#changes in notes and attachments in spring 17

[k4lenz]

i loved you first ✮ chapter 1 - “that’s just the way life goes”

(ted nivison x fem!reader)

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

a/n: i’ve been listening to the song 'i love you, i'm sorry' on repeat, and something hit me really hard about it. so i decided to write an angst fic very much loosely based on the lyrics! childhood best friend!ted that you used to do everything with. i was crashing out hard while writing this, can you tell?? anyway enjoy chapter 1 ahhhhh ALSO I KNOW THIS IS ANGST I SWEAR CHAPTER 2 ITLL GET BETTER IM SORRY but also chapter 2 is gonna be more of this song coded oops. idk if i love this but i hope u guys do :)

playlist: click right here bb

notes: angst, fluff, dating, growing up together, YEARNING, underage drinking, dating, drugs, coming of age, highschool, university, that damn Toyota Tacoma, lunch club + SMPlive mentions, parents mentioned

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

2008. Your parents moved into his hometown in Massachusetts when you were just shy of 10, and became friends with his parents who lived just a few streets away. You shyly greeted him for the first time, and you two just clicked.

You were inseparable from then on, and your parents were so thankful they sent you to the same primary school. And then it continued into middle school, and even highschool. Attached at the hip.

For his 16th birthday, 2014, you bought Ted a polaroid camera. Shabby money you’d gathered up from chores around the house and a job at a cafe. You’d bought him an album for the pictures too, your both signed the back of it. Nonetheless, it still got you the gift. From then on, it was his favourite gift he’d ever gotten. Even if you told him he didn’t have to say that, you’d sparked an interest of photography in him from the beginning.

People, especially your friends, were always suspicious you two were dating. Rather, you’d both always wave it off with a “gross!��� and a laugh.

Despite the lingering touches, on your waist, a hand around your shoulders, a jab in your side, a squeeze in your hand, your hand in his hair.

You two were just friends.

✮

Halfway through the winter, the ground icy and snow piling. January 17th, 2015. He was freshly 17, slowly growing out of his boyish features with his very own 2002 Green Toyota Tacoma and a proper license. So proud of himself.

He’d not come to school on the day because he’d had his test (and he hadn’t wanted to waste his birthday-day doing it the day before).

4pm sharp he was out the front of your house, beeping the horn of his newly owned car and a that big childish grin on his face. The look on his face was familiar to you, like home, recognisable throughout the years and never changing.

You ran out the front door giggling, tripping over your own feet in excitement as he got out of his car and came around to open the passenger side door for you. Giving you a little poke before getting back in the car.

“Y’like it?” “I’ll like it more when you drive me to school every morning! “If I have to.” He’d sigh, albeit exaggerated, but secretly his heart would warm. He’d made you take a picture of him with the car, too. And he’d snuck one of you with it when you weren’t looking.

The winter weather slowly faded, preparing itself for the blossoming flowers of Spring.

Valentine’s Day, 2015. He was beeping again out the front of your house, to your parents usual annoyance and a disturbance to your neighbourhood.

But to give him credit, you’d told him to pick you up 5pm because you’d asked him for more time to get ready. And it was 5:05pm.

You came out of your front door with the biggest smile on your face, cheeks tinged pink, tucking your hair behind your ear, as he stood there with one hand behind his back and the other holding the passenger door open for you.

“What’cha got there, Teddy?” You teased, as he handed you the bouquet of roses, proclaiming they were platonic and watching you giggle.

“Thankyou. They’re beautiful.”

You’re beautiful. is what he wanted to say. And they’re not platonic. And I love you and I always have, since the minute I laid eyes on you.

But instead he grabbed his polaroid camera once you’d sat down in the passenger seat, wanting to snap a picture of you holding the flowers. He used the camera to hide the blush on his cheeks.

Click. He was just saying it in his own way.

You two drove down to the lake, sitting in his car eating snacks you’d bought on the way there and laughing about everything and nothing. Just you two against the world.

His eyes glanced at your lips, and then met your eyes again. Your eyes stared through his soul, your lips found his as if that was all they were ever made to do. The night ended in soft whispers, giggles, his hands on your waist and your arms around his neck, lips interlocked as if they could never part again. as if you were each others air.

Quiet promises of relationships. You two never announced it, but you didn’t ever need to, you came into school holding hands and nobody batted an eye. Like it was bound to happen. As if everybody but you two knew and kept the secret to themselves, waiting for you to finally figure it out.

✮

Many nights were spent sneaking into each other’s houses, into each other’s beds, holding each other close. Beds warm with each other, he typically preferred sneaking into your house. Your sheets warmer, fluffier. More you.

You studied together, stayed together, and worked hard for your final moments of highschool.

You couldn’t have done it without him, and he couldn’t have done it without you.

May, or April, 2016. Prom night. You couldn’t quite remember. The memories got fuzzier as time passed, you’d admit. He waited downstairs, talking to your parents in his best suit and tie, the colour matching your own dress as you finally came down the stairs. He was speechless, his eyes simply absorbing you. He had to make sure the flowers in his hand didn’t drop as he handed them to you and your hand found his chest.

“You okay there, Teddy?” You laughed fondly, eyes glittering and amused.

“You’re the most stunning thing I’ve seen in my entire life.” He’d reply, entranced. Your parents shared a look, raising eyebrows to each other knowing he was the right one for you.

Most of your night spent on the dance floor, twirls and dips and laughter. Your friends altogether, but to him it felt like you were the only person in the room, when he dipped you and kissed you to his favourite song. Your friends gagging playfully, saying you two were straight out of a Disney movie.

The night held a party after with everyone in your year, at some guy’s house you hardly remember. The taste of alcohol on your lips, and Ted’s, you recalled. Snapping drunk Polaroid pictures and singing (screaming) the most popular music like you’d never hear it again.

June 16th, 2016. You wore your graduation caps and robes. He picked you up at 9am, the ceremony started at 11.

He knocked on the door, hair styled, glasses on, robes on, and his graduate cap. Greeting your parents with warm smiles, hugs, and congratulations at your front door as you told them you’d go with Ted and meet them there. It felt like home. He felt like home.

Your parents snapping a picture of you two walking down the driveway hand in hand and sending it to his parents. That picture was your lock screen on your phone for a good long while.

That same stupid damn truck waiting for you in the driveway.

“You look incredible.” He murmured in your ear, voice as sweet as honey, pulling you in for a kiss as soon as he’d opened the door for you to get in the car. You were sure your parents were still watching, but you kissed him back anyway. “You’re not too bad yourself, handsome.”

You sat at the spot near the lake in the car again, for that extra hour you had. You weren’t too heavy hearted, not at all, because you’d both gotten accepted into Ithaca College in New York. Even though everything would be changing, you would have everything changing together. You’d even found a sweet little apartment together, close by to campus. You’d gotten a job at a café down the road, and he was doing editing on YouTube.

You were reminiscing on your best memories of Massachusetts. Of how you met. Of school.

You two against the world.

You and your family cheered loud when your boyfriend got up on the podium and accepted his certificate, your parents sitting right next to his, and you still waiting in line.

His eyes first found his parents, your parents, and then you.

It was always you.

Him and his family cheered loud when you got your own certificate. He was already lined up with the rest of the fellow graduates, holding up his certificate. But he was simply entranced by your wide smile and laughter.

Your eyes first found your parents, his parents, and then him.

It was always him.

Always each other.

You went to a party, laughing getting drunk with your friends. Celebrating what you’d call freedom. Hand in hand. You’d stumbled back into his house, which was now allowed according to your parents and his, because you were both 18.

The next day you were hungover, eyes dreary and heavy with a bit too much alcohol. Regret, pancakes, and those prized hours of sleep.

The day after you were ready. That dumb Toyota Tacoma once again sitting in your driveway at around Midday. Ready for you two to make the trip to Ithaca. The sweltering heat of the start of summer coming down on you two in heavy rays.

Loading your boxes into the car, your parents and his parents chatting in your house. Playfully nudging him while you two walked down the driveway, he gasped.

“Oh, so you want me to drop your precious valuables?”

“No!” You’d squeal, as he set another box down in his boot and lift you up to spin you around. The joy in the air undeniable. Independence and your very own space to yourselves, together.

Everything together. Not a statement, but a promise.

Soft goodbyes to parents, long hugs and promises to call, tears pairing with the new feeling of independence. You felt upset, but also happy. Happy you had set life plans, that you’d graduated and now knew what you were doing, alongside the love of your life.

Ted would always be the love of your life. You were so sure of it at the time.

Endless chatter filled the car as you two drove to Ithaca. He’d insisted on driving, teasing you that you’d crash his car when you’d told him to take a break and let you drive. A few pit stops and many cans is sods and bags of chips later, you were in Ithaca and loading your boxes into your dorm.

Sharing looks at the state of said dorm, but embracing it as your new home anyway. You’d make it your own.

✮

College was hard, but you made time. You were both doing your degrees that went for the same length, and yet you still found time for each other. You always would.

It wasn’t hard to find friends, and considering you and Ted were always attached, you fit in well to a friend group together. Days had studies or work, smoking weed and drinking and parties were what weekend nights held. Kisses and shotgunning, and so much more. Your parents would kill you and his parents would kill him if they knew, but hey, that’s the fun of college.

You watched him start off his YouTube career properly in 2017, as a part time kind of thing. You encouraged him, even, sometimes appearing in the back of his videos. In 2019, sometimes you’d be in a Lunch Club video or two, simply as ‘Ted’s Cool Girlfriend’, and you’d play on his account on SMPLive. You met all of his other friends, and familiarised yourself in his world as the end of your degrees neared.

And yes, you were the girlfriend, with your dad in town, that he had to cancel on when he went to a misfits party during the day, because he did indeed have a 400mg edible. His friends continuously sending you videos of him stuck on the couch, questioning his entire life choices, chugging water for his cottonmouth. Shaking, while narrating the whole situation like it was a storybook. Trying to tough it out. You still have the video on your phone of Schlatt putting a handheld massager on your boyfriend who looks half dead. You’d also made his friends use that old Polaroid camera to take a picture, knowing he’d want to look back at it and laugh.

You’d lied through your teeth to your dad, still laughing at the videos, which hadn’t helped anyway because about a month later Ted posted a video on it anyway. He most definitely got reprimanded by his parents and your own.

✮

As the end of college edged closer, nights were spent studying, or in the library together. Comfortable silences, with the occasional jab or joke. It was all so perfect.

And yet, it almost felt like for once in the last 12 years, you two were living separate lives. Not simply attached at the hip anymore, you two were so different.

You were close, always, but something felt off.

✮

Before you two had began college together, you’d sat in the back of his Toyota Tacoma down at the lake, laying on pillows wrapped up in blankets staring at the stars. A few weeks before highschool graduation.

“We should travel the world together, Teddy. Go see everything amazing out there. You could make a short film of it, or something. Travels with Ted.”

His eyes lit up, the prospect of it making him yearn for the future.

“That’s a stupid name.” He teased. “But I like that.”

You giggled, playfully hitting his chest. “I’m being serious!”

“As am I, that’s a stupid name. And I want to travel with you.” His lips found yours, he kissed you softly, carefully. To show he meant it. “We can start saving.”

✮

And you did start saving, you both were still saving.

And yet you hadn’t talked about it since at least 2018, hadn’t had time to even think about it. Far too busy with the whirlwinds of the world of New York City and College.

You sat on the couch, May 3rd 2020, exactly one month before your graduation.

He sat on the floor while you sat on the couch, his head between your legs facing away while you two watched a movie. His hands on your legs, your hands in his hair. But something felt distant, you felt distant.

You were lost in your thoughts, anxiety creeping up in your gut. Crawling through your body, seeping into your head. You watched his head move to look back at you, and you blinked.

“Are you okay, honey?” He murmured, those big brown eyes finding yours, his voice soothing but ringing through your ears.

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m good. Why?” You managed to stammer out, tone laced with nervousness. You were never good at lying.

“I said somethin’ about the movie and you didn’t reply.” His eyes narrowed, concerned. It was then he noticed your laboured breath, and the rhythmic tapping of your foot against the floor beside him. He reached for the remote to pause the film, and sat beside you on the couch. His hand finding yours, and his shoulder touching yours.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” The words made your throat feel heavy, your lips parting to speak but nothing coming out. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

I do. The thought rattled in your brain, as you built the courage to speak.

“I do.” You could hear that your own voice was shaky. You swallowed hard. “I was just, thinking.. um..”

“That’s rare.” He teased quietly, holding your hand. You laughed quietly, shaking your head.

His joke brought just that little bit of relief, if only for a brief moment. You found your voice.

“I was thinking about our future.” You paused for a moment.

“I was thinking about us.”

You saw his eyes process the statement that was more of a question, with a blink. A thousand unspoken words on his tongue, and your own too.

Are you still coming with me? Is what you were asking. Are we still going to travel together like we always said we would?

He hesitated, and you knew. A little part of you just knew.

“Everything is going really well for me, here.” He almost sounded shameful. His eyes unable to find yours, you knew they were filled with guilt and empty promises.

You hesitated, this time.

“I don’t want to stay.” You were breathless as the words tumbled out of your mouth.

And at that moment, for the first time, you felt worlds apart. His hand on yours felt distant, nothing else in the room but just.. you. You and your own thoughts.

The words had triggered an argument, tears, a fight or flight response. You slept at your friends dorm that night, yet you’d hardly slept at all.

You came back to open arms the next morning, whispered apologies, flowers and pancakes. And the salty taste of tears.

But it felt over. A certain sinking feeling in your gut, eating you up. You knew he felt it too.

Your greatest fear was right there in front of you. Making your hands shake and your knees weak. You and your other half.

You two were finally growing apart.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

[silmarillion-dnd]

Classes & Sub-Classes, part 1:

Barbarian & Bard:

Masterlist

Note; this will not be built up like DND 5e but is heavily inspired by it

Barbarian:

Barbarians are the protector of their people and leaders in times of war, they charge recklessly into danger so their people can stay safe, sacrificing themself if needed. Their courage and strength make them the perfect adventure. They often come from small nomadic tribes and the rootless and hard life is perfect for them, they have strong attachment and loyalty to their family and friends.

Pros: Barbarians have “Barbarian rage”, they get an extra attack at level 5. Barbarians are resistant to physical damage and have advantage in strength. You get a reckless attack on level 2 per short rest.

Cons: You have no connection to the music of Ea unless you reach the Eldritch levels.

Barbarian rage:  Once you have raged the maximum number of times for your barbarian level, you must finish a long rest before you can rage again. You can rage 2 times at level 1, 3 at level 3, 4 at level 6, 5 at level 12, and 6 at level 17. When entering Barbarian rage you get advantage on all your main attacks, not bonus action. Rage damage is +2 up until level 10 where it changes to +3 and at level 16 it changes to +4.

Saving Throws: Advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Equipment:

One martial melee weapon - example; greataxe, broadsword, etc

Any smaller simple weapons that come in a pair - example; two knives, two handaxes, etc

An explorer’s pack and four javelins

Standard Array:

Strength; 15 

Dexterity; 13

Constitution; 15

Intelligence; 11

Wisdom; 12

Charisma; 10

Sub-Classes:

Berserker: When entering rage you become unstoppable and get a bonus action each fifth round, while being immune to becoming frightened you also gain the ability to make others frightened when entering rage for up to 3 turns.

Bane of Tulkas: You are devoted to Tulkas, who has a special interest in you, and you start out as level 3 devote. Your life goal is proving yourself worthy of the Vala Tulkas´s attention, and you do his will gladly. You can reroll saving throws, and gain anything from half damage to almost no damage from lethal blows.

Venturesome: You are quick to anger and have strong morals, you are almost impossible to move and only take half damage from lethal blows. You have advantage when rolling to frightened others around you. (most suitable race is a dwarf)

Cursed (Beast): You have angered one of the Vala, or a powerful Maia, and now when entering rage you become something else, you spring forth claws and your teeth grow sharp and your body stronger and less fragile, when entering your beast form you frightends everyone around you, except your team who knows of your curse and powerful Ainur, you take half damage on lethal blows and can push anyone up to 10 feet away, you also get +2 on strength and Constitution. You have advantage on Dexterity, and your normal form can deceive others around you. You are always angry and tend to push people away from you, you have disadvantage on Charisma. Others might suspect you are cursed and some even feel it and therefore either attack or deny talking to you can your team.

The Guarded: You are very close to your family and history, and try to see the best in everyone. With this path, you can call upon the spirits of your ancestors and they will come and aid you in combat, boosting your confidence and blocking your enemies attacks. When reaching level 15 one of the spirits will become seen to everyone around you when you call for them in battle and you can use them to fight with you. You have advatged in Charisma and sometimes one of your ancestors will whisper down to you and help you outside of battle.

Friend of Nature: You prefer the wild and dream about becoming one with the wildlife and nature around you. You have the ability to talk to animals and advantage on perception cheks.

Most suitable Race: Elvers, except for Cursed and Friend of Nature Sub-Class, are unsuitable races for this class.

Bard:

Bards are either professional storytellers, music composers, or scholars (folk literature, genealogists) they weave magic through their words and music to inspire allies, discourage foes, manipulate, create illusions, and heal wounds. They are masters of song speech and have a natural doorway for the music that Ea is made of - depending on sub-class and race this will increase.

Pros: Advantaged on arcane (with song or music), persuasion (with song or music), have charm person, detect magic, bardic inspiration, song of rest at level 1. 

Cons: Disadvantaged with heavy armor, medium armor, and heavy/big weapons depending on sub-class and race.

Equipment:

One simple light melee weapon - example; rapier, shortsword, etc

One simple light range weapon - example; short bow, light crossbow, etc

1, a diplomat’s pack or 1, an entertainer’s pack

Any kind of musical instrument

Leather armor and a dagger

Standard Array:

Strength; 8 

Dexterity; 15

Constitution; 13

Intelligence; 15

Wisdom; 10

Charisma; 15

Sub-Classes:

Swindler: As a swindler you get advantage on deception, sleight of hand, and perception. You can only use light armor and light weapons. 

Mediums: Talk with any spirits such as Maia and Eldritch even if they can´t speak in common. You get foresight when reaching level 3. You can only use light armor and light weapons. Your connection to the music of Ea is strong, and you have saving throws on storytelling and history as you read the music of the world and let it tell you what has happened and what will happen. 

Warrior: You get advantage on attack rolls when starting a battle, but only in the first round. You can wear medium armor and use any kind of weapon. 

Noble: You have advantage on intelligence and deception, and depending on race and background might even know someone of high social status which will help on your quest. You can wear medium armor and use medium weapons. 

Creator: Talk with any spirits such as Maia and Eldritch but only if you have a language in common. You get foresight when reaching level 3 and can cast fey magic; level 1 faerie fire, level 3 calm emotions, level 5 hypnotic pattern, level 10 modify memory. You have disadvantage on constitution as your connection to the music is greater than your connection to the physical world. You can only use light armor and light weapons. Your connection to the music of Ea is strong, and you have saving throws on storytelling and history as you read the music of the world and let it tell you what has happened and what will happen. You draw your strength from the music and if you succeed a song roll you can get advantage on one of your Array´s, of any choice, for ten rolls when reaching level 7 (you can only do this one pr. long-rest). - this class only works for Elvers, Peredhel´s, and Maiar.

Traveler: You are a natural storyteller and have advantage on perception, intelligence, and wisdom.

Most suitable Race: Any kind of Elvers, Human, Peredhel, and Maia makes the most sense to play as a Bard.

[sondrox]

Through Rocks and Snow Ch. 17 - The Summit

FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14146784/17/Through-Rocks-and-Snow

AO3: Through Rocks and Snow - Chapter 17

17. The Summit

Prompt: Rigid

Before that day, Madeline’s relationship with herself, and by extension, with Badeline, has been nothing short of a wretched one.

Now they’ve had made amends, their relationship had become rigidly tense. Tense as in “Meeting a new distant relative” Tense. Still, climbing the mountain had never been more exciting and Madeline has never thought of herself as more capable than ever.

Trees, undergrowth and sky grew in abundances as they reached the surface. Madeline and Badeline were climbing their way out of the caves just as fast as they have fallen.

In a moment of catharsis, both person and reflection spun into one being. With the determination of Madeline and the power of Badeline, time froze for a second as Badeline launched Madeline through the skies. Everything around around became a blur of snow, sky and sunset where Madeline floated despite the unparallel speed she climbed with.

The moment she reached the forsaken city, Madeline noted something different on the place.

The buildings lit bright and sunlight shone through the window frames and what little broken glass remained attached alike.

The once suffocating sensation of space became as old as the buildings Madeline now traveled through running with the chill wind hitting her face and her pink fluttering free as her.

Did the city change or had Madeline changed instead?

Not so long ago, change may have been the scariest thing for Madeline whereas now excitement and adrenaline rushed through her blood for her and Badeline to spring once more into the sky with the power of the mountain.

Even with her newfound vigor, Madeline couldn’t help but feel uneasy at the place she met the other part of herself, even if her relationship with literally herself was in a whole ‘nother world in comparison, the red-haired girl couldn’t shake the feeling of their lukewarm first encounter they had.

She noticed Badeline also carried mixed feelings in one of their breaks when Madeline had to rest and figure where to go. The person turned to her reflection reluctant. She could feel Badeline stare on the back of her head burning; Just like she felt on the city behind them.

“You’re thinking about too, right?”

Badeline pressed her lips together in a curved line and shied her eyes away from Madeline into the giant view of an once great city. “I just don’t know how to feel. I always thought we would be nothing more than enemies or allies at best, always trying to control everything about the other. Is so…complicated to put all that in words.”

“You don’t need to.”

Madeline’s word pulled Badeline out of her head, startling her as if she had just woken up from a bad dream.

Madeline smiled with smiled with shame and a tad of laughter seeing the same confusion and empty headedness that plagued herself since forever. “You don’t need to explain. I feel the same.”

Badeline opened her mouth but no words came out. Her breath stopped midway before shame invaded her and her lips pressed together in a twisted S form. “I’m sorry,” She whimpered with half closed eyes filled with tears on the edge.

“I know and it’s okay.” Madeline opened her arms wide.

“Are you seriously asking for a hug right now?” She asked between small coughs trying to contain her cry.

“I’m trying to do something nice for us.” Madeline’s tone grew irritated. Slowly but surely, Badeline accepted the hug. They stayed in that position until Badeline’s breathing soothed.

After a while they arrived to the backdoor of the celestial resort, expecting to find Oshiro as soon as they put a foot in. The storage room they entered was surprisingly clean of dust and webs.

“I remember this place in a lot worse shape,” Badeline said to the air as she idly grabbed a bag of food for birds with disinterest.

“Badeline.”

“What? Is true. That old weirdo forced you to do his job. It would not be the first time.”

“He needed help.”

“You needed help. Help I tried to give you, by the way, and you ignored me for the umpteenth time.”

“This time was dif–“

“This time was no different than all those times you ignored what was best for you.” Badeline teleported behind Madeline and grabbed her by her shoulders to turn her to the nearest exit. “Please.”

The new, cleaner and far more spacious Celestial Resort allowed person and reflection to get out of the large storage room in a matter of minutes, and before they knew it, the vast and colorful scenery of the golden and purple ridge filled their eyes. As soon as Madeline exposed to open air, wind fluttered against her hair and the cold breeze froze her red cheeks.

“This place was always this quiet?” Badeline asked upon materializing above Madeline.

“Er, sort of. I suppose that’s why I went here after…”

“Yeah,” She said irritated.

“Yeah,” She said ashamed.

“What is it with you running away like that whenever trouble appear”

“Were you not the cause of those impulsive ticks?”

Badeline stopped her “walk” mid-air. “Hey, don’t throw me under the bus like that.” She growled with her nose and some cold air could be seen coming out. “If anything, I was the one who learned that from YOU after you…kicked me out.”

“Sorry about that again.”

“Don’t care, didn’t ask.”

Madeline couldn’t help but notice the wind in the ridge blew stronger than last time. She soon became aware if it wasn’t for Badeline, she wouldn’t have made it to the Mirror Temple.

The once dark lit temple now was illuminated in almost every surface and corner. Madeline stopped to contemplate the temple, now in all of its magnific. “This is all my doing?” She asked to the large space in the room.

“This WAS your doing,” Badeline rectified. “I told you, the temple reflects your mind, but you didn’t listen to me, as usual.”

“Okay, okay, no need to gloat about it, what do we do now?”

“Miss problems asking for help? I thought I’d never live to see this day.”

“Don’t jinx about it,” Madeline poorly mimicked Badeline’s voice being done with it all.

“Okay, okay. Just listen to me and keep your mind calm.”

And so she did after Badeline returned to Madeline and her hair turned pink again. All she had to do was listen to her instincts and everything would be okay as her reward.

The full weight of her journey fell upon her head when she realized she had climbed what took her two—almost three days—in a couple of hours.

Strong and aggressive breezes of wind hit her body. They threatened to freeze her bones and hindered her every move rigid and tense. Madeline knew she could fly away if she was not careful.

Amidst the excitement and joy inflating her chest, Madeline couldn’t shake the feeling of shame. How much else could have she gained and achieved from the beginning, only if she had not been so messed up.

Madeline would always wonder about the “what ifs” and “coulds”, “woulds”, and of course, the “only ifs” alike. How could she not? What laid inside her had been the reason she almost gave up and now it was that very same thing the reason she was achieving her goal.

Right there, in the verge of reaching the summit, how could she forget?

She could not. She would not.

Not as an intrusive thought as before, but as a willful reminder.

And what a willful, cherishable reminder she’d have as her steps in the chill snow reached the red flag at the very top of the summit. Madeline could catch the sunset hiding in the horizon painting her skin in a dim orange tone and witness the view of her whole journey since she started at the very same drive that almost stopped her.

[saemi-the-writer]

Just wished to share some templates and memes for my Arcana OCs, so I’m starting with Niamh^^. And yes, I am indulging myself with everyone being on good terms/friends XD (let me dream!)

Note: opinions “what do they think of X so far?” below is her opinion at the end of the prologue!

1. Name? Surname?

Niamh Griffin

2. Any family?

2 aunts: Lucina and Izumi, a twin brother: Réamann and a cousin: Erwin. Parents (deceased): Gaia Scribonius and Bith Griffin.

3. Any familiar?

No (not yet).

4. Asra, Nadia or Julian?

Asra. Otherwise: Portia!

5. Best strength in magic?

“Domestic”/cooking magic, she has a special talent in offering these little things of daily life that just makes you happy. She also can easily changes the size and strenghten any object she grabs, which is really handy when she packs for traveling (think of Mary Poppins’ bag), a pin or a needle can become a weapon when she enlarges it, but her favourite is the frying pan! (classical but efficient!! xD )

6. Favourite colour?

Pink and turquoise.

7. Favourite number?

8

8. Sexuality?

Bi/pansexual

9. Weird hobby?

Collecting various items, sometimes recycling them.

10. Favourite season?

Spring!

11. Favourite weather?

Sunny days and misty days.

12. Favourite place in Vesuvia?

The Market Place.

13. How their laughter sounds like?

Gleeful, quite loud.

14. How do they look like when they cry?

Niamh tends to cover her mouth when she cries (to drown her voice) and her face becomes red.

15. What do they like to wear?

Pants! Not that she hates dresses or skirts, far from it, but she’s more comfortable and looks more elegant wearing pants. She likes to associate “comfy and pretty” or “sober and elegant”. Also: celtic style/embroideries! After meeting Asra and going to the Palace, she comes to love Prakra fashion too, loving the bright and vibrant colours.

16. What are their fears?

o   Isolation, loneliness

o   Her close ones’ death

o   Of never being enough

17. What do they like to do Friday night?

Wrap in a blanket and sit on the bed with a mug of steaming hot tea to discuss or read a book.

18. Do they use makeup?

Occasionally, on special occasions. A bit of red lipstick or foundation when she feels like it on casual days, otherwise she stays natural.

19. Favourite food?

Spicy roasted potatoes, with some herbs.

20. Favourite drink?

Tea, her two favourites are jasmine tea and assam with cinnamon.

21. Zodiac sign?

Taurus.

22. Day of birth?

May 15th

23. Favourite play?

“A Midsummer Night's Dream”

24. Favourite music?

Celtic folk, ballads, bard songs.

25. Favourite song?

“Tir Na Nog”

26. What are their aesthetics?

27. What is their style?

Cute, preppy, celtic, roman.

28. Any mental health issues?

Her crisis are due to her resurrection, she needs time to recover and adjust. But she might suffer of some PTSD.

29. Any health issues in general?

She gets sensitive to the cold and is prone to headaches.

30. Are they human?

Yes.

31. Favourite book?

“The Little Prince”.

32. Favourite book genre?

Fantasy Romance and adventure.

33. Favourite time of the day?

Dawn.

34. If they weren’t magician, who would they be?

She would be either an herbalist or a cook.

35. Do they believe in ghosts?

Yes, but not the common myth/folklore.

36. Do they believe in demons?

Of course! (they are real after all…)

37. Do they like sport?

Yes.

38. How do they look like?

drawing by @greyhands​, thank you!!

39. What is their biggest motivation to solve Lucio’s killer mystery?

To seek, find and reveal the truth, so everyone can get a closure to this sordid tale.

40. What do they think of Lucio so far?

A man whose shadow won’t leave Vesuvia. She doesn’t know what to think of him (yet), but her cousin Erwin seemed very attached to him so she guesses he must have had some good in him.

41. What do they think of Nadia so far?

A proud woman who suffers of a similar condition. She admires her determination and desire to refurbish the city, but she also thinks Nadia can be a bit arrogant and difficult.

42. What do they think of Asra so far?

Asra is both her master and the man she loves. She just wishes he would talk to her and stop leaving so often.

43. What do they think of Julian so far?

An elusive man. She is not certain of his guilt, he really didn’t strike her as a murderer, but she doesn’t know what to think either. And he is Portia’s brother…

44. What do they think of Portia so far?

CUTIE! She is very happy Portia befriended her so fast and loves sneaking around with her in the Palace. Bonus for sharing some gossips between giggles.

45. What do they think of Muriel so far?

Mysterious giant?? Seriously, she has no idea who this man is! (yet)

46. Do they like animals?

Heck yeah!

47. Are they allergic to anything?

Viciousness?

48. Do they have any talents (except magic)?

Cooking (without magic). When she doesn’t know how to express herself with speech, she has a way with writing (not poetry though) or dancing and singing to express herself.

49. Do they get drunken easily?

Yes! This girl can’t hold her liquor!

50. What is their personality type?

ENFJ

51. What is their worst negative quality?

Touchy, stubborn, overly idealistic.

52. What is their best positive quality?

Altruistic, creative, courageous.

53. What is their position to fall asleep?

Lying sideways on the bed. On the right side most of times.

54. The most uncomfortable moment they ever experienced?

Before death: when she realized her “friend” was toxic and yet she felt like she was worthless.

After resurrection: the first time she saw Réamann again, she blacked out and Asra ended up crying in her arms while she had no idea what was going on.

55. Their happiest memory?

When she was surrounded by all the people she loved again, at last.

56. Do they blush?

Yes.

57. Are they clumsy?

No.

58. Do they like jokes?

She likes to do some pranks!

59. How do they flirt?

Either very corny or blunt. She’s better at flirting back.

60. Favorite fruit?

Apples and raspberries.

61. Favorite flower?

Yarrow.

[lunarliza]

Dirty Little Secret | Chapter 4: Ferry Tickets

fuckbuddy!JJ x kook!reader

series masterlist | prev. chapter | chapter one

You and JJ are fuck buddies- strictly physical. But what happens when you find yourself falling more and more for everyone’s favorite golden boy even though all he can see you as is a spoiled rich girl?

note: smut ... like right under here 

“Fuuuck me,” you whimpered, face pressed down to your floral pillowcase. 

“You like that don’t you?” JJ’s hand twisted your hair as the other smacked the side of your ass while he slid himself in and out of you from behind. 

Ted and your mom went into the city for a few days while Macy was off at her tennis lesson which left you with an big empty house for the morning. You had contemplated doing a sunrise yoga on the beach or riding your bike along the pier, but a surprise text from JJ had you cancelling all your self-care plans. 

Which is how you ended up in your current position- under him, back arched, and feeling his thick cock stretch you out. 

“Mm,” you whined, lifting your eyes to his hungry ones as you watched him take you. You felt the cold metal from his rings cling onto your sweaty skin when his hands moved to grip both sides of your hips. 

“Mm, play with me.” 

JJ’s hands snaked around to your wet clit where he gently rubbed you back and forth. It sent you over the edge as you moaned louder into the pillow you were clenching. 

He came into the condom and pulled out of you, collapsing onto your side in a fit of pants. His gold locks were disheveled on his face as his broad chest heaved up and down. You laid in your current position for a few moments, collecting yourself, before springing to the bathroom to get cleaned up. 

You expected him to be gone once you got out, but, much to your surprise, JJ was still submerged in your fluffy white comforter, underwear on, scrolling through his phone. Slightly taken aback, you flopped down next to him. 

You and JJ had this unspoken no cuddling or pillow talk rule, but you decided that, after three months of fooling around, you could at least engage in small talk. 

“Why’d you call me up so early?” you asked, hugging your knees. 

“I was at the store and saw your parents getting gas to leave town. Didn’t see you in the car so I thought you’d be home alone,” he smirked, still glued to his phone, “and I was right.”  

JJ paid a lot of attention to little things- more so than you thought. Here and there he’d bring up a small fact he remembered about you like how you’d braid your hair before swimming or how he saw you talking to someone he thought you didn’t like. It was odd, but you pushed it aside. 

Another thing that always fazed you about him was why he was so open to sleeping with you. You assumed it was him getting off on the satisfaction of fucking a Kook, but the hateful remarks he made the other day on the boat with Rafe confused you. 

“Since when did you start hanging out with Topper and Rafe?” he asked, tossing his phone to the side.

You didn’t expect that question from him. “I don’t. Jade just dragged me with her because she’s trying to get with Rafe.” 

JJ snorted. “Oh Jade... she has a nice rack. And she can do way better than him, he looks like a celery.” 

You giggled at his uncanny comparison. “Hey JJ.” 

He lifted his eyebrows, leaning over on his side. “It was you that day wasn’t it? The day you caught me smoking, you’re the one who fucked up Topper’s bike.” 

You had always wondered what on earth JJ was running from the day you two met. You almost forgot about it until Topper brought up his messed up bike on the boat. You remembered hearing him whine about it months ago during class, the Monday after, and mentally put the pieces together. 

“What’s it to ya?” JJ responded, growing peeved. 

You shrugged. “Just wondering. I just don’t get this war between you guys. It’s honestly ridiculous, like what good is throwing shit at each other or punching each other gonna do?” 

The light-haired boy groaned and sat up in annoyance. “Of course you wouldn’t get it. You’re a fucking Kook. You can do whatever the hell you want- buy whatever you want, hurt whoever you want- and get away with it. Nothing ever affects you because at the end of the day, you just come straight home to your gated neighborhood with not a spec on your back. You’ll never know what it’s like to not have everything you want!” 

You scoffed and crossed your arms, standing from the bed to get away from him. “Well guess what, prick? I actually do know what it’s like. I didn’t always have this stupid life!” 

You ran your hands through your hair and avoided his gaze. That was probably the first time you confessed that out loud to someone since you moved. You heard JJ shift a little on your bed as pure silence soon enveloped you both. 

Since he was already there, why not just let the entire cat out the bag?

“I use to live in a small town outside of Charlotte. My parents didn’t have a lot but they tried to give me and my sister everything they could. My dad would come home late sometimes- there were days when we wouldn’t even see him. My mom sold clothes, shoes, hats, anything she could make at home so we could eat.” You turned to face him. “And as much as it fucking sucked, I liked it better that way than now.” 

“So what happened?” JJ peered up at you with sheer orbs and, for a moment, you forgot about his tactless, cold-blooded self. 

You sighed and pursed your lips. “My parents divorced because my dad kept having to leave and I moved homes for a few years. Then my mom met Ted and I was, unwillingly, initiated to this Kook life.” 

JJ lifted his eyebrows in shock. “You know most people see that as a like a Cinderella story.” 

“Well I see it like hell.” 

He let out a soft chuckle. 

“I know I should be more grateful of everything, but it’s just hard. And weird.” You’re back sitting beside him on the bed at this point. “Like, I’m just not use to this. I’ve never had a phone with internet until now and my mom keeps wanting me to pretend I’m some preppy fairy. And the kids here all suck. They have no personality other than their clothes and cars, and they don’t like me cause I don’t give a shit about that stuff. I really do hate it here. And I miss my dad. I haven’t seen him in years.” 

You plopped your head on the pillow and stared at your ceiling. It was nice to get all that off your chest, especially to JJ who’s been shoving his preconceived notions down your throat. 

“Well I almost feel sorry for you,” JJ said jokingly as you playfully shoved him. 

“But I get it, kinda. I don’t know. My mom passed away, so it’s just me and my dad. He’s,” he paused for a moment, “he has his quirks, you can say. We don’t get along too well, and he’s too busy working to really give me any real attention. It sucks.” 

“I’m sorry,” you comforted as he maneuvered so he was laying down next to you. You both rested side by side, fixated on your plain white ceiling. It was nice to finally talk to JJ without making a snide comment every two seconds. 

“Do you think it’ll get any better?” you asked, out of the blue. 

“You wanna know the truth?” You turned to your side, tucking your arm under your head, ready for his spiel. 

“I think we’re where we are for a reason. Do I wanna get the fuck outta here sometimes? Yeah. But I just know I’m meant to have this life and there’s not much I can do to get out. Just gotta take it day by day.” 

“C’mon, you never dreamed of going anywhere else in the world? Traveling?” you raised, a bit more enthusiastic than you intended to let on. 

JJ exhaled. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

The two of you laid in a comfortable silence for a while longer. There was, finally, an air of understanding between you.

“Why don’t you come to our side then?” JJ asked after a few minutes. “If you hate it here in Kookville so much, why don’t you try the other end for a change?” 

“I don’t know. My stepdad thinks The Cut is literally a death wish. He wouldn’t even let my mom go grocery shopping near there. It’s honestly kinda weird to me why he hates it so much.” 

“And he never told you why?” 

You shook your head and JJ retreated in thought. “I think he’s hiding something. Probably has a mistress over there to be honest.” 

You laughed and hit his stomach. “No! Him and my mom are literally attached by the hip! I don’t know... One day Macy went over to see a friend she met and he just flipped. Went over, took her away and everything. Maybe he’s just classist. I mean, he’s old money so I wouldn’t be surprised. But if he is then he wouldn’t have married my mom.” 

“Maybe...” JJ muttered. “I still think he’s hiding something. Could be drugs. You know I see Kook guys come over for coke sometimes. Then, on their lunch breaks, their dads come for the same thing. Father and son bonding if you ask me.” 

“Well, whatever it is, we can add this case to our mystery book,” you laughed. A real, heartfelt laugh. 

You and JJ spent the remainder of the morning talking about your lives, learning how wrong you each were about the other. He told you about the Pogues and how his friend Kiara, who you recognized from school, hangs out with them despite being wealthy herself. On the other hand, you continued to complain to him about all the stuck up nonsense your mother would make you do- to which he actively listened and pitched in his own amusing opinions. 

“What do you need etiquette lessons for? How hard is it to stick your pinky out when you drink?” 

The topic then switched to Topper and his crew. You settled on calling them the Veggie Tales which made you both erupt in laughter. “What was your first time like?” you asked bluntly. 

He threw you an odd look, but continued. “Tourist at a party. I was 15 and I think she was 17? I dunno, but she sure showed me the ropes that night.” He beamed up at the ceiling, thinking back to the time. 

“Aren’t all first times supposed to be really awkward and bad?” 

“Maybe. I don’t really remember it. Just her. She was fine as hell,” he had on his dreamy eyes. “What was your’s like?” 

You let out a sharp breath. You’d never told anyone about it until now. “Before I left the city I was dating this guy for a little while. He came from farmers, so we did it in his uncles barn.” 

“Aw, how romantic,” JJ commented before you smacked him with a decorative pillow. 

“Ow! What? I thought every girl’s dream was to do it with the chickens watching.” 

Your face knotted. “It was horses. And I still have nightmares to this day about the hay sticking at my ass.” 

The boy next to you snickered and went on to tease you about your story, cracking all the farm jokes his little blonde head could come up with. 

“I should get going soon,” JJ informed when you both settled down, “Thursdays I meet Kie at The Wreck to help out.” 

Your eyes jolted. “Thursday?!” 

You soared up from your bed and checked the time on your phone. “Fuck fuck fuck!” Your hands tangled up in your hair in stress. “My debutante lessons!”

“What the fuck is that?” 

“I have to go to Chapel Hill, my ferry leaves in 20 minutes,” you explained while hastily shoving heels into your canvas bag. Then it occurred to you that your parents took your car because theirs was in the shop. 

“Fuck! JJ did you drive here?” 

“Yeah, I parked my friend’s van by the gate,” he answered, still confused at the gibberish you spoke moments ago. 

“JJ I need you to take me to the dock right now! Please! I can’t miss this ferry.” 

“Alright, alright, hurry up then woman! The van only goes up to 110 on a good day.” JJ struggled to get his clothes back on and didn’t even notice his t-shirt on backwards.

You both sprinted out your house and to the front of the neighborhood, past the gate, and towards a clunky old Volkswagen that was parked on the side of the road. You hurried in as JJ fumbled with the keys before thrusting it in the ignition and speeding off towards the dock. 

“Fuck we’re not gonna make it!” you stressed, balling your sweaty palms, as your legs bounced on the torn up seat.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry! She’s old but just give her a minute,” JJ assured before he revved the engine and flew down the street. You were concerned at how he expertly steered the old clunker at 105 miles per hour but were too anxious about missing your trip to bring it up. 

He finally pulled up to the side of the dock. You sighed in relief, seeing people still boarding.

“Aaand here we are! With 3 minutes to spare,” JJ announced, flipping his blonde locks, proud of his Speed Racer work. 

“Thank you for the ride JJ,” you said as you exited the van, “and the heart attack.” 

“Hey, you got here in once peace didn’t you? So I don’t wanna hear it!” 

You giggled and shut the door, heading towards the herd of people while you dug in your bag for your ferry ticket. 

“Have fun at your degenerate lessons!” JJ called out the window at you before speeding away. 

You shook your head with a goofy grin before getting on. 

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

chapter five

tags: @starkeybaby​ @obxlife​ @everydayimfangirling​ @iamaunicorn4704​ @tangledinsparkles​ @poguesrforlife​ @thx-quxxn​ @obxmxybxnk​ @rororo06​ @poguesforlife​ @ilymarkchan​ @outrbanks​ @hazelgirl355 @hsunflower @cinnamon-roll-seth​ @alotbnouf @tembo-ndoto​

[eclecticash22]

🔮 September Month Ahead Reading 🔮

Take a few deep breaths, trying your best to relax with each one. Then take a moment to look over each pile. Follow your intuition and choose the pile you are most drawn to.

*This pick a card got pretty in depth and is longer than usual. I really enjoyed doing this reading and I hope you enjoy it as well!*

Pile One

I see at the beginning of the month, something may have you on edge. Watch out for someone who may try to lie to you, cheat you in some way, or deceive you. Also, be honest with yourself and others. As the month goes on I see a new beginning for you and it is one of happiness and peace. I love the Ace of Pentacles, because for me it is about relief of stresses and worry. I also see forward movement and success coming towards you this month as well. Whatever you are starting, it is sure to work out wonderfully. I see you're ending out the month either receiving help or giving help. You may be reaching out to a family member or friend for help about something or this could be a family member or friend reaching out to you. Either way, be open and honest with communications, as I see you nurturing your emotional health by the end of this month.

So I'm definitely picking up on some major event vibes happening. This major event may not be happening this month (for some of you it could be), however I do think this month is important in leading up to this major event. I see this month that you're really taking charge and planning your next steps. The new beginning that is happening is not only going to feel like it's a relief, but it will also be exciting. You're planning carefully, but having fun in the process. I think for a lot of you, this is a change that involves marriage, moving homes, moving jobs, etc. For some, I do see the possibility of a breakup, but that isn't for many of you. I do see that this is big and it will be something you're committing to. Whatever this is, you're going to be successful, so make sure to take care of yourself and have fun!

Charms: I do see you springing forward this month into something that you're going to be attached to. Whether this is a person, job, place, hobby, etc. I do see you having a fun time. Any time I see the Groot figurine I always hear, "Be your own hero." This month you're stepping up and being your own hero, making things happen for yourself.

Runes: Some of you may be inheriting something this month. There is a new beginning full of prosperity and wonderfulness coming your way. You will be seeing the outcome of your hard work, and it will be good.

Important Letters: X, R, C, Z, S, B, E, L, R, I, N

Important Numbers: 13, 22, 5, 9, 10

Shufflemancy Songs: Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall by Coldplay | Can't Help Falling In Love cover by Twenty One Pilots | Be Alright by Dean Lewis | Eh, Eh by Lady Gaga

Pile 2

At the beginning of the month, I see you being very nurturing towards yourself and others. This could also indicate a person who is being very nurturing towards you at the beginning of the month. Going on into the month, I see you reminiscing and looking back at the past, but not necessarily in a bad way. I feel this is more looking how far you've come and seeing where all the events in your life have taken you. This is realizing where you are now, and being proud of how far you've made it. I also see some change coming your way that is actually quite positive. The death card always represents change, not death- though it can be seen as a metaphorical death. Something is changing and becoming better for you, which leads us to the end of your month. I see at the end of the month, you're going to be abundant and thriving. I see you being happy and prosperous. Remember to express gratitude to the universe and treat yourself kindly this month!

This month I see you may be looking within yourself to make some change in your life. You're looking for the next step, but taking the time out to retreat within and learn more about yourself and what you want. I do see you may possibly be feeling inspired this month and overcoming challenges. I do see you learning a lot this month, not only about yourself, but learning life experience as well. Things are falling into place and they're looking pretty good. There may be some setbacks, possibly with disagreement and/or a disappointment, but the situation will work out for the best. You're going to be successful, and you're going to move forward to better things. Just make sure you're on the right track to what you really want.

Charms: I see this month that you're being careful. You're working towards turning over a new leaf. You're taking control and making your life yours, just be open to and accepting of help when you need it. I also see communication here, which can also be indicated by the eight of wands you got. Someone may be reaching out to you to tell you they love you. Know you are loved. I see this month as positive for you. Music may be important this month.

Runes: You may be receiving some inheritance or realizing a birthright this month. This month I see you as having bravery, energy, courage, and having faith in yourself and the situation. Change is happening. This could be destined. Relocation is possible this month.

Important Letters: B, N, F, C, E, H, A, E

Important Numbers: 13, 4, 12, 18, 16, 19

Shufflemancy Songs: Colors by Halsey | Secret Love Song by Little Mix | The Way You Look Tonight by Frank Sinatra | Leave (Get Out) by JoJo

Important Note: The angel number 555 may be important this month.

Pile Three

At the beginning of this month I see you feeling proud of yourself. Feeling proud of where you're at, the work you've done, and who you are. Going on into the month, I see you tapping into the free spirited, spiritual, creative part of yourself. I see you being grounded, feeling calm and peaceful, and really taking care of yourself. You may be feeling creative or adventurous this month as well. I definitely see the arts as being important this month. Possibly painting or crafting, but could be other things such as theater, music, writing, hair, makeup, photography, etc. Finding inspiration will come easy to you this month and you're going to be tapping into that inspiration to express yourself. At the end of this month, I do see that you may be feeling stuck or have the feeling of "one step forward, two steps back." Make sure that if this happens, you reevaluate the path you're on and see if there is another way to get where you are going. You may have drifted off the path you were on, and may be needing to get back on track.

This month, I do think you're feeling creative and expressive. You're taking the time out to focus on your mental and/or emotional health by expressing yourself in ways you find artistic and enjoyable. This may be a necessary break for you, as I do see that there is some stagnant energy here. Remember, take a break when you need to and make sure to take care of yourself. And I see you doing that. You're focusing on you and being your badass, amazing, and absolutely fantastical self. You have hope for the future, as you've seen how far you have come in life. I do see you being successful on getting back on track after this break you're taking. This month, you may be celebrating something with friends or family. These relationships are also important this month. This month is definitely one of expression for you, as you've gotten the Page of Cups twice. I see you letting something go and letting a cycle end. Rather than holding onto things, I see you releasing it. This could be pent up feelings, bottled up emotions, past situations, past relationships, etc. But after you release what's holding you down, you're setting yourself free and allowing yourself to move forward and open up to better things.

Charms: I see a lot of self exploration here. You may be tapping into your emotions and allowing yourself to sort through things you've repressed. Friendship may be important to you this month. You're letting go of attachments and allowing yourself to be free of them. You're bringing yourself to a comfortable place and allowing yourself to venture into new things. The number 4 indicates your angels are with you, helping you prepare for what is to come but also encouraging you to ask for help.

Runes: Creativity is important this month. Connecting to others will be important this month, as well as connecting to the self. Meditation may be helpful this month. Have faith in yourself, your skills, and what you are capable of. Have the bravery to believe in yourself and move forward towards the goals you have.

Important Letters: A, T, W, N, Y, V, P, T, Z, W, Q, P, B

Important Numbers: 19, 3, 22, 1, 5, 19, 17, 8, 10

Shufflemancy Songs: I Never Wanted To Go by Willamette Stone | Tell Me You Love Me by Demi Lovato | Express by Christina Aguilera | Applause by Lady Gaga

***All Groups***

Thank you so much for your time! I really hope the reading resonated for you. Pile 1 and Pile 2 were also pretty similar with some themes. So if you chose one of those piles, please feel free to look at the other one. Thank you again, and I hope you have a lovely day and an incredible month ahead!

DISCLAIMER: This reading is a collective reading. It may not resonate, and if it doesn't that is okay. Take what does resonate and/or choose another pile. This reading is also for entertainment purposes. Any decision you make is your own decision. I am not responsible for any decision you make.

[mimik-u]

Flower Child, Chapter 17: Fall

AO3 Link

i.

In defiance of every atom, of every primordial instinct that told her to run, Priyanka Maheswaran found herself in the slaughterhouse as the steel analog clock on the wall dragged her into the next minute.

5:55 PM.

But the hands of time were relentless. They kept moving, kept circling across the swath of smooth white. Seconds and seconds and seconds. Unthinking. Disinterested. Inexorable. 

Seconds and seconds and seconds.

They piled upon the altar like dry kindling. One spark, and they would smoke; they would simply burn, and the reek of charnel would suffocate her where she languished and sat in the slaughterhouse, where all dreams crumbled—embers becoming charcoaled dust.

5:56.

In approximately two hundred and forty seconds, in four minutes more, Steven Universe’s guardians would file in through the door directly across from the nephrologist. She would implore them to sit with a terse nod of her head. She would not tell them that the medical staff who worked on the Truman Ward colloquially called the conference room directly across the nurse’s station—this very room—the slaughterhouse, where doctors brought the family members of patients in and didn’t leave them unchanged when they finally came out.

I’m sorry, they would say to someone’s mother, father, sibling, lover, friend, daughter, son. 

We did all that we could, but the damage was too extensive.

We’ve tried everything, but your loved one is dead.

Your loved one is going to die.

I’m sorry, she would say.

She would adopt her best patient voice, which had only ever managed to be adequate. It wouldn’t be enough; her throat would strain against the sound, the crease between her eyes betraying that she was afraid.

They would see right through her.

I’m sorry, she would say anyway. She would plead. It would be the last defense against complete dissolution that she had.

She’d bring the cleaver down upon the smiles she’d wrought on their careworn faces only just that morning. 

It would be quick and brutal.

Barbaric even.

I’m sorry.

She had not intended to come here—not for any patient if she could help it.

Not for Steven Universe most of all.

But life was perverse, and it was so damn unkind; it knew nothing of intentions and hopes, dreams and childish wishes. It cared little for found families and fourteen-year old boys who needed kidneys.

5:57.

Priyanka sat at the head of the long table, her hands clasped in a rigid temple upon its smooth, gray surface, knuckles white from the simple exertion of clenching them. And then, as the seconds ticked by, as they smoked, as they gathered, as they burned, the room dissolved beneath her, stolen into nothingness by the snatch of a memory, an echo from a ghost who died nearly fifteen years ago…

She had possessed a beatific smile.

Her hair fell across her gowned shoulders in flowing, pink ringlets.

Rose Quartz went into labor two weeks before her due date.

It was a starless August night.

Balmy.

The world outside slept, lulled by the susurrant hush of the wind.

Though her contractions were coming steadily, Dr. Howard’s parenthetically lined mouth grew thinner each time his hawklike eyes slid towards the monitor which registered the twenty-six year old’s increasing blood pressure. She’d been admitted the week prior for severe headaches, a symptom consistent with her kidney disease, sure, but her blood tests indicated that she was hypertensive, too.

They started her on corticosteroids to help the baby’s still-developing lungs.

Dr. Howard took Priyanka off of all her other cases.

Made it her priority to stick to Room 11078 and to page him immediately if Rose’s blood pressure spiked to 140/90 mm/Hg.

“Because we’ll have to deliver the baby right then and there,” he stressed gravely,“if we want any chance of saving them both.”

He was talking obliquely about preeclampsia, a birth condition which began with high blood pressure and often ended with damage to the livers or kidneys.

And Rose Quartz’s kidneys were already shit, so there was that, and here was yet another sordid item to add to the ever growing list of what was wrong with the poor woman’s body.

Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl had all gone back to the hotel room for the night—against their wills, protesting—but Rose had made them, had told them to go on ahead, to get some sleep. She would see them in the morning. She loved them.

Goodnight.

And Greg was in the hallway, making a call to an insurance provider, which left Priyanka alone with Rose, who was propped up against two pillows on her hospital bed, palming her stomach protectively as she idly watched whatever was playing on TV—some offbeat sitcom or another. Frankly, Priyanka neither knew nor care. Scrunched up in one of the hardback chairs off to the left of Rose’s bed, she scratched harsh notes on her chart for the want of something to do.

To combat the growing feeling clambering up the rungs of her constricted throat.

To drown out the laugh track.

Those nameless people, that detached crowd, they laughed and laughed and laughed.

She couldn’t see what was so fucking funny, and she intimated as much without ever realizing it, scoffing just as her pen decided to run out of ink.

(It wasn’t really about the pen.)

“You seem exhausted, Priyanka,” Rose Quartz said softly, and it was with a jolt that the resident realized that she had been caught out.

Discovered.

Seen.

She flushed as she felt rather than saw that familiar, dark eyed gaze settle upon her gently—like a blanket, warm and encompassing. She stared obstinately at her clipboard, trying to will her own scribbles to make sense in a world that had currently lost its ever loving mind.

“I’ve been working overtime all week,” she said shortly, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. The wooden armrest pressed stiffly against her back, an unwelcome hand upon her spine. “Of course I’m exhausted.”

“Then you should go home. Get some rest.”

“Dr. Howard assigned me to your case again.

“Excuses, excuses,” Rose clucked, teasing, fond, amused. “He can’t make you work overtime.”

Priyanka was simply furious with herself. 

With a final click of her useless pen, she replaced it in the lapel of her scrubs and finally met her patient’s gaze with a steeliness that she hoped would wound, cut, eviscerate.

But nothing, not even the possibility of her imminent death, seemed to faze the woman, who stared at her evenly, with all the air of someone waiting patiently to explain the turn of the seasons to a child who wondered where the leaves had all gone.

Change was inevitable.

Winter became spring became summer became fall.

I want to leave them with roots, Priyanka, she’d explained in that tiny examination room, so many months ago. She’d taken the resident’s hand and intertwined it with her own. A faint floral scent wreathed her hair. Strawberries, maybe. Wild and sweet. I want them to have the chance to grow…

“It isn’t looking too good, is it?” Rose asked, her voice so casual that they could have merely been discussing a chapter from a really sad book. 

And the princess didn’t get to live happily ever after. And the evil forces prevailed in the end. And Rose Quartz’s body was rapidly shutting down. And there was nothing they could do about it, or more accurately still, they were doing everything.

And nothing was entirely working.

Priyanka’s dark eyes flitted to the number she had just recently scrawled on her chart in stuttering ink.

132/90 mm/Hg.

“No,” she said flatly. She felt no need to sugarcoat a bush that was already burning. Her fingers were cold where they gripped the flat of her clipboard. Her entire chest ached. “Your blood pressure is too high. The antihypertensives aren’t working.”

“Oh, well… I figured,” Rose sighed softly, still rubbing her swollen belly. Her forehead was beaded with sweat, curly tendrils of pink hair clinging softly, like gossamer, to her pale temples. “That explains the headaches, doesn’t it?”

Priyanka stared at Rose Quartz incredulously.

Gaped at her wildly.

Like she’d never properly seen before.

(She’d seen her so many times in the past couple of months, flitting in and out of the hospital, Dr. Howard’s office, and then the hospital all over again; she’d done what she swore she would never do with a patient; she became attached; she cared; it would be her own undoing.)

“Of course it does,” she snapped. She didn’t care that she was breaking a hell of a lot of rules, all the studied lines of decorum. She slammed her clipboard onto her lap and couldn't bring herself to bring a shit that it produced such a violent sound. She wanted to shake this woman, wanted to break the calm in her face, wanted her to register the simple fact that she could very well die. “If you’re still suffering from headaches, then, of course , it means the medicines aren’t working. It’s common sense, Rose. Mere logic.”

Her shoulders heaved as though she had only just ran a marathon.

And Rose’s smile—that beatific, perfect, clandestine smile—slid, like melting ice, from her mouth.

Finally, Priyanka thought savagely, and she hated herself for it.

Guilt assaulted her, a new lump in her constricted throat.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, dull color bruising her sharply drawn cheeks. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just… I’m—”

“No, Priyanka.” Rose brought one of her hands from the top of her belly, raising it firmly against the resident’s stammered apologies. If she was injured—if she was hurting—she didn’t very well show it, her expression as impenetrably smooth as the silver face of the moon. “Please don’t say sorry… not if you don’t mean it. You only said what you’ve been thinking, what all my loved ones have been thinking, really… what an entire fool I am.”

Her soft, brown eyes briefly flicked to the multiple IVs stemming from her lifted hand. The tubes swirled all around her arm, spiraling towards a multitude of brightly flickering machines.

“Crazy,” she laughed humorlessly, the sound without familiar melody. “Throwing my life away…”

A little less than nine months had elapsed since she had first announced her pregnancy, and now there was a grayness to her once milk white skin.

A lethargy behind that calm face.

The passion, the vivaciousness, the youth all gone. 

Priyanka was scarcely two years older than her.

“Priyanka,” she whispered, the name somber in the movement of that once perpetually smiling mouth, “would you believe me if I said that this ”—she gestured feebly at the hospital bed, at the medical apparatus all around her—“isn’t living? Would you understand if I told you that this isn’t who I am on the inside—all these needles and lines and medicines and awful machines?”

Without waiting for an answer, not seemingly needing one, Rose gently replaced her hand on her stomach, her palm tenderly cupping its curve.

“I know what living is, sweet Priyanka,” she continued, closing her dark eyes against some invisible memory, “and this isn’t it…  this isn’t all those days I’ve stood in endless protest for a cause that I so desperately believe in. This isn’t being able to play volleyball on the beach with my loved ones, watching Amethyst and Garnet and Pearl and Greg laugh in the sand. This isn’t the fish fries we’ve hosted, nor the long nights spent planning demonstrations on the deck. This isn’t the thrill of falling in love with so many people. Meeting Pearl. Coming to understand the strange cosmos of Greg Universe. Choosing to have this child with him. Choosing this path which may very well end in my own destruction… because this , Priyanka Maheswaran, from the moment I was first diagnosed at sixteen years old, was already my destruction. And I simply have been borrowing moments of living in the full acknowledgment of that terrible truth.”

Rose did not falter.

So strong, even to the last, she did not break.

But maybe, just maybe, she cracked… just a little, just enough so that Priyanka could see.

A single tear escaped the confines of her closed eyes, slowly slipping down her cheek and into the slightly rumpled collar of her paisley-studded gown.

“So would you believe me, Priyanka?” She asked again. 

She begged.

She pleaded.

“Please?”

She was asking a lot of the twenty-eight year old, to whom belief had never come easily. Priyanka was constantly interrogating her own values, checking and double checking them against rationality to ensure that they fit the meticulous schema she had constructed of the empirically observable world.

But just as there was no rationality in a twenty-six year old dying, there was no logicality in belief.

There was only a leap of faith, fingers crossed that she wouldn’t fall into the abyss.

Landing was not a guarantee.

And that was what so unfathomable to her, so cruel and so disgusting.

But what more could Priyanka say? What facts and statistics could she throw in this dying woman’s face to make her see reason that wasn’t exactly there.

The answer was nothing.

Perhaps it had always been nothing.

This student of science had no more protestations.

And in the absence of protestation, all that was left was a single choice: to jump or not to jump.

It was simple, really.

It was so damn hard.

Rose Quartz finally opened her eyes then. They were bright with her tears, and yet, simultaneously, the sheer darkness of them gripped Priyanka like the hands of a drowning sailor. The screen on the wall which measured her blood pressure had incrementally risen since they had started talking.

134/90 mm/Hg.

There was no time to waste anymore.

To pretend like they had ever possessed.

“What…” Priyanka began, her own voice hoarse, tight, strained, on the very verge of the precipice it hesitated to leap.“… what do you need me to do? Name it, and I’ll… I can’t promise anything… but I’ll try. ”

The word felt paltry, insufficient.

Trying was not an assurance, just as landing was not a guarantee.

“I’ll do what I can.”

Rose’s face simply collapsed, tears falling down both sides of her cheeks in gentle lines.

“Thank you, Priyanka,” she whispered, relief in every word, redolent in all the syllables of her spoken name.

But Priyanka did not want gratitude; she wanted an answer, something solid to latch onto, a promise she could keep.

“What you need, Rose?” She asked again, shifting her gaze her away. Her voice was abrupt—it was always abrupt—but somehow, it was not entirely unkind. “Tell me.”

The woman’s answer was immediate, unflinching; she had been obviously been thinking about it for a very long time.

It was the answer she probably would have proffered to anyone who asked.

Who took the time to wonder what exactly it was that Rose Quartz wanted.

What she needed.

What she had kept so carefully concealed behind that calm veneer of a facade.

“Take care of my baby for me, please,” she whispered. “Be their advocate when Dr. Howard and Greg will be mine… I’ll have so many people in the delivery room. I’ll have so many people rooting for me outside of it, too… but, my baby, Priyanka… I need someone in their corner, too… to root for them… to be their voice… please..."

All things considered, it was a pretty damn unreasonable request.

If Rose had to have a c-section, then Dr. Howard would need Priyanka’s steady hands to hold a clamp or provide suction; in the battlefield of surgery, her only allegiance was to the brusque orders that the old man barked to her behind his mask. The obstetrician would handle the delivery. Their own resident would whisk the baby away to the NICU.

And she and Dr. Howard would try to save Rose’s life.

That was Priyanka’s calling.

Her solemn oath.

Her duty.

But...

.... Unreasonable though it was—and it most certainly was so—Priyanka reasoned that it was likely not unkeepable. 

She could help keep an eye on the baby’s heart monitor.

She could even lend a hand in the delivery procedure if Dr. Howard didn’t need her.

She could try, dammit.

She could at least promise that.

“You have my word,” she returned tersely, dark eyes still averted. She played a little with her hands on top of her clipboard, twining and untwining them, as Rose seemingly sank back against her pillows, sighing softly.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Don’t thank me until it’s over—I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You heard me out,” Rose replied evenly. “That’s something.”

“No,” the resident heard herself say aloud. “It isn’t.”

The hands on the clock veered into 6:00 with all the bluntness of a collision and none of its explosiveness.

The door opened.

That was mundane enough.

And Amethyst and Pearl came in first, laughing about something that Garnet had apparently said.

And Greg followed, chuckling, lightly scratching his stomach.

And Garnet made up the rear, grinning, pleased with herself.

Oblivious.

They were all so happy, this extraordinary group of ordinary people—they had no idea where they were or what it all meant or what was about to happen to the smiles on their tired faces.

And Priyanka did not have time to recover her own face, to arrange it into some manner of professional acceptability, her mouth half-open, hands rigid upon the table.

And Amethyst caught her out first.

Because she was smart like that, perceptive.

And the mirth drained from her brown eyes as she perceived the nephrologist’s expression in the semidarkness of the room.

And the two women stared each other across its length.

They called this place the slaughterhouse.

“No,” she simply said. She croaked it. Panic violated the smooth youthfulness of her face, tearing it all asunder. “No, Doc.”

“I’m sorry,” Priyanka Maheswaran whispered. 

It wasn’t enough.

It had never been enough.

Garnet only stared at her, disbelieving. 

Her mouth hadn’t quite untwisted itself out of the ghost of its last smile.

“I am so, so sorry.”

She said it again anyway, though, like it counted for something, like it meant anything, as tears began to flow down Pearl’s cheeks.

Greg Universe made a sound that was half-horror, half-agony, bracing his hands against the back of a metal chair to steady himself against the blow.

ii.

A doctor, a washed up rockstar, and three Crystal Gems walked out of a conference room.

And the joke, the cruel punchline, was that the boy they all loved wasn’t going to get the kidneys he so desperately needed; he was going to go back on the list, which had always been more of a desperate gamble than a guarantee; he was going to degrade in that hospital bed for however many days, weeks, and months he had more.

Dr. Maheswaran didn’t think he had a year.

She was blunt about it. 

Professional.

But her eyes gave her away, the lines beneath them, the consumptive shadows.

(Mere hours ago, her face had been transformed by the simple action of a smile.)

There were no comforting words, nor bracing gestures between the coterie of broken people who limped their way back to Room 11037—injured, defeated, the wounds glistening across their bruised eyes, their shivering mouths. Greg took the lead, the rubber of his sandals snapping harshly against the tiled floor with each step, every guttural, convulsive movement. 

They silently decided that he should be the one to actually commit the words aloud, knew that it was for the best. He could be soft where Dr. Maheswaran was brutal. Comprehensive when Garnet couldn’t muster words. Sage when Amethyst’s youthful clumsiness sometimes made it difficult to find the right words. 

And he could hold it together long enough to actually say it.

Trailing behind him, pale fingers gripping the fabric of her sweater, Pearl’s horror took the form of sniffling that couldn’t quite be concealed. She was holding herself together—the news had cleaved her apart—and he wondered again, not for the first time since Steven’s diagnosis, whether or not she had been right all those years ago, when she had told him quite plainly, in that incisively logical way of hers, that she was better for Rose.

They’d come a long way since then.

They grudgingly tolerated each other now.

They coparented the best that they could.

Sometimes, he thought that they were even friends, sharing beers together on dusk lit balconies and spending so many sleepless nights side by side at the kitchen table, poring over bills and medicines and more bills because the bills, above all, were endless. 

And perhaps in the end, he and Pearl were even family in the way that they loudly and silently and entirely loved the same dying boy.

(That was how they had loved the same woman, too.)

But still, maybe she had had a point.

Pearl always tended to have a point...

The hallway was painfully short; Room 11037 arrived far quicker than any of them had ever anticipated.

His breath coming in hitched gasps, chest seized with a sudden tightening, Greg palmed the wood of the door, splaying his shaking fingers against its smooth grains as though to steady himself against an impossible reckoning. He was minutes away, possibly seconds, from breaking his own son’s heart, and that was on him.

Hell, all failures when it came to his son’s happiness were on him.

He was the kid’s dad.

He was supposed to protect Steven, shelter him, keep him safe from every quantifiable danger that he could.

And here he was, about to deliver another slap to his face and call it kindness.

The contradiction was not lost upon him.

The unfairness of it all stung.

It stung his eyes, and it stung his heart, and it stung all over, simply undid the man. He was a pincushion falling apart in all the places where he had been needled over and over again.

But he felt a hand on the small of his back then—gentle, kind.

He expected it to be Garnet or maybe even Amethyst; that had always been their sort of thing.

But when he looked back behind him, his mouth half-formed in an empty, perfunctory thanks, he saw that it was Pearl, her big, blue eyes still edged with the remnants of her tears.

Her sweater, neatly pressed, seemed to swallow her entirely.

She stood perfectly within the lines of one of the tiles on the floor, feet poised like a ballerina’s. Rose had once told him that she’d been trained to dance—once so disciplined in the art that she could stand upon the tips of her toes for as many minutes as her tutors required. 

Even when she was devastated.

Even when she was hurt.

“How… how do I do this?” Greg asked before he could stop himself. The words tumbled out of his mouth in an ungainly rush. “How do I… how can I… I mean… he’s just a boy… a kid, and I—“

And I don’t want to do this, Pearl.

I don’t want to see him go through this.

Pearl swiped delicately at her nose, and she swiped at her leaking eyes, but the carnage still remained. It was unlikely to disappear for a very long time. She wrung her slender fingers together and twisted them apart. She congregated them in a prim temple just above her stomach. She eventually let them fall to her sides. She glanced down. She failed to look back up.

Shoulders shivering.

Feet still in first position.

“I… I don’t think there’s any right way to do this,” she finally said. “Not really… but I—we’re behind you, Greg.”

“Yeah,” Amethyst agreed.

Garnet nodded her silent assent.

“We’re… always behind you.”

The weight of these words, the implicit meaning behind them, was not lost on Greg. He immediately understood how much it must have cost her to say such a thing to him, and yet, he simultaneously knew that she must have meant it—for Pearl rarely ever said things that she didn't mean.

She gave silent treatments, and she evaded tough emotional conversations with all the agility of a dancer; she shot people glares that she thought to be discrete from the corners of her eyes; she kept secrets to herself, kept them tucked away in the same places where she had invisible shrines to the woman they both loved.

But she rarely lied.

Or maybe, more accurately, she wouldn't lie now.

And so, choked, overwhelmed, grateful, he could only muster something like a vague sound of gratitude in the back of his throat that he thought she equally understood because she nodded at him primly.

And then, he turned to face the door again, palming the brass handle.

On the other side, he heard a snatch of laughter.

Steven.

Assuredly.

Perhaps he was watching one of his favorite shows, laughing at something a character had said.

Greg twisted his hand downwards and pushed lightly upon the door.

iii.

The door opened upon a scene that Yellow Diamond had always intended to flee before she could be caught out, but one anecdote led to another, and before she knew it, Steven Universe had started telling her about how he’d met Blue at the cemetery where their dead daughter lay. And the conjured image of her bathrobed wife, holding a hibiscus aloft in her gently curving palm, plucked an dusty chord in her chest. 

So this was the flower that had been on the nightstand for a couple of nights now.

This was the story of a boy and a woman and a cemetery and a handful—a lifetime, really—of aching, miserable griefs.

“She told me that she married you so her name would be a pun,” Steven had said, grinning mischievously.

“Something to that effect,” Yellow dryly returned.

And he pressed for more stories, more memories, more chords inside her chest. How did she meet Blue? When did they fall in love? Who proposed?

He asked so many questions, his brown eyes alight with curiosity, that she was reminded so much of Pink that it almost hurt to even look at him. But, just as she had done with her daughter, she sighingly indulged him, groaning and moaning and making it out as thought she was doing him a massive favor by relenting. And he only smiled at her teasingly—like he was in on the secret.

It was the other way around.

She was the one at his mercy.

And so she told him the story of the princess and the knight in less than fantastical terms, laying out the bare bones of her and Blue’s first meeting with a halting voice as the memories slowly came flooding back: Blue Montgomery’s sweeping ball gown, the spidery chandeliers, the waiters swerving in and out of the crowd bearing silver trays loaded with champagne, her ridiculously dramatic mother waltzing through the ballroom with all the radiance of a sun. 

God, how many decades ago was that now?

Years and years and years.

“Our daughter used to love this damn story,” Yellow murmured at the end, briefly flicking her eyes downwards. “We told it so many different times to her that she could repeat it word for word.”

“It’s a very good story,” Steven returned, laughing. “Did you really think about punching that guy?”

“Fleetingly, yes,” she almost smiled, “but—”

But then the door opened so abruptly, bringing reality back in with what appeared to be a collection of harried looking people. The businesswoman’s head sharply cocked towards the far side of the room to greet an assemblage of expressions that she was surprised to find in total strangers: anger and disgust.

Complete and total loathing.

Damn, at least buy me a drink first.

“You!” A slight woman in a sweater hissed furiously.

“Uh-oh,” Steven Universe said, shrinking slightly beneath his covers. “Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh...”

But Yellow Diamond wasn’t listening to him anymore, instinctive indignation rising to her aid and defense as she stood up from her chair and mustered as haughty of an expression she could for a woman wearing silk pajamas.

“Excuse me?” She asked venomously, crossing her arms over her chest. “And you are?”

“Pearl…” The balding man standing next to the sweater-wearing accoster tried to plea, placing a big hand on her much smaller shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t… uh—?”

“No,” The woman named Pearl snarled, jerking her arm away from him. Yellow could see that her pale eyes were bright with tears, which seemed like an overreaction if she had ever witnessed one. She didn’t know these people from Jack, Jill, or Harry on the sidewalk! “I want to know what she’s doing here! She has no business—“

“Pearl, wait!” Steven tried to interject, jerking upwards from his pillows. “It’s okay! She just wanted to vis—“

But his voice got lost in the shuffle as the taller woman behind Pearl suddenly stepped forward, her powerfully muscled arms clenched into fists by her sides. There was an indefinable air of authority about her that Yellow only recognized because she, too, possessed it. Her bicolored glare was a weapon in and of itself; the harsh florescence of the overheads glinted off the sunglasses folded neatly across the collar of her sweatshirt.

“Leave,” the woman said. “You’re not welcome here.”

“Garnet! No! She wasn’t doing anything wro—“

“Well, frankly,” Yellow shot back before Steven could complete his thought, “I’d perfectly well surmised that without your help. But forgive me if I’m having trouble piecing together the context behind this unwarranted rudeness.”

“You know what you’ve done,” Garnet growled.

“No!” The blood inside her head churned, simply boiled. She had never known when to leave well enough alone. “I damn well don’t!”

“1999—Diamond Electric vs. Hutchings,” Pearl began to tick off names on her fingertips. “2005—Diamond Electric vs. Davis. 2011—Diamond Electric vs. Bach. Are these names ringing a bell? Unsafe factory conditions! Unconstitutional wage gaps! Leaking waste reservoirs!”

“All settled in court!” Yellow returned with a cruel laugh that she did not remotely feel, raking her cold eyes over each and very one of her newfound opponents in turn. It had always been her against the world for as long as she could remember—she the trapped lioness cornered by the angry mob. (But the mob always tended to forget one crucial fact about exchanges between lions and men. Lions had claws and sharp, gleaming teeth; she would devour them and gnaw on their bones for sport.) “What are you all? Lawyers? Reporters? Protestors? Please, spare no sordid detail as to why I’m being read case names for events that happened long ago.”

“Yellow Diamond, please—” Steven’s voice was tiny by her side; she could not hear him; or perhaps, she didn’t want to hear him.

She wanted to fight.

“We’re, like, the Crystal Gems,” the smallest woman to Garnet’s left said emphatically. Her lavender bangs fell over one of her eyes, but she blew them back with a small puff of air.

“Never heard of you,” Yellow replied flippantly and untruthfully.

Because she had heard of them—several times, in fact. 

They were some small activist group that had always been a vaguely minor nuisance at her side—especially a few years ago—but they’d never done anything more than force her lawyers to spend some time haggling in appeals courts. 

A waste of time and money for everyone, really.

“Never heard of us?” Pearl spluttered wildly, her complexion whitening. “Never heard of—“

“Enough, you all!” The doctor who had been at the back of the group finally seemed to have found her tongue, and a pretty harsh tongue it was because her exasperated voice clearly cut through the melee. “We’re in a hospital for goodness’s—”

But the doctor was drowned out, too, lost in the onslaught of noise suddenly coming from one of the monitors above Steven’s bed—a shrill beeping noise that put an effective end to all the squabbling. The neon green line measuring his heart rate was spiking in short peaks, the numbers climbing, climbing, climbing… and beneath it all, clutching his chest, Steven was struggling to breathe, gulping in shallow bursts of air, his skin paling. Sweat beaded at his pale templed, hid eyes wide with fear.

“STEVEN! Steven!” So many voices yelled his name; it was all a jumble, a blur, a dissonant symphony.

The white coated doctor shoved past Yellow unceremoniously, nearly knocking her to the ground in her haste to get to her patient’s side. She pulled an oxygen mask down from one of the receptacles behind the bed, placing it over Steven’s mouth and nose.

“Breathe, Steven!” She commanded, her voice tight with obvious strain. The man and the woman named Pearl scrabbled over to the child’s bedside. Tears streaming down his ruddy face and into his beard, the man placed an arm around Steven’s back, steadying him. Pearl clasped one of his hands, her shoulders shaking violently.

“In and out,” the doctor continued. “Breathe. One… two… three.  That’s it, honey. There you go…”

As Steven’s breathing evened out, the monitor’s beeping died down, nearly becoming regulated once more. Exhausted, overwhelmed, so quickly undone, the boy slumped against the man who was holding him, closing his eyes heavily as the doctor took the opportunity to more securely fasten the oxygenated mask around his face.

But what happened next, if anything happened at all, Yellow Diamond did not stay to find out.

Violently tearing her gaze away, the woman turned around and did what she should have done the moment she made the poor decision to come into this room in the first place.

Shoving past the remaining Crystal Gems, uncaring that she knocked Garnet in the shoulder, Yellow limped away as fast as her sore leg would allow her to go, nausea rushing up the column of her throat, her cheeks burning with shame.

What a pathetic creature she was.

A monster.

A lioness among men.

(The lioness always tended to forget one crucial fact about exchanges between lions and men. Lions had claws and sharp, gleaming teeth; she would end up destroying the people she cared about, too.)

iv.

Pearl only had eyes for one person in the entire world, and his name was Steven Universe. Both in the absence of Rose and in the lingering presence of her, he was the center of her universe, the sun which she orbited day after day after varied, sundry day. Weak, pale, cold, he shivered in his father’s arms, barely able to keep his eyes open as his heartbeat continued to regulate itself after that latest episode.

“Acute stress arrhythmia,” she heard Priyanka explain behind her. The nephrologist had her back turned to them as she read numbers on a nearby computer monitor. 

She didn’t elaborate.

She didn’t need to.

Everybody in the room knew exactly who was to blame for his acute stress.

Shame colored them all; shame welled up in the corners of Pearl’s eyes as she continued to hold on to Steven’s hand.

Garnet collapsed into the chair that Yellow Diamond had just vacated, placing both of her hands over her eyes.

What children they had been.

What fools.

Pearl closed her own eyes in a useless attempt to stem the tears that were flowing freely now, unable to hold them back any longer. Shame wrapped a hand around her insides and squeezed. 

Steven was… he was—oh, God, the word was too unbearable to even think, much less say aloud—and here they all were—fighting with someone who would never see reason.

How stupid.

How pathetic.

“Steven, wait, honey. You need to put that mask back—” But Priyanka’s soft admonition was apparently ignored; Pearl looked up just in time to see Steven feebly lifting the oxygen mask from his face, dropping it just below his mouth. Each movement looked like it took something from him; he couldn’t even lift his head from Greg’s chest.

So he stared straight at her.

Directly into her eyes.

He had his mother’s eyes.

Her dark and lovely eyes.

“S-she…” She had to lean forward to hear him, for his voice was barely a whisper, an echo, a ghost. “…she really wasn’t being mean.”

“Shh, Shtu-ball. We know,” Greg tried hoarsely, pressing a kiss into his son’s mass of curly hair. “Save up your strength…”

“Steven,” Pearl pleaded, barely able to discern him through her tears. She refused to let go of his hand; it wasn't as much for his sake as she would have liked to kid herself to believe.  “I’m so, so sorry. We shouldn’t have squabbled with her like that. We just weren’t… I mean… I wasn’t… I was stressed—I-I wasn’t thinking.”

“Stressed?” Again, his voice was so small that it struggled to be heard over the hissing of the various machines he was hooked up to, and the fact of it nearly undid her right then and there. Salt coated her lips. It lacquered her tongue. “Why… why were you stressed?”

No.

No.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this... the news wasn’t supposed to come from her. It was supposed to be Greg’s job to do this; he was the one who was good at emotions; he was the one who knew how to have these sorts of conversations without completely dissolving into nothingness and rubble.

(He was the better person.)

(The one who Rose chose.)

Pearl could yell at a tyrannical businesswoman for longer than she could hold herself together in front of Steven; she could protest wars; she could hold demonstrations; she could plan fish fries; she could keep herself together on a day to day basis, bound by Scotch tape and glue.

But for him?

For Steven Universe?

Her eyes refilled with fresh tears, and she finally withdrew her hand from his, placing it over her mouth in the quietest sign of her incapacity.

Useless.

Pathetic.

Childish.

Fool.

“Oh,” Steven only rasped, understanding immediately. He was so smart like that; he never missed a beat. “The… the kidneys fell through, didn’t they?”

“I’m so sorry, kiddo,” Greg said, wrapping his arms more tightly around Steven as gently as he could manage as Priyanka took the opportunity to replace the mask over his nose and mouth.

“The kidneys were damaged during the donor’s accident,” she explained dully, “and we couldn’t detect it until we were already in surgery… I’m sorry, Steven. I am.”

But Steven never took his eyes off Pearl, those dark and lovely eyes. 

They were wounded eyes.

Bruised eyes.

Goddamn exhausted eyes.

"I'm sorry, Steven," she whispered. "I am so, so sorry."

The mask prevented him from speaking.

In place of his reply, there was only the steady hiss of oxygen and the dark-cloaked presence of grief, the seventh person in an already crowded room. They sat on the edge of Steven’s bed, simply taking up precious air.

Pearl couldn’t breathe.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

v.

Night descended upon the sky like a heavy curtain, unfurling its black velvet across the horizon with dark finality, the punctuation unmistakable. Sitting atop of the bulky air conditioning unit that stretched the length of the hotel room’s window, Amethyst gazed emptily at the spectacle, knees pulled up to her chest, her still-damp hair pulled over one of her shoulders. If she was back at home, there would be a roof to clamber onto and a vast canvas of stars to behold… but here, there were only skyscrapers that stretched their supplicatory hands upwards to an unhearing god. Here, there were stars made out of lit windows. Here, there was that familiar feeling of suffocation, of being cloistered in...

Cornered.

And unlike in a good alley fight, putting up her fists wouldn’t solve a damn thing.

Three hours had passed since they’d nearly given Steven a heart attack and then told him that he wasn’t going to get those stupid fucking kidneys. And still, the scene haunted her mind’s eye in the absence of anything else to think about, to obsess over, to grieve. When they had all left for the evening—Greg the only one staying behind for the night—he couldn’t even muster enough energy to tell them goodnight, simply blinking at them from over the top of his oxygenated mask before closing his eyes.

Merely twelve hours ago, they’d all been sickeningly happy because they had thought that the nightmare was over… but that sensation had long passed, a relic of time immemorial now.

Now, there was only darkness.

A feeling of falling.

The ground giving way beneath their feet.

Now, there was only Dr. M’s only consolation that wasn’t really a consolation at all.

He’s at the top of the list now.

The door opened and gently closed behind her. Amethyst swung her head around just in time to see Garnet come in, a towel slung around her corded neck, her white tank top damp with sweat. She’d gone to the hotel’s gym to obviously treadmill away from her feelings, which was a way more productive solution than Amethyst’s choice coping mechanism. She raised her half-empty bottle of wine in greeting—reckless, loose—accidentally sloshing a little over the top of the rim.

“Hey.”

“Where’s Pearl?” Garnet studiously avoided her gaze as she lowered herself to the carpeted ground, leaning against the wall. Her shoulders hunched forward, elbows braced on top of her knees, she almost looked like some kinda statue—still, beautiful, tragic.

“Tryin’ to drown herself in the shower, I think,” Amethyst shrugged before taking another hearty swig of Moscato. The tangy notes stung her tongue. “She’s been in there for an hour now, so you might not have hot water later.”

The gym trainer shrugged noncommittally as though this was all the same to her. 

And the two of them simply listened to the hissing of the water beyond the thin door to Garnet’s left for a handful of seconds; the serpentine sounds lashed the ground. Lashed their skin. Their ears. Their chests.

Amethyst sniffed and took yet another drag of wine.

There was nothing else better to do...

... but the silence was unbearable now that it was optional.

She turned her bottle upside down again.

Liquid courage.

“I met the old lady, y’know,” she said softly, her consonants a little rushed around their edges, a little tipsy, a little unsure. “Blue Diamond. It was… yesterday, I think? Hell, I think it was yesterday. God, I don’t even know at this point. But she was in the lobby, waitin’ for her valet to pick her up…”

Garnet didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up at her, but Amethyst knew she was listening from the way that every line in her body was rigid with attention.

“She’s kinda snooty, I think. Kinda looks like she’s got a stick up her ass… but she’s got a good heart, I guess. She cares about Steven…” Amethyst remembered the way her accented voice broke when she spoke of him, all of the syllables collapsing upon themselves in the throes of her gentle tongue. And she remembered the woman’s eyes, how startlingly blue they were, haunted underneath by the ravages of grief and time. 

“A lot,” she added. “That surprised me.”

“I… I shouldn’t have let Yellow Diamond get to me like that,” Garnet said, reaching up and gingerly holding her head. “I know. I know.”

“No, that’s not what I’m sayin’, G,” Amethyst immediately and fiercely returned, shaking her own head. “I mean, it’s kinda what I’m sayin’, but we all got caught up in her. She got under all of our skins. I’m just, I dunno, I’m trying to—“

But she broke off then, ripping her gaze away from her roommate and back towards the window.

To the darkness.

The absence of stars.

She raised the bottle to her lips once more but stopped short of taking another swill; the sickly sweet perfume nearly gagged her.

“It’s just… it’s difficult,” she continued, setting the drink down between her knees. “That’s all I’m sayin’. God knows why, but he likes the Diamonds, and the Diamonds like him… and we shouldn’t… I mean, we should try our best not to shit on him for that because—“

But Amethyst stopped short again as the natural end to that sentence reared its head off the floor of her stomach, striking just where it hurt.

Sick, ashamed, inconsolable, she covered her eyes with both of her hands.

“Because we love him,” Garnet proffered, her voice quiet, almost inaudible over the noises coming from the shower, “and we want him to be happy.”

That wasn't the end of the sentence.

That wasn't what they had both been thinking anyway.

“Yeah,” she croaked gratefully, wiping roughly at her eyes. “Yeah.”

They resumed their silent vigil together then, mostly because it kept them from commenting upon the fact that it wasn’t just the water they were hearing behind that thin bathroom door.

Garnet reached upwards and grabbed the remote from the edge of the nearest bed, turning the volume up on some stupid sitcom to drown it out.

The water.

The weeping.

And the weeping and the weeping and the weeping.

vi.

Blue Diamond had been on the balcony for hours now, long enough for the sky to bruise from peach to blue to purple, long enough to see the first stars ascend to their storied mounts, glimmering down upon the world in silvery, distant specks. 

Long enough that the tear tracks riveting down her cheeks had dried upon her long face in stiff lines.

Long enough that she wondered passively to herself if she had been here forever, a statue carved out of flesh and bone and misery and blood.

Long enough to reflect upon the fact that she wasn't referring to the balcony... but to something more abstract.

Metaphorical.

A state.

A cycle.

A condition of perpetual mourning.

Her phone laid facedown on the tiny table between her chair and Yellow’s empty one.

The last text she had received had been from Steven Universe.

It wasn’t even a sentence. 

Just a fragment.

No exclamation points, no abundant elaboration, no joy.

Tuesday, 7:09 PM:

Steven: kidneys fell through

Blue had seen the boy just this morning—dropping by after she had left Yellow’s room—and she could remember, quite distinctly, how radiant his face had been, utterly metamorphosed by its own happiness. 

She’d been drawn in by it, magnetized. 

Oh, how the two of them laughed and smiled and played. 

How many years had it been since she had last played?

It was before Pink died assuredly.

But even then, the details were murky to her; she’d been so wrapped up in her school, that she had forgot what it was to be twenty-one, and that twenty-one year olds were still children in a way, that they loved to have fun.

She’d been so strict with her sometimes.

Forbidding.

Cold.

(Her own mother would have been proud.)

But she and Steven Universe? They played, and they played, imagining all the things that Steven was going to do once he had recovered from the transplant surgery. Some of these plans were simply extraordinary in nature. He was going to run all day just because he would finally feel like it. He was going to make a massive sandcastle on the beach with all of his friends. It would be palatial, obviously, so they could live in it together, making seashell necklaces and seaweed crowns. He was going to eat all the donuts that he wanted—his diet had been so restricted since he’d taken ill—and then some.

“And if I get sick,” he had said proudly, “it’ll just be a normal sick, and that’ll be perfectly okay.”

But it wasn’t the extraordinary inventions which had touched Blue, which had moved her to the quick.

Rather, it was the simple things.

The mundane ones.

He would get to go to school with all the rest of the kids his age. He could go to a theater without worrying that his symptoms might flare up during the movie's climax. He could ride a bike through his charming, little beachside town. 

He could simply be a child.

And that would be enough.

That would be perfectly okay.

“And I could come over for tea and cakes on Fridays,” he teased as she had prepared to leave, running one last hand through his curly hair as she stood up from her chair. He smiled at her gently, his mouth tilting crookedly.

“Aye,” she returned warmly, returning the gesture with an almost easiness that still surprised her. “I would love that..."

But just as quickly as these fantasies had risen—entertained, explored, viscerally imagined—they had been wrenched from his hands just as immediately, and so Blue Diamond sat on her balcony for hours on end grieving for the poor boy.

But because she was selfish, because she was predictable, because she was broken, she gripped the arms on both sides of her chair, and grieved, too, for Pink Diamond.

(She was always grieving for Pink Diamond.)

Fingernails digging into the weathered wood, she thought herself a desolate fool for ever kidding herself into believing that she could go a day without being painfully aware of her daughter’s ghost.

She thought herself a masochist for inviting the same pain again in the form of Steven Universe.

She thought herself a coward for not daring to say three words to Yellow Diamond, three words that wouldn’t make everything between them right, but three words that needed to be said nevertheless.

And she couldn’t bring herself to utter them.

Not even when Yellow was in a hospital bed, covered in lacerations and bruises.

Because how could she say such a thing when she hadn’t said it in so many years upon years?

I and love and you.

And she kept thinking these things until they chased each other around her head in circles—dizzying, unceasing, senseless circles that gradually chipped away at the tentative hope she had held aloft in her chest ever since she had met Steven Universe.

Spirals and spirals and spirals.

Fool.

Masochist.

Coward.

Circles and circles and circles.

And somehow, every time, Blue Diamond concluded where she had first begun: alone in her own misery, drowning.

Fool, masochist, coward.

vii.

The walk to the parking deck that night was slow and laborious, one foot dragged after another, the styrofoam cup of shitty coffee in her hand doing little to perk her up for the long drive home. Priyanka couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed past her shift so long, but she’d wanted to make sure that Steven remained stable… that he didn’t suddenly crash on them after such a long, hard day on his body… that she continued to try (and miserably fail) to keep Rose’s last request.

Take care of my baby for me, please…

Ever since his episode, Steven’s breath sounds had been decreased on the right side of his chest; she instructed the intern on duty for the night to keep him on a steady supply of oxygen and to page her immediately if his stats even shifted by a margin.

“Like, even a number or two?” Dr. Stephens asked, her brow furrowing.

“Yes,” she had snapped rather harshly. “Even a fraction.”

But somehow, even as Priyanka had said it, even as the poor intern had flinched, she had known to herself from the very beginning that she could quantify every little integer and it still all be for nothing.

Chronic kidney disease didn’t care about numbers.

It didn’t care about people.

“Hey! Priyanka! Wait up!"

Oh, hell and shit—she recognized that voice. 

Wincing, she tried to arrange her features into an expression that didn’t completely betray her entire disinterest with humanity before she turned to face her colleague Dr. Reed. Maisie Reed, an ER doctor, had been at Empire Regional for about a decade longer than Priyanka. 

She was a good woman and good friend, but frankly, she just didn’t know when to shut up, going off on long, rambling tales that were hard for Priyanka to weasel away from once she got rolling. 

This was vaguely annoying on most days, but tonight, the nephrologist simply wouldn't be able to bear it.

“Hello, Maisie,” she returned brusquely as the older woman caught up to her. Her curly, flyaway hair was tucked back in a messy bun, her wire-rimmed glasses perched a little crookedly on the bridge of her nose. “How are you?”

“Exhausted,” Maisie rolled her eyes. “Did you hear about my star patient?”

“I think I actually met her,” Priyanka said, resuming her brisk walk. Maybe if she made it to her sedan before Maisie started a story, she could make a narrow escape.  “She somehow made it to my patient’s room. Goodness knows for what reason. She and the patient’s family nearly got into a fistfight.”

“Ha! You're kidding! I didn’t think that part was true, but some of the nurses were saying—”

“It’s true,” she affirmed curtly, cutting across the woman. “All of it.”

They lapsed into silence then as they walked side by side on the harshly lit concrete. The nephrologist could see her tiny car near the end of the row. She pulled the key out of one of the pockets of her lab coat, clicked the unlock button, and hoped that Maisie would finally take the hint.

“I think we’re only parked a little ways from each other,” she said cheerfully, dashing all of Priyanka’s dreams.

Joy.

They continued to walk together, the heels of their shoes clicking reliably against the floor.

“I also heard… that you’ve got a bad outcome,” Maisie murmured, her voice soft, empathetic.

Pitying.

It was the pity that Priyanka hated most of all.

Her companion’s hazel eyes raked her over piercingly, like an X-Ray, and there was tenderness in her expression.

Understanding.

“I’m so sorry, honey.”

“It’s not a bad outcome yet,” she snarled, rounding upon the woman fiercely, not bothering with polite pretense anymore. Screw her. Screw everything. Screw this fucking day. “He’s still alive. He’s still got a chance. I’ve just got to find…”

“… kidneys, yes. I’ve heard,” Maisie finished gently.

Priyanka violently turned away again, increasing her pace so that she pulled ahead of the other doctor. Her entire body strained against the sudden burst of energy.

She was tired.

So fucking exhausted.

“Then don’t resign him to the grave yet, Maisie. I’m still fighting for him, dammit.”

“Yes, I know that, too… I’ve always admired that about you, dear. You never give up.”

“Yeah, well”—she didn’t exactly know what to say to that—“that’s what we do.”

“Mm, yes,” Maisie replied. “That’s what we do…”

She finally reached her sedan with no small feeling of relief, proceeding to the driver's side with the expectation that Dr. Reed would continue onwards to her little red Nissan at the end of the row, finally putting an end to this unpleasant conversation.

Infuriatingly, though, Maisie stopped, too, her eyes bright with kindness and warmth and all the other things besides that Priyanka simply couldn’t stomach at the moment.

“Yes, well, goodnight,” she said pointedly, making a motion to open the door of her car. She threw her briefcase in rather unceremoniously. It slammed against the passenger side door and fell feebly to the ground.

“What’s his blood type, Priyanka? I’ll keep an eye out for any patients that fit the description… you know what the ER is like. We get potential donors all the time.”

Yes, this was assuredly true, but Steven’s blood type being what it was, finding a donor so quickly would be a damn near miracle.

Priyanka exhaled harshly through her nose but relented anyway—anything to end this absurd conversation.

What the hell—it wouldn’t hurt.

“It’s a long shot… but O neg, so I need an O neg donor. Had any of those on your docket lately?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

And here was the part where Maisie’s kindly face would undoubtedly fall into dismay because of course she hadn’t seen an O neg patient in a while—only seven percent of the entire population had O negative blood, which was a startlingly rare number. So, of course, she would shake her head profusely and apologize and swear to keep her feelers out…

… but Maisie Reed didn’t exactly follow the quick script that Priyanka had constructed in her head.

In fact, her pink lips wobbled into a radiant smile.

“Honey,” she laughed, “sit down and take a sip of that damn black coffee of yours because you’re not going to believe this.”

[josefavomjaaga]

Mier leaves Naples (last correspondence spring 1815)

I had not realized there were only two pieces left that relate to chapter 3 of Helfert's book on Joachim Murat. So I apologize; this will be rather short.

Gallo to Mier

Naples, March 17, 1815.

My Lord Count!

The King having ordered me to follow him on the journey which he has just undertaken in the Abruzzi and in the Marches, and for which he left this afternoon: I hasten, my Lord Count, to inform you of this officially: assuring you that this decision of His Majesty does not change in any way the official relations which I have the honour of maintaining with you, and which I shall always be flattered to cultivate.

I therefore beg you, my Lord Count, to kindly hand over to my Ministry the requests you may be in a position to address to me during my temporary absence, and which may require a resolution from His Majesty. They will be forwarded to me every day by an express courier from my ministry, and I shall take the greatest care to send you, My Lord Count, His Majesty's replies.

As for current affairs with the internal government, or those which cannot suffer any delay, His Majesty has just entrusted the direction of them to the Duke of Carignano, His Councillor of State; and I beg you, my Lord Count, to kindly address to him your requests during my absence for all objects of this nature, which may require prompt arrangements.

Accept, My Lord Count, the assurances of my highest consideration.

The Duke di Gallo.

So, this is it. Murat leaves Naples for the army, officially on a journey to the Abbruzzi. If there was more correspondence between Mier and Vienna about this, or from Murat to Mier, it is at least not cited.

The next letter is already Metternich breaking diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Naples, not quite three weeks later.

Metternich to Mier and Prince Cariati (concept)

To Monsieur le Prince de Cariati, Minister Plenipotentiary of His Majesty the King of Naples to the Court of Austria.

Vienna, 5th April 1815.

According to the official reports which this Court has received from Italy, it has been ascertained that the King of Naples has crossed, without previous declaration, with his army, the line which he occupied in the March of Ancona and which had served until now as a line of demarcation for the respective armies. This step, as pronounced as it is unexpected, can only be considered by the Court of Vienna as a hostile aggression, and His Majesty the Emperor has given the order to the undersigned, Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, to interrupt, as of this day, official communications with Monsieur le Prince de Cariati, and to have him sent the passports which he needs, as well as the individuals attached to his mission, in order to get out of the Austrian States.

The undersigned has the honour of sending them herewith to the Prince of Cariati, and he begs to receive the assurance of his distinguished consideration.

//

To Count de Mier, Minister of the Emperor at Naples

Vienna, 5th April.

I have the honour of sending You herewith a copy of the official note which I have just given to the Prince of Cariati. At the moment when You receive the present dispatch, by which I announce to You the order of His Majesty the Emperor that Your functions as Minister to the Court of Naples have ceased and that You are recalled, You will kindly ask for passports for Yourself and for the members of Your mission, and go directly to Vienna.

Receive etc.

I'm still not sure about Metternich's true feelings (if indeed he had any) but Mier I imagine was truely sad and disheartened at seeing his mission in Naples failed so badly.

[bailsmo]

Touhou Perfect Cherry Blossom (TH7)

Touhou Youyoumu ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom. is a vertical-scrolling bullet hell and the seventh official game of the Touhou Project series by Team Shanghai Alice. The full game was first released on August 17, 2003, at Comiket 64.

Initial release date: 17 August 2003

Series: Touhou Project

Designer: ZUN

Developer: Team Shanghai Alice

Publisher: Team Shanghai Alice

Mode: Single-player video game

There are playable characters such as Reimu and Marisa but they also added Sakuya Izayoi from Touhou 6 The Embodiment Of Scarlet Devil as a playable character, also known as the stage 5 boss or second to the last boss of Touhou 6.

Plot:

The heroine follows the trail of cherry blossoms high above Gensokyo, breaking through the greetings of Lily White, eventually reaching a great magical boundary and the poltergeist musicians Prismriver Sisters. ... The heroine defeats Youmu and hurries to Hakugyokurou to get Gensokyo's spring back.

Touhou Bosses:

Letty Whiterock (レティ・ホワイトロック Reti Howaitorokku) is a seasonal youkai who's only seen during winter. She seems fittingly cold towards most of the humans she meets, and is feared by humans as she is known to freeze them. Letty first appeared as the Stage 1 boss in Perfect Cherry Blossom, later she made a brief cameo in Hopeless Masquerade as a background character.

In Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, it was written that she was a type of yuki-onna. According to ZUN, if she was to show her full power compared to her strength shown in Perfect Cherry Blossom, it would cause an incident.

Ability

Manipulation of chill

She possesses an ability to manipulate chill. It's not an ability to create blizzards or make snow fall, but rather an ability to strengthen the "winter" that exists in the natural world. According to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, since this is equivalent to an ability that manipulates the winter within nature, she possesses tremendous power according to the environment, but she is pretty much powerless outside of winter. In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, Letty herself said that outside of winter, she hides away in a place where not a ray of sunlight can reach. In Forbidden Scrollery, she is shown spreading snow over Gensokyo.

Chen (橙) is Ran Yakumo's shikigami, who was guarding the village of Mayohiga during the events of Perfect Cherry Blossom. Unfortunately, she could put up little resistance due to being far away from her master.

Chen first appeared as the second stage midboss and boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, along with being the extra stage midboss and Ran Yakumo's familiar in one of her spell cards. She was also Yukari Yakumo's familiar in Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, and Antinomy of Common Flowers, and was a target on Stage 6 of Shoot the Bullet. Additionally, she made a background appearance in Hopeless Masquerade.

She is a bakeneko youkai that Ran Yakumo uses as shikigami, but since Ran herself is Yukari's shikigami, she is a "shikigami of a shikigami". When possessed as a shikigami, Chen aquires the fearsome power of a kishin, but since her master is also a shikigami, her ability is fairly low. The possession is removed when she is soaked in water, and since she also hates water as a cat, she is in any case weak to water. Her height is "low" and is capable of human speech. She can use impressive black arts, but only possesses the intellect of a human child. Whether she is possessed or not, her personality and appearance don't change.

She ordinarily lives on Youkai Mountain. In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, she made the village of cats and tried to stand as the leader, but the progress has been unfavorable.

Ability

The way her abilities show up in the game itself is that she runs around the screen so freely in a way that is not expected of a boss of a shooting game, which is characteristic of her (as one would expect of a cat). This could be considered cute if she were an ordinary cat, but it also makes her slightly more tricky to deal with due to her speed and deceptive movement, which can confuse her opponent. Another characteristic of her is how she spins around and around while attacking, somewhat like her master.

Alice Margatroid (アリス・マーガトロイド Arisu Māgatoroido) is a doll-controlling magician who lives in her home in the Forest of Magic near the home of Marisa Kirisame. According to ZUN's comments in the Music Room of Perfect Cherry Blossom, Alice is kind of a special character in the Touhou Project.

Alice made her first ever appearance of the fifth PC-98 Touhou Project game Mystic Square as the third stage boss and the Extra stage boss. Afterwards, with her canon completely remodelled, she appeared again as the third stage boss and midboss in the seventh work Perfect Cherry Blossom and as a playable character in Imperishable Night, along with being a playable partner in Subterranean Animism. She was a playable character in Immaterial and Missing Power and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody and was the Final boss of Cirno's scenario in Touhou Hisoutensoku. Additionally, she was a target on Stage 3 of Shoot the Bullet and has made a background appearance in Hopeless Masquerade.

She is a pure all-purpose-type magician youkai who lives in a western-style house in the Forest of Magic without strengths and weaknesses in attributes, but she fundamentally fights in style of manipulating her self-made dolls. With a personality that is indifferent to other people, she is attached to magic, and is usually confident but is also timid in one aspect.

In the games on the PC-98, she lived in Makai calling herself "The Magician of Makai" and had a black book that's called the "Grimoire of Alice". Makai was created by Shinki, along with its residents. She was also a magician that can control dolls. She also created her own "Wonderland" in Makai. In the games on Windows, Alice's book in her character portrait in Imperishable Night reveals that the writing possibly spells out "Grimoire". This is some evidence that the book is possibly the same Grimoire which Alice used in the Extra Stage. In Perfect Cherry Blossom, she said, "at last, former friend, we meet again. Have you only brought me your life as a gift?" which can be considered to be something carried over from the PC-98 games, and ZUN himself said that it was the third time that they have fought.

Lily White (リリーホワイト Rirī Howaito) is a fairy who heralds the coming of spring. She first appeared as the 4th stage midboss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, then as a special generic enemy in Phantasmagoria of Flower View and a common midboss in Fairy Wars, each time announcing spring has arrived. She returned as the stage 3 midboss of Hidden Star in Four Seasons.

Ability

Announcing that spring has come

Lily is able to announce that spring has come. Although it's unclear what this ability entails concretely, Gensokyo's residents are made to feel the actual feeling of spring's arrival which makes her very popular with florists. It seems like she is able to provide impetus for flowers and other plants to bloom. In chapter 8 of Strange and Bright Nature Deity, there was a depiction of the place she passed by instantly becoming spring.

She can still attack with said ability, but it's mostly due to excitement about the spring as she's not very aggressive. While it's advised not to stay around when she attacks, she has a good relation with humans. She doesn't seem willing to attack even if they catch her. Likewise, humans don't see her as a threat, but rather as a symbol of good luck.

The Prismriver Sisters (プリズムリバー三姉妹 Purizumuribaa San-shimai) are three characters named Lunasa Prismriver, Merlin Prismriver and Lyrica Prismriver, together appearing as the stage 4 boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom. Lunasa, Merlin, and Lyrica are collectively called the "Prismriver Ensemble" and perform at parties and festivals. At first sight, their instruments (Lunasa with the violin, Merlin with the trumpet, and Lyrica with the keyboard) may seem scattered and disconnected, but they still perform magnificent music. There is also a fourth Prismriver sister, named Layla Prismriver.

These three sisters are poltergeists, made by Layla Prismriver to have the appearances and personalities of her three older sisters from whom she had been separated. Thus, they are technically all the same age since they were presumably created at the same time. They only act out the roles of oldest, middle, and youngest sister based on whichever one they were made to resemble.

It is known, based on their official profiles and from comments by Eiki, that none of the original four sisters are still alive today. However, it's unknown how long ago the events that spawned these three poltergeists occurred.

Ability

Performing on musical instruments without hands or feet

In Perfect Cherry Blossom, this is the main ability that all three sisters have been specified to have. This probably derives from the ability poltergeists have, put to specific use in performing with musical instruments. By manipulating the spirits of instruments, they're able to manipulate the spirits of notes to create sounds. Since they needn't have direct contact with the instruments, they're able to play music impossible to play by hand.

Since the three sisters' musical performance is something that they have learned themselves after Layla's death, their previous abilities were probably along the lines of "moving things without hands or feet" or "making sounds without hands or feet". The former is because poltergeists in general can move things and make them float. The latter is because in the general phenomena of poltergeists, they can be heard from anywhere (a rapping noise, for example).

Youmu Konpaku (魂魄　妖夢 Konpaku Youmu) is a half-human half-phantom who lives at Hakugyokurou in the Netherworld as a gardener and swordplay instructor, who also serves for Yuyuko Saigyouji. She first appeared as the Stage 5 boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, the seventh installment of the Touhou Project, and has since become a recurring playable character.

In Perfect Cherry Blossom, she gathered all of Gensokyo's spring at Yuyuko's instruction, which was the reason Gensokyo's winter did not end. In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red and Chapter 13 of Curiosities of Lotus Asia, she took on the responsibility for collecting and returning the phantoms that wandered around Gensokyo as a result of the boundary of the Netherworld being thinned.

She belongs to the subspecies of phantoms called the "half-human half-phantoms" (半人半霊 "hannin hanrei" or "hanjin hanrei"). Half-human half-phantoms are the mixed-race of phantoms and humans (幽霊と人間のハーフ), which have a largish phantom accompanying them and a relativity long life span compared to humans. The phantom that always follows them is called the "half-phantom" (半霊[1]、半幽霊[2] hanrei, hanyuurei), and they are the other half of their body.[3] In Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, it was supposed that Youmu's human half manipulates the phantom half consciously. Youmu's human half has a lower body temperature compared to normal humans, and her phantom half's body temperature is not so cold compared to normal phantoms. In the Imperishable Night manual, it was written, "she has two kinds of body: human and phantom," showing Youmu to be "human" and the phantom to be "phantom."

Half-human half-phantoms are long-lived, but in Seasonal Dream Vision, since it has still not been 60 years since the time she was born, in Phantasmagoria of Flower View, she was not very knowledgeable about the "flower incident that occurs once every 60 years."

Personality

As she has a straightforward diligent personality, she is often manipulated by those around her (especially Yuyuko).[2][7] For this reason, she often fails at her task, but that does not mean that she has no real power, and she particularly excels at instantaneous force and concentration power.[8] In Immaterial and Missing Power, as literally stated by the shishou, "truth-slashing is something which you know", so she often performs tsujigiri-like moves, but Suika Ibuki pointed out that she does not think that Youmu understood her shishou's teachings.

She has strong sensitivity, and in the good ending of Imperishable Night, her human half was unable to resist the insanity-inducing effects of the true Moon, causing her to become "half-insane". Ironically enough, considering her species, she is afraid of ghost stories, dares, and darkness, but she is calm around phantoms since she is half phantom herself.  In Imperishable Night's Extra. After defeating Fujiwara no Mokou, Yuyuko pretends there is a ghost under a tree, earning a terrified shriek from Youmu. Much further on in Ten Desires, as a result of being mistaken as a hermit, she temporarily mistook herself as being a hermit. Due to artworks and her sprite in the fighting spin-offs, Youmu may be ambidextrous.

Yuyuko Saigyouji (西行寺　幽々子 Saigyouji Yuyuko) is the main antagonist of Perfect Cherry Blossom. She's the ghost "princess" head of Hakugyokurou in the Netherworld.

She first appeared as the Final Boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, later becoming a playable character along with Youmu Konpaku (as a duo) in Imperishable Night and showing up as an expansion character in Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, and Touhou Hisoutensoku. She would eventually also appear as the Stage 1 boss in Ten Desires, and as a Day 4 boss in Impossible Spell Card.

Unlike many departed spirits, Yuyuko resembles a living human; a humanoid. She is very cheerful and friendly: Her playful, good-humored personality, otherworldly beauty, and courtesan charm can have a disarming effect. She often makes bizarre and apparently nonsensical remarks and sometimes seems to overlook the obvious, leading to her characterization as an airhead or a ditz. As an instance, in Touhou Bougetsushou, she toyed with Youmu Konpaku as a daily occurrence even with Ran Yakumo present.

However, at other times she will reveal an extremely cunning and perceptive side and will also sometimes display an extraordinary level of knowledge. For instance, in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, she was the quickest character to identify the culprit as Tenshi Hinanawi when the incident was in the omen stage (Yukari Yakumo spoke of the dwindling of phantoms as Komachi Onozuka's negligence, but Yuyuko guessed correctly). Additionally, in Ten Desires, she obliquely informed the playable character about the location of the incident regarding the divine spirits. She is also known for her incredible appetite.

Ability

Manipulating death

This is the ability to, without exception and without permitting any resistance, end the life of any living being, whether it be human or youkai. The only kind of creatures immune from this are Hourai Immortals. Clearly and simply, it is an unusually and dreadfully powerful ability. Although this ability is what drove her to commit suicide and become a ghost, it seems that she hasn't forgotten this ability since then, and it seems that she can use this ability in a carefree manner (though she doesn't act carelessly in the usage of this ability). However, whether she's able to end life only to the extent of fainting, or if she invites one to death gently, is unclear. During her lifetime, the latter was true. Her Last Word "Saigyouji Parinirvana" is said to be the very incarnation of this ability.

Manipulating departed souls

This is the ability that enables her to manipulate ghosts and spirits, an ability she possessed even while she was alive. Although it's unclear what one is exactly able to accomplish with this ability, it seems to place Yuyuko on the role of the manager of the ghosts who stay for a while in the Netherworld. Because of this ability, she is able to let those from Hell stay eternally in the Netherworld.

Secret Bosses:

I can't post anymore images lmao so just search them up

Ran Yakumo (八雲　藍 Yakumo Ran) is the kitsune shikigami of Yukari Yakumo and is in turn the master of the bakeneko shikigami Chen.

Ran first appeared as the extra stage boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom, where she also appeared as the Phantasm stage midboss of that game, so she has the strong image of being a midboss, but even as an extra boss, she also had abilities not to be ashamed of, as she is also a long difficult battle.

She frequently appears as an attack option in the fighting games for Yukari Yakumo and has appeared in Imperishable Night as Yukari's attack.

Ran is described as being a gentle youkai, who won't start a fight unless provoked. Although Ran is a shikigami, she sometimes "forget" her position as a servant and acts of her own volition, like deciding to attack the heroine in Perfect Cherry Blossom to avenge Chen. Because of this, Yukari punishes her to remind her who the master is.

(still can't post another image)

Yukari Yakumo (八雲　紫 Yakumo Yukari) is a legendary youkai who is able to manipulate boundaries. She is the master of Ran Yakumo. She is called the "gap youkai" (すきま妖怪 sukima youkai), although "gap youkai" is not the name of a species, as she is more of a one-of-a-kind type of youkai.  Regardless of her power, Yukari appears to be the most well-informed being in Gensokyo of any kind and usually achieves her goals through manipulating events rather than direct combat.

Yukari first appeared as the phantasm stage boss of Perfect Cherry Blossom with Ran Yakumo serving her as shikigami. Despite being a high-class boss compared to other Extra and Final stage bosses, she's made occasional appearances in later games. She was a playable character in Imperishable Night, partnered with Reimu Hakurei (and supported her in Subterranean Animism), and was playable in the fighting games, but was only a cameo in the background of Hopeless Masquerade. Also, she was also an Extra stage target in Shoot the Bullet and appeared on the Final Day of Impossible Spell Card.

She is one of the oldest youkai in Gensokyo, one of the strongest of youkai, and is praised as one of the wisest of youkai.[3][4]. She was one who proposed the Great Hakurei Barrier, which covers Gensokyo, and is therefore tied to Gensokyo's creation. She is the only known youkai who is able to pass this barrier in order to access the Outside World, although there are a few instances like Mamizou Futatsuiwa who's passed it. She also performs surveillance and safety administration (mainly for Ran Yakumo). She is simply one of the most mysterious youkai living in Gensokyo.

Personality[edit]

Yukari is known for being a very youkai-like youkai who sleeps all day and lives for the enjoyment of life. Though she rarely leaves her house, she's well-connected and is acquainted with most of the most powerful youkai as well as anyone having anything to do with the Great Hakurei Barrier or the outside world, although she rarely attacks humans.[3] She has a tendency to toy with her opponents rather than use her full power from the start. If anyone is suited for the role of "mastermind", it's Yukari. She excels at mathematics and is experienced due to her long life.

She possesses superhuman intellect and especially surpasses in dealing with numbers. In Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red, as Ran Yakumo said, this intellect is something that even Ran is not able to understand, to the extent that for example that she is able to determine the depths of the darkness of Avici or determine in an instant how long it would take for Ursa Major to devour the North Star, as it seems. Concretely to what extent this amazing intellect goes is hard to know, but it would be no mistake to think that this intellect far surpasses that of humans.

She often has a great deal of insight and understanding about whatever happens in Gensokyo, and possesses considerable intellectual prowess, as well. Though she seems flaky and unreliable most of the time, when the safety or security of Gensokyo is at stake, she won't hesitate to get involved, even if it means using others to do the work for her. For example, in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, she treats Tenshi Hinanawi with much hostility after finding out the plot of the Heavens. She could easily be either a villain or a heroine, depending on her whims.

Yukari deals with problems by manipulating others to act to resolve things for her. She seems to rarely act directly except in particularly egregious situations. In all cases, she rarely lets anyone know what her true aims or goals are and sometimes these goals are extremely abstract. Yukari has a well-deserved reputation of being fickle, whimsical and lying often and thus many characters in Gensokyo dislike her. For whatever reason, Yukari takes it all in stride and does not seriously deny any of those comments. She seems to actively try to keep her more obviously-altruistic actions a secret, such as her donations to the Hakurei Shrine in Strange and Bright Nature Deity. She possibly cultivates this image to ensure that people continue to fear her as a youkai, as this is what her true goal for a particularly complex gambit is revealed to be at the end of Cage in Lunatic Runagate.

Abilities and strength[edit]

Yukari is with no doubt one of the most powerful youkai in Gensokyo. She has been described as an extremely powerful being more than once,[5][6], with easily enough power to destroy all of Gensokyo if it's needed.[7]. In Silent Sinner in Blue, Yukari claimed Watatsuki no Toyohime was stronger than her and avoided a direct confrontation with her, although at the time she was purposedly letting herself being captured.

Her physical strength is what you'd expect from a youkai. While the extent of an average youkai's strength is never really specified, their bodily ability is typically very high, so her strength is still far from that of a human. There are some examples and statements which show Yukari's physical prowess:

In Curiosities of Lotus Asia Chapter 12, Yukari's hand is able to effortlessly block and brush aside a mallet swung by Rinnosuke Morichika with all his might, leaving him shocked that a small slender feminine hand was able to pull off such a feat. Rinnosuke said that it feels like he hit a pillow.

Hong Meiling, in one of her Touhou Hisoutensoku win quotes, notes that she felt a odd resistance from Yukari's body (presumably after punching and kicking her a lot), to the point where she wondered if Yukari was wearing something else under that presumably delicate dress of hers.

Yukari states in her own win quotes in Immaterial and Missing Power that she has no weaknesses, and even shooting, cutting, stabbing, hitting, or killing her is useless.[8]

By mostly moving around in gaps, one would usually not see her as doing much physical labor at all, and according to Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, since she ends up in blurting out herself such sayings like "to do mountain climbing at such an age", there is the image that she is like an indoors-type youkai, but in the end, she is still a youkai.

Manipulation of boundaries

Yukari's "Danmaku Barrier", as illustrated in The Grimoire of Marisa.

Yukari using a border for transportation in Silent Sinner in Blue.

Yukari's main ability is manipulating any kind of boundaries.[9] This ability has been described as logically being able to affect essentially anything.[10] In her monologue during A Beautiful Flower Blooming Violet Every Sixty Years, she explains that this power allows her to control or remove the boundaries between any and all things, like Gensokyo and the Outside World, the worlds of the living and the dead, humans and youkai and even the day and the night. [11]

The most common and visible application of Yukari's boundary manipulation abilities is opening "gaps" (すきま sukima) which act as portals between two places, where she's able to hold, sit on or emerge from such gaps. By manipulating borders in space and creating a chasm, she is able to link together separate places. Because of this, she's able to show up at any place and can freely travel to places like the Outside World. Within these gaps one can see a lot of eyes, which according to the description of Yukari's Magic Eye "Laplace's Demon" spell card she can also use to see. Although Yukari's gaps can ultimately connect any kind of place, in Silent Sinner in Blue she could create a gap to the "fantastic" version of the Moon only during the full moon, which is the only period of time during which the passage is open. For some unknown reason she is unable to use her powers to bring a living being on the far side of the Moon, which is where the Lunar Capital is located. She is, however, capable of freely travelling between Gensokyo and the Outside World. Yukari can create gaps through which only she can pass, or which anything can pass through.[12] Moreover, while the main use of gaps is travelling to different plances, Yukari also uses them in battle either by virtue of being able to use almost any object (such as tombstones, road signs, and even running trains) as a weapon,[13] by retreating inside them to avoid being hit or land unexpected attacks,[14] sucking in an opponent's attacks to throw them back.[15], or merging different gaps to create harmful spatial distorsions.[16]

In Perfect Memento in Strict Sense, manipulating boundaries is described as a terrifying god-like ability with no weak points which there is no defense or countermeasure against, capable of fundamentally undermining reality itself and as one of the most dangerous abilities that youkai are known to possess, while Yukari's manual profile in Imperishable Night says that "the danger and potency of her ability is beyond imagination".[17]

Ultimately, everything is built upon the existence of boundaries; if there were no boundaries everything would effectively exist as a single enormous object. Because of this, the ability to manipulate boundaries is logically an ability of both creation and destruction: by making a new boundary is to create a new existence, and to destroy a boundary is to negate an existence. For example, as said in Perfect Memento, if there was no water surface there could be no lake, if there was no sky line neither mountain nor sky could exist and were it not for the Great Barrier even Gensokyo itself wouldn't exist. Furthermore, it seems that not only are physical boundaries, but also the general idea of boundaries can be manipulated and it seems like she would be able to manipulate the boundary between dreams and reality, which could very well be how she was able to drag the real Sumireko Usami out of the Dream World in Antinomy of Common Flowers. Yukari is also capable of seeing (and seeing through) boundaries that are normally invisible; when the Human Village was displaced from history by Keine Kamishirasawa, Yukari was completely unfazed and still able to see it.[18][19] She also tells Marisa that it would easy for her to manipulate the boundary between Winter and Spring.[20]

It's shown that Yukari can control the boundaries and bend them to her will as seen in Immaterial and Missing Power when she adjusted the sky by manipulating the border between the daylight and moonlight to unite the day and the night.[21] According to Marisa Kirisame, Yukari can even control the boundary between "a danmaku for play and a danmaku for battle".[22]

Yukari is also capable of sensing and repairing damage to the Great Hakurei Barrier, and although in Perfect Cherry Blossom Yuyuko Saigyouji doubts Yukari could make such a strong barrier,[23] she has been refered to as its creator in various occasions.[24][25] To add to all this, Hieda no Akyuu writes that "manipulation of boundaries" is theoretically a godlike power which would allow Yukari to create or destroy anything, but that all the stories about it are impossible to confirm.[3]

Examples of the usage of this ability:

Neutralized Suika Ibuki's ability by forcing the oni, which was spread as mist over the entirety of Gensokyo, into her normal form so that she could be seen and interacted with by others.[26]

Adjusted the sky by manipulating the border between the daylight and moonlight, to unite the day and the night. Possibly, this also allowed Yukari to stop the night in Imperishable Night.

Manipulation of the boundary between the true and illusionary moon, which allowed her to open a gap, that lead from Gensokyo to the Moon, on the lake surface. (Lunar War, Silent Sinner in Blue)

By creating the Boundary of Fantasy and Reality, she estabilished the Outside World as the real world, and Gensokyo as an illusionary one, allowing youkai to disappear from the former and thrive in the latter. (Youkai Expansion Project, over 500 years ago)

She is widely acknowledged as the creator of the Great Hakurei Barrier, which isolates Gensokyo from the Outside World. (The Great Barrier Disturbance)

Upon Yuyuko's request, weakening the Border of Life and Death between the world of the living and the Netherworld, making it possible for denizens of both world to easily cross it. (Perfect Cherry Blossom)

When the Great Hakurei Barrier has loosened, she returned Rinnosuke Morichika to Gensokyo who has been ejected into the outside world (Curiosities of Lotus Asia)

Dragged the real Sumireko Usami out of the Dream World (Antinomy of Common Flowers)

By manipulating the border of master and slave during the Perfect Possession incident, she thwarted Joon and Shion Yorigami's scheme that allowed Joon to win any battle by forcing Shion as the enemy's slave (Antinomy of Common Flowers)

Many of her Spell Cards and attacks allude to various circumstances involving boundary manipulation or creation, such as: Barrier "Balance of Motion and Stillness", Barrier "Mesh of Light and Darkness", "Boundary of Humans and Youkai", Barrier "Charming Quadruple Barrier", between many others. The description of Yukari's "Boundary of Intellect and Feet" states that she would be able to cut anything by using boundaries, a motif also used in her Splitter "Thing That Splits All Into Two" Spell Card.

According to herself, when humans have noctambulism it's because she manipulates the boundary between sleeping and being awake.

Yes this was all mostly from the Touhou Wiki because I can't explain this any better

[andersunmenschlich]

Episode 17: The Boneturner’s Tale

Ah, finally. It’s about time I got another episode listened to. Amazing how long that takes; so much to do. And still I have no bookcases. Oh well. This one’s the statement of a Sebastian Adekoya, and apparently it has something to do with books. I am pleased.

...Oh, I am very pleased.

It seems to me that Sebastian Adekoya understands books very well. I’ve said before (and will doubtless say again) that all books are books of magic. Just as this episode’s statement-giver says, opening a book allows you to enter the mind of someone who may well be long dead. In such cases, reading is a form of necromancy.

To read a book is to change your mind: to place thoughts there that are not your own, to see things you’ve never seen, walk through worlds you’ve never been to, that no longer exist or don’t exist yet, or that never will.

To write is to preserve a fraction of your own mind, freezing it in symbols which wait to be decoded by the incautious.

You don’t know what thoughts you’re inviting to live inside your mind when you settle down to decipher a lexical set. You can’t know what they’ll do to you, nor you to them (nor what they, changed, may do to you again). The promises in the titles, in the genres and the labels, can only tell you so much. What does this set of words contain? Have you even understood what is meant by the description—are you sure you know what it means when an old story is called a “romance,” or when a newer one is labeled “wuxia”?

Some thoughts won’t be able to live in your mind. Some you’ll never be able to get rid of. Personalities and people, scenes and scenarios, images and ideas... foreign things birthed in the minds of others; decode the twisting lines on the page before you, and they’ll spring to life in your mind as powerful as the day they were written.

Words can be wonderful—and dangerous.

Books are beautiful—and bewitching.

You should never read unwarily, because when you read you’re bringing alien thoughts to life in your mind, and you may not want them to make a home there....

Sebastian Adekoya says he used to work at Chiswick Library. As he describes it, it’s a local library very like the one I grew up with: cheaply furnished, full of battered paperbacks, open-feeling, and frequented by friendly, quietly chatting patrons. Probably the occasional Children’s Corner with a librarian who reads aloud well and a much-loved copy of, say, Matilda or Owl at Home, depending on the audience.

Our statement-giver says it was 1996 when the thing happened.

He’d been working for the library about a year at that point, and knew that the library bought its books new, when it bought them (though he didn’t know where they bought them from).

A patron returned five books at the front desk. One of them, he’d never seen before. It was not, however, new. “The barcode and ISBN,” Sebastian says, “both registered as being that of Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, but the book itself was an almost featureless black paperback, with a title on the front in faded white serif font: The Bone Turner’s Tale.”

Confused, he calls the librarian (Ruth Weaver) over to look at it.

She also didn’t remember ever seeing it before, but it had the appropriate markings for a book from Chiswick Library, and the stamps on the lending label indicated it’d been in their collection for several years.

Weaver shrugs and says not to worry about it: they’ll get it put on the system properly. Sebastian, however, is bothered. So he does a bit of quick research.

The man who brought the book in, one Michael Crew, apparently only checked out four books, not five. Our statement-giver thinks maybe he’s a self-published author trying to get his book into the local library, and suggests this possibility to the librarian, who laughs and says that’s probably it—though why anyone would bother trying to get a book onto the shelves of this particular local library was beyond her.

Sebastian Adekoya notes that the book looked worn, “like it had seen decades of being read, with a line creased down the spine and one half of the cover faded from the sun. Nor, from what I could see, did it list any author at all.”

At this point, our fascinating book story is interrupted by the arrival of another character.

According to our statement-giver, this Jared Hopworth is, “not to put too fine a point on it, thick as mud.” He was also Sebastian’s best friend when the two of them were kids: inseparable. Hm. I must admit, I never had (nor wanted) anyone like that in my life. I suppose there was that other preacher’s oldest kid, from the church in the next church region over (it’s not called a diocese when you’re Protestant, but the effect’s much the same...). We were mostly friends in name, though, and never spent much time together.

In any case, Sebastian went to college and Jared hit the back alleys. For some reason, it seems, Jared Hopworth saw this as Sebastian Adekoya betraying him by being too smart, not him betraying Sebastian via being an idiot too stupid for college.

I do have to wonder how intelligent our statement-giver actually is, however, given that he apparently decided to just put up with what he describes as “a campaign of petty terror” for the sake of a memory of childhood friendship. Oh, sure, “he was always very careful to stop before he did anything that might get the police involved—but let’s be honest with ourselves, shall we?

You should only brush off malicious behavior from others if you’re enjoying it, and want to encourage them to do more.

...And now we get an even larger interruption. Excellent.

I do believe this is the very first time another character has actually broken into the middle of a recording. I don’t like it. Who is this Miss Herne, and why is her complaint so important that my story has to be disrupted?

I don’t even remember ever hearing her name before. I don’t know her, I don’t care about her—weren’t we in the middle of something?

...Oh, no, wait... I do remember her.

Naomi Herne, the annoying woman who doesn’t know how to appreciate a misty moonlit graveyard meadow. The one with the unusual attachment to that large piece of headstone. What’s she complaining about? I don’t remember that she had anything to complain about besides her own unfortunate lack of, as the children say, “chill.”

Well, whatever the case, it seems Jonathan Sims considers Naomi Herne’s statement a waste of time. It wasn’t, it was beautiful—but never mind. The interrupting messenger, someone named Elias (which rings a faint bell), tells the head archivist that the Lucas family gives the Magnus Institute financial support, so he shouldn’t annoy anyone connected with them if he can help it. Does Naomi Herne count as “connected to the Lucas family”? Her Lucas husband’s dead. She doesn’t even have the name. No children that I’ve heard of. No reason she should be connected that I can see. And they didn’t seem terribly interested in a connection at the funeral, did they? I think Mr. Sims can antagonize her all he wants without damaging future Lucas donations, frankly.

Our interrupter is also looking for Martin (the supposedly-but-not-apparently incompetent archival assistant). Mr. Sims says Martin is off sick with stomach problems this week, and Elias leaves.

...Wait.

Elias Bouchard? Jonathan Sims’ boss? Why is he running messages down to the archives? This makes even less sense than Rosie the receptionist being in charge of upkeep on recording equipment. Just how much disbelief is supposed to be suspended here? I’m asking seriously, because the Magnus Institute seems like a very badly put together organization if you think about it too much. Or at all.

Well. Elias Bouchard leaves, Mr. Sims expresses “blessed relief” at the fact of Martin’s being sick and thus not at work, and we return to the statement.

...Our main character really dislikes this particular assistant, and for (it would seem) no good reason. Is there history there? Did Martin do something especially bad to Mr. Sims at some point in the past?

Or is it just some kind of negative bias, like thinking a man will be no good with children because he’s a man, or that a woman will suck at math, or that a Hispanic cleaner will steal your jewelry because they’re Hispanic (you dropped your necklace down the back of the dresser, Grandma—I am never going to forget that unjust accusation, nor how plain you made it that your suspicion was based entirely on race).

In any case: back to the library.

Sebastian Adekoya notes that it’s typically a bad thing when Jared Hopworth turns up at the library, because it means Jared’s “bored enough to seek me out for harassment.”

This is apparently exactly what Mr. Hopworth has in mind, because he waits for Weaver to go back to her office and close the door, then knocks the returns cart over, spilling books everywhere. Which is a horrible thing to do. I can’t stand seeing books mistreated this way, I’d rather watch someone bash innocent children around (which, I realize, isn’t saying much given I’m the one talking—but still).

Despite obviously having done it on purpose, he smiles and apologizes.

I’m familiar with this particular method of annoying people. Deliberately doing something terrible, then acting as though it was accidental? Yes, indeed.

People have trouble dealing with this. You did a bad thing. You clearly meant to do the bad thing. This should give them the right to demand retribution. But then, instead of continuing in the “person who does bad things deliberately” role, you switch to “friendly mistake-maker,” and it throws them.

Really they shouldn’t give you the benefit of the doubt.

There’s no doubt!

Sebastian Adekoya bends down to pick the books up, and as anyone with a capacity for noticing patterns of behavior could have predicted, Jared Hopworth hits him in the back of the head with a book.

Which is, again, a terrible thing to do to a book. Human skulls are, on average, much sturdier than the covers of books.

This book, however, may be capable of taking care of itself.

“Behind me, Jared stood holding the book I had put aside—The Bone Turner’s Tale—and had apparently picked it up to hit me with. But rather than offering me a fake apology, or further violence, instead his eyes were locked on the book. We stood there in silence for a few seconds, until he said something about needing something new to read, turned around, and walked off.”

According to our statement-giver, Jared Hopworth isn’t much of a reader, “and the look in his eyes when he left had something in it not entirely unlike fear.”

Yes, I think this work might be able to handle that book-abusing felon just fine.

On his way home after leaving the library that night, Mr. Adekoya passes Mr. Hopworth’s house. Apparently they’re both living in the same houses they occupied as children, which is rather unfortunate for Sebastian, don’t you think? It’s late September, which is a nicely spooky time of year, and something’s moving in the pool of orange light under a streetlamp.

It’s a rat. A large white rat that looks as though it was once a pet. Something’s wrong with the back half of it, and its head seems to be turned around farther than it should be as it drags itself along by its front paws.

Which is also deliciously spooky.

Sebastian Adekoya stares at it until it drags itself off into the darkness and disappears from sight.

He notes that the lights were off in Jared Hopworth’s house. As someone who sleeps days, works nights, and routinely doesn’t turn the lights on as I go about my nightly affairs, I don’t find this particularly indicative of a lack of activity—but that’s me. I suppose most people, when their lights are shut off, don’t make and eat food, read books, do jigsaw puzzles, etc. Ah, how limiting it must be to have such weak senses.

Jared Hopworth more or less vanishes from the scene for a while. Weeks go by without him turning up to torment Sebastian Adekoya, who begins to feel worried. Almost a month with no torment? Surely something must be wrong!

...Hmm. Do you suppose our statement-giver might be just mildly masochistic?

Whatever the case, he’s not eager enough for unpleasantness to actually go to Mr. Hopworth’s house and check on him, so the Jaredless time rolls by until late October, when Jared’s mother turns up at the library with her arm in a sling, wearing an unnecessarily bulky coat and a hateful expression, carrying a familiar black-bound paperback book, which she flings onto the floor at our statement-giver’s feet before turning to leave.

Sebastian Adekoya asks after the health of her son, which arrests her departure and provokes a bit of an outburst: “She spun back and started to swear violently at me, told me I had no business with her son and that I—and my books—were to stay away from him.” This outburst also gives Sebastian a bit more time to inspect the arm... which reminds me markedly of the rat.

“As she spoke, I couldn’t look away from her arm and the odd ways it twisted as she gestured. How her fingers seemed to bend the wrong way.”

Well, well, well.

Before leaving, Mrs. Hopworth spits at Mr. Adekoya—and I find it interesting that, while she clearly has no problem throwing the book onto the floor like it’s a live animal and she wants to smash its skull, she avoids spitting on it.

Despite the absence of spittle, our statement-giver decides to employ paper handkerchieves in picking the book up, rather than touch it with his bare hands.

He sticks it in the book returns cart, locks up the library, and goes home.

It rains heavily that night and Sebastian Adekoya, in his converted attic bedroom, can’t sleep. He’s worrying about the book. He’s worrying that perhaps he shouldn’t have just left it there, unsupervised, as it were. “What if Ruth came in earlier than I did tomorrow and took it? What would happen to her?”

Frankly, that strikes me as an interesting experiment. What would happen to Weaver? Come to that, what happened to Hopworth? Was the idiot eaten by the bone book? Twisted beyond telling? Possessed, perhaps?

I’d quite like to know.

“Should I have destroyed it?” Sebastian Adekoya asks himself.

I’m not sure this question would even occur to me. “Should,” after all, presupposes some kind of ideal state for things to be in.

Should you do thus-and-such a thing? It’s an incomplete sentence. You’ve left off your goal. “In order to [X], should I [Y]?” That is a complete sentence. So—should Sebastian Adekoya destroy The Bone Turner’s Tale? It depends on what his goal is. If he wants to study it, then no: he definitely shouldn’t. If he wants to stop it from doing what it seems to be doing, then yes: he probably should.

Completely failing to define his goal for an ideal state of things RE: The Bone Turner’s Tale, Sebastian discards the idea of destruction on the grounds that he wasn’t sure he had it in him to destroy a book—”even one with such a strangeness to it.”

Well now. Thank you, Mr. Adekoya, for letting us know that you consider strangeness a helpful push towards destruction.

...Oh, I’m not really surprised. I do have a passing acquaintance with humanity, after all.

Sebastian Adekoya lies awake in bed until sometime around two in the morning, when he finally gives up and goes to get the book. He gets out of bed, dresses, grabs his gloves and a jacket, and walks twenty minutes to the library in the rain, where he unlocks the door, goes in, deactivates the alarm, and begins turning on as many lights as possible without making it too obvious that there’s someone in the building.

He tells us that part of him wanted to keep the library in its nearly pitch-black state, but he turned on lights anyway. I’m guessing this is due to his weak eyes, since he says “I had to half-feel my way through the foyer and into the library proper.” [with a complete lack of sympathy] Must be rough.

He also uses a flashlight—but not before he puts his bare hand on the book returns cart, catching his balance, and his fingers come away wet.

The books, it would seem, are all bleeding.

...That is very annoying. I think I would be very nearly angry. Blood-soaked books!? Have you any idea how difficult that is to clean? Frankly, it’s impossible! This had better be the type of supernatural blood that vanishes without a trace.

The Bone Turner’s Tale, meanwhile, is as dry as... well... a bone.

Sebastian Adekoya puts his gloves back on (which means, unless he washed his hands without telling us or this is the type of supernatural blood that vanishes without a trace, that the inside of at least one of those thick gloves is going to need some rather tricky cleaning done), and picks up The Bone Turner’s Tale. He puts it on the desk and—clumsily, because of the thick gloves—begins reading.

He doesn’t begin at the beginning, just opens it randomly, which I suppose is understandable given the current unwieldiness of his fingers, but still. I can’t really approve.

“It was written in prose, and certainly seemed to be a story of some kind. The part I read dealt with an unnamed man, at various points referred to as the Boneturner, the Bonesmith or just the Turner, watching an assembled group of people as they made their way into a small village.

“It’s unclear from what I read whether he is traveling with them, or simply following them, but I remember being unsettled by the details he observed in them: the way the parson would move his hand over his mouth whenever he stared too long at the nuns or how the cook looked at the meat he prepared with the same eyes that looked at the pardoner. It was only at that point that I realized the book was describing the pilgrims from The Canterbury Tales.”

You know, I’ve never read The Canterbury Tales.

“Now, this certainly wasn’t some lost section of a Chaucer classic,” our statement-giver tells us. “It was written in modern English, with none of the archaic spelling or pronunciation of the original, and besides that the writing itself was of questionable quality. There was something compelling about it, though.”

“I flicked ahead a few pages, and found the Bonesmith had apparently crept up to the miller while he slept. It described him silently reaching inside him, and… it’s a bit hazy. All I remember clearly is the line ‘and from his rib a flute to play that merry tune of marrow took’. And as for the rest, I don’t recall in detail, but I know that I almost threw up, and that the miller did not survive. This was on page sixteen, and it was a thick book.”

Funny, since he described it as a small paperback earlier. Hmm. Something like my paperback copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, maybe? 6.75″ x 4.25″, over 1000 pages long—a veritable brick of a book. Hmm. Could be.

It also gives a bit of a hint as to what might have happened to the rat (and the mother... and possibly the son).

I like it.

Our statement-giver is notably less pleased, and turns to the frontispiece to see if he can figure out where this book came from. Apparently he’s given up on the idea that Michael Crew wrote and self-published it? I don’t see that that’s entirely out of the question at this point. I mean—what, after all, do we really know about Michael Crew?

Peeling off the Chiswick Library label, Sebastian Adekoya discovers another library label beneath.

This label is not in excellent shape. According to our statement-giver, it says something like “Library of Gergensburg” (or “Jürgenleit,” or “Jurgenlicht”), which suggests that the last library wasn’t in Britain.

I wonder whether it was still written in English there?

Giving credence to my tentative hypothesis regarding masochism, Sebastian Adekoya prepares to return to reading the book that nearly made him throw up.

At this point, however, Jared Hopworth breaks in. Literally. Through a window. Sebastian Adekoya recognizes Jared via voice, which is one of the only ways I ever manage to recognize anyone. (Why, yes: I am indeed borderline prosopagnosic. I blame humanity’s insistence on all looking basically identical. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth—and all in the same arrangement, at that. How, I ask you, is anyone supposed to tell any of you apart?)

As far as visuals go: Jared has apparently decided to dress himself in baggy pants and a thick coat with a face-concealing hood. This strikes me as a very reasonable way to dress, particularly if both coat and pants come well-supplied with those deep and useful pockets I take so much for granted in my clothing.

Sebastian says that Jared is now “longer” than he used to be, whatever that means.

If he meant “taller,” I’d expect him to say “taller.” But “longer”? I’m not entirely certain.... Does he mean to say that Jared has, perhaps, been a bit stretched? That would seem to fit with the pointyness of his fingers.

His bones, I’d say, are longer than they once were.

Jared Hopworth is also “standing at a strange angle, as though his legs were too stiff to use.” That’s interesting.

If I were to guess (which I’m about to), I’d say that reading this book gives people the ability to manipulate bone inside living bodies. Now, I might hypothesize that the book simply warps things all on its own... but that rat really did look like an experiment, and Jared coming for the book strikes me as an “I haven’t mastered this skill yet, I need more practice, give me the manual” type of thing.

Sebastian Adekoya, declining to give Jared Hopworth the book despite the obvious tidiness of giving a strange thing to a strange thing, decides to punch Jared Hopworth right in the solar plexus.

Whereupon Jared bites Sebastian with, not his teeth, but his ribcage.

“...I felt his flesh give way and almost retract, drawing me in close. And then I felt his ribs shift, shut tight around my hand, as though his ribcage were trying to bite me. They were sharper than I would have thought possible, and at last, this was what actually started me screaming.”

Now, if that isn’t just perfect for late October, I don’t know what is.

Sebastian drops The Bone Turner’s Tale. Jared grabs it and runs off. Sebastian starts chasing him, but....

“I started to chase after him, until I saw how he was moving. How many limbs he had. He had… added some extras. That was the moment it finally all got too much for me; I stopped running. It wasn’t my book, it wasn’t my responsibility and I had no idea what I was dealing with, so I didn’t. I just stood there in a daze and watched the thing that was once Jared disappear out into the rain. I never saw him again.”

Uh.

Well, that’s probably all for the best so far as Sebastian Adekoya’s concerned, but does he really think things are going to stay that way? Jared Hopworth likes bullying him; I somehow doubt that gaining new powers will have changed that.

Our statement-giver, I think, is just as doomed as... huh. As pretty much all of the others seem to have been, come to think of it.

Somebody heard Mr. Adekoya screaming, it seems, and called the police. They turn up to receive the best lie Sebastian Adekoya can come up with on the spur of the moment, which involves falling asleep at his desk and being awoken by an attempted robbery. He can’t remember how he explained the bloody books, which seems to me like a thing that would take some explaining.

Hmm. I wonder how many strange things the police see in the Magnus Archives universe. Maybe Sebastian didn’t explain the books at all—perhaps there are some things the police in this universe just... leave alone.

The blood, apparently, was not the disappearing type. Mr. Adekoya says “it took weeks to get out,” and I assume he means to imply “out of the carpet,” because let’s face it: blood-soaked books don’t clean. Those books had to be thrown away and we all know it.

...I wonder what the blood type was.

Jonathan Sims describes himself as “deeply unhappy” about this statement.

“I’ve barely scratched the surface of the archives, and have already uncovered evidence of two separate surviving books from Jürgen Leitner’s library. Until he mentioned that, I was tempted to dismiss much of it out of hand, but as it stands now I believe every word.”

So interesting, the things he believes and doesn’t believe. I’m becoming more and more convinced that he stubbornly denies things until evidence actually forces him to believe—which might seem like a good way to remain sane in a universe like this one, but consider: is the denial of reality sanity? I don’t see that it’s even safety, since not knowing about a thing (germs, say) has never prevented the thing from killing you.

An interesting side note: Mr. Sims’ boss, Elias Bouchard, apparently has a very hands-off attitude when it comes to the supernatural.

“Record and study, not interfere or contain.”

Personally, I think that study and interference aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive... but that’s me. In any case, I do think Sebastian Adekoya’s either very dense, or that library label was very oddly written. Two separate words with two separate capitals (Jürgen Leitner) seem difficult to confuse for a single word! “Jürgenleit”? Really? Come, now.

Tim and Sasha, two of the three amazingly competent archival assistants, have done research which proves that yes, Jared Hopworth had a warrant out for breaking and entering and assault, but no, nobody found him and the case was dropped.

And aha!

About seven years after giving this statement, Sebastian Adekoya was found dead in the middle of the road, body so messed up they figured it had to be a hit-and-run.

Even though there were no signs of crushing or trauma marks.

That’s lovely.

I’d like a Leitner.

[tales-unique]

THIEF

Chapter 1

         DATE          NOV 14TH, 2042

         TIME          PM 05:17:08                          :09                          :10…

Deviancy had given Connor a new perspective on Detroit, one that he would forever be indebted to Markus for allowing him to achieve. As he entered the Detroit City Police Departments headquarters and ascended in the elevator to where the police offices were, now frequented by both human and android officers, he pondered various topics while deftly flicking his coin from one hand to the other.

To clarify, it had been four years since Markus had led his revolt in pursuit of freedom and equality for androids, both deviant and otherwise, and ultimately won the favour of those who had once been their oppressors. It had been an arduous journey, with many casualties, but ultimately their goal was achieved; androids were now a recognized people and were finally free. There was still much work to be done and in the years since those fated days, Markus had worked tirelessly to bridge a gap that many had deemed impossible to completely fill. So far it had all be favourable due to the determination of Markus to lead a peaceful revolution, one that had brought many humans around to their cause. Their plight had resonated with many who themselves had felt downtrodden and outcast, and Connor felt himself comparing it to other accounts in history where humans had turned on their own kind just as easily; it was in their nature to be this way, he would often remind himself, to keep any negativity in check. With a flick of his wrist, he captured the smooth metal coin in between his fingers, brow creasing briefly. A report had been filed; an altercation between two humans and an android with another human having been caught fleeing the scene. As the words flitted in his cybernetic brain he felt a small frown tug at his lips. Although there was much positive progress in the way of equal rights and liberties for androids there were still those who feared the changes, both human and androids alike. It was inevitable that there would still be clashes, as Markus himself had informed the people of Jericho, and soon the peoples of the world, but Connor felt somewhat calmer knowing that there was a conscious effort now to limit these instances. Especially as he was able to return to his previous occupation within the Detroit Police Force. Now a fully-fledged Detective, no longer attached to Cyberlife since its collapse, Connor now focused on being able to help Markus in the best way he knew how; by ensuring that androids contributed to society in a positive way. Pulling himself from his reverie as the metallic ding of the elevator doors opening sounded, Connor politely nodding his head to a pair of other detectives that entered the elevator as he left, his feet carrying him swiftly to the bright, open room where he worked. The layout and the design were still the same, with tables lined out neatly with each lieutenant’s name presented on a plaque, but now there was one more decorated desk— his own. “Good evening, Lieutenant,” Connor smiled as he strode to his desk, situated opposite the decorated, yet grizzled, detective and his partner of some time. “Hey Connor,” came a somewhat exasperated sigh, to which Connor’s brows furrowed once more, his head tilting a fraction as he assessed the situation. Hank looked tired, far more so than usual, and Connor noted with some shock that there were no traces of whiskey in the cooled coffee that sat forgotten in his mug. Ceasing his analysis Connor settled at the edge of Hank’s desk, glancing at a report the older man had been staring at for what he imagined to have been a while, judging by the way he seemed to have no focus on it whatsoever. “You look tired, is it a rough case?” Connor spoke out, inclining a hand to the report Hank possessed, expression becoming more perplexed when a gruff laugh was his response and a shake of the head. “No, no, actually, it’s pretty shit. Fowler thinks I ought to take it easy every once in a while, the bastard,” Hank almost snarled, soon tossing the report onto his desk without a care. He glanced up at Connor, who looked at it expectantly. Still something of a poodle, that boy was, and Hank almost missed the motion of his hand already waving to allow Connor a read. “Go for it,” he huffed, turning his eyes to his terminal, “just some burglary attempt, nothing major, he just wanted my input since the witness is— Hmph .” The way Hank abruptly ended his sentence didn’t go unnoticed by Connor as he took the report in hand to read what little had already been documented, eyes scanning over it wordlessly. He looked sour, like in those first meetings between them when all of this began, and it worried Connor. In truth, human emotion was still somewhat new for the android, though he was more at peace with it than some. Slipping from his perched position, Connor gave a small nod, setting the report back down. In seconds he had already gained the knowledge, the rest was a mere formality. “I believe the fact than an android is involved may be a reason why Captain Fowler assigned you the case,” he gave a small shrug, locking gazes with Hank. The older man only hummed in response, leaning back in his chair, giving the non-verbal hint for him to continue. “After all, we are still, technically, the best team for handling any deviant behaviour, isn’t that correct Lieutenant?” A small, chipper smile was given, and he could see Hank’s shoulder slack in acceptance. Connor could more often than not bring the old detective around to his way, in that same way a child always gets what they want in one capacity or another. With a grin Connor straightened his tie, falling into step with Hank as the two made their way to the interrogation rooms.

Connor had initially been indifferent to interrogating the woman that had been caught fleeing the scene. He concluded that she was a criminal, albeit not as dangerous as the android they were investigating who had been present, and thus deemed it another step towards completing the mission. He did find it interesting to note that it was statistically higher for men to be caught attempting burglary than women, but he still held the conviction that she was just a criminal. However it soon became clear to him as they continued that she was no ordinary burglar or indeed no ordinary woman. It had taken mere seconds, perhaps even less if that were possible, to hear her audible growl as her eyes narrowed on the mirror before her, one that she outed as being two-way and no doubt concealing the detectives within, an iciness to her tone that caused even him to stiffen. She spoke out harshly, daring them to come back and try to make her talk. It was this statement that caused Hank to groan as he stood at Connors side, hand dragging down his face; no doubt this was why he seemed so drained earlier— he’d already attempted to speak to her before. Before any other words were uttered Connor initiated a scan, one that turned his LED a consistent spinning circle of yellow. In truth he had been reluctant to remove it, becoming almost fond of the light at his temple, viewing it as part of his still-forming identity. Connor the android sent by Cyberlife still remained, he simply had evolved, but like other androids and even humans he wanted to still resemble some small part of the life that led him to this point. Instantly there came a mugshot photo of the suspect before him, her name suspended in neat lettering beneath it. VERONICA VORNE. The name intrigued him, mostly because of the alliteration of her name and its ease when being pronounced. He continued to sift through the walls of text, briefing himself on the basic demographics and the like that had been catalogued for her file before coming to her criminal history. Predominantly she was known for serial burglary, though one account of public assault coupled with resisting arrest had resulted in a two year sentence. Having ascertained such information he then moved on to the young woman herself. Shrouded in the typical dark attire of a thief she looked so stark against the white background, like a concise Rorschach inkblot. The clothes were thick, black sleeved shirt and denim jeans, designed to keep her well insulated and warm in the cold November weather, just as the solid boots on her feet did. As she lifted her wrists to flex them, testing the range of movement she had with the handcuffs, Connor noticed her fingerless gloves. He then moved to her leather coat, which was still zipped and dappled with wet patches from where snow had melted upon it. It seemed fitted to her shape, and Connor couldn’t help but wonder how she was able to evade capture long enough to have made it outside while wearing it. He noticed no hood nor cap on her person that would have obscured her face. It was then he recalled an officer with a black balaclava in hand, speckled with moisture in places, which was most likely hers. No doubt it was taken upon her arrest so they could identify her. It was in this moment that Connor took a moment to survey her face, taking in her features. Everything about her seemed to resemble the stark contrast between dark and light. Deep-coloured eyes, glowing a rich brown in the fluorescent of the lights were set against the bright whites of her eyes, though he detected the faintest of blood vessels there; from stress, he surmised. They were framed in long, delicate lashes that dared to flutter ever so lightly every time she heard movement behind the locked door. Then his gaze shifted to observe her skin, which was rosy to a degree, as he had seen from her mugshot photograph, yet the harsh light only exaggerated the pale undertones. Tilting his head minutely during the scan he noted the softness of the features themselves, their femininity, as his eyes looked over her dainty nose, to her lips. They were a dusty shade of pink, like the Spring Roses he sometimes saw in the park and would have looked warm and inviting had they not been pulled into a harsh frown. With a turn of her head towards the camera her hair gave a small flourish, having been released from the confines of her hood upon capture judging from the tousled look it held. Despite this frazzled appearance Connor noted its healthy condition and medium length, it falling in waves down her back. The colour of its strands resembled her eyes in its rich brunette colour and sported a gleam that eluded to her fondness for hair care. A well-kept thief, he noted to himself. With the rudimentary scan complete, the whole process taking less than a few seconds, Connor returned to reality, his gaze now looking to Hank once more, relaying the information he’d gathered as he so often did. “Veronica Vorne, born in downtown Detroit on—” “Relax, I know who she is,” Hank soon interrupted, watching with some amusement as Connor looked at him in confusion, his eyebrows soon raising upwards towards his hairline. “Not personally ,” Hank quickly added, “but our paths have crossed a few times, little shit.” The term was said with a fondness Hank didn’t show often, and even then it had only been picked up on because Connor was an android. Tilting his head, Connor silently willed Hank to continue, wishing to learn more, earning a deep sigh from the older officer and a roll of his eyes. “I’m not playing ball tonight Connor, so stop lookin’ at me like that! Just go, get in there, and let’s do our thing, Christ.” It was clear it grated on Hank’s nerves to be pulled into such a basic case, though Connor knew there may be more to it. He would pry into it at a later time, for now he tasked himself with following Hank’s lead, eyes falling upon the wayward thief once the door sealed behind him.

It was the sharp sound of the door opening that made Veronica’s eyes turn to them, eyeing them warily for a moment before widening in recognition; she'd almost expected it to be that asshole, Gavin, again. Hank’s name fell from her lips and Connor would have almost mistaken it for breathless if not for the fact she was not out of breath at all, at least according to his interface anyway. humans had such strange mannerisms, ones that were often contradictions to themselves. Connor took to standing back from the table, allowing Hank to sit opposite her, and for a moment all was silent. Both Hank and Veronica sat back in their respective seats, Hank with his arms crossed, studying the woman before him, and Veronica with an almost childish pout of her lips, eyes narrowed again as she attempted to formulate a way to be out of this predicament. Hank was the first to break their stalemate, shifting to lean forward with his arms resting on the table, gaze staring at her squarely. He read out her rights for a second time, to which she gave consent to waiver, and it was then that Connor learnt that she’d already violated the agreed terms of her bail once before. This, the android concluded, would result in jail time unless she cooperated with them on their investigation. Raising an eyebrow Hank regarded Veronica as her own brows knitted together for a moment, contemplating the situation; tell them what she knew and be a rat or continue her vow of silence and maintain a paper thin loyalty. The quote “no honour among thieves” suddenly came to Connors mind as he continued to stand with his arms folded across his chest. There was a soft sigh from the woman, tired and annoyed, as she looked away from them both. It was then that she finally opened her mouth to speak, and Connor felt himself perk up in anticipation of what she was going to say. “I don’t know anything about an android, or an android murdering anyone. I was just there to rob the place, alone .” To say that Hank was enraged by her statement was obvious from the way he slammed a hand down upon the metal table, causing the young woman to jump in her seat, eyes wide; startled. They bickered back and forth, starting with Hank’s low growl that she was spouting a load of bullshit and he was in no mood for it. Veronica, on the other hand, maintained her innocence in the matter vehemently, suddenly panicked. She claimed that she’d entered the premises alone with the sole intention of committing a robbery and had no knowledge that there’d been an android there at all nor that said android had been involved in a previous murder that they were currently investigating. However Connor could see from the subtle twitch of her eye that this was at the very least, a half-truth, to which he stepped forward and placed a strategic hand upon Hank’s shoulder, just at the moment he was about to lunge forward with another verbal attack. “Might I try, Lieutenant?” The request was simple enough, but Connor was unsure if Hank would allow him the chance to question Veronica, even though he was rather stressed by the whole situation. For a moment or two Hank regarded him, eyes narrowed suspiciously while he did so, before he gave a huff and a nod, vacating the seat. With a polite incline of his head Connor settled into it, briefly glancing to the door as Hank exited the room; perhaps it was better for all of them that he was given time to cool down. Throughout the whole thing Veronica had sat in relative silence, but as Connor turned his gaze to her, hands clasping together upon the table before him, he noticed how she looked almost distressed that Hank had left the room. With a calm smile upon his face Connor watched her closely, tilting his head slightly as he noticed how she seemed to retreat slightly within herself, her eyes becoming wide and almost fearful. Was she aware that he’d caught onto her bluff? Did she know she stood no real chance against him when it came to the interrogation? Connor was curious to discover the reasoning behind her fear but wanted first to calm her enough so that she would at least talk to him. “Hello, my name is Connor, and you are?” He started out modestly, casually, but it only served to cause her to stiffen in her seat. His smile faltered slightly into a small frown but he refused to give up. He would try a kinder approach before he would press her any further. Glancing to the mirror he sighed, looking back at her once more. “Lieutenant Anderson may seem coarse in his approach, but he means well,” Connor began, watching as Veronica shifted her gaze to the mirror briefly before locking her gaze to him again, following each movement he made. Taking this as a positive sign, Connor continued, even going so far as to lean in slightly, regarding her more. “He just wants to solve the homicide investigation and we think you may have crucial information—” “I don’t know anything!” The abruptness of her interruption caused Connor to pause, his LED flickering a circle of yellow before he straightened in his seat. He noted how Veronica then swallowed nervously, knowing that her outburst had convinced him of the opposite, that she did indeed know something about the case. Lowering her head down she forced her gaze downcast, settling to stare at her bound hands, form fidgeting slightly in her seat. Connor knew that he was close, something in itself that surprised him given how aggressive she’d been beforehand at times when Hank had been interrogating her. Clearly there was an emotional element that he had uncovered, or perhaps it was the fact that he was a complete stranger, and an android, that had shaken her resolve, and caused her to become flustered. Connor was undecided for the moment but felt the time right to begin to apply pressure to the situation. “You do realize that if you don’t help me you will go to prison,” he snapped suddenly, harsh and unforgiving, once again causing her to jump slightly in her seat. “Tell me, Veronica, do you want to go back to prison again?” His question was pointed and it caused her eyes to immediately fly up to meet his own, her hands splaying out on the table’s surface as she shook her head meekly. It was a slow process, but Connor soon began to pull threads of relevant information from her. It was interesting to find that she did indeed know nothing of the android that they were investigating, despite both having been reported to be in the same property, yet he did learn of another android, the one who she had been indirectly protecting all along. An older model, possibly an AF200 model judging from her limited description, discarded and left to shut down, that she had named Zen. Veronica had refused to let them go unnoticed, to be forgotten. She took the android to her home and, with what little she had, attempted to repair or rebuild what she could. Of course she wasn’t even remotely qualified for such a task, but attempt it she did and this led her to steal so that she could then purchase or trade for what she needed. Connor listened quietly, his LED consistently yellow, until her tone lowered and her voice faded into silence. Her eyes were downcast once more and held a forlorn sense to them that caused Connor to unclasp his hands, reaching one out to gentle cover her own. At the gesture Veronica lifted her gaze ever so slightly, acknowledging the contact. They were both silent for a moment before Connor spoke up, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “I give you my word that Zen will not be hurt, but I need you to be honest with me. Do you know anything about the android? Anything at all?” He pressed further, and although she was uncomfortable she did give a small nod that was coupled with a sigh. “I know someone who might know about the android. He’s done a couple jobs with me in the past, runs with a small group in the area where the guy was killed,” she hummed lightly, and Connor could feel her fingers twitch slightly underneath his own, unaware she was tentatively brushing the inside of his palm as though to calm herself. Catching herself part way through Veronica sucked in a breath, pulling her hand free to the edge of the table, eyes pointedly looking to the side. “I’ll see what I can get out of him,” she added, briefly glancing to the two-way mirror with a glowering expression. “You hear that Hank?” Came her biting comment, voice raised, “I’m going to see what I can do to help your little case!” She huffed, dropping back against her seat, almost as though she’d deflated. It was amusing to Connor, who sat with grin upon his lips, which on increased when she turned her gaze to him and gave a small flicker of a smile. It seemed like she was fighting herself to do so however by the way she turned her head away and tried to pinch her lips together, eyes glittering despite only looking at the wall. With the interrogation over, Veronica was escorted by Hank to one of the holding cells until the information she had given them could be credited and what little information they had could be written up. It needed to be collated with the rest of the information from the couple whose home she had tried to rob. In truth, she was still in a lot of trouble considering she had violated the terms given to her at her last arrest, despite having given them a possible lead, but that wasn’t the main concern Connor had. Remaining a few steps behind as he followed the pair Connor silently contemplated what would happen to her once the investigation was over. Of course, his rationale told him that she would continue to be as she was and that he would most likely cross paths with her again following the next crime she committed, but he also found himself thinking beyond that narrow, professional viewpoint. He was concerned that there would be no saving grace for her next time, that she would be arrested and charged and ultimately end up in prison for more than her previous sentence. It was then he recalled the android, Zen, whom she had become fond of. Like a lonesome puppy, who would care for them while she was gone? Who would inform them of her absence? The questions, though trivial in comparison to his investigation, bothered him and it was noticed immediately by Hank, who had now turned back to the android after Veronica was settled into the holding cell. “You alright Connor?” The older detective asked, concern lacing his gruff voice, a hand coming to rest on his shoulder. When he was met with only a simple yes Hank’s eyes narrowed and he hummed his suspicions. Casting a gaze behind him he spotted Veronica watching them with interest, eyes bright and curious before she quickly looked away. With a small huff of a chuckle, he guided Connor away back to their desks, already surmising what the issue could be. He may have been old, but he wasn’t stupid. Pushing the android down into his seat Hank moved to his own, settling into it with a deep sigh. There had been the glimmer of hope that he would be able to leave work early for once, but that had been long extinguished. Flicking his tired eyes to Connor he found the poor android to still looking as perplexed as before. Leaning back in his chair he contemplated opening that can of worms and ultimately decided that he owed Connor that much at least, given all they’d been through. With as much of an expectant look as he could muster, Hank sat up straight, gaining Connors full attention at last. “Something on your mind, Connor?” He then asked, resting his arms on his desk, eyebrows raising when the android opened his mouth to speak, with some difficulty he noted. “I’m curious, Lieutenant,” he began, to which Hank hummed dryly, already having guessed as much already, “what will happen to Miss Vorne once her usefulness has run its course?” He asked almost innocently, somewhat shocking the older detective. When Hank didn’t reply Connor continued on, brows furrowed, hands gesturing along with his voice. “I only ask because it’s statistically proven that offenders will continue to offend unless prevented from doing so, and she’s already stated that she steals in order to help repair the android she saved, Zen I believe she called them—” “Focus, Connor,” Hank drawled, leaning his head against his hand. “Ah, yes. What I mean to say is that I believe we should, at least, try to help her in some way. Maybe we could utilize her as some kind of informant, perhaps? Her connections may prove useful in our investigations, especially if the lead she’s already provided us proves correct,” he concluded, pursing his lips as he studied Hank’s expression. Connor could feel a sense of unease cross over him and he also detected panic flare within him, which only intensified when Hank snorted sourly and shook his head. “Holy shit, you’re worried about her!” He exaggerated, eyes wide as he swivelled slightly in his chair to look at his terminal, incredulous. Releasing a deep breath Hank attempted to distract himself with his work before looking to Connor once more, who looked at him with a look of despair painted on his face, like a puppy lost off its leash. “Veronica’s fine , Connor,” Hank attempted to console him, “she’ll give us the lead like she promised and she’ll prance outta here like nothing happened and returned to that android of hers, okay? There, did that clear your conscience?” The sarcastic nature of Hanks comment didn’t go amiss and Connor gave a frown in response, LED oscillating between blue and yellow before finally settling back to its standard blue ring. “Actually, Lieutenant,” Connor began pointedly, mimicking his sarcasm, turning his gaze toward the corridor that housed the holding cells, “I don’t believe that it has.” He then turned his gaze back to Hank only to see that he now held his head in his hands and was groaning at the situation before him. He knew that he could stop it before it could properly start by demanding that Connor let it go, but he also knew that Connor wouldn’t be able to do just that so easily and would probably attempt to do something himself to help her. Thus he decided that the best action to take was to give in to Connor’s newfound humanity and let the little shit in on the fun. Pushing his chair away from his desk with his feet Hank stood up with a grunt, beckoning Connor to follow him with a flick of his hand. “Well, are ya coming or what?” He then called, smirking at the sound of the android scampering to follow him towards the holding cells.

Captain Fowler was, to say the least, not impressed by Hank’s insubordination. To have released Veronica without permission had annoyed him enough, but to then come into his office and request, dare he say demand, that she be given a probationary period to try as an informant for their case? Well, that was something else entirely. Ultimately, with a lot of convincing from both Hank and Connor, the Captain reluctantly agreed to allow Veronica to operate as an informant on the condition that she would report any and all findings she could to them in order to further their case and any other cases that she may find knowledge of. Any leads that produced breaks in the case would result in leniency to her prior charges, something that would no doubt tempt her into doing a good job. There had also been the warning that if she didn’t perform well there would be consequences, but Hank hadn’t the patience nor the care to properly listen, but Connor had. It hardened his resolve to ensure she did well, and remained safe, while she worked alongside them. Upon seeing Hank and Connor move to leave the Captain’s office Veronica stood straight, watching them expectantly as they descended the small set of stairs, hands in front of her as her fingers twisted around the balaclava that had been taken from her previously. “So, what’s happening? Am I free to go now?” She asked eagerly, bouncing slightly on her heels. She needed to hurry home to check on Zen, to make sure the android hadn’t gotten into mischief while she’d been gone. Her expression dropped slightly when Hank began to explain the conditions of her release but she ultimately came to accept them. Not that she had much choice. The notion of working with someone on the inside brought forth memories of infiltrating Jericho for Connor, and although it wasn’t all a positive memory a small smile come to his lips as he recalled the moment he finally came into his own and became deviant. It opened to him a whole new perspective on life, one that he was now determined to embrace wholeheartedly. Amidst his recollections he’d noticed that Veronica had fallen a couple of steps behind them upon leaving the police headquarters, the cool night breeze having ruffled her hair. He stopped to watch for a moment to watch as she brushed the waves back, bringing her hood up to trap them. When he finally caught her attention he felt his lips twitch upwards, motioning for her to continue at his side. When she accepted the offer by falling into step beside him Connor felt a similar feeling to the one he’d experienced back in the police headquarters; a slight nervousness blooming in the pit of his artificial stomach so to speak. Humans would often engage in small talk when walking with one another, or so he’d observed, and since Hank had decided to stop and do just that with another officer who was just returning, Veronica was left to his company, and his company alone, so he took the chance to engage her in conversation. Pausing on route to Hank’s car, Connor turned his head to Veronica, who looked at him curiously, stopping as he had. It was now that he could truly regard the difference in height between them. He was at a minimum a few inches taller than her, give or take an inch due to the thick heel on her boots, for he had calculated her at five feet and five inches when inside the station, again taking the heel size into consideration. He gave a small, polite cough, having realized that he had been staring, a small blue hue lightly dusting the tops of his cheeks. Wanting to distract from any uncomfortable instances, Connor felt it best to begin a conversation with her, noting as he did so the small tremble in her limbs. “It’s a rather cold night, are you alright?” Although her clothes were insulated, the lack of movement meant that the chill of the night air was able to affect her, and Connor wanted her to feel comfortable, especially with him. They were going to be partners, after all, and her well-being and morale was now something to consider. “Oh, no, I’m fine,” Veronica replied with a soft smile before her brows furrowed slightly, taking in his smart appearance. “Aren’t you cold?” The question caused his own eyebrows to raise upwards slightly and he opened his mouth to correct her, for androids couldn’t feel the cold as humans could, before deciding that he would take her concern as it was. Giving her a small smile in response he shook his head, smoothing his suit jacket down with his hands on impulse. “No, I’m not cold, but thank you for asking,” he then replied, eyes drawn to the way her breath created entrancing wisps of mist in the air before vanishing without a trace. There was still so much that enthralled him about humans, from their mannerisms to their very beings, which was to be expected from an android programmed to be as inquisitive and curious as he was. Silence then fell upon them for a moment before a cough drew their attention, Connor turning his head to see Hank stood, alone, with his arms crossed, watching him and Veronica with an inscrutable look upon his face. “Is something wrong, Lieutenant?” Connor questioned, though he couldn’t understand if anything would be wrong. He had just been idly chatting while Hank himself had done so. “Well I’d like to get home before I freeze my balls off , thank you,” came Hanks sharp quip in response with a roll of his eyes, though his gaze soon narrowed with a huff when Veronica snickered at the comment, shaking her head lightly. Connor watched the small exchange with some interest before he regarded Veronica again, once more looking at her with a curious, if somewhat concerned, expression. “How will you be getting home?” He questioned, his auditory systems noting the sound of Hank entering his car; the familiar creak of the car door and the slam of metal. “Might I suggest you share a ride with Lieutenant Anderson and myself?” It was a kind gesture and an appropriate one to make, judging from the way Veronica smiled warmly. Thus he couldn’t help how his brows knitted together in confused shock when she politely, and somewhat awkwardly, declined. Her reasoning was that she didn’t want to be any more of a bother than she already had been for the pair and that her home wasn't so far away that she couldn’t walk there. “Oh,” he replied after some thought, looking dejected amidst his confusion, “I see, but I’m afraid I must insist. A woman shouldn’t walk the streets alone, especially on a winter’s night.” His heart, though artificial, was in the right place, and he wasn’t going to allow Veronica to put herself in danger for the sake of a little burden. One that he calculated would only be around twelve or so minutes, if the snow held off at least. Connor wanted to remain respectful of her independence but the android was too chivalrous to be beaten, and after a small bout of back and forth banter Veronica finally gave in with a sigh, thanking him quietly as he motioned with his hand for her to make her way to the car. It was a relatively quiet drive, with only the melodies of the quiet jazz that Hank enjoyed filling the space of the car. An obvious difference from the Heavy Metal Connor was usually met with. The android rode shotgun with Hank at the wheel, while Veronica was settled in the back behind him. Stealing a glance at her through the rear view mirror Connor noticed how she had her head turned to look out the car window, a weary expression on her face, illuminated at regular intervals by the street lights. He studied her until they reached her address, or as near to as she felt comfortable with revealing, and then he watched as she shifted forward in her seat, eyes looking between them both. “Thanks for the ride, guys, I appreciate it,” she murmured, nodding her head in acknowledgement as Hank assured her it wasn’t too out of his way, her gaze then turning to Connor, who had turned in his seat to regard her. “Goodnight, Miss Vorne, and please refrain from getting into any more trouble tonight,” Connors' voice held a teasing edge, one that caused her to smirk lightly in response. “I make no promises,” Veronica countered with a small chuckle and with that she slipped out of the car. She gave a small wave as she then crossed the street, blending into the shadows as she walked the rest of the small distance to her home, leaving Connor to decipher his thoughts about her.

[pain-somnia]

ssm19 day 17

SasuSaku Month 2k19 Day 17: Ink and Paper Rating: K+ Disclaimer Day’s Notes: It’s short and I wasn’t going to write for this day but I woke up at like 2am and felt inspired so I banged this out right now before I need to start my work shift. Enjoy!

Snail Mail

It started with a school project.

In fifth grade, Sasuke’s teacher had asked them all to pick a random envelope from a box. Inside the envelope was a letter from another fifth grade student from somewhere else in the country. Sasuke didn’t care which student he got as long as they made the project easy.

Sasuke had read his envelope and had been relieved that the handwriting was neat and legible. It was much neater than what he expected from most fifth grade students but he was grateful. It would have sucked to have gotten a letter from someone that had writing as bad as Inuzuka Kiba.

The penmanship was neat and decidedly girly and it matched the name━Haruno Sakura━of the girl that introduced herself in the letter. Because her letter was sent first she did the basic introduction and explained what she liked to do and asked him to tell her the same things about him.

Sasuke wrote a short letter back, as simple as possible, and handed the envelope with his letter to his teacher to send to Sakura.

The following week he received another envelope, a little bulkier than the first one. Sasuke opened it up and inside was not only a letter but a paper flower, flattened a bit to fit inside the envelope. Sasuke wrote her back, sticking a flattened paper crane inside his envelope.

The project was supposed to last until winter break but most of the students had started to slow down on receiving and sending letters after the sports festival. Not Sakura though. Sasuke got a letter every week and he responded back almost as soon as he got the letter.

Sakura sent him a bookmark made with a pressed cosmos flower the week after he had told her he liked to read. Sasuke sent back a postcard from a temple he had visited in Kyoto with his family when she told him she had only ever been to China to visit relatives but other than that had never left Osaka.

When it was reaching the end of the project, Sakura had written her home address in her letter, asking if they could continue being penpals. That New Year Sasuke sent his first greeting card to someone outside of his family.

Sakura and her parents express delivered him and his family a crate of crabs and Sasuke had to explain to his parents who it was that he knew that lived in Osaka.

They continued sending letters back and forth, even after Sasuke entered middle school and his parents bought him his own cell phone. It was when he was a third year middle school student that he finally got curious and included his phone number in a letter to Sakura.

“Hello?” A soft, feminine voice rang clear through the speaker but Sasuke almost didn’t hear it over the beating of his heart thudding in his ears. Even with years of written correspondence, Sasuke was worried that the phone call would never come or that Sakura would see the request of a phone call and get scared off.

“Hey,” he had answered back and after that Sakura exploded into a steady stream of chatter. She was much more talkative than he was but it was pleasant just to hear her talk.

For the longest time there had been a silent agreement that they wouldn’t send pictures of themselves. For middle school he had only explained that he would be wearing a gakuran and Sakura told him the colors of her serafuku. When high school started up Sasuke received a LINE message from Sakura. Well, it was from her address but it was sent by a Yamanaka Ino. The message read “Isn’t she cute?” followed by a photo of who Yamanaka insisted was Sakura wearing her high school uniform for an all girl’s school that Sakura told him before that she was attending.

The western style uniform suited her and she was cute but Sasuke didn’t respond to the message that her friend had sent him using her phone. Instead he sent a picture of himself wearing his own high school uniform.

Ino-chan says to tell you that she approves, was the message he got back after school. He could only assume that she had met up with her friend that was going to a co-ed school and shared the photo.

They continued with LINE messages and phone calls but never stopped their handwritten letters, or packages as they were more likely to be because Sakura insisted on sending small gifts whenever she could. Sasuke returned the favor as well, always sending her things that could only be found in shops in Tokyo.

“Why don’t you ever change the girly charm?” Kiba asked when he caught him messaging during one of their breaks before the teachers rotated. Kiba flicked the bell and polymer cherry blossom cell phone charm attached to Sasuke’s phone. Normally Sasuke wouldn’t go buy accessories for himself but Sakura had sent him the charm as a return gift for the charm he bought for her when he and his friends had visited Disneyland.

Eight years of letters, barely four years of phone calls, and now Sasuke was on the shinkansen to Osaka to take the exam for his first university of choice. His father wasn’t happy with his decision to go to a school so far from home but his mom advocated for him and reminded his father that he had an uncle that owned a senbei shop in Osaka.

“Hey. I’m at the station,” Sasuke spoke into his phone, looking around for someone with rose gold hair.

“I think I see you,” Sakura replied back. “Turn to your left.”

Sasuke did as he was told and smiled softly at the petite girl bundled up in a thick winter coat waving ecstatically.

“Holy crap, you’re tall!” Was the first thing Sakura said to him in person and even though he knew she spoke in a Kansai dialect, the Osaka-ben was still something he had to get used to. “Are you hungry? It’s lunchtime, we should go get something to eat.”

“A bit.”

“Wait. You need to head to your uncle’s place, right?”

“He thinks I’m arriving this evening.” Sasuke’s ears warmed up as Sakura laughed into her hands. “We, uh, have time.”

“That excited to hang out with me, huh?” Sakura teased him, grabbing onto his free hand. “You’re lucky Ino-chan doesn’t know you’re here, Sasuke-kun.”

“Excited to keep me to yourself, huh?” Sasuke returned the tease, watching as the apples of her cheeks bloomed pink. Sakura interlocked their fingers and squeezed his hand.

“I waited eight years. No one can blame me if I don’t tell anyone my boyfriend finally came to visit.”

“I would have come sooner but if I told my mom why I wanted money to come to Osaka she would have come along as well.” Sasuke could imagine all of the ways his mother would embarrass him when she met Sakura.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here now. Even though you’re so freakin’ tall.” Sakura nudged him with her shoulder, playfully. “Ready for the exam tomorrow?”

Sasuke nodded and let himself be led out of the station and into the city. Sakura started listing all of the shops they had to visit and Sasuke was sure that he was going to end up gaining a few pounds after he moved in the Spring.

Even if his waistline suffered a bit, the warm hand in his own was better than ink and paper.

[dailyaudiobible]

08/15/2020 DAB Transcript

Nehemiah 9:22-10:39, 1 Corinthians 9:19-10:13, Psalms 34:1-10, Proverbs 21:13

Today is the 15th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it's great to be here with you as we seal another week up and continue to move forward because the only way is forward. And, so, this week, yeah, we live into this week and then it becomes a part of our history and we start over again with a shiny sparkly week that we get to live into. But now we are at the conclusion of the week so let's take that final step for this week. We’re reading from the English Standard Version this week and we’re back in the book of Nehemiah. Today chapter 9 verse 22 through 10 verse 39. And just by way of reminder we’re in the middle of a prayer, the law has been read to the people, great repentance is happening, a great revival is happening, and we’re in the middle of a prayer.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and we are grateful again at the end of another week, we are grateful again that You have brought us this far. We’re still here. The days go by and they add up to weeks and we realize we’re still here, You are still sustaining us, You are still guiding and directing us. We…we would have lost it all, including our minds by now without You, and yet You are here Fathering us, being patient with us, helping us grow and mature. And, so, we acknowledge this as we end another week. You have been faithful, and You have given us what we need, and You have instructed us, and our role is to trust You. And, so, as we release this week, we trust You, and as we look into the new week, we trust You. There is no safer thing to do. There is no safer place to be. Everything else is in our own strength and we are not strong enough. But You are the most-high God our Father and we trust You. And, so, come Holy Spirit well up from within, lead us into all truth, lead us forward in the name of Jesus we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it's the home of the Global Campfire. So, be sure to check it out if you haven't. Be familiar with it.

The Prayer Wall lives there and a fantastic resource. Day or night no matter where you are in the world somebody's praying and you can always reach out and you can always participate. If you can't sleep, go there. Find out what people are asking for prayer for, pray for them. If the burdens of your life are keeping you up, maybe that’s a place to go and offer your story so that others might shoulder the burden along with you. So, that is a fantastic resource in the Community section. Check that out.

If you want to partner with a Daily Audio Bible you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link on the homepage. My heart is full of gratitude as it is on a daily basis, gratitude and awe that, yeah, this…that we just have the gift of each other, that this can happen and that…that this is happening is overwhelming sometimes. So, thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or the mailing address, if you prefer, is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And if you have a prayer request or encouragement, you can hit the Hotline button in the app, which is the little red button at the top or you can dial 877-942-4253.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hey, family this is Dave from Colorado I was wondering if I could ask for some prayers for my nephew Richie. He is right about 40 years old and his girlfriend Tammy, they’ve been together probably like 20 years something like that. She was on a waiting list for several years for kidney, you know, attached to the dialysis machine and not really able to go too far from home, but she finally got the kidney and that was January last year and then, you know, things are looking better. She was able to go to the mountains for the day or go camping, you know, she was just starting to kind of enjoy life. Anyway, yesterday morning God decided to bring her home during her sleep. I guess I suppose it was painless but my nephew he is just devastated and so are her kids so if you could pray for them that would…that would be awesome. I appreciate that. And also, White as Snow, I heard your call last week and it sounds like not only you don’t have to struggle with all those doors anymore but kind of sounds to me like God opened one of them and got you in a little better position. Anyway, I just wanted you to know you’re going to be in my daily prayers now. You know, as a fellow truck driver I know what it’s like out there on the road. Anyway, I guess that’s it for today. I love you all family and I appreciate you all so much. We’ll talk to you later.

Good morning DAB family this is Rebecca from North West Arkansas. I’m calling to pray for Jude from Maryland that has gone to the hospital for COVID symptoms. You called in and you’re going to the hospital and you wanted to pray for other people and I just think that is precious and I just wanted to pray for you. Dear Father we pray right now that You would put Your hands on Jude, and that he would heal her completely, that You would give her Your Holy Spirit and the strength of Your Holy Spirit in her. Help her feel that and help her know that You’re with her. Be with her doctors and nurses. I pray that You would protect all the doctors and nurses that are taking care of COVID patients right now and that You would give them strength, give them what they need physically and help them have the rest they need. Lord I pray that You’ll also be with all the children going back to school and be with their teachers. I pray that You would protect them from this virus and help them to learn in a health and safe environment. Lord thank You so much for DAB and thank You for Brian and his family and all those who participate in making this a wonderful podcast. We love You and we thank You Father and we praise You in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hello Daily Audio…Audio Bible family this is Theo I was led by God to this…to this site and to this Prayer Wall. Thank you, Pastor for everything that you’ve done. I’m new to this, just a few days old to this site, and I absolutely have fallen in love with it. Thank you for the brothers and sisters that have been praying for me since I’ve posted my prayer request on the Prayer Wall. And I’ve attempted to reach out to others that need prayer also. And just continue to pray for me for protection and healing. And I really need it. And I just want to say how much this has changed my life and my walk with Christ. And I just want to say that I appreciate everything that every…everyone is doing just loving and caring for each other. So, I just want to say thank you very much. And as I said in the Prayer Wall, a little bit of love and a lot of prayer goes a very long way and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you very much. God bless you.

Hi family at Shannon from Texas and I need some prayer today. I know God transcends time. S,o the simplest thing happened this morning and I am losing it because I feel like I’m just losing it because of everything that’s going on. I lost a credit card and I feel like the world falling apart. So, I know that this little thing is pushing me over the edge like this…I am just not doing well. So, I’ve been taking care of a sweet little six-month-old baby boy that screams constantly. I’ve been finding myself just getting angry over prayers that are answered and just hope deferred. So, please pray that I find that card and that I just…just for me overall. Thank you. Love you.

Hello Daily Audio Bible family this is Sunset Cindy in Washington I am a first-time caller. I just started listening to DAB and actually last month, July 17th and I am so thankful that my cousin, shout out to my sweet cousin for suggesting this. She could tell I was struggling with some, you know, loneliness and isolation and things that are happening during this COVID crisis that were in and out it’s so helping me to focus on other things, focus on the things of the Lord and give me an opportunity to hear His word and listen to people all around the world. It is astonishing the connection I feel with all of you. And I just wanted to pray for Valerie who’s also a new listener. I was listening today it’s August 12th. She is calling in to say she’s trying to catch up as I am also trying to catch up. I would love to catch up with all the rest of you. I know I’ve got a long way to go. It’s August and I…I…but I’m almost through January as well. So, I’m just praying for her. And also, Jude I heard you call in about going to the hospital and praying for your COVID symptoms that you would be well and 100% and all of the medical providers that are helping with this crisis. I would also like to have the family pray for my immediate family. I have a family member who’s in…extreme anxiety attacks are happening to his mental…you know it’s just really affecting him mentally…

Hi family this is __ in __ South Africa my message today is for Valerie. Valerie, I heard you call in today on August 12th and I just wanted to say welcome. I always get so excited when I hear a new voice on…on DAB and it’s just, yeah, it’s just amazing to have you as part of the family. So, yeah, 2 and ½ weeks you’re in there, you’re going and I just pray that God would...would sustain you and help you to…to reduce the number of ebbs that you mentioned, ebbs and flows, and increase the number, the amount of flowing daily hours of routine and with purpose. I’ve been listening to DAB for about 10 months. It’s just changed my life in so many ways. It’s just blown me away and just continuing to do so daily. It’s hard work listening and…and concentrating and I’ve been writing notes and trying…I’ve got hundreds of questions because the Bible is a tricky book but it’s just wonderful to…to be able to…to learn daily to be able to enjoy Brian’s incredible teaching and the way…his explanation of Scripture and I just pray for…for enormous joy for you and purpose and focus as you continue on this journey and pray for strength and comfort for you and, yeah, just once again thank you for phoning in. It’s wonderful to hear your voice and I pray that God would bless you richly on this journey. Lots of love. Bye.

[violetsmoak]

Pieces of April [17/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21099044/chapters/50202530

Summary: On the anniversary of his death, Jason’s second life takes an abrupt new turn and he’s faced with a challenge that neither Batman nor the All-Caste prepared him for.

Rating: PG-13 (rating may change later)

Author’s Note: Daily check-in to see how you're holding up under social distancing, and a reminder that in addition to washing your hands and stay inside, don't snack too much, drink at least 8 cups of water and take a shower! You'd be surprised how easy it is to stop doing a lot of the basics when you're in isolation for a while! Hang in there, people!

First Chapter

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Six o’clock is an ungodly hour in the morning to be awake and Jason honestly doesn’t know how people do it. The hours between four and eleven in the morning are the only time he has a chance to rest, and now that’s been co-opted by the squawking creature in his arms.

He can’t imagine how the non-vigilante population finds it any easier.

And then there’s Tim.

Who voluntarily gets up at this time every morning to go play Wayne Poster Child™ after a night of knocking heads in the city.

There was a reason Bruce never let Jason patrol on a school night, and it wasn’t just because of the potential for unexplained bruises, and yet here’s little Timmy, off to run a multibillion-dollar company while existing on coffee grounds and stubbornness.

And the dumbass keeps offering to give up more sleep to take care of Jason’s kid.

How has he not fallen off a building yet?

Luisa’s gluttonous grunting brings Jason’s thoughts back to the present. She’s finally started to attack her bottles with gusto, as if it’s finally occurred to her that, “Hey, weird rubber thing in my mouth equals food”.

Jason’s grateful for that, too; not that he’s going to admit he was starting to worry there was something wrong with her.

It’s not that he’s trying to be heartless or anything, but there’s a fine line between being concerned and getting attached. And there is a mess of reasons why he can’t afford to do that. If Tim’s dopey insistence to help out is any indication, he’s already starting down that dangerous road.

Eventually, Luisa releases the nipple, and Jason maneuvers her around to burp her, only to hear a tiny, gurgling cough, which is then followed by warm wetness spilling down his shoulder—at the exact moment that Tim walks into the kitchen.

“Looks like she has a complaint about the chef,” he remarks, mouth twisted into a smirk.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason mutters, holding the now vomit-covered baby as far out in front of him as he can do while keeping her head steady. He tries not to grimace at the stain spreading across his back; he’s probably been covered with worse, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.

“That’s why you’re supposed to put a towel over your shoulder.”

“I know!” Jason snaps. “I forgot.”

Tim holds his hands out for the baby. “Go change.”

“I need to clean her up first.”

“You’re not sitting on my sofa covered in puke.”

“Who says I was going to sit on your sofa?” Jason challenges, even though that's exactly where he was going. He’s sort of co-opted that whole area into the downstairs changing station.

The sour-sweet smell of vomit makes the decision for him, however, and he passes Luisa over to Tim, who’s already got a washcloth in hand to dab at the mess. While Jason heads upstairs, he brings her over to that same makeshift changing station and starts to undo her soiled onesie.

The last thing Jason hears as he closes the door to his room is, “Ugh, he was right. That doesn’t look human.”

Jason snorts, glad he’s not the only one that has to suffer through mysterious bodily fluids.

He considers the merits of showering now, weighing the need to be clean versus the probability of ending up dirty again anyway in an hour or so and then decides to just wipe himself down with a wet cloth before putting on a new shirt.

Digging around in the duffel bag, he accidentally knocks down the jacket he threw haphazardly on the loveseat. The inner pocket gapes, allowing several items to fall out, including the Red Hood plush toy and the sonogram from Isabel’s fridge.

He grabbed them both on a whim before leaving the apartment, but he can’t quite recall the logic or reasoning behind that. Isabel’s email and its implications had taken up most of his brainpower at that point. The trained detective part of Jason tells him he wanted evidence, but he’s not entirely sure of evidence of what.

He picks the items up now, frowning at their existence, and then abruptly shoves them both into one of the dresser drawers.

It’s too early for soul-searching.

When he comes back downstairs, it’s to Tim just wrestling a grump baby into a white onesie. Even standing at the foot of the stairs, Jason notices that it contrasts very obviously with Luisa’s skin.

“I was right,” he says, “she’s definitely turning yellow.”

Luisa cracks an eye open at the sudden sound of his voice, and beyond the startling blue iris, he notes that her sclera is also off-color. “Look, even the whites of her eyes are going yellow.”

Tim studies her, and nods. “Yeah, she is a little jaundiced.”

“So do we take her to the doctor for this, or what? I mean, does she have yellow fever or something?”

“Yellow fever has an incubation period of three to six days,” Tim replies. “Since she hasn’t been alive that long and hasn’t had a chance to be exposed to anything like that, I doubt that’s what it is.”

Jason gives him a look. “How the hell do you know this shit?”

“An eco-fascist cell tried to contaminate Gotham’s water supply with a strain of it last year.”

“It’s always the water supply with these people,” Jason mumbles. “You’d think the city would invest in better security down there. Batman’s not always going to be there to stop it.”

“Batgirl, actually,” Tim replies. “Singlehandedly. Steph was very proud.”

“I’m sure.” Jason frowns again at the vaguely yellow baby, telling himself that if Tim isn’t worried, he shouldn’t be. Still, “You know, while we have her here, we should maybe wash off some of that white stuff."

“What? No. Did you forget? ‘Wet baby equals slippery baby’? Those were your words.”

“There are other ways to take a bath, moron,” Jason retorts, examining the bulge above Luisa’s umbilical cord stump. He thinks he remembers Dr. Kerry saying it would fall off in a week or so, but to be honest, most of the night they picked her up from the hospital is a blur to him.

“Well, I’ll leave you to that then, because I have to get going,” Tim says, heading upstairs to transform himself from half-asleep slob to Timothy Drake-Wayne.

Jason tries not to balk at that; part of him was hoping Tim would offer to do that chore.

Bathing is different from feeding. With blankets around the kid, he doesn’t have to worry so much about bruising her skin by just touching her. And yes, he knows that babies don’t bruise that easily, but he’s so used to ruining everything he touches that this seems like a valid concern to him.

In the end, he just takes his time, not giving her a real bath from the tiny tub still packed up in the pile of baby things, but an approximation of the wipe down he gave himself earlier. Careful to keep her covered except to expose whatever arm or leg needs wiping off, he slides a cloth gently against her skin, noting she’s still got that weird white residue on her.

She makes squeaking grunts of complaint at the alien feeling, but it must not feel too bad because she doesn’t erupt into crying. He takes that has a win.

“Now that Her Highness has had her morning toilette,” Jason grouses as he nestles the lump of baby into her carrier.

Once Tim leaves, Jason spends the day at home much like he did the day before, scouring the apartment for anything readable that isn’t a gaming guide, taking apart his gear and putting it back together and grabbing quick naps between feedings and changings. It’s entirely possible he may be losing his mind, because how did his life become this?

I didn’t even stay this still when I was a kid. Is this what life is like for eighteen years when you have a kid?

There has to be more to the parenting gig than this.

Frustrated, he turns the television on, surfing the channels and wondering why there’s nothing worth watching on any of the thousand channels Tim has access to. Eventually, he lands on a local news channel which he keeps on just to have something making noise in the overly silent house.

He’s barely synthesizing the information until a special report comes on, the shaky camera capturing a car speeding through Crime Alley, windows rolled down to allow a gun to open fire.

“…only the latest in a series of violent incidents that have occurred just outside of the Bowery this week,” the woman on the screen is saying. “Officials believe these may be retaliation for the recent raiding of three businesses in the Bowery with connections to the Maroni crime family…”

“Then officials are stupid because anyone gunning for Maroni wouldn’t be takin' it out on him in Crime Alley,” Jason mutters. Especially since everyone in Gotham’s underworld knows the penalty for going anywhere near Hood territory.

“…just the latest in the continuing unrest in the neighborhood. Local police are still asking for information regarding the disappearance of teenagers LaRynn Davies and Carlton King, last seen leaving the schoolyard of PS 181. This has been Maria Amardosa, Gotham News—”

Jason jabs at the remote, switching the television off.

It doesn’t surprise him that crime’s up; April and May are when the weather starts to warm up, which means a lot of enterprising criminal organizations open back up for business. Even when he was Robin, Jason used to make a point of more heavily patrolling his neighborhood in the spring to discourage that sort of thing.

And now, it’s going on a week, and he hasn’t been out once. It’s bad enough having to leave matters when he’s out of town or off-planet, but in those cases, he can’t do anything about it.

“But now, I’m right freakin’ here, and sittin’ on my ass.”

Which is why when Tim gets home from work that night and gratefully accepts the stir-fry Jason whipped up more out of boredom than actual hunger, he decides to broach the subject.

“I’m goin' out to patrol tonight,” he informs him, half-defiant. “If I don’t put in an appearance along my usual route, people are gonna start gettin' ideas.”

More than they already are.

He expects protests or warnings, but to his surprise, Tim swallows a mouthful of rice and nods. “I’ll watch the baby while you’re out.”

All reasonable like, the way he’s been since he picked me up at the bar.

Jason tries not to feel like he’s being handled, and goes on in a guarded tone, “This isn’t me tryin' to dump her off on you and run. I’m not that big of an ass.”

“Debatable. But noted. It’s not a problem.”

“Are you sure? Because if you don’t want to, tell me.”

Tim fixes him with an exasperated look. “You’re really not used to people just…genuinely wanting to help you, are you?”

“Not generally, no,” Jason replies, folding his arms across his chest. “Especially not people that I’ve tried to kill.”

“Twice.”

“Twice.”

“Though I did knee you in the balls that one time,” Tim reminds him, shoveling another bite into his mouth.

Jason winces. “Yeah, I remember. Not sure that’s enough to put us on equal playin' field though."

“Also, do you remember last year when you thought you had a bedbug infestation, and even when you switched safehouses, you couldn’t get rid of them?”

The question is asked with an innocence that wouldn’t fool even the most naïve person in the world, and Jason growls. “Okay, I take it back. You do owe me. At least I would have made your death quick. Bedbugs are just…” He shudders. “Evil.”

“There’s a reason Ra’s al Ghul wants me to work for him,” Tim agrees cheerfully.

“I’m suddenly re-evaluating the wisdom of leaving you with a small child.”

“I’m serious, though, it’s no problem to watch her.” Tim makes a waving gesture. “Go. Break up a few bar fights, knock around whatever pimps deserve it, whatever. Just…don’t kill anyone.”

“I ain’t askin’ permission here, Drake.”

“I know that. Doesn’t mean you don’t need the reminder.”

“If you’re so worried I’m gonna snap, maybe you should be tryin’ to keep me home.”

“That would be pretty stupid. And possibly suicidal on my part. You haven’t been out on the streets for a week, and you’ve been cooped up in here since Isa came home.” He ignores Jason’s glare at the nickname. “You need some kind of outlet, and this is the best one I can think of for you.”

It’s the most laissez-faire response he’s ever gotten from a Bat when it comes to Red Hood’s involvement in the Gotham nightlife—or rather, his frequent interruptions of it. Even Barbara—who he knows understands the logic of his crusade, even as she vehemently decries it—has never been like this.

Barring the whole ‘don’t kill anyone’ spiel, that was almost encouraging.

And a far cry from the kid that accused him of taking the easy path of crimefighting when they first met years ago.

Jason realizes then that he’s had a very specific image of Tim Drake in his head all this time. Living in close quarters with him is showing him that he really doesn’t know him at all.

Now is that just me…or is the rest of the family just as clueless when it comes to the baby bird here?

He must be giving Tim a funny look, because the kid says, “What?”

“Nothing,” Jason replies. “Just wondering what Bat Daddy would think about your pro-Red Hood stance.”

Tim winces, an expression of deep revulsion on his face. “Please. Never, ever refer to Bruce or any other guy I know as ‘daddy’. Ever again.”

Jason raises an eyebrow—that’s the first time he’s elicited that reaction—but rather than ask about it, he instead returns to his room to grab his clothes.

The Nest isn’t like the Cave, where Batman keeps extra gear for everyone stowed away (even for the Red Hood, he learned shortly after the mission to bring Damian’s body back from Apokolips), which means Jason’s going to need to stop at one of his caches after leaving to get his helmet and some of the bulkier pieces of armor he didn’t have with him.

Kitted out in everything except the eponymous red hood, Jason pauses in front of the secret entrance to Red Robin’s base.

Sitting on the couch with Luisa, Tim is just hanging up the phone. “I made an appointment for her to see Leslie next Tuesday. It’s the earliest she could fit us in since I couldn’t tell her the exact details.”

“Yeah, probably something to explain in person,” Jason agrees. He jerks his thumb at the door. “I’m leavin' now. Last chance to back out.”

“It’s not going to kill me to be responsible for an infant for a few hours,” Tim deadpans. “I mean, you’ve done it all week, so it should be easy.”

“Famous last words, Replacement. Just remember—Safiya’s number’s in your phone. Use it if you get overwhelmed.”

Tim rolls his eyes at his own words being flung at him. “You’re hilarious.”

“I know,” Jason grins.

“Get out of here.”

“Gone—also, stealing one of your bikes.”

“Just make sure to fill up the tank when you’re done!” Tim calls after him before the door shuts and locks away the domestic part of Jason’s life for the evening.

The short trip from Tim’s place to Jason’s nearest safehouse passes in a blur, and before he knows it he’s safely behind the visor of his helmet and back on the streets.

There’s nothing quite like Gotham at night, and even after a lifetime living here, he’s not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not.

The rooftops are familiar steppingstones beneath his feet, as he tucks and rolls upon landing, only to propel himself back to his feet and do it again upon reaching the next roof. The rhythm of it all is easy, second nature even, and one he missed in the days where he’s been cooped up.

The last time he was out of commission for so many consecutive days was when he caught the winter flu, and even then he dragged his carcass out of bed just to loom in the dark as a warning to anyone who might try something. It’s a trick Bruce used to pull, when needed to make an appearance as Batman but was hacking up half a lung.

Tim was right about one thing: being able to throw himself into a fight is cathartic. His mind closes off every other thought beyond the here and now, and for the first time in a week, he feels like himself.

He busts up two bodega robberies, stops a carjacking and when a john tries to drag one of the girls working the corner into his car, Jason takes supreme joy in slamming the bastard’s hand in his car door. He checks in with several of his sources, some of whom have names for him of whatever moron has decided to ignore the rules of the Hood this week.

It’s a few hours worth of running about before he finally feels clear again, and by the time he starts winding down his patrol, there’s a deep but familiar exhaustion curling in his muscles that he only ever feels after a good workout. It makes his thoughts feel clearer and more capable of tackling his personal problems once more.

Using the interface in his helmet, he runs a search for the addresses of every Jonathan Sutter in Gotham, then uses the program he piggybacks off the Batcave server to attach the names to any of them that have been treated for Joker toxin in the past year.

There are two and considering one of them is about sixty years old and works as a greeter at Walmart, it’s a safe bet which one he’s looking for. He makes a stop out of his usual route to check up on the guy.

Isabel’s ex lives in the nicer part of Otisburg, about two blocks from an elementary school and a playground.  His home is a decently maintained two-story walk-up, with one of the newer Volkswagen models in the driveway. From what Safiya told him, Sutter does decently financially, and according to the photo in his dossier, he’s got a kind of refined Tony Stark looking going on.

Though that means about jack squat when it comes to whether the guy should be around kids.

If he were Batman, Jason would break in and loom over the guy’s bed until he woke up, but since Sutter’s less likely to be receptive if he’s pissing himself in fear, Jason decides he’ll return by daylight.

He just wanted to scope out where the guy lived, anyhow.

Whether due to his own exhaustion catching up with him, or the nagging feeling at the back of his mind wanting to make sure Tim’s place is still standing, he returns to where he parked the borrowed bike and heads back to the Nest earlier than he normally would.

He’s not even surprised to see the family insomniac still awake, although for once he’s not poring over case files. There’s a game paused on the flatscreen, and Tim is in the process of carefully hefting the baby in his arms up and down, a frown on his face.

Like every Bat, he gives no indication he even noticed he’s no longer alone.

“What’s up?” Jason asks as he rubs a towel through his sweaty hair; he left the bulky bits of his gear in the Nest.

“I think she feels lighter than she did when we brought her here,” Tim replies, a perplexed expression on his face. “Do you think she’s not getting enough food?”

“Not possible with the amount we feed her.”

“Yeah…” Tim shakes his head, then meets Jason’s gaze. “So, did you strike fear into the hearts of every gangbanger in the Alley?”

“You joke, but I take that as a personal challenge.”

“Please don’t.” Tim stands up, holding the baby with more confidence than Jason thinks he’s ever imagined and wanders over. “She slept most of the time you were away.”

“Of course she did,” Jason mutters with a scowl. The baby seems to behave for Tim a lot more than she does for him.

“That’s pretty impressive since she already spends about three-quarters of the day asleep.”

“Wish she would sleep at night, or at least let me.”

“It’s not like we’re not used to being up at all hours.”

“Yeah, but we’re also used to passing out for actual sleep when we get home. I think she thinks sunrise is a signal to work up a f-fuh--,” Jason’s complaint is interrupted by a yawn, and he shakes his head. “Fuss. And on that note…”

“Go. Shower,” Tim says. “I can put her down before I turn in.”

Jason nods at that, putting a foot on the stairs before something occurs to him and he glances back.

“Hey, Tim…”

“Yeah?”

“…Thanks.”

Tim appears caught off-guard, and then an actual grin breaks over his face. “Careful, Jay, you’re starting to sound downright friendly.”

“It’s the sleep deprivation,” Jason replies, “Don’t read into it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”  

⁂⁂⁂

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Next Chapter

[xfimnotdone]

Working out the kinks Parts 1 & 2 of 4 NSFW

Title: Working out the kinks

Author: xfimnotdone

Date: May 2019

Rating: Nc-17

Spoilers: small mention: Arcadia, story similar to Detour.

Summary: They get some quality time with each other to explore their newly established relationship while on a case, in cramped quarters.

Author's notes:       

Set during season 7, established/but new relationship let's say slightly before En Ami.

Raystown Lake is a real place my family and I go to on vacation. It has paranormal history and the idea and facts came from this website:             https://www.nightwatchparanormal.com/raystown-ray.html No infringment intended.           

Also a little research was done and used from this website:             https://www.glamour.com/story/a-to-z-kinks-and-fetishes 

Tags: MSR, UST, RST, Voyeurism, masturbation, smut, kinks, nsfw, season of secret sex, one bed, slow burn

Chapter 1 of 4

FBI Basement Office

October

Monday 9:25am

Scully was returning from a trip to the ladies room when she cautiously pushed open the office door, listening to Mulder talk on the phone. She peered in, eyeing up his appearance. Leaning back in his desk chair, he casually had his feet propped up and crossed on the desk. His gray dress shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. This is one of her favorite looks. She swallows dryly and listens hard, eavesdropping. Mulder abruptly says, “Okay” and then hung up with a huge grin on his face.

“Mulder? What gives?” Scully approaches the desk, eyebrow arched and arms crossed.

“I just got off the phone with Skinner. Looks like we have a lead,” Mulder reveals excitedly, kicking his feet down to the floor as he begins to rummage through his desk drawer.

“A lead? A lead on what?”

“Monster of the week, Scully! And it's not far from here. We'll leave today around one. Should give us enough time to pack and have a quick bite.”

“Mulder. You have more explaining to do.”

“Raystown Ray. Lake Monster in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. First reported sighting of the creature was in 1962. The description entails a 50-60 foot long serpent with a reptile head...”

“Like the Loch Ness? Mulder, you can't be serious?” Scully huffs.

“Dead serious. Dead, Scully,” he tosses her the file and her quick reflexes snatch it before the papers can spill. She opens the manila folder, her pointer finger caressing the edge as she skims the reports inside and flips.

“Two deaths in the last month. And three reported sightings of the creature. Mulder, these autopsy reports are not complete.”

“Nice catch, Agent Scully. We need to get the rest of those reports and see if we can get our eyes on Raystown Ray.” Mulder folds his hands in front of him, leaning on the desk with square shoulders. “So I'll pick you up at one?”

“Sure.” Scully deflates, her shoulders lower as he stands. This is not her cup of tea. She is the skeptic of the pair and feels this is a waste of time.

He swiftly moves past her, brushing her elbow with his torso as he navigates the cramped office. She smells his body spray like a delicious cloud that engulfs her and she closes her eyes. “Mulder,” she calls, turning.

“Yeah?” he answers, nearly out the door.

“What are our accommodations?” She is afraid to ask. “Please tell me not a tent?”

“Ahh Scully. Good ole Skin-man came through for us this time. He suggested we rent one of their campers. There's no hotels close enough. One bed, Scully. I think the old man is on to us, and quite frankly I don't think he cares.”

“Well. You just behave yourself.” Scully warns. He waggles his eyebrows and beams a smirk her way as he shuts the door behind him leaving her alone in the office.

The drive to Pennsylvania is quick and uneventful. Scully took the advantage of a nap while Mulder crunched on sunflower seeds and played steering wheel drums to classic rock songs.

Upon arrival, Scully and Mulder took in their surroundings, noticing the crisp autumn air as the sun began to set behind mountains. Erie white mist began to blanket the lake and settle in the nooks of the trees. The camper was set up and parked on a gravely lot, surrounded by tall pines. There were no other campers in sight, not one. A sloping hill gave way to an open grassy area that lead down to the water’s edge.

The lake is curvy like a serpent, nestled unnaturally between two high mountain peaks. Mulder studies a map of the lake, sprawled on the camper bed. Socks revealed, dress shirt untucked, tie loosened, he makes himself at home on the bed when he is interrupted by Scully.

“Mulder,” she calls from the kitchen area and is taken aback by how comfortable he looks when she views the bedroom.

“I'm sorry Scully, there is no way in hell these long legs are going to fit in that bunkbed!”

“Yeah, I'm aware,” she smiles. “We can share. I'm heading out to the lab before they close at 5. I'm going to see if I can get any more answers out of them.”

“I'll be here.” Mulder chews on his bottom lip, floating a magnifying glass over one area on the map.

“Don't do anything stupid.”

*    *    *

Scully returns a few hours later and enters the squeaky camper door, searching for a place to put her belongings. She puts away a few bags of groceries she got on her way back from Huntingdon.

Scully proceeds to her left, down a short narrow hallway to the bedroom, opening the sliding door to find the bed empty. No Mulder. His reading glasses and magnifying glass are discarded on the comforter. She turns her head, noticing a sticky note attached to the wall mounted tv. “Don't worry. I just went for a run. My cell's on”.

Immediately, she sighs with relief. She notices the VCR light blinking red and the edge of a tape was revealed as if someone ejected it but never took it out. She ran a manicured finger over the edge, hooking it and removing the tape. “Playboy: Voluptuous Vixens II” she reads the label.

Her confidence plummets. Heat creeps up her throat, flushing her cheeks as her anger builds. She is no stranger to Mulder watching porn, but in recent light of their new physical relationship, she did not imagine him needing this outlet at this time. Especially, not here, in this place.

She tamps down her feelings, swallowing hard just as she hears whistling coming from outside. Mulder rips open the camper door, clunking his running shoes off at the door. He sees the open bedroom door, Scully's legs barely peeking out. He smiles at her as he pokes his head around the corner.

“Nice accommodations, huh Scully? The last time we got to play house was in Arcadia,” he begins and then awkwardly stops his thought when he notices a tape in her hands. “What's that?”

“Uh. It's a tape. I found it in the VCR. Were you watching this while I was gone?” she inquires. She meets his eyes for a moment and then tries to stare at something nonexistent on the bed.

“No. What is it?” Mulder enthusiastically flops on the bed next to her, taking it from her hands. “Oh! This looks like fun. But...this is not mine.”

“You're sure?” Scully reiterates.

“Scully. I hope you would know by now this is not my kink. I am more of a fan of baseball...you know,” he unexpectedly reaches for her chest, cupping one breast in his hands through her clothes. “These are like baseballs, the most perfect handfuls that I can't get enough of.”

He leans in for a soft kiss to her lips, still holding her breast in his palm, squeezing gently. She lets him feel her for a moment as they change angles, licking each other's lips seductively. Scully feels her heart quicken its pace and her labia tingle with arousal.

“That's enough,” she breathlessly pushes him away, getting up from the bed. Mulder's erection is tenting his dress pants and he makes no move to hide it.

“Do you have any kinks, Scully?” he asks, accepting rejection as if he anticipated it.

“No, Mulder. I don't think so.”

“I don't believe that for one second.” Mulder states, while taking in her appearance. Scully was acting like she was searching for something in her luggage the was piled up in the cramped space on the side of the bed.

Chapter 2

“Catholic upbringing, Mulder. We don't do kinky.” She confesses, finally pulling out what she was looking for: silk pajamas.

“That's the biggest load of bullshit you've ever tried to feed me. I can tell by the way you kiss me. You have kinks.” Mulder, notices her lack of eye contact and her hurried movements.

“Well, I guess I just never allowed myself to...” .

“Would it help if I told you mine first?” he calls after her as she retreats to the tiny bathroom.

“I already know yours. Big breasts,” she cringes as she lays her night clothes on the closed toilet lid. The small bathroom forces her eyes to dart around, trying to control the conversation while finding creative places to put her things.

“I told you that tape isn't mine,” he persists as she slides closed the wooden door between the bedroom and bathroom, hiding his view.

Mulder tucks his head with a smile, leaning back to lay on a pillow and stretch out his legs. He reaches down to press his palm to the bulge in his pants, trying to relieve some pressure.

The shower water gurgles and squeaks to life, spraying cold water at first. Scully massages the back of her cramped neck with a hand, then strips her clothing until they are puddled in a heap at her feet. Once the water is warm, she dips a toe in to test the temperature and the climbs into the tiny fiberglass shower.

The smell of spring flowers from her shampoo wafts through the humid air as she rolls the bubbles through her auburn strands. Her eyes close in pleasure, massaging her head and enjoying the warmth of the water. Then she hears it. The wooden door sliding open. She opens one eye, then the other, slowly turning her head towards the door.

“Voyeurism, Mulder? Is that your thing?” Scully questions.

“Certifiably,” he answers, laying back on the bed. He watches her and she lets him. She continues bathing normally, but he notices how the water sprays down the valley of her breasts like a slip n slide. The shower doors are wet but not steamy enough to obstruct his view.

Mulder digs his hand into the waistband of his pants, rubbing himself with a heavy hand, creating pressure. Scully's nipples jut out hard into the cool air and he watches as she runs her hands over her body. She cleans herself with nothing but soap in her hands. No washcloth. No sponge. Just her fingers.

He swallows hard and unbuttons his pants, deftly sliding the zipper down.

“Mulder? Are you touching yourself?” she asks, beginning to tuck her fingers into her labia. She sighs. It goes straight to his groin, hardening him even more as he watches her fingers disappear in her slip.

“What do you think?” he answers, voice thick with arousal. Pulling his boxers lower, his erection feels the coolness of the room, straining towards his belly button. “Is this turning you on, Scully?”

“Yes,” she confesses. He can barely hear her over the spray of the shower and whistling pipes.

“Get out of the shower,” he commands, stroking himself with a full fist. Once. Twice. The skin of his shaft rippling over engorged veins as he stretches and releases.

“You agreed.” she reminds him, continuing to clean herself, now reaching deeper into her pussy and then retreating, moving down her legs.

“What did I agree to again?” Mulder runs the pad of his thumb over the tip of his penis, spreading the drops of arousal leaking out. He watches her, notices how the water beads up and sticks to her pubic hair. He wants to lick it off.

“No sex while on an out of town case. You agreed.” She reminds him, stalling. She is rapidly thinking how to get out of this situation. Scully is slowly losing control of her resolve, dripping with arousal, tingling with pleasure knowing his eyes are on her while he is touching himself.

“Why did I agree to that again?” Stroke. Stroke. He reaches down with his other hand, grabbing his balls with the tips of his fingers and pulling the sac upwards, stretching the skin.

“Because it's unprofessional.” She finally works up the nerve to end this and shuts off the water.

“Nothing about this is professional, Scully.” He gasps, closes his eyes and continues stroking for a moment. When he hears the shower doors’ shut, his eyes snap open.

His mouth is agape, panting with his cock in his hand, still and tight. “Pinch your nipple,” he whispers. Her nipple is soft now from the warmth of the water, but with one hard pluck it pebbles under his scrutiny.

“Did you enjoy the show?” she taunts, lingering a moment too long before wrapping herself in a white towel, then grabbing another to wrap up her hair.

“Absolutely, I will always enjoy that show.” Mulder emphasizes, stroking slowly, letting her watch. He keeps his eyes on her but her eyes are on his crotch. “How's it make you feel? To watch?” he asks, noticing that she just could not take looking any longer as her eyes dart to the wall beside him.

“It makes me wet.”

“See, you do have kinks, Scully,” he shines a toothy smile at her and she blushes for a moment then turns her back and retreats back to the bathroom.

“I don't want to talk about it anymore.” She shuts down and closes the wooden door. Mulder remained patient, but his effort to coerce her has hit a door, literally and his frustration was now simmering. He had no idea her resolve was so strong.

“Fine you're not getting any!” he jokes, pulling his boxers up over his heavy penis.

“I waited seven years, Mulder. Don't underestimate me.”

Mulder stands, walking through the other doorway, down the hall and puts his shoes on.

“I'm going for a quick walk. I'll be back.” He switches on a flashlight and heads out the door. As soon as the door slams shut and the camper jolts a little from the impact, Scully lets out a sigh of relief.

She tears her towel off and without hesitation plunges two fingers into her heat, holding them there, just pressing gently, trying to relieve the throbbing. Scully feels her body pulse around her fingers with need, a new wave gushes wetness down her fingers.

She desperately makes a hard decision and pulls her fingers back out, wiping them on the discarded towel. She wipes herself dry, feeling a tiny bit of relief and begins to dress in her pajamas.

*    *    *

Mulder cautiously makes his way down the slippery, grass bank.

He stands along the edge of the lake, shining his flashlight beam across the tranquil, inky blackness of the water.

He looks around for a moment, making sure all is calm before unzipping his fly and pulling out his cock. He looks up into the night sky as he begins stroking, noticing his eyes adjusting to the low light. Mulder sees the sparkling milky way arch across the sky as he comes hard.

Satisfied for the moment, he tucks himself back into his pants and walks along the shore of the lake. Nothing moves, not even the water. His breath puffs in the cool night air, feet crunching the sand and gravel below his shoes. Dimly, he hears the call of a Great horned owl in the distance as he turns to make his way back up the huge hill.

Thump, thump, splash. Mulder whirls around, shining his beam toward the sound. His heart quickens once again, excitement building in hopes of spotting their creature. A beaver pokes its head from the water, carrying a stick as it paddles along in the darkness, occasionally thumping its tail.

[astrea-it-posts]

Salesforce has always evolved new changes to enhance their customer experience and also from Summer ’17, the users will not be able to use the Notes & Attachments related list to the attach files to records.