting positively nowhere. And while Abigail insisted that this was good for her, that she would soon come to realize that Stanhope was trying to help her understand her condition better; Theresa knew, with absolute certainty, that she wasn't going to find any of her answers here, at these weekly one hour therapy sessions on the couch of a clueless psychologist in Aylesbury.

"Theresa?"

"Sorry?" she blinked, and sat up straighter.

Stanhope narrowed her eyes, and crossed her legs; stretching the thin line around her mouth into a forced smile.

"How have you been sleeping lately?" she repeated.

"Better," Theresa shrugged and stared down at her nails; she really should stop biting them. "But I do sometimes still wake up in the middle of the night, unsure of where I am, or how I got there."

"Hmm."

"And I've been having dreams."

"Oh?" Stanhope looked up from her notebook, pen hovering in midair.

"They're silly, really," she smiled, and shrugged. "I try not to think of them too much."

Stanhope nodded, mirroring Theresa's smile; it looked even less genuine than the first one.

"I'm not sure if you're aware of this," her expression morphed into a pensive grimace. "But, research has shown that dreams help the unconscious mind to process that which we've not been able to properly address with our conscious mind. Maybe, yours are simply a manifestation of your subconscious, trying to make sense of a reality that you've only recently become a part of again."

"Maybe."

Theresa bit her lip, suppressing the urge to explain how Stanhope's interpretation of reality lay tied to personal experiences that resided in a linear sphere of her own existence; a stable constant in spacetime. In truth, it was all relative; a construct that Theresa had believed to be true until it collapsed in on itself some seven years ago. From then on she'd resided in a vast void as an onlooker, her body wasting away while her mind remained trapped in a narrative that promoted senseless discontinuity; she was three, and looking for her dolly; she was twenty, talking to her father; she was ten riding her new bike in the rain. While in between those realities her body remained tettered to a drifting soul in an undead state. Alive, but not living.

"Trees," she said.

"Trees?"

"My dreams," she began. "Palm trees, banana leaves, and sometimes images of cobwebs with black circles, but they're not really cobwebs. They look more like the ones that you see in comicbooks, or cartoons," she paused, her mind sifting through the pictures of her dreams. "A swan, an arrow, and a rabbit. I think. They appear in black and white flashes. And there are more, but it doesn't matter, because it always ends with him."

"Him?"

"Daniel."

Stanhope had been listening to her with increased interest; the explanation of the dream chained to a piercing expression; but now her pupils had dilated even further at the mention of Daniel.

"Daniel Faraday? The man who put you in a coma?"

"He didn't put me in a coma," Theresa snapped. "I put myself in a coma!"

"Theresa–"

"I wanted it; I asked him. I knew the risks involved; we'd tested the rats, and understood that the human mind could potentially respond differently," she inhaled sharply. "I did it to myself!"

Stanhope didn't move, merely looked at her, tainted compassion melting down the sides of her face.

"I'm sorry," she leaned forward, and put a hand on Theresa's knee. "I spoke too abruptly, I didn't mean to upset you."

Theresa pushed her hand away, unwilling to accept such a thoroughly educated apology; she already struggled enough with Stanhope's ambiguous nature as it was.

They'd been tiptoeing around the "event" since she started these sessions, and Stanhope's demeanor would invariably change whenever Theresa so much as mentioned Daniel's name; it unnerved her. Why was she so interested in him? What did she want?

On more than one occassion Theresa had laid the memories out in front of her like pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit into the picture of her past anymore, and in those instances it became obvious that it had always been and would always be Daniel who laid at the core of her trauma.

Was that it? Did Stanhope get off on that? She'd located the source, and now she wanted what? To excavate the neural pathways between her memories and emotions; tear down all of Theresa's defences, until she could stand it no more?

She wasn't ready to admit that she hadn't given up on him, yet. Nor ready to confess that his disappearance had ignited an overnight obsession. Every single day since she'd woken up from her coma, she'd been looking for him, and every single night he would appear to her. Speaking without words in dreams that proved to be impossible to decipher without properly working ears. But she was sure, so sure, that it meant something.

"He's still out there somewhere."

"He has been missing for over four years. Wouldn't it be better if you laid Daniel's memory to rest, and just moved on from all of this?"

Theresa snorted and crossed her arms in front of her chest; she almost sounded like Abigail. Move on, go out, meet other people; as though it was that easy to forget.

"Have you ever lost someone?"

"Yes, of course." Stanhope replied.

"Well then what if you knew for sure that they weren't lost, but still out there somewhere? Wouldn't you do anything you could to find them, and bring them back?"

Stanhope sighed and reclined in her chair.

"Theresa, there's a difference between rational dreams and irrational fantasies," she began. "Every 90 seconds someone on this planet goes missing. In the United Kingdom alone over 170,000 people are currently unaccounted for. Daniel has been gone for over four years; he disappeared along with an entire science team, and then some. I don't like to make a sport out of contradicting my patients, but it's my duty to make you understand that holding onto Daniel's memory makes it impossible for you to move on. From one scientist to another, you must understand that when that freighter lost contact with civilization in the middle of the South Pacific it wasn't because of a defective radio."

"They never found anything."

"They didn't find the Titanic until 1985, that doesn't mean it didn't sink before then," Stanhope uncrossed her legs, and capped her pen. "I understand why you're holding onto this; it's your lifeline. I see it all the time. But just because they weren't able to find that freighter doesn't mean it's still out there somewhere. You woke up months ago, it's time for you to let go."

Theresa clenched her jaw, shooting daggers at the woman across from her. In what world could this harpy ever have obtained a Master's degree in psychology from Yale university?

"With all due respect, I really don't give a damn about what you think happened. I know he's still out there," she rose from the couch; her nostrils flaring with contained anger. "And he's on that island!"

Stanhope stared, her jaw unhinged.

"Island?"

Theresa was done. Whatever Stanhope had to say, she wasn't interested in counterarguments any longer. At the end of the day she, herself, was the only person who understood what had happened, and maybe, just maybe, if she ever found him, Daniel would understand too.

"I think we're done here," she reached for the doorknob with a type of determination she hadn't felt in years.

"Goodbye, Dr. Stanhope."

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Aylesburg, England - April 2008

Harper watched her storm out, the door slamming shut with a loud definitive bang. The silence that ensued reinserted itself with deafening determination, but for the woodpecker that continued to hammer out its frustrations into the tree just outside her office window; what she wouldn't give to be that bird right now.

She reached for her cellphone, dialed the number; the line almost immediatley connected.

Theresa Spencer had been one of her most frustrating cases to date. A stubborn young woman struggling with the after effects of temporal displacement syndrome. As an acting psychologist she had had trouble holding back. The way she'd treated the young woman had gone against everything that she had ever been taught in college: 'Never bait the patient. Respect their boundaries. Guide them through difficult experiences, never force their hand. Present tools, not the toolbox.'

She'd done none of that.

And she'd lied.

All in the name of–

"Yes?" the line clicked.

Harper rose from her chair, and looked out the window. She could see the woodpecker now; a bright red feathered crown bobbed up and down on its little head.

"I figured you'd want to know that she's ready."

"So soon?"

"It wasn't difficult; she did most of the work herself," Harper paused. "She still loves him, Eloise."

"Yes, that's what I counted on; I just didn't think she would start looking this soon. Are you sure?"

"She's been having dreams; she mentioned the island."

"Really?" Eloise paused, a static crack sounded on an exhalation.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Are you second guessing my motives, dear?"

"Of course not," Harper moved away from the window. "I haven't forgotten what you did for me; I'm just not sure it's healthy to go through such lengths. Most people, they take a pottery class, start croquetching; they don't–"

"Look dear, I appreciate your professional opinion, but if I wanted therapeutic advice, I'd ask. In the meantime, just do as you're told."

Harper sighed. 'Do as you're told', that had worked out so splendidly in the past.

She put the phone on speaker, then walked around her desk and sat down. The screensaver on her Windows XP immediately gave way to a bland desktop with the standard green hillside/blue sky background shining brightly, almost happily, in her face. She hadn't bothered personalizing the image; she wasn't going to be in England for much longer anyway.

"I looked into the information that you gave me."

"And?"

"I found a woman," she double clicked on an untitled folder, pulling up the file.

"Her name is Jamie Rachel Spinoza; she lives in Miami. Her parents are Bob and Mary Spinoza; he's a math teacher at a local highschool; she's a dentist assistant. I couldn't find any connection to the island, they seemed chosen randomly by the mother. But, if what Richard told you is true, then this Jamie will be your best bet. Her birth-certificate looks… improvised," she double clicked on another file, and a fadded brownish yellow scan of a 1970s Florida birth-certificate popped into view. "It appears to have been signed by Richard himself," she snorted. "Or at least it looks like his handwriting."

"Excellent!"

"Eloise," Harper turned away from the screen and pensively stared at her phone. "You should know that she recently gave birth to a little baby boy; I couldn't find anything on the father. He doesn't seem to be in the picture; if anything were to happen to–"

"Do you have an address?"

Harper closed her eyes, and sucked in her lips.

Unrelentless.

"Yes, I'll mail it to you."

"What about the other one?"

She scrolled down to the last item in the folder, double clicked.

"Kai Nieves?"

"Did he check out?"

"According to Adam he's 'the real deal'."

"Good, has he been recruited, yet?"

"They're negotiating," Harper scrolled through a list of pictures. He was a handsome man, dark skinned, blue eyes; an unusual combination of tough and kind mixed together, but very appealing nonetheless. "Apparently, Mr. Nieves isn't exactly in the business of promoting his gifts. He wants to know what he's getting involved in, and he wants to talk to you."

"Hmm."

Harper could almost hear the wheels in Eloise's head turning as she considered the demand.

"I think he would be more inclinced to accept our offer if we tell him what happened to his parents," she suggested.

"No," Eloise retorted. "Send his details to me; I'll visit him first thing in the morning. Then book me a flight to London."

"You're coming here?"

"Of course," Eloise's voice pricked up. "If you say she's ready, then it's high time I meet my future daughter-in-law."

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

3 days later

Aylesburg, England - April 2008

"He's a nice lad; you should give him a call."

"Abigail," Theresa sighed and looked up. Not this again. "Will you please stop trying to set me up with your colleagues?"

"This is the last one, I swear; he's the one."

Theresa closed The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene; thumb inserted between the pages as she sat up straighter to read the name and number on the napkin.

"Jack Hoff?" she narrowed her eyes. "Are you serious?"

Abigail shrugged.

"He's a really nice guy."

"Abby, just say that name out loud, and tell me again how he's supposed to be the one."

Abigail huffed.

"It's not his fault his parents didn't put proper thought into naming him when he was born; He's really nice."

"I'm sure he is," she pulled her legs in, motioning for her sister to sit.

Abigail flopped down; her shoulders slumped as she eyed Theresa.

"I'm worried about you."

"I'm OK," Theresa assured.

"Are you?"

"Better than a year ago."

"I'm not talking about that."

"I know."

"Why can't you just let it go, Trish?"

"Why can't you just quit setting me up with middle-aged men, Abby?"

Abigail rolled her eyes, and shoved Theresa's feet off the couch; the book slipped from her lap and landed on the carpet with a tud.

"Oy!"

"Because, dear sister; the world doesn't solely revolve around Daniel Faraday and his silly experiments!" Abigail motioned to the book as to emphasize her point. "You spent six years in a coma, and the first thing you do after you wake up is call out for a deadbeat ex-boyfriend who abandoned you eons ago!"

"You don't know that he left of his own accord!"

Abilgail gawked, her eyes bulging like that of a toad choking on a fly.

"Do you ever hear yourself?! Not a single call or message in six years, and you're still defending this guy?!"

Theresa pulled her legs back up and rested her chin on her knees; her eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond the diningroom chairs. The harsh consonants; the long drawn vowels; she was getting so tired of this eternal discussion that held neither answers nor solutions.

"Can we just not?" she heard herself say. "Just not today."

Besides, her mind hadn't exactly been on Daniel so much as it had been on other brainchilds and hypotheses. Two days ago, a sudden epiphany had her digging through files and old research that had lain stored away on Abigail's attic for some six odd years. Contrary to what her sister believed, Theresa hadn't just been Daniel's research assitant. She had had her own motives for wanting to work with him. Yes, he had been her boyfriend, but he had also been her colleague, and thanks to his invaluable insights he had gotten her involved in groundbreaking research that had held the potential to bring about an enormous paradigm shift. She owed him; she owed him so much more than Abigail would ever be willing to admit or accept.

"I guess it wouldn't hurt if we cut to the intermission early today," Abigail smirked, her expression softening.

Theresa snorted.

"The guy could bake one hell of a pancake, though; I'll give him that."

"Excuse me? What was that?" Theresa gasped, and put a demonstrative hand on her chest.

"Did Abigail Imelda Spencer just say something nice about Daniel Faraday?"

She reached for her sister's forehead.

"Dear! You're burning up. Maybe, you should…hold on," she theatrically pulled the napkin from her sister's chestpocket, and held it out in much the same manner Abigail had done moments before. "Maybe you should ring up Mr. Jack Hoff; see if he can help you flush that blush straight off your face," she winked.

"Oh, will just shu–"

The doorbell cut straight through their living room banter; both sisters simultaneously looked up.

Theresa frowned.

"You expecting someone?"

"No."

"I swear," Theresa began. "If this is one of your set ups come to take me out on a date; you're definitely crossing a sacred line, my precious sister."

Abigail rolled her eyes, and stood up.

"Oh, why don't you just stuff that napkin down your throat already?" she countered, before rounding the corner, down the hallway.

Theresa laughed, her attention momentarily drawn to the number underneath the name; even that seemed like a joke: +441296 366613. She flung it away, symbolically getting rid of Mr. Hoff and his digits, but as she watched the napkin flutter to the ground, she couldn't help but wonder what a date with a man called Jack Hoff would be like; maybe, he preffered to be called Jim. She would.

"Uh, Trish," Abigail reappeared, her expression grave as she stepped back into the living room.

"There's someone here for you, but I don't think–"

"Huh?" Theresa stood and crossed the room. "Who is it?"

Abigail caught her arm, pulling her backwards before she could peep around the corner.

"I'm not sure if you should."

"What are you on about?" she narrowed her eyes, twisting her neck in an impossible angle to catch a better glimpse.

"Maybe we should continue this discussion inside? It's raining cats and dogs out here."

Theresa's eyes widened; Abigail scowled.

"Mrs. Hawking?"

She pushed past Abigail, her jaw unhinged as she faced the woman in the doorway.

"Please, Eloise, dear. Mrs. Hawking was my mother's name."

Eloise stepped across the threshold, looking for all the world like Mary Poppins blown in on a regular Eastern wind as she surreptitiously closed her umbrella with an animated flourish. Abigail remained stoic, arms crossed in front of her chest, while Theresa felt an almost irrepressible urge to climb up on the rooftop to scrutinize the current position of the weather van, just to make sure.

"Forgot your broom, I see."

"Abigail," Eloise inclined her head. "It's nice to see you again."

"Nice?!

Theresa placed a hand on Abigail's shoulder, rage burning a metaphysical hole through the reality of their current situation. There was only one person her sister desired to manually vivisect more than Daniel, and neither of them ever expected that scenario coming to pass. Apparently, Abigail had just won Satan's lottery.

"Just let me handle this," Theresa whispered; Abigail continued to scowl, but refrained from speaking her mind further.

"Why are you here?" Theresa turned to Eloise.

The old woman took a step closer, the light illuminating her aging face. She appeared much older than the last time they'd seen each other. But then, it had been over a decade ago since they'd last spoken.

"I think it's time we talk."

"Talk?! I've been trying to contact you for the past year; my sister tells me you ignored her calls and messages for over five! Honestly, I'm not quite sure whether to let Abby have a go at you, or if I should just throw you out myself!"

"Oh please, Trish," Abigail gritted. "Just give me five minutes with her."

"Yes, an unfortunate lapse in judgment on my part; I assure you, it won't happen again."

Abigail snorted loudly; Theresa remained apathetic.

"No, it won't," she said. "It was nice of you to stop by, Eloise; but whatever you've got to say, I'm not interested anymore."

"My dear, I think you would want to hear what I've got to say."

"Not interested," she turned around, guiding a fuming Abigail back to the living room.

"Don't you want to know what happened to Daniel?"

She stopped, her back straight as an arrow, nerves wound tightly around an invisible coil of her own making.

"No, no, no," Abigail shook her head. "Don't even think about it, Trish!"

But she was already thinking about it. In reality, she had nothing to go on; she'd already dug up everything there was on the Kahana, even secretly visited its last known location, followed coordinates that had left her staring into the deep blue of a vast ocean that held onto whispered secrets as though bound by an unbreakable vow. It had ignored her, stared back at her and challenged her sanity. Eloise was the only person left alive who could possible shed some light on the unsolvable mystery of Daniel's disappearance.

"Abby, could you please make us some tea?"

"What?!"

Theresa looked back at Eloise, who had taken the liberty of unbuttoning her coat; the umbrella placed against the door, dripping water onto the fading words of the "welcome home" doormat.

"Are you off your rocker?"

Theresa stepped closer to her sister, voice dropping to a whisper.

"I need to know."

"No, I won't stand for this," Abigail countered, putting her hands in her sides. "It stops here, Trish."

"Why are you so hell bend on keeping me from finding out the truth?"

"The truth?! This is not about any truth, and you know it."

"Last time I checked, it wasn't you in that coma, Abby; it happened to me!"

Abigail snorted.

"'D'you really believe that?"

Theresa shrugged; her shoulders slumped. Why couldn't her sister understand? She was a scientist, a believer of facts and a seeker of truth, always on the side of the undiscovered. An inherent curiosity creature lived inside her brain, housed in her skull, fed on her neurons, and for months now it had been aided by a second creature that was slowly drilling holes into her heart, scarring the outer reaches of her soul. It was dark there, cold.

Truth? It had never just been about the how; it had always been about the why.

"I have so many questions, and nobody has been able to give me any answers! Why can't you understand that?"

Abigail scoffed.

"Why can't you understand that I'm right here? Right now. Why do you insist on chasing ghosts; aren't the living enough?"

Theresa stared, her stomach in knots. It wasn't fair; it wasn't true.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Abby."

Abigail let out a low frustrated growl, clenching her fists together in futile surrender.

"Yeah, me too," she said, then thundered down the hallway, shoving hard past Eloise as she reached for her coat.

"Good luck with this hag," she threw over her shoulder, leaving the which unsettled.

The loud bang of the door shutting closed momentarily shocked through the corridor, shaking the furniture before it resettled.

Theresa sighed.

"Tea?"

"Please."

With a heavy heart she made for the kitchen, uncaring of Eloise following. These fights had been getting more and more intense of late. Last week she'd even scanned open ads online for available flats in the surrounding area. It would break Abigail's heart if she moved out, but she simply couldn't take it anymore.

"This had better be worth my time, Eloise."

The old woman had followed her into the kitchen, and sat down at the table; Theresa reached for the kettle.

"Daniel's dead," Eloise said.

If there was a way to get straight to the point, then surely Eloise Hawking had just nailed it. Theresa whirled around; the kettle fell in the sink, water clattering off of it.

"He died on an island in the South Pacific Ocean in late 1977."

"1977?"

"I buried him myself."

"What?!"

"I shot my son in 1977," Eloise said it with such cold conviction it made it hard for Theresa to sympathize. Not a tear or tremor burst through her poised expression, stoic figure; it was like looking at a robot talking about murders yet committed.

Theresa closed the tap, leaned her palms on the counter; her back curving under the weight of a thousand questions. She asked only one:

"You're sure about this?"

"Positive."

She turned around; the making of tea; the cooking of water, all but forgotten.

"He did it then."

"If you're referring to his experiments, breaking through the barriers of space time," Eloise rolled her eyes, air quoting the words. "Then, yes, and no, I suppose."

Theresa slowly lowered herself into the chair on the opposite side of the table, her focus never having been sharper.

"What do you mean?"

"He traveled through time, but he wasn't the one who made it happen."

Over the next hour Eloise spoke of events that started with a plane crash on a beach in 2004, and ended with a riffle deep in the woods in 1977. All through her monologue Theresa refrained from asking questions. Instead, she sat with her hands crossed in her lap, her heart slamming against her chest as the old woman revealed all that Theresa ever wanted and needed to know. Daniel had lived and died, becoming part of an immense paradox that defied all reality known to mankind.

It occurred to her that any other person would have referred Eloise to the closest mental institution in the Aylesburg, but not her. For she knew that it was possible. They'd researched the brain's ability to travel; why not the whole body?

"Why do I get the sense that you're not just here to tell me that Daniel's gone?" Theresa said after Eloise had finished.

"Because he's not."

Theresa frowned.

"You just told me your past self killed your future son; how he is not gone?"

Eloise smiled and reached for her purse, pulling from it a leather-bound journal, Daniel's journal.

"I want you to take a look at this, and ring me once you've made up your mind."

She placed a card on the table, a foreign number written on it in black ink.

She stood.

"It's my personal number; I will not ignore you this time."

She placed a hand on top of Theresa's.

"What do you want me to make up my mind about?" Theresa asked.

"Thank you for the tea," she said by way of reply, then she walked out of the kitchen, down the hall, and blew out of the house on a Western wind.

The kettle, wet from water, untouched on its side in the sink.

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

A/N: I know this chapter was way different! But it's all part of the story, it will make sense later on! I put some nice Easter eggs in this one, though. I'm curious to see if you guys can find and unwrap them! Let me know! I'm super curious!

Again, thank you all so much for the comments and warm messages on the previous chapter. It blows my mind that even one person would read this story, let alone several! Words really can't express how much I appreciate it.

And because I'm so grateful, I'll reveal to you that the next chapter will be set in Dharma Town again, and will include some much needed Suliet!

Thanks again! And hopefully I'll see you in the next chapter ;)

FYI: all of the characters who appeared in this chapter were on the show at some point or another. None of them were fabricated by me, but I did take some liberties with them, and expanded upon their respective story lines.

#Juliet Burke #James Ford #Sawyer #LaFleur #Future's Past #Fanfiction #Miles Straume #Daniel Faraday #Jin-Soo Kwon #Theresa Spencer #Eloise Hawking #Richard Alpert #Harper Stanhope #Abigail Spencer #Time Travel #Lost #Suliet

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qm-vox · 6 years

Text

So You Want To Play A Beast

(Meme version of Queen Ramona Rabbit provided by cantankerousAquarius, character by me. Catch her in New Avalon.)

Here I am, back on my bullshit again. As I mentioned in So You Want To Run A Spring Court, a series of Seeming articles are starting up next. Unlike Courts, Seemings are not political or religious bodies, and are only loosely social identities; rather, one’s Seeming is part of who and what one is. Lost develop a Seeming because of the abuse they have survived, the labors they were forced to undergo, and what they did to survive both. It can be a complicated and hurtful subject for Changelings, but also a source of pride; the things you learned to become a Beast, a Darkling, an Ogre, are also the things that ultimately helped you to escape.

At this point you may be wondering why I started with the Courts when Seemings are more fundamental to an individual character, as well as less optional (you can have no Court, but it’s hard to have no Seeming). I’m gonna be real with you, it’s because there’s six of these damn things and each of them is about to be as complex, if not more, as the Court articles.

The following article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost core and Winter Masques, with additional information drawn from Swords at Dawn (that last book has come up a lot because it deals with the Lost in change and conflict). Other books, where used, will be cited. And so, without further ado:

A Miserable Menagerie - Beast Overview

Beast is the first Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and is well-represented in the published material and the fanbase alike, being one of the most popular and therefore most common. Stripped of their human reasons, Beasts had to remember how to think like human beings again before they could escape and seize their Homecoming. It’s never exactly a complete reversion. Aside from this common loss of reason, and a certain surprising sociability (more on both of these later), few experiences unite Beast to Beast, a reality that can make their fellow Lost mistakenly think that their Beast peers lack common strengths and common bonds. It’s true that many Beasts have strong similarities to Lost of other Seemings that share similar functions (a Truefriend kept as a loyal and loving hound has a lot in common with a Playmate forced to serve as an ornamental factotum and the Chateline condemned to maintain her Keeper’s house), but it’s also true that any Beast has more in common with their fellow Beasts than with the troubles of their non-Beast peers.

Release the Hounds - Homecoming as a Beast

Compared to Beasts, only the wretched Wizened have a higher disparity between those who are taken by the Fae and those who manage to return. Anyone at all might become a Beast; the process of transformation is a sort of corruption, one a mortal prisoner might catch from being forced to live among animals, from being treated as subhuman, by deliberate malice, alchemical transformation, or even deliberate pact - but not anyone who becomes a Beast can manage to achieve their Homecoming. The first and most difficult step is to find their reason again, some powerful trigger or memory that reminds the Beast that they were once human and that the Fairest of Lands (Arcadia) is not their home. Though not all Beasts degrade in intelligence in the same way or to the same degree (one might be seemingly wholly feral, condemned to live as a rabbit or a rat, while another has memories of being a hunter-gatherer among a pack of others, with axe and bow to hand and no thought but the kill and feast), no Beast can escape without remembering what it was like to be mortal. It’s more than just a matter of cunning or intelligence; indeed, the actual physical act of escape is often shockingly simple. It’s that without human intellect, human memory, the Beast cannot yearn to return home, and thus cannot escape the Fairest of Lands.

The second obstacle is having something to come back to, and believing that you deserve to have your Homecoming. This is easier, in some ways, than regaining your mind, but infinitely more insidious. All Lost need mortal memories to make their way home, of course, but for Beasts they need something to focus on that keeps their reason anchored while they’re still trapped in the lands of unreason. It can be all-too-easy to slide back into the animal’s mind, especially if your moment of clarity and your opportunity to escape don’t coincide. The hound knows how to survive the mad lands when the man might not.

Memories of loved ones to come back to help, but for many Beasts the light that guides them home are distinctly human places, places where they felt that they belonged and which in some way belonged to them. The library where a Beast spent her childhood, full of her fond memories and imagination, can help her cling to her human half long enough to get home, as might the memory of the funeral home where her father’s wake was held, or even the stadium where she was cheered on by adoring fans. These human places hold significance that can be understood on some level by the animal (safety and contentment, loss and sorrow, joy and thrill), but require human reason, human perspective, to be wholly understood. That reason, and the shining light of the mortal world, draws the Beast back home.

Beasts are among those Seemings least likely to escape with someone else’s help. It’s not that they’re asocial or incapable of cooperation, but rather that need to find human reason. Most of the time if someone is making their own Homecoming and stops to rescue their Keeper’s favorite catgirl, that catgirl’s mind isn’t her own. Maybe on the way home something shocks her memory back into place, but all too often that doesn’t happen and you end up with a hob or a catatonic victim rather than a free Lost. On the other hand, Beasts freed by their Keeper can make almost ideal Loyalists; their ability to produce great Composure on demand, and the general prejudice of other Lost against them, mean that a Beast still enslaved to her Keeper can often go years without being detected, if she ever is. For an example of such a Beast, check out Maya Sharptongue in Night Horrors: Grim Fears.

All Creatures Great And Small - Beast Kiths

The magical bonds that unite Beasts as a Seeming are subtle and often overlooked. All Beasts can spend Glamour to flare their Presence and Composure, a capability that makes them second only to the Fairest for sheer sociability even if the Beast in question shares the essence of a decidedly non-social animal. Additionally, all Beasts have an affinity for all animals (that 8-again with Animal Ken though) which, while seemingly limited in modern application, has a lot of impact on their day-to-day life. A Beast will rarely have, say, rats in her home unless she prefers those rats be present; her pets will be well-trained and well-behaved (and likely well-loved) and her ability to just walk up to and befriend any given animal is not to be underestimated.

Psychologically, Beasts regardless of Kith tend to be territorial, a fact many Lost don’t think about a lot despite it being somewhat odd on its face. After all, not all animals are particularly territorial, and yet a swan-like Windwing, a lupine Hunterheart, and a Swimmerskin mermaid all display a similar concern over their spaces, their places. This is the Beast’s human nature at work; just as the places of human connection draw them home from Arcadia, so too do they stake claims over such places in their new lives, creating spaces where they can feel safe and in control, and able to indulge in both their animal instincts and their human desires and sorrows. For those Beasts with an especial affinity for their physical environment, Contracts of the Den and Contracts of the Wild (the latter being shared with the Elemental Seeming) can go a long way to creating and safeguarding their personal places of power.

And then there’s the back end. Beasts genuinely struggle with their Intelligence; compared to a human whose Intelligence attribute is equal, a Beast will always achieve worse results, and can’t benefit from the flashes of inspiration and intuition that sometimes characterize human thought. They struggle more with unfamiliar intellectual processes, though putting in the time to learn can solve that problem. The end result is that Beasts, regardless of Kith, tend to be some of the smartest dumbasses their friends know, who provide better results when they have to think at speed or under pressure than they do outside of the moment. Still, this perception of stupidity haunts Beasts, and in all too many Freeholds they can find themselves gently shunted away from power or complex duties or responsibilities that others believe they’re incapable of handling.

When it comes to Kiths, Beasts present an odd combination of being greatly defined by their Kith (in much the same way that Elementals or Wizened are) and their Kiths having very little relation to the folkloric archetypes that inspire Beasts. The overwhelming majority of the options for your Beast character concern themselves solely with the physical properties of one or more animals, which is great for the fantasy of playing an animal-person and completely fucking useless for the fantasy of a fae animal-person. More than most other Seemings, a Beast character meant to invoke a figure from folklore might want to consider the Dual Kith merit, with an eye towards Fairest and Ogre Kiths to snag most of what you might want.

Some expanded thoughts on the individual Beast Kiths follow.

Hunterheart - Arguably the quintessential Beast, Hunterhearts are infused with a predatory nature expressed through deadly fangs and claws. They tend to be reshaped in the vein of mighty wolf-men, cunning cat-people, or as archetypes of Beasthood or the hunt - mighty Hunters with racks of stag’s antlers, or even near-Ogrish beings like the Beast of French legend, whose price for a stolen rose was a bride to soothe his burning heart. Almost any predator might lend its nature to a Hunterheart though; a tarantula, for instance, is more appropriate here than as a Venombite, and Summer’s smallest and most surprising berserker may well be a Hunterheart with the soul of a shrew and an unshakeable lust for blood. Hunterhearts tend to be very physical people, who have a lot in common with Darklings - including an inability to escalate violent confrontation in an appropriate manner. Among the more thematic of the Beast Kiths, Hunterhearts might benefit from a Dual Kith into Flowering or Whisperwisp if you’re looking to embody a predatory trickster figure.

Windwing - Perhaps the poster child for Kiths that deal solely with the physical attributes of an animal, Windwing is a prime candidate for the other half of a Dual Kith concept if you’re after a more folkloric concept rather than looking to explore a more straight mixture of human and animal. A graceful Swan Maiden might look towards Dancer or perhaps Artist, while a Mothman type might lean towards Shadowsoul (a wise owl, on the other hand, might be an Antiquarian on the back end). Most carrion birds will also be Roteaters, but especially corvids of all stripes. Regardless of their nature, a Windwing is an incredible asset for a Freehold, and can expect to be courted aggressively for their abilities as a messenger, guard, spy, and scout.

Skitterskulk - I have no god damn idea what the writers were thinking on this one. Skitterskulk is, in theory, supposed to represent hard-to-exterminate vermin such as mice, flies, cockroaches, or mosquitoes; things that move fast and bother people with their filth, thievery, and pestilence. Unfortunately not only does their blessing of Impossible Counterpoise have almost nothing to do with this (and almost nothing to do with the perception of Skitterskulks as spies presented in Winter Masques), it is shamefully fucking useless. If you find yourself looking at Skitterskulk for the animal natures it’s associated with, consider some combination of Roteater, Windwing, Truefriend, Venombite, and/or Runnerswift instead. Don’t use this Kith.

Roteater - Speaking of, meet what is probably my favorite Beast Kith. Roteaters embody those animals that scrape, scavenge, and feed on carrion or refuse. Crows and vultures are obvious candidates (and probably Dual Kith’d with Windwing), but Roteater is also great for Beasts in the vein of Rat Kings (fleeing from the gnawed halls of a Sugarplum Fairy), raccoons (whether sly thieves or powerful tricksters) and even for social insects such as ants when used in combination with Truefriend. Roteater strikes a very good balance of the physical properties of its animals and their folkloric qualities, with the power of the Beast Seeming itself filling in the back end. Given that Lost tend to struggle both with money and with legal access to certain goods, the propensity of a Roteater to scavenge, salvage, and scrape can be a godsend to their Freehold and especially their Motley, if they can put in at least a minimal effort to clean themselves up.

Truefriend - Truefriends have a lot in common with Fairest; as “beloved” pets, they had a lot of their Keepers’ personal attention, and their memories of Arcadia may be cut through with the bloody consequences of the kindness and discipline of the True Fae. Regardless of what kind of animal they are (and they can be most of them; Truefriend is rife for thematic Dual Kith opportunities inside of the Beast Seeming), they tend to be, well, friend-shaped; Truefriends are often well-groomed, sleek, colorful (or with an interesting color pattern in their fur or scales) and might even be cute or drawn from a twisted branch of pop culture as embodiments of more ‘modern’ takes on Beasthood such as catgirls or animal mascots. Like Fairest, Truefriends may take to manipulating others in order to feel in control of their own life, and given the lack of suspicion that attends to Beasts they may get away with it for a whole lot longer.

Broadbacks - In a Seeming marked by a tendency to be kinda dumb motherfuckers, Broadbacks are the guys that make dumb ideas work by outlasting their consequences. Their bonus to Stamina rolls is most famous for satyr-like partying, but it also means that they can guard a door for hours on end without so much as a bathroom break, run marathons long after even the Runnerswifts have keeled over to beg for the sweet release of death, and brave hazards or traps in the Hedge that might force back other Lost. Aside from the (again rather famously represented) satyrs and fauns, Broadbacks might also take after minotaurs, be infused with the essence of camels or llamas, or even Dual Kith into Swimmerskin (as mighty whales) or Windwing (with Contracts of Hearth or of Omen, embodying the albatross).

Swimmerskin - The lines between Beasts and Elementals blur with Swimmerskins, especially those who take after mermaids, selkies, and nixies; Elements (Water) is a popular enough buy that it can be hard to tell the difference. Mechanically, Swimmerskin is a case of a Kith that sorta has to be about the physical properties of its animal nature; it’d be a strange sort of mermaid who couldn’t swim. Consider investing in magical Merits such as Siren’s Voice, specific Contracts (Elements was already mentioned, but Omen for a powerful sea-witch or Wild for a storm-brewing sea dragon can be equally striking), or investing in the Dual Kith merit to bring out further specific animalistic or folkloric traits, such as Hunterheart for a sharp-toothed shark, Tunnelgrub for octopi and other escape artists, or Farwalker for an ambush predator or a Thing From The Deep, emerging to prey on the ignorant and innocent.

Steepscrambler - The opposite of Swimmerskin in some ways; Steepscramblers are all about the physical act of climbing, but they really did not have to be and as a result they’re a big whiff on the folkloric elements of the animals they embody, including and especially the specific ones spoken of Winter Masques. Still, in a lot of ways Steepscramblers have the same practical uses as Windwings, especially in highly urban environments, so for concepts that are looking to invoke those folkloric trickster elements, eat the Dual Kith into Whisperwisp, Drudge, Farwalker, or Flowering and live ya best life. If you’re more interested in direct physical animals but are looking into something like a spider, fly, or beetle, consider Dual Kithing inside the Beast seeming to pick up the other aspects of your animal.

Runnerswift - For when you absolutely, positively have to GO FAST, there exists the Runnerswift. Though most famously associated with prey animals such as rabbits and deer (which are also common fertility symbols, go fucking figure), consider Runnerswift for more predatory concepts as well; as hunting hounds, cheetahs, or man-eating horses straight out of Greek legend, Runnerswifts can make terrifying pursuers and hunters. Though it can be tempting to Dual Kith in the latter case, it pays to keep in mind that the human side of your Beast definitely remembers how guns and baseball bats work, and those are probably going to be a better option than fang and claw if you’re already in a situation where you feel comfortable running down your frightened prey. Like quite a few Beasts, Runnerswifts skew towards being tricksters in much the same way as Hunterhearts, though in this case the prey animal often comes out on top rather than being made out as the villain.

Venombite - A cool concept with a bad case of being a late bloomer; Venombite’s Blessing is nearly useless until you start punching up into high Wyrd, at which point you are a POWERFUL MAGICIAN who can also fang people to death if they get too close or you can catch them unawares. Still, Venombite can be quite attractive for many concepts, especially spiders, deadly nagas, and treacherous scorpions. Their tendency to be associated with small and easily overlooked animals make Venombites surprising brokers of information and dealers of death; it might be awhile before your own poison can kill the human, but the brown recluses that obey your commands can kill one now.

Cleareyes - What if you had Contracts of Fang and Talon 2 but all the time? Cleareyes is an odd Kith; mechanically they’re solid, but also redundant with one of the game’s more attractive Clauses in one of its most attractive Contracts. There’s a few ways to split this difference, though I tend to suggest either making that Clause and/or their Blessing free if they have both (similar to how Gravewights get a discount on Contracts of Shade and Spirit) or permitting Fang and Talon 2 to give them a different sense the animal is known for (a cat-eyed Cleareyes able to see in the dark might invoke her Clause to also gain cat-like balance or perhaps a cat’s sensitive hearing). Thematically, Cleareyes is great for a lot of concepts and can hold down a lot of the same niches as Roteater and Runnerswift in a different way. It Dual Kiths well with almost any other Beast Kith if you want to double down on animalistic aspects, but as a task-driven Kith it also goes surprisingly well with those outside of Beast; Draconic (feral drake guardsmen, or perhaps a ‘failed’ Fairest), Antiquarian (wise owls in a different vein from Windwing), Oracle (a churchyard grim, or a cat kept as the familiar of a terrible witch), and Farwalker (straight-up werewolves or, with Contracts of Mirror and a nasty disposition, vicious rakshasas) are just some of the potential combinations on the table.

Coldscales - Not the flashiest, but they get the job done; Coldscales (typically but not necessarily reptilian in nature) benefit from a further bonus to Composure that makes them unusually hard to manipulate, a boon not to be underestimated given just how much fae magic attacks people emotionally. Though this Kith is intended to represent cold-blooded reptiles, consider it as well for animals famous for their sloth and endurance; a sleepy Bear Prince who can’t be bothered might display the calm endurance of a Coldscales, as might a terrible wyrm that must be roused to wrath (perhaps Dual Kith’d with Fireheart or Draconic), or even a big cat, deadly only if hungry or disturbed and otherwise content to feed on the carrion left behind by those who flee before him.

Riddleseeker - The Kith, the myth, the legend; Riddleseeker is the closest you get to a Mental-focused Beast (for, ah, obvious reasons) and is introduced in Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Its sample character, the loyalist Maya Sharptongue, has a sphinx-like aspect to her but Riddleseeker is also a great choice for ravens and crows (perhaps clutching fragments of lore stolen from their Keepers that their human minds could understand when their beast ones could not), legends of oracular serpents, and tricksters like the fox who made Mighty Miko a king. Riddleseeker holds down thematics on its own, but if you’re looking for the physical aspects it doesn’t do on its own it Dual Kiths inside of Beast pretty easily.

The Animal Kingdoms - Beasts in the Courts

As alluded to earlier, Beasts are often the backbone of the Freehold. Wizened do the thankless jobs that everyone relies on, but often it’s Beasts that fill in the miscellaneous roles. Messages and packages need carried? You’re probably calling a Beast. Loyalist needs his shit kicked in? Beasts are ready. Need to connect with a lonely mortal and see if their dreams are poisoned? Whistle up a Beast. Obviously not every single job a Freehold wants or needs will be filled by a Beast even if in theory it could be, but given how diverse the Seeming is and their combination of on-demand sociability and poise, they’re attractive for many duties. After all, even the most standoffish Venombite or Coldscales can put on a charm face with the best of them if you can keep a steady supply of Glamour on the table.

Given their difficulties with abstract reasoning, Beasts tend to relate to the ideals of their Court on a practical level, which can make them either sorta-kinda bad at being Courtiers on a formal level or paragons of their Court’s ideals, without a whole lot of in-between. Both perspectives are valuable; there’s not a whole lot of point in constantly debating the ideals of, say, Fear, if no one is going to go out and spread fear. For those Beasts who place great faith in the ideals of their Court, their commitment can serve as an inspiration and example to others, and a living reminder that sometimes living up to high ideals means making choices that aren’t easy for you personally or politically.

Beasts are surprisingly common in leadership positions, especially in Summer (where their physical focus and access to talented officers can carry them far) and Spring (where their instant sociability and diverse spread of talents can help them catch the eye of the Court). Unlike Fairest (who have a steadier and stronger social focus), Beasts aren’t prone to losing their entire goddamn minds in singular, shattering moments, which can make them more stable officers, nobles, and Crowns than their more glorious peers. They can also make surprising spymasters and even money-makers. Depending on the Court, though, a Beast in a leadership position may require an assistant to help with the paperwork (or the math), or else be prepared to work a lot of overtime patiently making and decoding ciphers on her own.

Like Elementals, Beasts can be somewhat more sensitive to the physical temperament of the Seasons than other Lost, to the point where it may be surprising to find, say, a snake-like Beast bundled up in layers beneath her Winter Mantle (gently muttering ‘fuck snow’ under her breath every so often). Those who choose to endure such discomfort are often some of their Court’s most avid members, and known as such.

Spring - Insofar as any Lost are natural joiners of Spring (typically a Lost’s second or even third Court), Beasts make for natural Spring Courtiers. They’re sociable, hard to visibly ruffle even if they’re screaming internally, often physically striking, and talented at living in the moment. Unfortunately that same talent can feed into a Beast’s difficulties balancing their human and animal aspects and leave them stuck in the middle between healthy and toxic even worse than Spring generally gets stuck. Despite this, Beasts can go quite far in Spring and often end up as movers and shakers who influence opinions.

Summer - Most people think of predators as Summer’s Beasts, but herd animals are much more common. Sure, every now and again you get a canine Beast who goes far, or a would-be King of Cats that remembers the twisting alleys of his Durance and the silver nets of Arcadia’s animal control enforcement, but Summer’s brotherhood and focus on physical defense is much more appealing to Beasts whose natures are shaped by animals such as deer, oxen, and dolphins. Those Beasts whose Durance was defined by fear and flight also sometimes flock to Summer, seeking the strength the Iron Spear offers to ensure that they will never again be Arcadia’s prey.

Autumn - Where most of the predators actually end up; human nature turns an animal’s innocent hunger and instinct into cruelty and schadenfreude in places, giving rise to Beasts that take after vicious werewolves or treacherous serpents. Though they can have a hard time fitting into the scholarly aspects of Autumn, Beasts go quite far in the Leaden Mirror through practical applications of sorcery and being quick on the draw. They may not necessarily understand the nature of their power, but Beasts definitely know how to hammer it home.

Winter - The Coldest Court is as pragmatic about its Beasts as it is about everything else; Winter tends to recruit Beasts by openly asking them to serve in jobs the Court believes they’re suited for, and paying them for that work. Summer might be content to make, say, a Runnerswift into a mighty Knight, but Winter is going to ask them to run (and, at times, to hide). The ability Beasts have to crank their Composure on demand can make the talented and discreet candidates for Winter’s higher-level social positions, and as the keepers of important information or Tokens.

Until Proven Guilty - Beasts and Changeling’s Themes

Beast is in an awkward spot compared to the other Seemings. In a game that is very explicitly about abuse, trauma, and recovery, Beast lacks a clear connection to those themes. Core introduces the idea that Beasts are united by a sort of innocence, a refutation of corruption that protects them from Arcadia on some level, but literally none of the rest of the game did anything with that theme. Their other primary theme - the mix of literal or folkloric animal instincts with human ones - is engaging and interesting, but disconnected from that central aspect of the game in a way the other Seemings aren’t.

You don’t necessarily have to address this. If you aren’t looking to deep dive into the nature of your Seeming, or your Chronicle doesn’t have a strong emphasis on those themes of abuse you can probably just let it ride. If you are looking to focus on those themes, one idea that’s gotten me personally a lot of mileage is to look at how your Beast relates to Seemings that had similar functions and asking yourself why are are not that Seeming, exploring your Beast’s trauma through comparison and contrasts.

From life experience though, there might be something to that dropped ‘innocence’ theme. That idea of an innocent, damaged and transformed by circumstances beyond their control, trying to build a new life in a world they weren’t prepared to live in has some strong similarities to children raised in cults or by survivalists and conspiracy theorists. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve connected with someone only to watch their entire worldview fall apart as they realized the world they’d been raised to live in doesn’t exist, and that everything they know how to do only works in the context of that fictional world. Fairest can also be strong candidates for depicting this kind of abuse, but I’d still encourage you to consider Beast if you’re interested in engaging on this concept directly.

We Don’t Bite People, And Other Lies We Tell Children - Coping With Beasthood

To be a Beast is to be caught between worlds twice over (three times, for Swimmerskins and Windwings, which, y’know. Sucks to be you guys); like all Lost they are influenced by both fae and mortal nature, but Beasts are also caught between instinct and reason. The animal within is entirely comfortable in the now in a way humans just aren’t, but their human half treasures things the animal can never understand. In the heat of the moment, though, when it comes down to instinct or reason, instinct often wins - sometimes to the Beast’s benefit, and sometimes to their great sorrow.

This balancing act defines the Beast’s life, and generally starts at home. Beasts usually live alone if they can, even if they’re otherwise sociable, so that they have a space in which they can entirely be themselves and decide who is welcome, when. Rarely does this influence stop in the physical bounds of a Beast’s house, apartment, or sewer drain though; any place the Beast thinks of as their turf (the broader neighborhood or apartment building, their office in the Freehold’s Commons, even their job if they have enough pull to get away with it) is going to be shaped to let them express some part of both sides of themselves. How that comes out varies from Beast to Beast. An affable satyr might become the neighborhood darling, doing favors and bringing food to their neighbors in unspoken payment for letting odd behavior slide, while a spidery Venombite might be more likely to trade on passive intimidation or even adopt a performative identity (it’s strange if a pastor’s wife is creepy, but no one thinks twice about a goth gal that’s spooky). Having those safe and/or welcoming spaces available is vital for a Beast’s ongoing mental health, and without them a nervous breakdown is only a matter of time.

Outside of the matter of their home and places of power, Beasts have a tendency for straightforwardness that has little to do with their particular animal (though it might) and everything to do with the fact that as a Seeming, Presence is their strongest source of social prowess. Dealing openly, for good or ill, plays to their strengths and has the added advantage of keeping their social life relatively straightforward, even if it’ll never quite be simple.

Stability, ultimately, has to be the goal of a Beast looking to build a new life after their Durance. They need to find a way to live their life that acknowledges and nurtures all parts of their divided nature; even those Beasts dumb enough to favor one side over the other can’t do it for long without losing their entire god damn minds. Few Freeholds are without stories of would-be Cat Kings (Autumn Nightmares) or Riddleseekers who turned into crows one day and just never turned back. Having escaped Arcadia only by finding their minds again, Beasts tend to be among those Lost most cognizant of what their issues are, and most willing to face those issues on direct terms. They did it once already, after all; the hard part is showing up to do it again every day.

Sample Beast - The Toy Taker, Autumn Riddleseeker/Windwing

Margaret Bellman is called Maggie by her Freehold and the Toy Taker by an increasingly mystified local media. Her memories of Arcadia are more like a gap than the usual splintered and fractured recollections of the Lost; one minute she was a teenage girl staring in fascination at the twisting figure in a mirror, and the next she was a grown-ass woman with crow’s feathers for hair and tiny, somehow functional wings, staggering through that same mirror and bleeding all over the place.

It didn’t take long for Maggie to swear herself to Autumn, though she’s an odd bird for the Leaden Mirror. Though she adores and practices magic, Maggie’s primary profession and hobby is theft. She steals things the Freehold needs stolen and sometimes robs homes for money, crimes the media has yet to connect to her other persona.

For Maggie also steals toys.

It’s never often. When her life is at a low point and spiraling out of control, Maggie slips into a child’s bedroom and takes one of their toys. She rips the shiny bits from it to add to her collection at home (displayed this way and that in her room, in shadowboxes, on strings, glued to the walls, dangling from coat hangers), crucifies the remainder, and leaves it on the kid’s door. Though the Winter Court disapproves of her methods, her hobby sows Fear and Sorrow in equal measure and her dedication to it has earned her some small formal appreciation from the Coldest Court.

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Wizened

#Changeling: the Lost #Seemings #RPG #Beast Seeming #abuse #trauma

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brownskinsugarplum76 · 7 years

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Friends at the Bar, Part 1

This story is going to have 2 or 3 parts. This part is PG-13-ish, but we’ll get to the full-fledged smut before it’s over. 😁 Thanks @callmethehunter for the sanity check on this one. 👍🏽❤️

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“Are you kidding me???” Karen demanded, walking back to the table from the bathroom, watching her boyfriend, Marc, in a very passionate kiss with a very interested redhead. “What the fuck?” she shouted, tossing her clutch on the table and clenching her hands at her sides.

Marc stopped and turned his gaze toward his irate girlfriend. The redhead smiled, stood from her position on Marc’s lap, and leaned over slowly for one last kiss. Then she turned and walked to the bar without a look in Karen’s direction or a word to her or Marc, although she was speaking volumes with her sway in her leather mini skirt, shrunken, distressed band T-shirt and spike-heeled boots.

Marc heard every unspoken word and, with his gaze on her retreating figure, stood up. “I’m done here, with us,” he muttered, barely looking at Karen before he lifted his guitar case from against the wall and headed to the redhead at the bar with his quick, long-legged gait.

Karen stood, trembling and glaring at his retreating figure, her mouth agape. She was glad that she hadn’t had any of her drink before she went to the bathroom, and she quickly gulped her Jack and Coke to steady herself.

She slammed the empty glass on the table and fought the urge to throw it at a wall, or Marc, or the redhead. Marc had seemed distant before she went in the bathroom, and pretty much all day that day, but she had no idea this was coming. Wow. Very unexpected. I’m so glad I kept my own place…

While she was taking a moment to calm down and work up the courage to approach the bar for another drink, one was placed on her table by a tall stranger who was actually quite familiar.

His presence made the previous ugly moment with Marc a little less ugly. “Thanks.” She quickly drained the glass, another Jack and Coke, while the man watched her with concern.

“Do you come here often?” she asked, truly bemused by his company.

“Only when there’s a damsel in distress, or disgust,” he quipped, looking over in Marc’s direction and seeing him attached to the redhead by the lips again. “I’m Robert,” the stranger offered with a wink, scanning her curvaceous body.

“I see that,” she said, with an uncontrollable grin in bloom on her face. “I’m Karen.”

She swept her bangs out of her eyes and took in the sight of his leather jacket and tight black Swan Song Records T-shirt, and then she considered his chiseled face and wild head of curls, which she had seen in the magazines and her fantasies. Tonight his jeans hugged his sculpted legs, but not in the manner of the second-skin variety that he preferred onstage. He was also less towering than on those nights, thanks to the Converse high tops on his feet.

This is the kind of distraction I need right now. But why is he inserting himself into my messy situation? With liquid courage inside of her, she motioned for him to sit down and he obliged, dragging a wooden chair across the sticky floor to sit beside her.

“What are you doing in this rat hole? And why on earth would you want to talk to me right now?” Karen asked, nodding her head toward the bar, feeling embarrassed by her earlier outburst.

“Jimmy and I decided to come down from Mount Olympus to hear what the kids are doing these days,” he said with a serious voice that gave way to a hearty laugh and the most disarming smile that Karen had ever seen.

Jimmy is here, too? I guess the surprises aren’t over yet.

“We saw The Damned recently and wanted to check out some other acts. I’m glad we’re here. You look like you could use a friend. With drinks.“

“I didn’t see that coming from Marc. I don’t understand, but whatever.” She was sullen but determined to set the feelings aside and enjoy her present company. And then I’ll give Marc a piece of my mind.

Robert placed a hand on top of one of hers. “Let me help you take your mind off of that, Karen. Come sit with Jimmy and me. I’ll keep the drinks coming, and one way or another, I’ll make your evening much better.”

There’s that dangerous smile again. With an invitation… She tried to ignore the warm current of excitement that was spreading through her body from Robert’s slightest touch while she was processing what had happened with Marc.

She continued to keep her cool as they stood and walked through the crowd in the dimly lit building to the table where Jimmy sat.

“Robert to the rescue, eh?” Jimmy imparted in greeting, while Robert headed off to the bar. Jimmy’s glossy, tousled dark hair and a pair of sunglasses obscured much of his expressionless face, but with the amount of time he wordlessly faced Karen, she could tell he was making an appraisal of her in her tight black and white striped minidress, leather choker and ankle boots, and the way her blood red lipstick popped against her pecan-colored skin.

“He was right to talk to you, though. We watched that guy… Your boyfriend?”

“Former boyfriend now,” she corrected him.

“We saw what he did and how you reacted. I’m sorry that happened to you, Miss…?”

“Karen. And thank you. This concern means a lot from the two of you. So, you guys are into punk now?” she asked, changing the subject and trying to suppress her surprise at how thin Jimmy looked in his all-black outfit of T-shirt and jeans.

“I’m enjoying the fashion show that you ladies are putting on,” he said, grinning broadly, “but I do also think the energy of the music is great. We’re thinking there’s something we could do with this sound.”

“We’ll give it a go somehow, don’t you worry,” said Robert, who returned victorious with a whiskey bottle and three shot glasses.

The music discussion would have to be tabled. “Right. I’ll be back, mate.” Jimmy stood, facing a blonde who was sitting alone. It was clear that he had been eyeing her for some time. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Karen. I’m sure our dear Robert will be good, therapeutic company for you tonight.” Jimmy winked and headed to the other table.

“More whiskey and wit for us to share, then! So, what lured you into this London rat hole, as you call it?” Robert asked as he sat down next to Karen.

“Marc is in a band that’s playing here tonight. I came to support him. But his band is awful! Shit, it feels good to be able to tell the truth about that now! Maybe he’s into that girl because she thinks he knows what he’s doing on a guitar.” She laughed uncontrollably at the thought.

“Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. I don’t have to tread lightly around his ego anymore. I could get used to that!”

“And with that, we have something to drink to,” said Robert, pouring shots for the two of them. “Chin chin,” he pronounced, clinking the tiny glass against Karen’s and setting her soul ablaze with an intense, lingering stare.

They drank in one gulp. He slowly licked the last bit of the whiskey from his lips. She felt flushed, and not only from the drinks she’d had.

“You’re not from around these parts, yeah? American?”

“I am. I came here for college and stuck around after that. But I’ve been wandering around without really getting anything exciting going for myself, and then I got caught up with Marc for the past several months…”

“Well, the world is yours at this moment, darlin’. Take your time in making your next move,” he said, placing a hand on top of hers again. “As for me, I’m here all night, and I’m intrigued to see how bad this bloke really is.”

“He should be going on any minute now. Brace yourself.” Karen poured another round for the two of them. Let’s make this as entertaining as possible.

They drained the glasses again. Karen noticed that Marc had disappeared from the bar area. The redhead was perched on a stool facing the stage with a professional camera in her hands. She is serious about being in his circle, isn’t she? Karen poured herself another drink.

Marc emerged and yelled “Good evening!” as he and his three band mates took their places on the tiny stage. He ran a nervous hand through his shaggy brown mop of hair, while his new companion cheered loudly and started taking pictures.

The crowd responded with screams of praise. The drummer counted in the first song, and the music and Marc’s singing began. Just as Karen predicted, the band was short on talent.

The crowd agreed, as their earlier cheers turned to boos and beer bottles and cans being launched at the stage.

For a split second, the band seemed to contemplate whether they would keep playing or leave. They chose to finish out the song and storm off the stage.

The redhead placed her camera in its bag and began to walk away, but not before noting the presence of Robert and Jimmy, lost in separate conversations. She made a beeline for the table where Robert and Karen sat, but thought better of any interaction when she saw Karen’s murderous glare. The redhead slung her camera bag over her shoulder and made her way to the exit.

She’s left without him. Talk about adding insult to injury for Marc! Karen beamed inside, taking a celebratory drink.

“Bloody hell, you were right,” said Robert with a smirk and a chuckle.

“That’s part of the reason why I didn’t move in with him. I refused to have to hear that noise any hour of the day or night. That, and I’ve grown used to my independence.” Or, maybe part of me knew all along that Marc wasn’t Mr. Right… “I guess I’ll be even more independent now…”

She looked at Robert and found notes of lust and mischief, nevertheless still tempered with concern, on his face and in the depths of his overcast cerulean eyes.

Yes, the perfect distraction. She kissed him urgently and received an enthusiastic response, complete with his large hands cupping her face and locking her into their oral embrace. This, and several ounces of whiskey, emboldened her to place a hand on one of his thick thighs and walk her fingers upward.

Robert purred with anticipation. “You seem to be a strong woman, love. I think you’ll move on just fine.”

“I think you’re right,” she murmured, closing in on the final destination for her fingers, his fertile bulge.

"I’d love to help you celebrate your new independence, my dear,” he said in a hushed tone, leaning in for another kiss.

Marc and his band came into view, walking quickly toward the exit. Marc caught sight of Karen and Robert and stopped at their table while his band mates left. “Made a new friend, have you?” he asked Karen, sitting his guitar down and taking in the vibe that was percolating in front of him.

“That’s no longer any concern of yours, remember?” Karen stood and tried to steady herself through her anger at Marc, her burgeoning need for Robert, and her intensifying intoxication.

“I just didn’t think I’d find you with this dinosaur, is all.” He folded his arms across his chest, displaying his biceps and the ragged edges of his improvised sleeveless t-shirt.

Robert stood and coolly assessed the growing conflict but didn’t say a word, letting the insult die in the air. He was confident that Karen was more than prepared to fend for herself.

Karen inhaled sharply. “I don’t need to explain anything to you anymore. You know, you did me a favor tonight. You made me realize that I’m tired of hearing your music, I’m tired of pretending you have a shot at success with your band, and I’m tired of putting my dreams on hold for yours. Honestly, I think I’m just as done with us as you are.”

“Whatever you want,” Marc scoffed, glaring at Robert, grabbing his guitar, and walking away.

Robert watched Marc’s retreating figure and made a mock cross-eyed angry face. Karen collapsed against Robert in a fit of laughter.

“Thank you for lifting my spirits, Mr. Plant. You are just what I needed tonight.” She stood a bit taller to kiss him but wobbled on her feet.

Robert prevented a fall by circling an arm around her waist. “Hmm, you’re a little worse for wear than I realized… I’m glad I could help, love, but I think it’s time for you to go home. Where do you live?”

“A few blocks away.”

“How do you feel about walking?”

“Let’s find out,” she said, grabbing her clutch and starting toward the door.

Robert followed but quickly grabbed her hand when she nearly crashed into some people en route to the exit. “I think you’ve earned yourself a one-way ticket to your apartment,” he said, hailing a cab when they were outside.

Karen gave her address as Robert sat down beside her in the cab.

“I think it’s really good to be single right now, and to have you at my place,” she said a little too loudly, climbing into Robert’s lap and grabbing his face for a forceful kiss that was more sloppy than she intended.

“I like where you’re going with this,” he said, breaking away, dropping his voice to a murmur and caressing her hair, “but you’re too in your cups at the moment, darlin’. Give me your number. I’ll take you to your door tonight. I’m in the city for a few days and will call and check on you tomorrow.”

She pouted, produced a stick of gum and a pen from her clutch, popped the gum in her mouth, and wrote her number inside the wrapper. “Here,” she said, thrusting the paper at his chest and collapsing there with her dizzy momentum. “You better call,” she slurred into his t-shirt.

“Oh, I will, my feisty new friend. Just rest up and be ready to celebrate your freedom.” He placed the paper in his pocket and held her, resuming his soothing caress.

#robert plant #led zeppelin #70s #1970s #1977 #fanfic #fan fiction #fanfic writing #robert plant fan fiction #robert plant fanfic #led zeppelin fanfics #led zeppelin fan fic #led zeppelin fan fiction #led zeppelin fanfic #my writing #brownskinsugarplumlibrary

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spartanguard · 7 years

Text

a charm of powerful trouble (4/5)

Summary: Killian should have known to keep his flask close when a mad scientist was on the loose. But at least werewolves don’t drink rum, right? (3.6k, rated PG)

A/N: Sorry it’s been so long! My muse has a terrible lack of focus, even though this has been thoroughly outlined for a month. But I finally have an update! And there’s one more to come. Thanks to @optomisticgirl for looking this over and to @cocohook38 and @snowbellewells for keeping me going :D

Part 1 (art) | Part 2 (art) | Part 3 (art) | Part 4 (art) | AO3

Dawn filtered hazy through the windows of the cabin and Killian lazily blinked open his eyes at the light, happy to be on his ship with the woman he loved in his arms. She shifted a bit and he glanced down at her as she too fluttered her eyelashes as she woke.

“Mm, good morning,” she murmured, pulling herself even closer to him and trailing a hand up his arm, grazing his collarbones and neck on her way to the tips of his ears. She played with them, teasing, “My, what big ears you have.”

“The better to hear you with, my dear,” he answered.

She smiled up at him. “And what big, blue eyes you have.”

“The better to see you with, Swan.”

Finally, she placed a gentle kiss on his lips and pulled back, leaving him grinning. “And what big teeth you have,” she finished, biting her lip and glancing up through her lashes.

He growled into her ear, nudging it with his nose. She smelled positively delectable and he could feel a familiar hunger growing within. “The better to eat you with, love.”

He reared back and sank his teeth into her shoulder. She screamed, but not in the good way. She tasted divine, but all too soon, she was out of reach and he was left licking his chops, craving more.

She stood on the opposite side of the cabin from him, hands outstretched defensively and a terrified look on her face. Wait, why was she scared of him?

“Emma, it’s me,” he tried to say, but all that came out were ferocious roars. He glanced down at his paws and fur-covered limbs. Oh, right.

“Help! There’s a wolf!” she shouted, and her palms began to glow.

“Please, Swan, listen to me!” he shouted, only to howl.

“What did you do with my husband?” She was angry and holding back tears, breaking his heart.

“I’m right here!”

“GO AWAY!” she yelled, and unleashed her powers at him. He writhed and twisted against the magical restraints, still shouting for her to listen to him, but it was all for nought until—

—Until he awoke thrashing in his own bed. As a human.

Emma was lying next to him with her hands gripping his shoulders. “Hey, hey—it’s okay; it was just a dream. You’re okay now.”

Immediately, his hand went to her face, cupping it—he had to feel that warmth against his skin, to see if she was real. She tilted her head into his touch and gave him a soft smile that eased the concerned furrow of her brow, and his panic ebbed a little.

He couldn’t help it: he surged forward to claim her lips with his, desperate for that connection. This whole ordeal had only started hours ago, but it felt like ages that he’d been separated from her. She responded just as hungrily, which was reassuring—until he remembered that she’d been through quite a bit last night, too.

He broke the kiss but tugged her close to him, practically burying his head in her shoulder; as terrible as he felt about everything, he needed that physical contact to ground him right now. “Emma, I’m so sorry; I’m so sorry for everything last night—”

She cut him off, firmly but gently telling him, “Hey, you have nothing to apologize for. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He pulled back to look at her, astonished by the resolve and forgiveness on her face. “Swan, I hurt you and Belle. How could I...how can you...?” How can you look at me? were the words he couldn't voice.

“No. You didn’t do anything; the wolf did. Actually, whoever did this to you is really who should be blamed.”

“But I wasn’t strong enough to fight back.” How could she think he was innocent in this?

“You did the best you could. No one is mad at you, babe. Please don’t beat yourself up about it; please.”

He scoffed a bit, both at how well she knew him and at the fact that it was too late. True, he was getting better at letting go of the past and not letting his sins weigh on him so heavily, but situations like this reminded him of just who he’d been: ruthless and mindless when it came to his revenge and anyone who got in his way. But if he wasn’t that man anymore, then he should have been able to fight against the beast; he should have protected those he loved instead of letting it run free.

A knock on the bedroom door interrupted his self-deprecating train of thought. “She’s right, you know.” Granny was peeking in the doorway and he could smell the grilled cheese and onion rings she had with her (much stronger than he usually could, actually). “Most wolves have even less control than you did on their first transformation. I certainly didn’t. Hell, Ruby ate her boyfriend.”

“Uh, Granny, that part probably doesn't help,” Emma interjected, muttering as she pulled the sheets tighter around them. Killian was less concerned with propriety, and felt his heart rate pick up a tick.

But Granny shrugged it off. “Point is, you did fine, and you’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.” She set the bag of food at the foot of the bed; Emma’s stomach growled in response—though, was it louder than normal, or did it just seem like it? “Now eat up; even if the wolf ate, transformation takes a lot out of you and you both must be starved.”

He wasn’t sure he had much of an appetite, once he recalled what his last meal was, but it wasn’t long after Granny left and Emma dug into hers that he suddenly found himself ravenous. For lack of a better word, he found himself wolfing down the french fries and reuben sandwich brought for him (he’d never had a reuben before, but he figured Granny’s lupine senses must have known he’d like it—which was mildly concerning, but he was too focused on his meal to really think about it). He was just finishing Emma’s onion rings when her phone rang from its spot on the nightstand.

“Oh, good—it’s Regina,” she said as she grabbed it and answered. “Hey, what did you find out?”

Though it was quiet, Killian heard the mayor’s response clear as day. “You might want to put this on speakerphone; if he’s awake, you’re both gonna want to hear this.” That didn’t sound good.

Emma did as was asked and scooted next to Killian; he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close instinctively. “What’s up?” Emma asked.

“Guyliner, you there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I have good news and bad news,” Regina started. “The good news is that I caught the culprit and he’s all ready to be processed. He doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of the cells at the station, but take your time. And be sure to add theft to the list of charges.”

“I was going to return them!” Whale protested in the background. Emma and Killian both sighed; of course it was him.

“How’d you figure out it was him?” Emma wondered.

“Remember my missing spellbooks?” Regina had put in a formal complaint earlier that week, but they’d been too busy to follow up on it. “They had similar transformation potions in them, but not quite to that extent. So I made an educated guess, baited this guy to my place on the promise of a couple hearts, and that was that.”

“You’re sure?” Killian had to ask. It was believable, but...this was also Storybrooke. It wasn’t uncommon for multiple villains to be running around at the same time.

“Oh, I’m sure. I put him under my own version of a polygraph test, and he spilled everything, even where the brains came from.”

Emma groaned, slightly exasperated. “Did you take his heart?”

“I gave it back,” was Regina’s nonchalant answer.

Emma huffed, but plowed on. “Okay, your turn to go on speaker. We need to talk to Whale.” While they waited for Regina to switch her phone, she reached over and gave a comforting squeeze of Killian’s leg through the bed covers. It helped a bit, but he could still feel a ball of anxiety growing in his stomach, and it wasn’t just the greasy food. Just because he was human right now didn’t mean he was in the clear; he needed to hear just what the mad doctor had done to him.

“What’s up, Savior?” the doctor’s smarmy voice greeted over the phone.

She just rolled her eyes. “Cut the crap, Frank-N-Furter. What exactly did you do and why?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious what I did.”

“Humor me. We already know you love to hear yourself talk.”

“Hm, that’s true,” he conceded, and to their surprise, he launched right into an explanation. “I did it for the same reason anyone conducts experiments: to see if I could. Letting the patients out was just a ruse to get you out of the house. Slipped in and put in the flask, easy peasy. You should really rethink your home security.”

Killian could feel her tense next to him; Whale’s casual attitude was grating on him, but Emma plowed on. “Why did you do this to Killian?” she demanded.

“The pirate is a prime specimen. Look at how old he is and how much he’s been through. If it works on him, it’d work on anyone.”

Anxiety quickly turned to anger within—once more, he was just a means to an end, being used. Old rage filled him up and burst out. “So that’s all I am—a lab rat in your game of science? Not an actual person, with a life that you’ve so carelessly interrupted?” The doctor was lucky that he wasn’t physically there; even with his brace shredded, Killian would have found a way to get Whale on the wrong end of his hook.

“I mean...yeah,” was all Whale had to say.

It was a good thing they were alone, because Killian jumped out of bed and began to pace furiously, hardly giving second thought to his nudity. This was his childhood all over again: he was just an object, under the control of someone else; it was, quite literally, dehumanizing.

He could feel Emma’s worried gaze as he stalked his side of the room. “Okay, but what it is, exactly, and how do we fix it?”

“It’s a transformation potion, but an incredibly potent one. I super-concentrated it for maximum power.”

Regina asked, “Why a werewolf? Couldn’t you have picked something with less...fleas?”

“Ruby left a hairbrush here once, so I had to work with what was on hand.”

“So it’s like Polyjuice Potion?” To his surprise, Emma seemed relieved by the revelation, but he had no idea what that was. She threw him a glance with the corner of her mouth ticked up, which usually meant she’d explain it later.

“Kind of. Same idea, but this one isn’t as...temporary, I guess?”

Any relief disappeared.

“What do you mean?” Emma asked slowly.

Whale explained, “It was designed to be a bit more permanent in nature.”

The pit that had been forming in his stomach rapidly became a dropping stone, and Killian was frozen in place; even the dustmotes swimming in the light streaming through the windows seemed to still. What the bloody hell did he mean? Emma’s mouth hung open in shock and she was staring at him, but clearly both were left speechless.

So Whale continued. “Tell me, Captain, have you noted anything different since you returned to human form? Heightened senses; a craving for meat?”

Killian swallowed as a cold sense of realization washed over him. “Aye, I have,” he confirmed with a low, shaky voice. Those subtle differences he’d noticed over the last few hours felt like giant warning signs now.

“Then there you have it,” Whale concluded. “There’s a slight chance it’ll wear off eventually, but I designed it to be even more potent than a werewolf’s bite. Ideally, you’d transform for an entire week around the full moon, rather than just a day.”

Emma snorted and proceeded to unleash verbal abuse on the doctor, but Killian found himself tuning it out despite his apparently enhanced hearing. This curse was permanent. No amount of True Love magic could reverse or alter it; no spell or potion could undo it. His entire life had been redirected and likely torn apart thanks to one sip of a psychotic man’s cruel experiment. If he wasn’t safe for even a rabbit to be around when he transformed, then how could he hope to stay with Emma?

Suddenly, she was in front of him, telling him to look her in the eye and breath; he hadn’t realized that he’d collapsed to his knees until Emma’s voice pulled him from the self-induced fog in which he’d placed himself.

She stroked his cheek—normally a comforting gesture, but it didn’t fit with the uncertainty in her shaky voice. “I promise you, we’ll figure this out,” she said, but she didn’t seem as convinced anymore. And if she wasn’t, how was he to be?

He hummed an agreement halfheartedly and leaned into her touch. But he knew that regardless of whatever she believed, he was now a danger to her; come nightfall—and possibly long after—he’d have to be far away.

Emma couldn’t help the disbelieving snort that escaped her lips when Whale explained what he’d done to Killian. “So this is all a game to you? You don’t mind that you’ve completely changed someone’s entire life—entire being—for the sake of some ridiculous study?”

“No, this is science,” he threw back, smugly, making her want to slap the cocky grin off his head that was surely there. And she was half tempted to ask Regina to do it for her.

“And you’re certain there’s no reversal?”

“DNA can only be messed with so many times; it’s dangerous stuff.”

“Emma, just let your pirate’s next meal be him,” Regina interjected. “As mayor, I’ll let this one slide.”

It was definitely a tempting offer, but said pirate was currently kneeling on the floor, staring at nothing and dangerously close to a panic attack. “As much as I might love that, we’ll figure out the doctor later; just make sure he can’t leave the station. I’ll meet you at the library.” After hanging up, she gave herself to the count of ten to freak out before going to Killian. As life-altering as this was for him, it was rocking her world, too. She knew he’d eventually have the beast in check, but how long would it take? How many more nights like the last would they face? They’d been separated before, but she didn’t think could handle it on such a regular interval. She’d gotten too used to his constant presence and unwavering support at her side to willingly give it up for even a short amount of time.

But right now, it was her turn to be that for him. She took one last deep breath before slipping off the bed and kneeling in front of him. “Killian,” she whispered. “Look at me.” God, how many times had she said that in the past 24 hours? “Breath, babe; just breathe.” He looked up at her; that panic that had finally started to ease from his eyes had found its way back in and it broke her heart. They had to find a way around this, but right now, all signs were pointing to dead ends. She couldn’t tell him that, though.

So, for the millionth time, she stroked his cheek and told him, “I promise you, we’ll figure this out.” It lacked her normal conviction, but it was one of those things where if she said it enough, she might start to believe it again.

He was equally unconvinced, but agreed anyway. They stayed there on the floor for a bit, just holding each other and trying to wrap their heads around this, until Killian began to sway and she nearly had to catch him to prevent him from falling over, squeezing his shoulders to stabilize him.

“Okay, back in bed with you,” she directed, though admittedly less forcefully than usual; she stood to pull him up with both hands and he followed with no protest. “Get some more rest while I go see what I can figure out with Regina, okay?”

He just nodded, but before she could step aside to tug back the covers for him, he pulled her tight to him, one arm around her waist and his hand on her cheek, and placed a searing kiss on her lips. Normally, such situations, given their present lack of clothing, would lead to other activities. But this didn’t have the usual heat—just the passion. He’d only kissed her like this a few times in the past, and though she knew what he was trying to say, she couldn’t afford to think like that.

When he finally broke away, he pressed his forehead to hers and murmured, “I love you, Emma.” She was short on breath, but managed to return the endearment, and they stood there for a moment just breathing each other in. Then he placed a gentle kiss on her temple and backed away, gave her a tired half-smile, and moved toward getting in the bed. He was asleep before she’d even finished tucking him in.

He was trying to say goodbye, she could tell. Only this time, she’d be damned if she let him.

She quickly dressed and poofed right over to the library, not even wanting to waste the time it would take to walk out of the house. If Belle noticed when Emma appeared in the lobby, it wasn’t apparent; she was too absorbed in a book, with another stack next to where she was reading, seated at one of the tables in the stacks.

“Finding anything?” Emma asked as she approached, finally drawing Belle’s attention. The doorbell chimed in the background, signaling Regina’s arrival.

Looking up from the page, Belle shook her head and answered. “Nothing yet. I’ve looked at transformation spells, books on mythology, and even some theoretical physics and medical books. Nothing on how to reverse something like this.”

Emma just sighed, and Regina awkwardly offered her a pat on the shoulder as David arrived with coffee. Regina caught everyone up on what Whale had revealed, and Belle just shook her head at the news. “He’s right, unfortunately; there’s nothing that can turn a werewolf back into a human, especially if the source he used was someone who was born one.”

Emma felt her stomach fall to the tile floor. “So there’s nothing we can do?” She hated how watery her voice sounded, but the prospect of no solution...they’d overcome too much to hit a brick wall now. “He’s just...going to be a wolf forever?”

Her father’s heavy, comforting grasp squeezed her shoulder. “Hey, just because it can’t be reversed doesn’t mean we can’t handle it,” he assured her. “We’ve done it before and we can do it again. And if there’s anyone who can overcome this, it’s Hook.”

“It might take some time, but once he accepts it, he’ll be fine,” Belle added. “And David’s right—I know he can.”

Regina concurred, which was probably the most reassuring, and eased Emma’s internal tension a bit. “Okay, what do we do?”

David and Belle gave her as much of a crash course as they could in wolf taming, her father having been the one to get Ruby through it just after the curse broke. They promised they’d be on standby if they were needed tonight, but their instruction had Emma feeling confident; no, things weren’t going to be perfect, but they were going to be as close to it as possible.

A trip to the station and then the hospital saw Whale in a new residence: the cells. It wasn’t an ideal prison, but it seemed fair to have him on the other side of his odd brand of medicine for once.

Darkness was falling by the time that was wrapped up, so Emma hurried home with dinner from Granny’s: the usual for her again, and a rather pink steak for Killian. The house was still dark when she arrived; she didn’t blame him if he was still napping. But the moonrise was imminent—he needed to be awake and she needed to be with him if they were going to manage this thing.

Tossing the food on the kitchen table, she then headed upstairs to their room. As usual, the bed was perfectly made and his side of the room was spotless; not even a stray sock was on the floor. But it was empty, and there were no signs of life anywhere else. Shit.

Proper gentleman that he was, though, there was a note lying on the bed:

Emma—

It would be the poorest of form to knowingly put you in danger, my love. As such, I’ve sequestered myself for the night to keep you—and others—out of harm’s way. Please do not fret, and know that I will return come morning, hopefully no worse for the wear.

Counting down the hours and leaving all my love with you,

—Killian

She sighed, shaking her head. Of course the dramatic bastard would run off, thinking it was for the best. Despite everything, they were both still getting used to the fact that they didn’t have to go through things alone, so this was one instance where she knew to seek him out.

And, predictable as he was, she was pretty positive she knew where he’d gone. With a wave of her hand, she transported to the Jolly Roger.

thanks again for reading! tagging @kat2609 @thesschesthair @fergus80 @xpumpkindumplingx @its-like-a-story-of-love @shipsxahoy @mryddinwilt @annytecture @killian-whump @laschatzi @ive-always-been-a-pirate @jscoutfinch @nfbagelperson @stubble-sandwich @phiralovesloki @athenascarlet @kmomof4 @ilovemesomekillianjones @whimsicallyenchantedrose @pirateherokillian @luvmylife25 @drowned-dreamer @lenfaz @losttalongthewayy

#cs ff #cs canon divergence #werewolf!killian #my ff #a charm of powerful trouble

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ouathinktank-metacommentary · 7 years

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i think that CS is the second biggest problem in OUaT, the first would be all those random characters that appear only for 10 episodes and then leave. The show spends so much time on them and then they just disappear. I mean OUaT has some main characters and then guest stars,there is almost nothing in between .Therefore the leads have no friends or basically no one outside of the family. All these hit me when Regina and Snow took Emma out for drinks .Emma's only friend is Regina, Snow's only 1/2

2/2 friend is Regina, Charming’s only friend is well again Regina .So all i wanted to say is that they could use some of the guests in that way. For example Tink could have been Regina’s friend outside of the family, Ruby could still have scenes with Snow , some prince could have been Charming’s buddy. Why the hell are they bringing people that don’t stay? I swear i have never seen this before

True. Captain Swan is just a side-dish, a result of severely lacking writing, simply put. Because some writers are plot-first novelists, others are character-first novelists. And Brothers Dim (and their little team of wannabes) are neither. I mean, they were apparently good at ‘hero essence capturing’ (which is in every writing manual that talks about archetypal characters, and they’ve only been developing S1 for like… a decade?) in a way of showing basic understanding of the inner workings of a solid hero, you know–how to show what is at their main character’s core. And it worked really well in S1 where there was basically a lot of exposition and more of a setup for character development that was supposed to ensue, you know–from S2 onward?

Only it didn’t. So if we’re talking about main characters, they had some start/stops (and first more serious inconsistencies) with Regina, Emma was just more solidified in her basic conflict, while with Rumple they clearly had no idea what to do with (which direction to take him in, but then when he ‘had’ his son back…they completely screwed it up by not going there, at all) and there was literally no development with Snow and David (between each other, only a little bit with their daughter) apart from a shitload of flashbacks which were now not background–but just basic, instant exposition for these new random pointless characters. And that was just season two. After which, it only got worse. Because if that’s how they write main characters (at this point there’s absolutely no consistency, as everything’s plot driven–and all plots are shallow and vapid and deus ex macguffin resolved?) what can we expect for the side-characters? The guests that you mention, that honestly no one gives a rats ass about because we all know that they’re there just for that episode’s plot purpose–and never anything beyond? When they for instance already had so many great characters (Ruby, Archie, Kathryn, Ashley–basically ANY conceived and left completely unused after the very first episode that gave their exposition) that they did absolutely nothing with, really?

So at this point a lot of us are still hung up on foundation of the story, and the… squandered potential, really. Like say, Swan-Mills family (as the three of them always had that link, and developments that are the only ones that still make sense), the way they were despite horrible character digressions and regressions (the focus on the family, rather then Emma’s and Regina’s atrocious ‘romantic’ choices) and… why we either lament the loss (“where’s Emma Swan, she disappeared seasons ago?”) or fanwank and fix it (”fancifiction does it better”). While in reality, we have just too much convoluted stuff (plot wise, I’m not talking about characters being degraded and rendered beyond recognition in OOC-ness like Emma has been, for purposes of romantization of her boyfriend), a lot of running on spot, way too many insipid dialogues and scenes that only serve to engage the audience through action. With very little essence, and development. Now, a screenwriter can write these stereotypes but then it’s up to the director, the casting director and the actors to give depth to otherwise flat characters. So the screen-writer might write a generic fop character and get away with it if the rest of the process adds up, and you get a better result? It is a two-fold process that can help them turn the literary characterization of their leads into explosive material, but…

OUaT has been horribly flat in that department for way too long now, so is it any wonder if we wonder at what point have they given up trying–and why?

#ouat shitty writing #emma swan #regina mills #deserve better #swan queen #will always be better #but tell that to the two idiots #anon #replies

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devon-kelley · 7 years

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Charlie Hunnam Starved Himself on 400 Calories a Day For His Latest Role

Gym rats and couch potatoes can agree on one thing: when it comes to losing weight, it’s no walk in the park. Hollywood actors regularly endure this daunting task when they’re forced to shrink their already perfectly fit bodies down to nothingness for roles, then snap back to their healthy forms as quickly as is humanly possible.

Charlie Hunnam is the latest victim of forced weight loss for his role in Lost City of Z, which opens Friday. Hunnam’s character is an early 20th century British explorer who makes three treks through the Amazon in search of an ancient indigenous city, and he and his costars Robert Pattinson and Edward Ashley were each required to lose about 35 pounds to demonstrate the hardship of their characters.

“We were starving, and it was incredibly humid and hot, so we didn’t have to imagine too much of the hardship those guys were enduring,” Hunnam told Yahoo Movies, saying he consumed between 400 and 500 calories a day. “On the last film that I did (a remake of the 1973 prison escape drama Papillon), I just had to lose a lot of weight again, and that was by myself,” Hunnam said. “I really missed the camaraderie of losing it with the guys.

“There was a sense that we were in it together. But then also on the underside of it, a little bit of competition… [We’d] be very suspicious of each other. When Robert would be going off and walking away, I’d have a tendency to be watching him wherever he went just to see if he was like, going off into the jungle to smuggle a quick banana or something. So we kept each other honest.”

Click through to see the extreme measures that 18 stars were willing to take for the right role.

Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style:

Charlie Hunnam's 'Lost City of Z' Diet: 400 Calories a Day

Empire Star Gabourey Sidibe Opens Up About Her Weight Loss and Body-Image Issues

The Surprisingly Body-Positive Reason That Mama June Went From a Size 18 to Size 4

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and@YahooBeauty.

Charlie Hunnam

Hunnam lost some 35 pounds for his role in Lost City of Z, in which he plays an early 20th century British Explorer trekking thrice through the Amazon in search of an ancient city. “We were starving, and it was incredibly humid and hot, so we didn’t have to imagine too much of the hardship those guys were enduring,” Hunnam told Yahoo Movies, saying he consumed between 400 and 500 calories a day. He found it easier to lose weight for this film than his last, Papillon, because he did it alongside costars Robert Pattinson and Edward Ashley. “There was a sense that we were in it together. But then also on the underside of it, a little bit of competition… So we kept each other honest.”

Adam Driver

Driver said that his extreme weight loss was helpful to his “process” as an actor while playing a 17th century Jesuit Priest alongside Andrew Garfield in Martin Scorsese’s Silence. "You’re so hungry and so tired at some points that there’s nothing you can do — you’re not adding anything on top of what you’re doing. You only have enough energy to convey what you’re doing, so it’s great," Driver told Interview Magazine. "I can't control what's happening in scenes, but I could control when I ate food. And that visual part of the storytelling, I don't think I've ever taken it to the extreme before." (Photos: Paramount Pictures/Getty Images)

Liam Hemsworth

“I didn’t eat for weeks,” the 26-year-old told E! News of his latest role in The Dressmaker. “I could actually hear his stomach growling,” his co-star, Kate Winslet, added. Hemsworth admitted that getting used to a new body isn’t easy. “I did some pushups in my trailer,” he said. “Anytime you’re going to come out and take your top off, it’s good to do a couple of pushups… It’s very difficult to come out and just take your clothes off.” (Photos: Everett/Universal Pictures)

Matt Damon in Courage Under Fire

in a Reddit ask me anything, Matt Damon laid out the exceptional difficulty of extreme weight loss and yoyo dieting (that pretty much comes with the territory of winning an Oscar). “I think the most challenging role that I've ever had was when I did Courage Under Fire and I had to lose all the weight that I lost on my own, that was the most physically challenging [thing] I've ever had to do in my life,” Damon wrote. “I weigh probably 190 pounds right now, and I weighed 139 in that movie, and that is not a natural weight for me and not a happy weight for me even when I was 25. So, you know, to do that I had to run about 13 miles a day, which wasn't even the hard part. The hard part was the diet. All I ate was chicken breast. It's not like I had a chef or anything, I just made it up and did what I thought I had to do. I just made it up and that was incredibly challenging.” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Beyonce in Dreamgirls

To prep for her role as Deena in Dreamgirls, Beyoncé lost 20 pounds on her own accord. "I figured in the '60s Twiggy was the hot model, and Diana [Ross] and Cher and all the legends were thinner than I am," she told Oprah. "So I decided I wanted to lose weight and make a physical transformation. And it was difficult because I love food. I love to eat. I did a fast—a master cleanser for 14 days. Everybody was eating Krispy Kremes around me. I was grouchy, but I did it and I lost the weight." (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Emily Blunt in The Devil Wears Prada

Emily Blunt shed a few pounds for her role in The Devil Wears Prada, but she doesn’t want young girls to think they should look like she did in the film. “I am from a family of thin children, so I have always been OK with that. I’ve only lost weight for The Devil Wears Prada and that was because my character was supposed to be on the edge of anorexia,” she told Parade. “But I think the pressure is so huge on young girls right now to lose weight and it needs to diminish. It is becoming worrying how many super thin girls we see walking around, and they are so obviously ill. It is kind of accepted and it is glamorized more than it should be.” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Chris Hemsworth in Lost at Sea

"Just tried a new diet/training program called 'Lost At Sea.' Wouldn't recommend it,” Hemsworth tweeted. He detailed his staggering weight loss in an interview with Men’s Health. “We couldn't go away for a month and get skinny, we had to do it while we were shooting,' he says. 'At one point, a day's rations were a boiled egg, a couple of crackers and a celery stick.” Hemsworth happily got back to his brolic Thor figure after filming was over. “To get back to looking like Thor is simple: I get in the gym and work out,” he says. “I enjoy it. It keeps me fit and healthy. I've got to eat more calories – certain types and all clean – and it can get boring eating chicken breast and rice and so on. But at least you're fed properly.” (Photos: Instagram/Getty)

Amanda Seyfried in Chloe

Seyfried slimmed down for her role as an expensive call girl. "I'm on a raw-food diet," she told Esquire. "It's intense. And sort of awful. Yesterday for lunch? Spinach. Just spinach. Spinach and some seeds." But to her, Hollywood’s pressure to be thin is nothing more than doing her job. “I looked way better when I was 15," Seyfried told Ellen DeGeneres. "I had huge breasts, and then I came to Hollywood and I was like 'I got to lose weight. I got to look thin and fit,' and I lost them a little bit. They were quite uncomfortable, but they look beautiful. I was feminine. I had some nice curves and I think that we should really appreciate that as opposed to trying to get rid of everything." (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Christian Bale in The Machinist

Christian Bale famously dropped more than 60 pounds for his role in The Machinist, weighing in at a staggering 122 lbs at 6 feet tall. “The writer is only about five-foot-six, and he put his own weights in,” Bale’s co-star Michael Ironside told Huffington Post of the mixup in the weight Bale was expected to meet. “And then Chris did the film and Chris said, ‘No, don’t change the weights. I want to see if I make them.’ ... So those weights he writes on the bathroom wall in the film are his actual weights in the film.” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Anne Hathaway in Les Miserables

To portray a dying prostitute in Les Mis, Anne Hathaway had to shed the muscle she put on for her role as Catwoman and drop 25 pounds in merely a month. “I lost the first 10 (pounds) in three weeks through a detox and then I lost the subsequent 15 in 14 days by doing food deprivation and exercise, which I don’t recommend,” she told SF Gate. “I know when I was a teenage girl … I would try crazy things and I do not recommend anyone do this at all. I was under the supervision of a nutritionist and I had a doctor monitoring me, but it’s not fun. You can be too thin.” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Tom Hanks in Castaway

Hanks shed 50 pounds to portray a character stuck on a deserted island, and he looked to his character’s surroundings for a painfully realistic weight loss. ”You know coconuts? Think you can eat a lot of coconuts? Well, let me tell you, it’s a natural laxative,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “So just put two and two together there. Take a coconut, drink all the milk out of it, and then eat all the insides, and you tell me how you feel after an hour and a half…” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Mila Kunis in Black Swan

"I had to look skinny in order to look like a ballerina," she said on a SiriusXM interview with Howard Stern. "You fake it. So, the best way to fake it is to unfortunately look like it." Kunis weighed in at 95lbs during the film and trained in ballet for three months to fake it as best she could. "I never watched what I ate [before]. It was one of those things, for the first time in my life, I got a food delivery service," she said. "And I'll tell you this, I'm not promoting this at all, but I used to be a smoker, and so I smoked a lot of cigarettes and I ate a limited amount of calories. 1,200 calories and I smoked. I don't advocate this at all. It was awful.” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Natalie Portman lost 20 pounds over six months on a 1,200 calorie vegan diet for her role as Nina. "At a certain point I looked at [Natalie's] back and she was so skinny and so cut — I was like, 'Natalie, start eating,' I made sure she had a bunch of food in her trailer,” director Darren Aronofsky told Popsugar. (Photos: Everett/Getty)

50 Cent in Things Fall Apart

To play his best friend who died of cancer, 50 Cent dropped from 214 pounds to 160 in nine weeks following a liquid diet and running on a treadmill three hours a day. It was an emotional process for him, and not an entirely unfamiliar one. When he was shot in the jaw in 2000, he could only drink liquids and his weight plummeted to 157. “This time it was a lot tougher for me,” he told AP. “I had to discipline myself not ... to actually have myself be in the physical state to convey the energy I felt. It’s a passion project for me.” (Photos: Instagram/Getty)

Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

To play the “pale, anorexic” Lisbeth Salander, Mara kickboxed with a trainer. She didn’t discuss her diet, but an interview with Vogue made it seem like eating, or lack thereof, played a significant role in preparing for the film. “’You can eat.’ I look up to see her reaction. Mara rolls her eyes, and Fincher laughs. ‘You can have lettuce and a grape. A raisin if you must.’ She orders a piece of fish and barely touches it… I ask if she had to get unhealthily skinny for the role. She says, ‘Umm . . . not really.’ ‘It hasn’t been too hard for her,’ Fincher quickly adds.” (Photos: Everett/Getty)

Jared Leto in The Dallas Buyers Club

To play a trans AIDS sufferer, Leto lost 38 pounds. “I got down to 116 or something. I just basically didn't eat. I ate very little,” he told E Online. “I had done similar things with weight, but this was different, I think the role demanded that commitment... It was about how does that effect how I walk, how I talked, who I am, how I feel. You know, you feel very fragile and delicate and unsafe.” The role took a major toll on his health. “Your organs [and] muscles shrink, your organs shrink [and] my stomach has shrunk as well. I'm doing cardio but I'll tell you what, the more I've learned is - and I think it comes with age too - is it's 90 percent diet. It's a matter of how much I eat or how little I eat.” (Photos: Splash/Getty)

Matthew McConnaughey in The Dallas Buyer’s Club

McConnaughey’s character was also a victim of AIDS, and he lost 50lbs for the role. He consulted the shapeshifting master, Tom Hanks, as well as a nutritionist before embarking on his weight loss. Starting at 185lbs, he thought he would stop at 145, but he didn’t feel it was enough. "I was going around and people were going, 'Hey, are you feeling all right?" McConaughey told People of reaching his initial goal. "But then I hit 135 lbs. I ran in to somebody and they didn't just ask if I was all right, they said, 'My God, we need to get you some help.' And I thought, 'There we go. That's the perfect spot.' " He ate good foods, but not much of them and found himself “uncontainable with energy,” needing to sleep three hours less each night. “I found through this journey that the human body is much more resilient than we give it credit for.” (Photos: Splash/Getty)

Jennifer Hudson in Winnie Mandela

Jennifer Hudson starred as Winnie Mandela and went from a size 16 to a 6 for the role. "Whatever it takes to morph into a character I'll do it,” she told People. “I’m in the best shape of my life!” Hudson enlisted the help of celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak, and got her start on Weight Watchers. (Photos: Everett/Getty)

#celebrity #adam driver #body #weight loss #devon kelley #slideshow

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onhowtobecrazy · 8 years

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Sweet Shot of Kerosene - SQ Week

Written for Day 2: Coffee Shop

A/N. So... I started watching Wynonna Earp. And THAT scene happened. Of course I had the irrepressible urge to rewrite it in a Swan Queen way. So you get awkward idiot Emma and absolutely-not-subtle at flirting Regina. Yeah, the result is probably terrible but it’s GAY, so indulge my friends!

There aren’t a lot of advantages in being the only other waitress below fifty working in the only drinking place of a small town in Maine, but Emma Swan sure enjoys the lazy afternoons where Granny’s pub/dinner/coffee shop/whatever the hell goes through that old woman’s head is not open yet and the only thing she has to care about is sweeping the floors and cleaning up the counter while swinging her butt to some of her favorite tunes—without the usual nuisance of catcalls and leers of her beloved clientele.

The people of Storybrooke are not a bad bunch, to be honest, she’s known worse, but that doesn’t mean she particularly enjoys Whale making a pass at Ruby and her every chance he gets, or having to kick out drunk Leroy after yet another broken glass on someone else’s head.

Still, Storybrooke’s her home, she’s made her peace with that.

It’s not like she has anywhere else to go, anyway.

She’s humming to herself, some cheesy folk tune on the radio, and as she sways in rhythm, her elbow accidentally hits one of the clunky beer tap, instantly showering her with foamed, sticky brew.

“Shit!” she groans as she turns around and fumbles blindly to put a stop to the violent spraying, effectively drenching her front as well as her back in the process.

“Shitshitshit you goddamn cockfucker—”

“Well, that was an interesting display.”

Emma whirls around at the sound of a voice she doesn’t recognize, and meets the amused brown eyes of the intruder.

A quite stunning intruder, one might say, sleek gray dress and bold high heels, dark short hair framing a troublingly intense face. The woman—who could be anywhere between her early to late thirties, Emma guesses—stands out singularly from the usual crowd.

“Hi, um… yeah, sorry about that. I’m not the most skilled person with my, uh, limbs, I guess.”

“Really?” the woman retorts, eyebrows raised mockingly as she moves down the stairs to the counter behind which Emma makes clumsy attempts at soaking up as much of the damage as she can with the dishtowel (she’s got beer running between her breasts and down her belly, great, fucking great, what a perfect fucking—). “You appear to be quite skilled with your tongue, though.”

Emma stares at the woman for a second, pausing in her rather useless task, her mind drawing a blank. Did she just—

“Ah, well. Sorry about that, too. Didn’t mean to shock anybody.”

“Oh it would take more than that to shock me, Miss…”

She waits a little too long for Emma to supply, her mind still mulling over that weird hot flash that last interaction just gave her, and she stumbles over her words when she eventually catches up.

“Right! Emma. Swan. I’m, I’m Emma Swan.”

She hesitantly shakes the hand the other woman offers her, sheepish about her clammy coldness when the palm that presses against hers is smooth and warm.

“I’m Regina. Nice to meet you, Em-ma.”

She says her name in a certain way, lingering just a little on the middle, dragging it through her lips, and it does weird things to her that makes her withdraw her hand quickly and take a step back.

“Yeah, you’re nice too—I mean, you’re nice to meet—wait I mean, nice to meet you.”

She’s seconds away from face-palming herself and her stupid mouth, but Regina laughs, not unkindly, and that sounds is so delicious, deep and low, that Emma finds herself laughing along, just so it can last longer.

“Now, do you think I could have some coffee? Black, no sugar.”

“Oh, yeah, sure—wait, hang on, we’re not actually open yet, I’m sorry…” Emma cringes, nodding towards the folded chairs and altogether completely deserted place.

“Oh,” Regina says simply, as if it hadn’t been obvious. “Forgive me, I hadn’t realized. The door was open… and when I want something, I don’t like to wait.”

Emma pauses for the second time, barely suppressing a shiver as Regina’s very dark eyes encapture her own.

She has no idea what is happening. This is not what her life looks like. She’s not the type of girl who has intense encounters with beautiful strangers. She gets average, sometimes good, sometimes mediocre, kind of boring. But not this.

One thing she knows, though.

She doesn’t want it to end.

Of course, her body chooses that moment to give a violent shiver, reminding her that she still very much looks like a drowned rat and she should do something about it before catching a stupid cold.

“Shit, I’m sopping wet… uh, do you mind to—I mean, I kinda need to change my shirt, so…”

Emma gestures awkwardly at Regina and the woman nods knowingly.

“Right, of course.”

She slowly turns around, the smirk she’s been wearing through the whole conversation still haunting Emma as she turns her back as well.

She starts lifting her shirt, her heart beating erratically in her chest and making her movement clumsy, feeling strangely disappointed that Regina had complied so readily to her request for privacy. She pulls the shirt over her head—and feels a painful tug on her skull as one of her long lock gets stuck on one of the buttons.

Oh no.

She struggles and desperately tries to wrench free but it only causes her to nearly scalp herself and lash out in colorful expletives.

“Everything alright?” Regina’s tries her best at sounding nonchalant, but Emma can definitely hear the amusement in her voice. She winces.

“Uh… actually… I think I’m stuck. Think you could—”

She barely has time to finish her sentence than Regina is behind the counter with her, hands carefully searching through the opening of her shirt and untangling the stubborn lock, helping Emma finally ease out of her top, flushed and wild-haired.

“There,” Regina smiles, her voice very soft. “All better.”

Emma feels herself melt at the sound of that voice, chuckling uneasily as Regina hands out her shirt to her.

“Lucky you’re not a guy, right, that’d make things really… awkward.”

Regina’s smile becomes cryptic, her eyes scanning curiously over Emma’s body, lingering on her chest. She blushes a shade deeper and slowly brings her soaked shirt to her chest to conceal her now possibly see-through bra.

“Anyway. Thanks, I owe you one.” She tries joking it off but Regina’s eyebrow rises in interest.

“Hmm. Well, maybe you could buy me that cup of coffee. Maybe tonight.”

Emma lets a smile spread on her lips, she feels herself falling deeper and deeper under the spell of Regina’s alluring voice, her confidence, her plain desire. Her mouth opens to say yes but reality crashes back in just in time as she eventually answers: “Y—No I can’t. I mean, I’d love—like to, but I’m working, and then I got… plans. I’m a big… planner, yeah, I always know what I’m gonna do at least three… hours in advance. So.”

“I understand,” Regina says, apparently undeterred, but Emma is not done putting her foot in her mouth as far as she can’t reach.

“I’m in a relationship,” she adds forcefully—too forcefully. “Well—sort of. I mean, it’s a boy. Man.”

“A boy-man?” Regina leans in with a laugh shivering at the corner of her lips, and her finger reaches up gently to wipe off a bit of foam still lingering on Emma’s neck, while she confesses in her ear: “I’ve been told it’s the worst.”

She drags her finger until it brushes the top of Emma’s bra as she takes a step back, then walk away.

“Well, Miss Swan,” she drawls, emphasizing the Miss mockingly. “If you ever want to upgrade… I’ll be around.”

She drops a square little white something on the counter, fingers sliding teasingly just as they’d done on Emma’s skin a few seconds ago.

“Wait,” she asks as Regina nears the entrance. “So, you just moved in to Storybrooke?”

Regina pauses, her hand on the handle, then turns around with a smile that manages the feat to be both gleeful and slightly frightening.

“I guess the word hasn’t been around yet. I’m the new Mayor.”

She waves mockingly at Emma as she makes her exit, letting the door close slowly behind her. Emma rushes to the card she’s left on the counter and reads, in an elegant handwriting, Regina Mills, and a phone number.

“Mayor Mills. Well, I’ll be fucked...”

She groans in embarrassment as she puts her head between her arms.

Then she smiles.

...Hopefully.

#sqw #sqw 8 #sqw 8 au #coffee shop au #swan queen #sq ff #wynonna earp xover #regina mills #emma swan #lolymoon writes #ouat #ouat shorts

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hermanwatts · 5 years

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Sensor Sweep: Witherwing, Lankhmar, Mid-List Collapse

Writers (Less Known Writes): David William Jarrett was the son of Mervyn Spencer Jarrett (1906-1986), a works engineer, and his wife Olive Elizabeth Jenkins (1907-1997), who were married in the summer of 1940. He had one older brother. Jarrett’s novel was Witherwing (London: Sphere, 1979: New York: Warner, 1979). It begins as a kind of heroic fantasy novel in which Witherwing, the youngest of six princes of Tum-Barlum (the name clearly modeled on Twm Barlwm, the name of a hill in south Wales, but that has no significance to the story).

RPG (Walker’s Retreat): With last weekend’s Big Brand marketing event masquerading as a fan convention came the announcement–with no release date–of the fourth installment of its iconic isometric dark fantasy action RPG franchise. You know which one I’m talking about, and it’s not the MMORPG. I thought I’d take the time to give you all some alternatives that you may have overlooked or forgotten about, beside Path of Exile and adaptation of other Big Brand properties. This is not an exhaustive list; most of these will be linked to their Steam entries, but I advise you to look at GOG also if you want DRM-free versions or see if you can buy used physical copies.

News (Niche Gamer): On October 22nd, the United States House of Representatives voted 410 votes to 6 (16 abstained) in favor of the CASE Act- dubbed the “Anti-Meme law” by its critics. The “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019” was introduced by Representative Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat, New York) on January 5th, 2019. The bill’s purpose was to help content creators utilize a small claims court for copyright infringement, as the current law means copyright disputes must go through the more expensive federal courts.

Publishing (Kairos): Where have we seen this blockbuster-chasing mentality before? Oh yeah, in the likewise floundering Hollywood film and AAA video game industries. As Western civilization rapidly burns through the cultural capital inherited from Christendom, expect to see more industries falling into hit-obsessed death spirals. It’s a seductive trap. A company stumbles upon a big hit, scrambles to replicate what is in fact a black swan event, and cannibalizes its own seed corn in the process. It’s an old story.

Comic Books (Paint Monk’s Library): Since Paint Monk’s Library began covering Marvel’s new Conan the Barbarian comic, I’ve received a slew of emails and private messages, mainly from people agreeing with our reviewers about the direction the House of Ideas has taken with such an iconic property. But for every five or six encouraging emails, I get one message from an angry reader telling me that I’m out of touch and if I don’t like Marvel’s new comics to quit reading and “go back to the nursing home to read Bugs Bunny” (Yes, I really did receive that email last month).

Writers (PulpFest): Not long after midnight on the morning of November 5, 2019, the pulp community lost one of its cornerstones. Tom Johnson passed away after a long battle with cancer. Tom and his wife of many years, Ginger Johnson, were the longtime editors and publishers of ECHOES, a fanzine about the pulp magazines. For nearly twenty years, Tom and Ginger could be counted on for a new issue of ECHOES every other month.

Star Wars (Digital Bibliophilia): Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is a story that takes place about a year after the events of Star Wars (or A New Hope if you prefer). It begins with Luke and R2-D2 aboard Luke’s X-Wing fighter, and Leia and C3PO aboard a Y-Wing travelling to the planet Circarpous IV to a meeting with an underground movement that had arisen against the Galactic Empire on that planet. They are to formally offer their promise of support from the Rebellion Alliance and encourage the movement rise against it’s oppressors.

Art (DMR Books): Howard Pyle has rightly been called “The Father of American Illustration.” Before Pyle there was a virtual nothingness when it came to American art. After, there was—perhaps—a flowering of painterly excellence unparalleled in the entire history of art. In the late 1890s, Pyle established various schools of art in Wilmington, Delaware and beyond. Pyle’s movement has been called the “Brandywine School” in reference to the river that ran along the banks next to Pyle’s various artistic seminaries.

Cinema (Jstor): Long before First National Pictures began production on Doyle’s dinosaur story, a young marble cutter named Willis O’Brien was sculpting tiny T-Rex figurines. According to The New York Times, O’Brien began experimenting with animation models during an apparently slow day at work. Inspired by his background in boxing, he molded a mini fighter out of clay. His coworker whipped up another clay champion, and pretty soon the two men were acting out a full boxing match with their primitive action figures. Lo and behold, O’Brien’s next production was a short test film featuring a cave man and a dinosaur (made of modeling clay and wooden joints) shot atop the Bank of Italy Building in San Francisco.

Author Interview (Pulp Hermit): It’s not easy thinking of Will Murray as a new Pulp Author. William Patrick Murray is an author everyone should be familiar with in the new pulp movement, and definitely known throughout pulp fandom since the 1970s. He should be familiar to everyone in the new pulp community. He is one of the most prolific and knowledgeable people in the field of pulp fiction. The author of well over one hundred books, he has penned 40 Destroyer novels, and two-dozen Doc Savage novels (many based on Lester Dent’s uncompleted stories), plus King Kong, Tarzan, and The Shadow. He has also contributed to the Executioner and Mars Attacks, as well as numerous anthologies.

Science Fiction (Quillette): But this is not the spirit of our moment. Instead, as speculative fiction becomes more diverse, the sense that it must be corrected grows, and author and art are evaluated together. There is a notable asymmetry in this evaluation. Most fiction readers are women, and many fiction genres are dominated by women. Men who write romance novels or cozy mysteries must write under female pseudonyms, because the audiences for these genres will largely avoid books by men.

Writing (Pulprev): When writing a tactical thriller with heavy action elements, you have to get around to talking about the hardware. Tools drive what the characters can and can’t do, and weapons are a big part of that. Also, guns are cool. When writing guns in fiction, a common approach is to simply drop generic terms like ‘rifle’ or ‘pistol’ and leave it at that. Some slightly more sophisticated writers drop brand and/or gun names: FN SCAR, Beretta M9, Barrett M82. It may well work for them. Most readers just want to get on with the action without being bogged down in too much detail. But I prefer a more sophisticated option.

Pulp Fiction (Rough Edges): As you know if you’ve read this blog much, H. Bedford-Jones is one of my favorite pulp authors and indeed one of my favorite authors, period. I think he was at his strongest with historical adventure novels, so it’s no surprise that YOUNG KIT CARSON is a top-notch yarn that’s been out of print since 1941, when it appeared in the fiction supplement of a Canadian newspaper. A copy of it was discovered recently, and it’s about to be reprinted by Bold Venture Press.

Fiction (Tentaculii): I’d never heard of Ivy Frost before, but I like the sound of him. These gun-blazing mystery-science stories all appeared in Clues Detective Stories magazine from 1934-37 (not on Archive.org), so one assumes that Lovecraft was aware of them. One wonders how may ‘little nods to Lovecraft’ Wandrei might have snuck into the stories.

Fritz Leiber (Goodman Games): You might have heard about our recent DCC Lankhmar release. It’s a wonderfully in-depth take on the classic novels by Fritz Lieber, and licensed by his estate. If you are a fan of those novels, you might have heard of something called Rat-Snake. In the back alleys of the city of Lankhmar, money is won and lost, and lives are sometimes wagered as the ultimate prize, all on the roll of the dice. All part of a game called Rat-Snake.

Art (DMR Books): Stephen Fabian was selling macabre artworks very early in his career, batting one out of the park with his classic cover for Whispers #2 in 1973. He would go on to do more work for Whispers over the course of that groovy decade, including the first-ever illo for Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks.” Stephen did several evocative paintings for Arkham House during that period, as well as covers for Centaur Press and Donald M. Grant. All in all, the 1970s were a great preview of the glorious horror art Mr. Fabian would produce in the 1980s.

Gary Gygax (Warp Scream): I had the opportunity to interview Gary a number of years back, when I worked at CGM. I very much enjoyed talking to him, and it was fascinating to hear the history of D&D and gaming in general from his perspective. Like many people here, I’ve been a D&D geek for ages; I thought others might be interested to read what he had to say about the history of it all.

Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): It is nice when the Fake Gamers out themselves so readily, but this performative virtual signalling is really meant to be part of the gatekeeping campaign to push their enemies–those not of the SJW Death Cult–out of the subculture and hobby, or at least its public-facing elements, so that they can control the narrative surrounding tabletop RPGs. Narrative control then becomes cultural control and feeds into political control.

Sensor Sweep: Witherwing, Lankhmar, Mid-List Collapse published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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idornaseminary · 7 years

Text

Chapter Two-Hundred Three: Beatrice and Enzo

Beatrice stood pacing in front of the large four poster bed in the Grotto, having drawn the crystal beaded curtains shut around it. This was a safe haven for her, a place of only happy memories, and as much as she hated to admit it, it couldn’t always remain that way. Especially not after last night.

She wrung her hands and chewed nervously on her bottom lip, debating whether or not the Den was actually safe enough to meet in. But Vincent died and that meant, regardless of what Ibori had to do with it, he would be on high alert and could be scoping out the Unlikely Company’s meeting place. Did that mean though that she had to invite Enzo to her happy place? Well, her and Calix’s little oasis really.

Beatrice shook her head and sighed, glancing at the little balcony overlooking the darkened courtyard below. There was nothing more she wanted than to just step outside and look up at the bright starlit sky, to see what the future had to hold, to figure out just when this darkness would end. And unfortunately, for the Gestona, since she didn’t have the constellations to help guide her actions, she would need to forge her own path, and part of that meant clearing the air with Enzo.

Liara was missing. Vincent was dead. Figures of authority were dropping like flies and no matter how much she hated the pompous Frenchman, they were on the same side and would eventually need to start working together. She whirled around as the heavy wooden door opened, her curly hair bouncing with the motion until she stopped, face to face with her least favorite person, save for Ibori, in the castle.

“I thought you mighta just decided not to come tonight,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest defensively as she stood staring at Enzo Bellerose, her eyes narrowed and jaw clenched.

Enzo stood still, arms folded over his chest as he looked into the smug face of Beatrice Selwyn. When he got her patronus, he thought it was a joke or perhaps one of the others trying to get them to speak to each other again. Normally, he would have disregarded it - waved the damn swan away and let the bitch wait. But now, after the breaking news of Professor Vincent’s death, it seemed all too petty.

“I considered it,” he replied bitterly.

“Look, you hate that I hesitated, I hate that you forced my hand, but can we just move on?” Beatrice growled, wrinkling her nose in anger. “Mel’s alive and Teddy’s gone, that’s what’s important. Right?”

Enzo snorted, walking around the room slowly, taking the sights in. He had been here only once before, not long after he found the Den. It was nice, but a bit too… intricate for his tastes. It reminded him too much of Chateau Bellerose.

“You need to figure out where your head is at, Beatrice,” Enzo muttered. “You’re impossible to figure out.”

“Oh I’m impossible to figure out?” she scoffed, pointing at herself before turning and walking over to the fireplace. “This is coming from the man who’s supposedly dating Melanie Winter and yet doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her opinions, or feelings, or thoughts on relevant matters?” she asked, crossing her legs at the knee, glad for her bright blue and yellow fleece lined leggings, keeping her warm. “This is coming from the man who thinks that he’s above everybody else and that we mere mortals can only dain to be as powerful and invincible as you?”

Enzo cocked his head to the side, nearly smirking at her comment regarding his superiority. “You said it, not me.”

He took a moment, letting his fingers run along the fabric of the curtains. He pondered if he should speak on her ability to cry and scream and then make up as if it never happened, only to repeat the process again and again, but he knew nothing would come of it.

“Is there something you actually wanted?” he finally asked, looking back over to her. Out of anyone in their unlikely company, Beatrice was the last person he thought he would see in this particular light. “Or did you just want to tell me that we need to work together?”

Clearing her throat, Beatrice sat up straighter in the chair, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Shit is obviously hitting the fan, Enzo. I need to know that if we’re stuck together when everything falls apart, even if you hate me, you’re not just gonna leave me for dead because my life doesn’t mean anything to you,” she said bluntly, lacing her fingers together and setting them in her lap.

He huffed, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t hate you, Beatrice,” he admitted, licking his lips, not looking at her. “You’re often difficult to get along with, and you need to separate personal feelings from what we are trying to do, but I don’t hate you.”

She smiled faintly and dared to look up at him. “It’s hard to separate my feelings from the bigger picture because I’m living in it, not just passing by. I want to be involved. I want to care for my friends and make sure they know that. People deserve to know they’re loved when they die,” she rambled, tempted to start a fire in the hearth to warm the cold room, not improved by her present company.

“I’m alive. I’m living. I’m breathing. Life doesn’t just happen to me, and I try very hard to remember that I can have an impact on what happens. I don’t just want to disappear without a trace, without people to remember that I was here, that I cared, and that they were loved,” Beatrice explained, standing up to grab a warm fur-lined blanket from the bed. “What would the world be like if you could just leave without a care in the world, nobody to miss you or wish for your return?”

“You’d wish for people to hurt after you die?” Enzo said, looking at the small woman.

“I wish that people celebrate my life when I die,” Beatrice admitted, smiling up at him. “Why? You just wanna die and nobody even notices?”

“It would be easier for everyone,” he replied, chewing the inside of his cheek.

She pursed her lips quietly and sat down in the chair with the pelt draped across a pair of threadbare black and white elephant printed pants she borrowed from Halina’s closet, raking her ragged nails across the coarse grey fur. “Not for Mel.”

He sighed, waving his hand in the air. “Off topic,” he said, not wanting to talk about Melanie with Beatrice.

“No really. She really cares about you and if anybody would miss you when you’re gone, it’d definitely be her,” she said, stubbornly carrying on. “She’s crazy about you, Enzo.”

“She has a strange way of showing it,” he muttered, thinking about how much she seemed to disregard what occurred between them.

“If you mean about her kissing Vincent, even though he initiated it, and she stopped it, she still feels really guilty about the whole thing,” Beatrice admitted without a second thought, tempted to go and try to give him a hug. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she loves you, Enzo.”

Enzo turned his head, his eyebrows furrowing in shock and confusion. “Kissing… Wait, what?” It felt as if he had been punched, his lungs feeling like they had imploded. His knees instantly began to lose themselves, and he had to lean against the wall to steady his frame.

Beatrice’s heart dropped, her eyes widening in abject horror of what she had inadvertently done. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck a royal rubber duck,” she muttered under her breath, standing and turning with her back to Enzo for a split second before spinning on her heel to face him, an apology ripe on her pink lips. “She didn’t tell you yet, did she?”

Enzo stood still, his shoulder still against the wall, his jaw locked in place. It seemed wrong to worry about something so trivial when people around them were dying, but it was impossible. Melanie kissed him. He couldn’t help memories from Winter Break and New Year’s Eve from breaking through.

The sorrow quickly turned to anger.

Of course, she hadn’t changed. Whores never do.

Enzo steadied himself, visibly shaking his shoulders as if it would give him enough stability to get back to his dorm. He looked Beatrice dead in the eye, not wanting her to explain the situation anymore.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said, although his chest was heaving. “Keep yourself safe.”

And without another moment of hesitation, he turned away, slamming the door to the hidden room behind him loudly.

Beatrice ran her fingers through her hair, tugging on the roots as she wracked her brain, worried for Mel’s safety. What’s he gonna do? I should go warn her I let the cat outta the bag. She paused a small smile on her lips, and shook her head, banishing the brief but relieving thought from her head before going to find her friend, hoping to beg her forgiveness. At least Enzo doesn’t hate me.

#script #beatrice #enzo

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fesahaawit · 8 years

Text

Sharing My Retirement Plans With My Dad!

[Heyo! Got another killer guest post lined up for y’all today, this time from long-time reader JW who now has a blog of his own over at The Green Swan. He just had one of those amazing conversations about life and money with his father, and thought we’d might enjoy hearing how it all went down. I think he guessed right – check it out :)]

*******

I have something personal to share with you all – an email from my Dad. And not just any old email… a special one, in which I’ve never received anything of the like before. My Dad was wanting to know more about my plans to retire early!

To say I was nervous when I saw his email would be an understatement…

While my Dad doesn’t know I have a blog (and neither do any other friends or family), he does know I do not want to work for the rest of my life. He knows I’ve accumulated a fair amount of wealth so far, although not the exact amount. And he knows my goal is to get out of the rat race early. I have explicitly told him this before, but that’s the extent of it.

Until earlier in January… At that point, Pandora’s Box was opened. And it started with this email. (By way of reference, my dad is currently 63 and plans to retire in 2018)

My Dad’s Email:

Hi JW,

I always do a financial review at year end and it got me thinking about you wanting to retire early. I can relate, I was always planning to retire at 50. A few things to think about (you probably have already considered these, but anyway):

— I don’t think anything greater than a 7% long term return on your investments is realistic. You don’t have to go back too many years where a huge double digit loss was happening

— College education keeps increasing.

— Health insurance is really scary in the future. I’m planning $10,000/yr/person until medicare. You want to make sure you have a good ins. plan. Who knows how much this will increase. But $20,000/yr for 20 years is $400,000.

— If you ever do decide you want or need to re-enter the work force, it’s really hard to re-enter at the salary you were making before.

When I got to my early 50s I realized:

— I would be really bored.

— I still needed a purpose in life

— By working a few more years, mom and I could have this house and possibly a second home if we wanted.

— It was also a good feeling knowing that we could retire whenever we wanted.

Anyway, a few thoughts I wanted to share. I’d love to help you reach your financial goals if there is anything I can help with.

Have a good day,

Dad

What a nice note, huh!? Needless to say, he hit on basically all the major concerns any early retiree should think about. At the time of reading this, I didn’t realize that he ever considered early retirement. I always knew that him and Mom did a good job managing their money and were financial responsible, but they did have to raise four boys and paid for half of our college costs (in-state public school tuition).

I thought about how best to respond and decided to put some thoughts on paper. I shot him the below email, and then followed up with a phone call. Below is my unedited response to my Dad.

My Email Response:

Hey Dad, thanks for the email. I didn’t realize that you were thinking of retiring early as well. What you mentioned in your email are definitely some of the key things I’ve been thinking of too. Of course it is hard to pin down hard numbers on some of those things until the day comes. But here is the basic synopsis that I’ve come up with. Let me know if this makes sense and when it would work to discuss.

I hear you on the 7%. I’ve always used 8% as an estimate when projecting my future investment balance based on the long-term historical returns of the S&P 500. Once in retirement I will likely continue to stay 100% invested in stocks, but focus on the “safe withdrawal rate” (“SWR”). There are some good online simulators for determining “FIRE” (financial independence, retire early). Have you ever checked out firecalc.com or cfiresim.com?

I would estimate my required investment balance at retirement based on a 3.0-3.5% SWR and knowing what my core expenses are with some cushion. For example, core expenses of $60K including mtg payment at 3% SWR would require $2 million in investment assets. Realistically, and conservatively, we’d probably be targeting closer to $3 million. The biggest wildcard are long-term healthcare costs in case of illness or disability, which as you mentioned would either require good health/disability/long-term care insurance and/or more cushion in our investments.

Jr’s college fund will be basically fully funded by his 3rd b’day at ~$70K. Invested in a balanced and diversified stock index portfolio, this should cover the majority, if not all, of college costs by 18 estimated at ~$250K. We’ll have the same plan to fully fund baby 2’s 529 by age 3 as well. These funds of course are considered separate from the investment assets needed for the SWR above.

Without an employer or gov’t subsidy, I’d maybe be even more conservative than $10K /yr /person. We’ll see how it evolves in the coming years with Trump though. Lots TBD in retirement including if gov’t subsidies will be means tested or not or simply based on income…and then what will our income be in retirement, etc, etc. With unknowns like these to evolve likely well into retirement, we’ll try to play it safe rather than be sorry later.

Heard you loud and clear on re-entering the workforce at prior wages. But if we needed to build back some cushion, we could do this reasonably at lower wages and even consider temporary side gigs. However, we’d have no intention of doing this. We’d rather work an extra year at the higher wages than risk having to re-enter at lower wages for a couple years.

What to do in retirement…that’s the million dollar question, huh!? I’ve always heard it is important to retire “to” something and not to retire “from” something. So I understand where you are coming from. I would be ideally retiring to: delving into the kid’s activities and development (not much unlike what you did with us); hobbies that have gone by the wayside over years like hunting and others; travel with the fam; and finding ways to volunteer for various good causes TBD.

So at this point in time, that’s the thought process. We’ll shoot for $3 million in investment assets not including 529s which will be fully funded in coming years. And it gets squishy when thinking about healthcare and disability insurance, but I have time to figure that out and adjust the plan of course.

Like I said, let me know when it works to chat. I just thought it would be easiest to lay out some of my thoughts before doing so. Thanks again for the email.

What do you think? Decent response? I wanted that to lay some ground work for a good conversation with him. And indeed it was good. We talked for quite a while.

Our Follow Up Conversation

My dad was very excited for us and our plan to retire early. He agreed with a lot of the assumptions including a SWR of 3.0-3.5% and having a baseline of $3 million, recognizing it is a lot of money but can be easy to attain when the snowball starts rolling (the FIRE-Starter that we are still in pursuit of!).

Conversation then focused on life purpose, employment in retirement if extra cash is needed, and healthcare; all three of which are somewhat related to each other. Employment, even part-time, can help fulfill my purpose in life while also help provide for some or all of the cost of healthcare and/or allow me to take advantage of employer sponsored insurance.

When your life is devoted to work it can be hard to think of what will fill that void, and the conversation kept reverting back to part time work. He mentioned how ideal it would be to be paid the same and just work less hours, and how, unfortunately, my career in banking really isn’t feasible for that. So we discussed a number of alternatives.

He mentioned there are plenty of ways to be creative with employment and there are unique opportunities out there if I look hard enough. One example he gave was that an old colleague of his who retired and began delivering RVs across the country. He also mentioned part time consulting, etc, given my banking and finance background.

Then he asked what I will do between 8-3 when the kids are in school? He thought that is when part time employment would be ideal. But what if I don’t need the money, will I be that bored that I revert back to employment? Is retiring to family not enough?

I’ll have 10 years with the kids still in the house which will be great. When they are gone, then what? Well at some point grandkids. I’ve always heard how great it is to have grandkids! :) I’m sure they’ll keep us busy and provide for a great time as well.

So kids will keep me busy and, if I’m so lucky, grandkids as well. What will I do when I get bored?

With the kids gone, Lucy and I will have more flexibility to travel and we’ll no doubt take advantage.

I enjoy reading books, magazines, blogs, etc about a wide-array of topics including history, finance, religion, nature & the outdoors, etc. Does that not provide plenty of rabbit holes to chase down?

I’ll be able to focus more on my health and fitness. It’ll be a lot easier for me to fit in a good balanced exercise program and improve my diet. I enjoy cooking at home with Lucy. We can focus more on new, unique and healthy foods for us and the family.

What about other hobbies or projects? Many hobbies have been pushed to the side as I entered the workforce. This would include hunting, playing various sports (would I be too young to enter an old man basketball or soccer club?), and following college and professional sports more closely.

There are endless great causes I could volunteer my time to as well, including perhaps at the school system in some capacity that my kids will then be attending.

We also talked about his scenario with my mom. They were basically at FI 8 years ago. He wasn’t ready to leave work though because he needed that as his purpose in life. Also, they wanted their dream home on a lake which they had recently moved to, but were still in the process of paying off.

The additional years of employment would allow them to pay that loan off and have more cushion. He also acknowledged how much greater work was knowing that he could quit at any point if he wanted or needed to (albeit then move to a less expensive home). So the “one more year” syndrome was more like eight years for them in order to have the nice lake home for the rest of their lives.

An interesting takeaway from this was when I asked him how he’d fulfill his purpose in life once he does retire from his work here shortly. He said that he didn’t think he would have the need for purpose anymore and that days spent on the lake would be what he will fill his time with.

I think that begs the question for all of us – when will we no longer need that purpose in life filled by work? At what point can we say enough is enough. I’m done climbing that corporate ladder and I’m completely satisfied with a more leisurely lifestyle?

It’s a tough question, one that many retirees struggle with (especially early retirees). I may think I will be ready, but when I’m in the moment I may not be. We all need to try to determine when enough is enough in our lives.

I could probably continue on, but there you have it. My conversation with my Dad on retiring early! And the outcome: much congratulations and excitement, as well as some things to continue to ponder.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree with anything? J. Money thought the parts about not needing purpose anymore was pretty surprising to learn from my dad. Share your own thoughts below and I’ll happily answer any questions!

****** JW is a corporate banker, a small business owner, a personal finance blogger, and a family man with a wife, a kid and another on the way. He amassed his first million by age 30 and is on the path to reach financial independence and retire early in his mid-30s. JW blogs at The Green Swan to help others achieve their financial objectives and believes anyone can be on the path to retire early with the right habits and mindset. You can also find JW on Twitter (@TheGreenSwan1) and on Facebook too.

Sharing My Retirement Plans With My Dad! posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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heliosfinance · 8 years

Text

Sharing My Retirement Plans With My Dad!

*******

To say I was nervous when I saw his email would be an understatement…

Until earlier in January… At that point, Pandora’s Box was opened. And it started with this email. (By way of reference, my dad is currently 63 and plans to retire in 2018)

My Dad’s Email:

Hi JW,

— I don’t think anything greater than a 7% long term return on your investments is realistic. You don’t have to go back too many years where a huge double digit loss was happening

— College education keeps increasing.

— If you ever do decide you want or need to re-enter the work force, it’s really hard to re-enter at the salary you were making before.

When I got to my early 50s I realized:

— I would be really bored.

— I still needed a purpose in life

— By working a few more years, mom and I could have this house and possibly a second home if we wanted.

— It was also a good feeling knowing that we could retire whenever we wanted.

Anyway, a few thoughts I wanted to share. I’d love to help you reach your financial goals if there is anything I can help with.

Have a good day,

Dad

I thought about how best to respond and decided to put some thoughts on paper. I shot him the below email, and then followed up with a phone call. Below is my unedited response to my Dad.

My Email Response:

Like I said, let me know when it works to chat. I just thought it would be easiest to lay out some of my thoughts before doing so. Thanks again for the email.

What do you think? Decent response? I wanted that to lay some ground work for a good conversation with him. And indeed it was good. We talked for quite a while.

Our Follow Up Conversation

So kids will keep me busy and, if I’m so lucky, grandkids as well. What will I do when I get bored?

With the kids gone, Lucy and I will have more flexibility to travel and we’ll no doubt take advantage.

I enjoy reading books, magazines, blogs, etc about a wide-array of topics including history, finance, religion, nature & the outdoors, etc. Does that not provide plenty of rabbit holes to chase down?

There are endless great causes I could volunteer my time to as well, including perhaps at the school system in some capacity that my kids will then be attending.

I could probably continue on, but there you have it. My conversation with my Dad on retiring early! And the outcome: much congratulations and excitement, as well as some things to continue to ponder.

Sharing My Retirement Plans With My Dad! published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

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