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#child abuse mention
snivel1 · 2 days
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Kinito in the computer of a person in an abusive family.
Horror&blood warning under the cut!
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Transcript of the intentionally hard to read text:
"Friend! I made sure to give them a good talking to! They won't bother you ever again!"
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fierceawakening · 3 days
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You know, I said it already earlier, but I’m still really wondering how prison abolition IS supposed to work for rapists, anyway.
Like it seems like we’re agreeing that putting someone away in a box is an unjust punishment for not asking for consent. And that logic seems sound.
But when you actually study people who commit crime, whether it’s rape or abuse or whatever, you run into the problem of recidivism: someone did a bad thing, got caught, got imprisoned. How likely are they to do it again later?
Some people aren’t at all. If someone takes responsibility, or made a disastrous mistake, they’re highly likely not to repeat it.
But some people do bad things in part because they hold beliefs that allow for them.
Those of you who’ve followed me for a while likely know I’ve been closely following the Ruby Franke/Jodi Hildebrandt child abuse case. These were a wealthy Mormon momfluencer and a licensed therapist, both affluent and white. So not the sort of people who we usually think we’re saving with prison abolition really.
Anyway, they pleaded guilty to horrific child abuse. They basically got it into their heads that because the children acted defiant and wet the bed into adolescence (both likely responses to being abused imo), they needed to be abused severely and frequently until they stopped.
Anyone else see a flaw in that logic?
Anyway. The current buzz on this is about how long they should be in prison, and determining that will be based on whether the parole board thinks they’re likely to reoffend.
And I was watching a YT on this case by a forensic psychologist, just giving his take as an interested guy with relevant training. And he said that based on how long they’d abused the kids, what they’d said in the immediate aftermath of their arrests, and the whole elaborateness of the religious beliefs that justified it (essentially, a kid doesn’t pee and poop himself after a certain age unless a demon is making him do it), that he considered it very likely Ruby is CLAIMING remorse because she knows it’ll lighten her sentence, but very unlikely her beliefs have changed.
He didn’t say it was impossible they COULD change. He said he’d worked with offenders of various sorts and some do! But that it takes a lot of time, because the person has to be willing to look at, question, and rethink things that to them are fundamental, and that’s never easy and rarely fun.
(It took me YEARS to stop thinking all the things I’d been told by a high control group for example. It took time even once the group rejected me. That’s how invested I was.)
So back to prison abolition. You’ve got a rapist. He’s served his time. Or maybe he hasn’t. Maybe we’re just throwing the doors open because it’s about time.
How are you making sure he’s invested in a process that leads him to rethink how he understands sexuality and intimacy?
How do you keep people safe while he goes through that process?
If we really do recognize, as we very much should, that rapists are people, how do we give them space to change like people while keeping others safe?
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prokopetz · 9 months
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Country songs about women killing their shitty husbands and janky RPG Maker horror games with abused little girl protagonists where the Good Ending route culminates in killing her shitty father may not be the same species of media, but you could probably make a solid argument that they're close cousins.
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steddierthings · 1 year
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Okay another sad scenario I love to torment myself with is based on the idea that people are always sort of apologizing for Steve and he fucking hates it. Started with his parents saying shit to their friends like “oh you’ll have to excuse Steve, he’s never been much for academics” and other backhanded stuff like that. Or Tommy, “don’t worry about Steve, he never did have the balls to do some real damage, but he’s not afraid to take a punch”
Then he would hear Nancy say to Barb, “come on, I know he’s a bit of an idiot, but he’s sweet, you just have to get to know him.”
Or Dustin to Mike, “Dude, look, he can be a douchebag, I agree, but you gotta give him a chance, he can drive us everywhere.”
Or Robin to her fellow band nerds, “Sure he’s a loser prep but he’s cool, I promise.”
Then he starts dating Eddie. One day early on in the relationship, someone had said something that set Steve ranting to Eddie about how he doesn’t need people to make fucking excuses for him, he doesn’t give a shit what other people think (he gives so many shits) and he thinks he’s a pretty decent person when it comes down to it (he does not think this at all), so people need to stop apologizing for him. Eddie listens to him and the more he listens, the more he takes Steve seriously, the more he sees the hurt beneath the anger, the more Steve talks. And eventually the rant morphs into a quiet plea for Eddie to help him understand why his friends, people who are supposed to love him, feel the need to put all these caveats around him just to make their friends stand him. It makes him feel like shit.
Eddie is furious on his behalf, swears he’ll never do that to Steve, “I’m so proud to be with you, I’m so proud to be your friend, and anyone who doesn’t feel the same isn’t worth your time.” “Even Henderson?” “Even Henderson.” And because Eddie has only ever made him feel good, like he’s somebody worth loving, Steve believes him.
Then one day Steve’s leaving his house to meet Eddie and his friends at the Hideout. It’ll be the first time he’s met and hung out with Eddie’s friends and he wants it to go perfectly. He even borrows a shirt from Eddie since everything he owns would stand out like a sore thumb. But just as he’s about to go out the door, his parents’ car rolls in unexpectedly and they get out with two of their friends.
Steve’s caught. His parents usher their friends and Steve back inside and while his mom fixes them drinks, his dad discreetly drags him to the other room, grips his arm so hard Steve knows there will be bruises later. “Get your ass upstairs and get some presentable fucking clothes on, you look like a degenerate.” Steve doesn’t have a choice so he puts on some khakis and a navy polo shirt, checks that the sleeves cover the red spots his dad just left, scrubs off the eyeliner he’d been so excited to surprise Eddie with, and heads downstairs for a torturous half hour of socializing.
By the time they’re ready to release him, after he’s been thoroughly apologized for (“we tried and tried, but we never could get him to take school seriously, could we, Steven?” and “he’ll get his shit together eventually, right, Steve? Just needs to do a little time at these dead end jobs, work the laziness out of his system before he joins the firm”), he’s already late and he decides he’d rather look out of place than have Eddie think Steve stood him up. Eddie’s standing in the side parking lot outside the hideout smoking a cigarette and looking agitated, but he smiles wide when he spots Steve pulling up. He bounds over to the car and opens the door before Steve can. He laughs his head off when Steve gets out and Steve doesn’t mind the ribbing when it’s just Eddie, so he laughs a little too. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, you didn’t have to spend half an hour having forced to listen to the Michaelson’s talk about their perfect daughter and her four-point-oh first year at Wesleyan.”
“Aw, baby, did you have to act like a spoiled rich kid tonight?” Eddie leans against the car beside Steve to finish his cigarette. Steve hasn’t quite told Eddie about the reality of his parents, hasn’t wanted to spend their time together wallowing in his own misery when his life could be so much worse. So Steve smirks a little and puts on an exaggerated pout.
“Yeah and it sucked,” he says.
Eddie finishes his cigarette, checks that they’re sufficiently hidden from view, and gathers Steve up in his arms. “You better tuck that bottom lip away or you’re gonna trip on it,” he teases, and Steve smiles.
“Why don’t you tuck it away for me, Munson?” Eddie’s eyes light up the way they always do when Steve flirts with him, as if he’s still surprised about it, and obliges with a sharp little nip followed by soothing lick. Steve leans in and lets Eddie kiss away the misery of being around his parents, but he doesn’t let it go on too long, conscious that Eddie’s friends are waiting and their low impression of Steve is probably falling even more the longer they think he’s late. He gently disentangles himself with one last kiss and they head inside.
The guys are posted up at a high top table already. Eddie introduces everyone and Steve immediately forgets all their names, which doesn’t help his nerves. They’re all glaring at him. “You’re late,” the one Steve thinks is called Gary says.
Over Eddie’s “come on, man” Steve says, “yeah, sorry, had some family stuff.” He tugs at the sleeve of his polo, unconsciously making sure the finger marks are hidden. Then he does the only thing he knows to do to make people like him and throws his money at the situation. “You guys want anything to drink? I’ll get the next round.”
The drinks — beer for Eddie, Steve, and Jeff (maybe? Josh?), Cokes for the rest of them—ease the tension a smidgen, and the guys go from openly hostile to mostly pretending he’s not there as they talk about an upcoming campaign and the rival metal band playing later that night. Eddie tries to draw Steve in, and he does his best to look engaged, but he only cares about this shit when it’s Eddie talking about it. Gary going on about padawans or whatever can’t quite keep his attention.
Even so, Steve thinks it’s going okay. He’s laughing and nodding where it seems appropriate, making vaguely agreeable comments when Eddie prompts him. Eddie only shoots him a couple of weird looks so he’s probably not saying anything too stupid. It’s not the worst way to spend an evening, especially because Eddie keeps giving him little nudges and winks so Steve doesn’t feel ignored. But it’s not necessary, even though Steve appreciates it. He’s content to let them visit with each other and keep his conversational contributions to a minimum.  
But of course it can never last. Steve excuses himself to the bathroom, partly because he has to go, partly because the din of the bar and the pressure of making a good impression and the lingering stress of being around his parents have exhausted him and he needs a minute. He does his business, splashes water on his face, and only grips the sink to gather his strength for a few seconds before heading back. Arriving at the table turns everyone’s attention to him. Eddie grins at him, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that Steve doesn’t understand, and the others are back to glaring. Uncomfortable, Steve gives them all a grimace of a smile, which apparently Jeff/Josh takes as a signal to address him directly for the first time that night. He eyes Steve up and down and says, “Harrington, man, I gotta ask. What the fuck are you wearing?”
His tone isn’t overly combative, could maybe even be (generously) interpreted as the same teasing that Eddie subjected him to outside, if Steve wants to be optimistic, so he lets out a nervous chuckle. He doesn’t know what to say, though. Doesn’t know how to explain about the expectations and the disapproval and the five fingerprints on his bicep already turning black and blue. He’s too drained, though, to come up with a joke or comeback. So he just stares at the guy, mute. 
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Eddie swoops in with a sharp laugh. Steve cuts his eyes to him, and Eddie raises his eyebrows like what is going on? Uh oh. Maybe things weren’t going as well as he thought. With no answr from Steve, Eddie turns back to the guys. “You’ll have to excuse Stevie here, he didn’t get the memo about the dress code. No FBLA clones allowed.” 
His tone is light, joking, but it catches Steve in the gut. There’s a roaring in his ears as Eddie’s friends crack up around him and all he can hear is “You’ll have to excuse...” Eddie promised. He promised. 
Before Steve can say anything, the conversation’s moved on. He doesn’t even bother to try to join in now. That familiar burn of humiliation and rejection wells up in him, clogs his throat, makes him feel mean. Every time Eddie looks over at him, Steve blatantly ignores him. Bats his hand away the next time it nudges him. Someone, he won’t even pretend to remember their names now, asks him a question and he snaps back an answer. Doesn’t even flinch at Eddie’s harsh, “Steve!” Tension has crept back into the group and he can feel them all watching him like he’s a wild animal about to attack. They’re not wrong. 
At one point he goes to the bar and orders a shot of whiskey. Downs it and orders another to take back to the table. Before he can toss that one back, Eddies snags it out of his hand and says, “Okay, we’re done here.” Steve doesn’t need the hand Eddie presses to his back to propel him out of the venue. He’s halfway to his car before Eddie catches up. Steve doesn’t slow down, but once he gets into his car and sees that Eddie’s rounded to the other side, he unlocks the door for him and sits sullenly as his furious boyfriend slams himself into the seat.
“What the fuck was that, Steve?” 
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, don’t play that game. You were a fucking asshole in there. You’ve been an asshole the whole night.” 
That slices through Steve’s rage, and he lets out a bewildered, “What?” He’d thought things were fine until the end. He’d been doing everything right - not intruding on their conversation, making benign comments to show he was listening without letting them know how lost he was, he’d bought them drinks...but apparently he was wrong.
“You couldn’t have looked more bored if you tried. You barely said a word, and when you did, it was clear you were barely paying attention. You called Jeff the wrong name--twice!” Fuck. He’d fucked up so bad. 
“Eddie, I didn’t mean--”
But Eddie’s on a roll, gesturing theatrically in his anger. “I didn’t think you were like this anymore, man. I thought King Steve was no more. But apparently one annoying interaction with your parents is enough to bring him charging back in.”  
Steve runs a hand over his upper arm as if trying to warm it. He thinks back over the earlier part of the night, reexamining every interaction under this new interpretation. Maybe he can see how Eddie, so used to everyone around him being loud and talking over each other, excited just to be together, would take Steve’s reticence tonight as boredom and disdain. But that’s not right, and Steve can’t have him thinking it. His heart pounds in his chest and it’s fear he’s feeling. Fear that he’s about to lose the single best thing (minus Robin) to ever happen to him if he doesn’t do something. “Eddie, that’s not what was happening, I swear. You have to believe--” 
“Whatever, man.” Eddie shakes his head, looks away from Steve. Steve wants to reach out, tug him back so they’re facing, but every part of Eddie screams Don’t touch me. He shakes his head again, as if the first time wasn’t enough to convey his disgust. “This King Steve act, it’s such fucking bullshit.” 
For the second time that night, Steve hears a roaring in his ears, an echo of slurred words slamming into him like bullets. No, you. You’re bullshit. It’s bullshit. It’s such fucking bullshit. He thinks he might throw up. 
“Get out of the car.” 
Eddie finally looks back, rolls his eyes. “I’m not getting out of the car, man. We’re going to talk about this.” 
“Get out of the car, Eddie.” He starts the engine, puts the car in drive, waits.
“I’m not getting out of the car.” Eddie grabs at the seatbelt as if to prove it and Steve loses the small bit of control he was holding onto. 
“I said get out of the goddamn car!” Eddie’s eyes widen and he lets go of the buckle, which clatters against the door. 
“Steve--” 
“Eddie, if you don’t get out of the car in the next two seconds, I am going to lose my goddamn mind.” 
And whatever Eddie sees as he gapes at him must make him believe it because he opens the door and slides out. He stands holding the door, and Steve turns toward him.
“You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve always been bullshit, I guess I didn’t get the memo that wasn’t allowed.” 
Whatever Eddie opens his mouth to respond is lost as Steve peels away, the passenger door slamming shut on its own. 
He drives home in a confusing mix of rage and hurt and disappointment, embarrassment and self-hatred. He wants to cry, feels the tears burn at the backs of his eyes, but he pinches the bridge of his nose, breathes hard, and keeps it together. 
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Part Two
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royalarchivist · 29 days
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Fit: I would never hit my own children. My own biological children. I would never hit my own children, but these little bastards– [he kills a "Snot" a child-like mob] Fair game, fair game. [Fit looks at Ramon] Well, ok, biological or adopted, it doesn't matter. My children– I would never hit my children.
Fit: See, now I just opened up a can of worms– now someone's like "Ramon's your biological child???" So what if he is? So what if he is, huh? [Reading chat] No I'm not a bird, I didn't lay Ramon. That sounds painful. That sounds extremely painful.
[QSMP kicks him off the server]
Fit: You know, and– literally because we're having this conversation right now, the QSMP admins were like "Uhh, no, we gotta restart the server. Fit's talking about pushing eggs out of his ass."
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hajihiko · 11 months
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Family Business
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theanonymousclown · 2 months
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I’ve been re-reading this Psychonauts fic by @magicalmilly and my GOD this scene never fails to make me laugh. Anyway this is my petition to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE continue this fic it’s been unfinished since 2022 and it was JUST REACHING THE CLIMAX OF PSYCHONAUTS 1-
Anyway the basic plot of the fic is that Milla and Sasha are very concerned about Raz because of what he shares about his family life. High key recommend, Raz gets to apologize for intruding on Milla’s nightmares.
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anewgayeveryday · 21 days
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Today's LGBT+ Character is;
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Mitch Muller and Jonas Wagner from Long Exposure by Marsoid-Gay and Bisexual respectively
Read Long Exposure on Tapas here
Requested by anon (a long time ago)
TW For child abuse
Status: Alive (and Dating)
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stardustdiiving · 8 months
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I’m so deeply sorry to Childe fans who understand his mental illness(TM) the way ppl talk his #issues stresses me out SO much. They don’t GET it. like idk even when ppl misunderstand say Xiao or Scaramouche I feel there’s generally an understanding of the severity of their emotional baggage and how that impacts them as characters. However unfortunately Childe seems to have completely dissociated from the concept of his own trauma and thinks he’s just a little silly sometimes and everyone has FALLEN for it .
Do NOT let him fool you. That freaking white boy got dropped into a hole when he was 14 and was molded into a child soldier and weapon of violence who twisted his terror of being a child in literal hell into loving the thrill of violence and combat with the strangled remains of his childhood innocence so he could survive. Ok. Everytime I talk to him he starts dropping casual passing comments about how he loves being used as a weapon instead of being a person and how he loves compartmentalizing his sense of identity like he’s doing nothing but playing a good imitation of himself/Ajax/Tartaglia/etc in the middle of our mundane conversation, and I don’t even think he’s aware of the implications of this. You have got to help me
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miwachan2 · 1 year
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⚠️Warning this mini comic contains: Blood, Death, and Child Abuse (Hinted/Mentioned)
also its a long post lol
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other bonus Tags + lil mod bonus uwu:
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I hope yall enjoyed some unhinged Sun and soft Moon for this lil comic uwu - Miwa
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tags:
#Vampire AU  #Vampire Sundrop  #Vampire Moondrop   #sundrop  #moondrop  #fnaf sundrop  #fnaf moondrop  #moondrop fnaf  #sundrop fnaf  #fnaf  #fnaf sb  #fnaf security breach  #fnaf Vampire AU Miwachan2  #Blood  #tw: blood  #fnaf Vampire Au Comic #Vampiric Equinox #Vampiric Equinox Comic #unhinged sundrop #soft moondrop
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autisticwriterblog · 5 months
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Izzy, Ed and abuse
okay, so I’ve seen a few people talking about Izzy and Ed, and it genuinely disturbs me that I’ve seen people deny that Izzy is a victim of abuse. By most definitions, physical abuse is categorised as causing physical harm to another person’s body with intent to hurt them. Some things, like punching Izzy for selling Stede out, or choking him for saying hateful stuff when Ed was at his lowest, whilst not acceptable in the real world, are perfectly normal reactions for a pirate to have toward a member of his crew, so I’m not talking about things like that.
But the toe scene and the early parts of season 2 are clearly abusive, and only by sheer character bias (framing Ed as someone who could never do anything wrong) can you look at the way Ed treats Izzy and not consider Izzy a victim. Izzy and Ed have had a mutually toxic relationship for a long time, judging by their interactions, but I personally only see abusive behaviour starting with the toe scene. And the abusive one is Ed. Which shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say, considering what we see on screen, and yet…
Even at the end of season one, we saw Ed cut Izzy’s toe off and force him to eat it, and it is confirmed in season 2 that he took two more toes. He is even about to take a fourth toe when Izzy reports that the crew refused to throw their treasure overboard, and Izzy doesn’t argue, much unlike in season 1, when he often bitched at Ed for his decisions. Now, Izzy just takes the punishment.
Things between them come to a head when Ed shoots Izzy in the leg, leading to infection, and the amputation of his leg. He even puts a gun in Izzy’s hand, directly leading to Izzy’s suicide attempt. And in the end, all Izzy gets is a mumbled apology and that's that.
I know many people don’t like Izzy, but do they not sympathise with him? I’ll be first to admit that I don’t like Ed and Stede (I used to, but season 2 made me dislike them more and more for reasons too complicated to go into now), but I feel bad for them when bad things happen to them. I got bullied as a child, so I sympathise with Stede in the flashbacks to his childhood, and I was horrified when I learned what Ed's father was like. I don't particularly like either of them, but I feel bad for them when they're suffering. Which is why I found it so strange and appalling that people who dislike Izzy seemed to find it funny when Izzy was crawling along the floor, or died a painful death.
Even ignoring Ed's treatment of Izzy, the way he treats the crew is abusive too. He overworks them, pushing them into three months of consecutive raids (assuming they did one raid a day), leaving them all so stressed that Fang seems to always be crying. He forces Jim and Archie to fight to the death for no reason other than he said so. He expects Frenchie to kill Izzy, and it is clear how terrified Frenchie is the entire time he lies to Ed. The whole crew walk on eggshells around Ed because they don't know when he'll explode again. Basically, even if Izzy isn't being mentioned (and he should for the record, because he got the worst treatment - and he didn't deserve it, despite that some people seem to think being mutilated is a fair punishment for yelling at Ed), Ed was still abusive towards the crew. During that time period, Ed is incredibly unstable. He wants the world to burn and doesn't care who gets hurt along with him. Which is why the crew still show signs of trauma after Stede returns. Because they are traumatised by Ed's behaviour.
I know that Ed is a victim of abuse, and I have seen people bring this up when his abusive behaviour is mentioned. The thing is, it's perfectly possible for a victim to become an abuser themself, because they're a human being and are capable of doing bad things. Yes, survivors don't have to become abusive (see: my mum, who was smacked as a child but never raised a hand to her own children, because she didn't turn out like her parents), but it can happen. And that is what happened with Ed. There is even a direct parallel between Ed's dad throwing a plate against the wall, scaring Ed's mother, and the scene where Ed throws a chair against the wall, making Stede visibly flinched. If you want someone to be annoyed with about this comparison, don't pick the fans who are just noticing something in canon - blame the show for writing Ed doing the same thing his abusive father did.
In conclusion, Izzy fans aren't just making things up. We're pointing out things that canon showed onscreen and how Ed's behaviour toward Izzy is abusive. I wanted to like Ed this season, but the way the show wrote him made it impossible for me to tolerate him, because he treated everyone badly and they were expected to just move on. I understand that Ed is a romantic lead, but perhaps it wasn't a good idea to make your romantic lead act so abusive toward his subordinates and then never show any real consequences of that.
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Bad News First, Eddie
Part One 🦇 Part Two🦇Part Three🦇FInal Part
This was getting longer than both Steve and Wayne's parts combined, so I'm gonna break it into 2 parts. Posting part 1 now, and part 2 should be up within a day. Thank you everyone for the wonderful replies/reblogs. I screenshot them cause they keep me going haha.
Trigger Warning: Child abuse referenced, as well as one scene of a child being slapped. Use of slurs in a derogatory manner.
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Bad news first, Eddie thinks to himself as he swings the trash can lid turned shield, this is a fuckton of bats. Good news, Dustin is safe.
The bats are overwhelming but he's holding his own. He can do this. He can buy them more time. He's done running away from the things that scare him.
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Bad news, Eddie thinks, watching Dustin sob above him, I'm gonna die here.
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Eddie dies. He knows this because all the hurt stops. The world has faded into itself, dimming to a blackness deeper than Eddie's ever known.
The afterlife is a bit disappointing if he's honest. He's not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn't nothing. Endless, unfathomable nothing.
He kinda hoped he'd see his mom or something, but that's delusional. If the afterlife was heaven or hell, he wouldn't end up in the one his mom went to, that's for sure. Too many sins under his belt for that.
Death is pretty boring though.
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Time is impossible to track. He's tried a few times, counting seconds to make minutes but that's so boring he loses his train of thought. Ends up humming some tune or another before repeating the process.
The day he finds himself humming a Wham! song has Eddie a little panicked. He doesn't listen to Top 40 stations. He spent a good deal of time avoiding learning any Wham! songs, actually, so now that he's somehow gotten one such in his head...
This has got to be capital H Hell.
Well. Everyone in town thought he was on the road straight to it. Laugh it up, Hawkins. You were right. The Freak went straight down.
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Eddie misses Wayne. He can't remember the last thing he'd said to him. When did he last tell his uncle he loved him? Wayne knew it though. He had to know it. They didn't say it out loud but they didn't need to. Right?
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In the distance, Eddie sees something. A light? He's not sure what it is but it's something new. Something different.
The light leads him back into the Upside Down. The bats are swarming and he just crashed the bike- fuck fuck fuck, run. Run, Eddie, get the fuck out of here!
He's screaming at himself to run but instead his body stops. Turns. Pulls the shield and spear from his back and screams at the bats.
Eddie rips himself back, away. Crumples to the ground, folding into himself. Not that. Anything but that again.
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A soft humming sound. Gentle, warm.
Loving.
Eddie unfolds himself to see what it is.
His mom smiles down at him, reaches out to ruffle his hair as she hums. Eddie knows the danger has passed and he is safe now because Mamma only hums that when it's safe.
"There's my handsome boy," she moves the hand from his hair to boop the tip of his nose. "How about we play a little game, hmm? The floor is lava!"
She scoops him up and plops him on the kitchen table. There is a crunching sound beneath her feet as she moves. Lava sounds an awful lot like Dad's broken beer bottles but if Mamma wants to play pretend then Eddie can do that for her.
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His mother is beautiful. The most beautiful woman in the world. He takes after her in a lot of ways. Matching curly locks, the same face scrunch when they're angry, their noses, big brown doe eyes. Eddie even shares her voice, just a different pitch. The point is, Eddie's mom is beautiful and he's got enough ego left at four years old to think of himself as beautiful, too.
The problem, then, is that Eddie makes the mistake of saying it in front of his Dad. 'As pretty as Mamma,' he'd said. They'd, he and Mamma that is, were sitting crosslegged on the floor in the living room. Dad had been in the kitchen, Eddie could hear him puttering about. Mamma had booped his nose and called him the best looking kid in all of America.
Eddie nodded fiercly, "yeah! As pretty at Mamma."
It used to be a fuzzy memory, what happens next. A flurry of movement and shouting. Now he's witnessing it with terrible clarity. His dad's hand curling around his upper arm and yanking him into the air, crushing hard enough to bruise. His dad's shouting at him. He remembers not remembering the words but now they hit him like the slap his dad delivered to his face. "No son of mine is going to be a fuckin' fag, thinkin' he's some pretty little girl. Is that what you want, you little shit? To be a little girl?"
"Stop it! Stop it! Let him go, he didn't mean anything like that!" he hears his Mamma plead but his Dad won't stop shaking him and screaming. He bursts into tears because it hurts and he's confused and his Dad's never hit him before- "Hit me! Hit me! If you're gonna hit someone, hit me!"
Eddie gets tossed aside. He lands on back and sees as his Dad does exactly as his Mamma demanded. Eddie's never been so scared in his life, he can't watch. He scampers down the hall as fast as he can and crawls under his bed to hide.
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If Eddie had to guess, that's the memory that ingrained his need to run.
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He's reliving his memories. He's a little embarrassed how long it takes him to figure that out. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. They don't tell you that the quote flash unquote takes a really fuckin' long time. Like, you know, your whole life long time.
It's so strange to witness, too. Like he's both watching the memories as an outsider, but also through his own eyes. He has both the knowledge that he had when he died, and also no experience beyond what he's seeing in the memory.
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He watches his Dad beat his Mamma, beat him, but also watches his Dad push him on the swings and slow dance around the kitchen with his Mamma. And that's the worst part, he thinks. That his Dad could have been an awesome one. If he'd stayed sober like he kept promising. He didn't though, couldn't. Hell, maybe it's even a wouldn't. He watchs Wyatt fucking Munson pick beer and drugs over him and his Mamma time and time again.
Couldn't even put them down long enough to be there when Mamma got sick.
-
Eddie is seven. He's just had his head shaved, bald as his Mamma now. He regrets doing it as soon as he sees his Mamma's smile falter when Uncle Wayne drops him off at the hospital.
"We match, Mamma," Eddie says shyly, eyes downcast. "I wanted to match..."
"Oh, baby, come here," and she's scooping him into a hug, genuinly smiling again, "I love that we match. So long as it was your decision to cut your hair."
Eddie realizes now why her smile had faltered. She thought Dad had shaved his head against his will, probably because long hair was for woman, as he liked to say. Eddie in the memory didn't know that, though, so he just cuddles closer and says, "Yeah. Uncle Wayne did it for me, so it would be nice and even, he said. Wanna hear what we did in school today?"
-
There is something looming at the edges of his vision. Eddie can't seem to make whatever it is come into focus. It's not a memory because those always focus. It's something else. Something new.
-
His dad teaches him to hot wire a car. Makes him learn how to pick the lock on car doors and handcuffs. When he sees how easily Eddie took to lockpicking, he makes him learn other locks, too.
Eddie misses out on school because his dad can't be bother to enroll him and Eddie doesn't know how to do it himself. He's too scared to, anyway. Afraid his dad will start swinging and won't stop until he's dead.
-
When Eddie is eleven, a lot happens. It was a pivitol age for him. He got his first crush (a boy named Jimmy) and a first kiss (a boy named Jeramiah). Eddie also ends up in the hospital because his Dad caught him kissing Jeramiah.
It's not his Dad that picks him up from the hospital, though.
Eleven is the age he is the day his Uncle Wayne moves him to Hawkins, Indiana.
He's also eleven the first time he hears Black Sabbath.
Eddie is also eleven years old when he decides that he wants good news delivered last. To end with something good.
-
He relives becoming himself.
Catching up in school because he's not stupid, but falling behind because he is kinda dumb (schoolwork never seemed as imporant as hanging out with friends, or starting a band, or playing dungeons and dragon, or any other number of things).
The relief he feels the first time he meets another person like him, learns there's another word besides faggot for what he is. Gay. The immense pleasure of feeling truly seen the first time he says that out loud to someone (it's his best friend, Jeff) "Bad news, Jeff. You might hate me for this. Good news, I'm gay."
Good, good news. Jeff doesn't hate him!
There's a fear that Wayne might be like his Dad regarding all this, so he can't tell him; won't tell him.
But then Wayne comes home unexpectedly when Eddie is a freshman and catches him with another boy's tongue in his mouth. Eddie has a panic attack that winds up with him in the hospital.
He remembers the paralizing fear when Wayne came to pick him up upon his release. Eddie had walked to the pickup numb and afraid. He climbed in, buckled the seatbelt, and waited for the worst.
Wayne climbed in and started the pickup but didn't put it in gear. Instead, he spoke, "Life is gonna be rough for you, boy. Rougher than it should be."
Eddie cannot make words form to reply. Can't do anything but shake.
"Eddie," Wayne says and he feels the seat move as Wayne shifts to turn towards him, "the bad news is, life is gonna be rough, but the good news? Living under my roof isn't. Won't be. Eddie, my boy, I love you. And nothing, absolutely nothing, will change that."
Eddie breaks, like a puppet with its strings cut, sags in the seat and sobs. Never, never had Eddie ever bothered to entertain the idea that this might be Wayne's response.
-
Eddie is a sophomore the first time he notices Steve Harrington. It's fucking awful. It's also amazing.
Because noticing Steve Harrington means noticing Steve Harrington. He's immidiately popular because he's good looking and good at sports.
Eddie's not gonna claim to know Steve, he doesn't. There's just these little clues that King Steve isn't a default jerk. For one, Steve doesn't partake in bullying. He stays silent. Lets it happen.
But Eddie's also been witness to two times when Stever did step in; both times when it was escalating to be a phycical altercation.
"Hey, Tommy, don't," Steve had said, not quite stepping between Tommy and the other kid, but enough to be within Tommy's line of sight. "The game is tomorrow. You throw that punch and your hand is gonna hurt like a bitch through the whole game. And I swear to God if we lose this game because you can't handle it-" Steve didn't finish the sentence, didn't have to. Tommy lowered his arm and scoffed. Walked away mutter about how the kid wasn't worth it anyway.
The other time, it had been Jeff he'd defended. Jeff hadn't even been doing anything. Just stumbled into some asshole from the basketball team and knocked him over. Eddie had been the one who'd shoved Jeff (because Jeff was teasing him) and he was ready to place himself in the way when Steve had beat him to it.
"Fucking relax, it was an accident," Steve stood face to face with Roger. Eddie and Jeff just stared at the back of Steve's head. "It's not Jeff's fault that barely tapping you knocked you down like a house of cards. Right, Jeff?"
Eddie and Jeff blinked at each other in a sort of stunned silence because since when does King Steve know either of their names? Steve turned to look over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. Jeff stammered out, "R-right. It was an accident. Sorry, man."
"See, he's even sorry."
Eddie reached out, wrapped his hand around Jeff's wrist, and tugged him away. He could not stay here and witness anymore of Hero Steve or he was going to embarrass himself infront of the entire cafeteria in the worst way possible.
-
That was the tipping point for Eddie. When he finally had to admit he wasn't just noticing Steve Harrington. He had a full blown crush on the dude.
Fuck.
-
Watching his memories play, Eddie realizes he spent far too much time in high school trying to get Steve's attention. Bumping into him on purpose, being antagonistic to his friends just get a response, or trying his best to use Jedi mind powers to make teachers pair them together for projects in the rare few classes they shared (this never worked; teachers liked Steve too much and hated Eddie).
Steve changes between junior and senior year and still doesn't notice Eddie. Eddie's kinda bitter about it.
Then Steve graduates, but doesn't leave. He's always hanging around, bothering the freshman Eddie's taken under his wing. He's not jealous that Dustin Henderson thinks Steve hung the moon. He's not. (he is).
Anyway, the bad news. Steve graduates but doesn't leave and Eddie can't get over his stupid crush. Good news, he and Steve share a mutual friend in one obnoxiously lovable freshman, so that's like one step closer to Eddie being Steve's friend, right?
-
The thing that's looming finally comes into view when his most recent memories come up. Or, more accurately, it -she- makes herself seen.
He's holding a broken bottle to Steve's neck demanding to know what he's doing here and then the scene pulls away from him until he's watching himself threaten Steve. The memory moves in slow motion.
"Eddie?"
He screams because Jesus H Christ nothing else in the afterlife has ever spoken to him.
"I am sorry. I did not mean to scare you," she says. Eddie can see her now. She doesn't look like either an angel or a demon. She just looks like a regular person, a girl with shoulder length brown hair, wearing jeans and a yellow shirt that looks too big for her.
"Uh, it's fine?" Eddie says, because what else is he going to say? "Who're.. who are- what are you?"
"I am Eleven. It has been difficult to reach you, Eddie. Had to try, though."
"What?"
Eleven nods, like someone has said something he can't hear. There is a long pause before she speaks again. "Do you want to wake up, Eddie?"
"What do you mean wake up?" Eddie feels like he might start having a panic attack.
"I am not good with words. Not delicate, Mike would say," Eleven says, "so I will be frank. You are alive. Can be alive. Doctor Owens says you retreated into yourself. To protect yourself. But it's safe now. It is all safe. The Upside Down cannot hurt you again."
Eddie feels the panic set in almost instantly at those words. The memory explodes into black and the girl vanishes.
-
The more Eleven shows up, the more aware of other things Eddie becomes. Occasionally the sound of conversation drifts in but it's far away, muffled. He can taste food on his tongue that he had not eaten. Feel a brush get stuck in his hair.
They don't really talk, he and Eleven. She takes her queues from him and since he's got no idea what's happening he doesn't know what queues to give.
"So, you're not here to like... send me on, or something?" He asks. They're sitting cross-legged in front of each other. Eddie in the outfit he died in and Eleven in shorts, a crop top, and an oversized jacket.
"Where would I send you?"
"Y'know. Like... Hell or wherever."
Eleven is silent a long time before she says, "I don't want to send you anywhere. I want to bring you back."
Back. He can go back? That doesn't seem right. That doesn't seem like it should be an option. "You mean like, back to Hawkins?"
"Eventually."
Eddie's not sure what to make of that. Is he gonna be a ghost? Because if it's Hell or being a ghost, the latter sounds infinity more fun. Plus, as a ghost he could probably check in on Wayne.
"Alright. You win, Eleven. Take me back."
Eleven stands up immediately, offering a hand to help Eddie up. "You have to want it."
"Want to be a ghost?"
"No. You have to want to be alive."
That makes sense, Eddie supposes. Wanting to be alive is probably what makes ghosts be able to like, be ghosts. "OK. OK. I can do this." He does a full body shake, dancing from one foot to another to pump himself up. "Alive. Alive. I want that. I want to live. I want to see my uncle again. Want to give Hawkins a big fuck you for thinking I'd end up in Hell. I want to see Jeff and Gareth! I want to haunt the fuck out of Dustin Henderson for trying to follow me! I want to know if Robin, Steve, and Nancy won! I want to know if they made Vecna pay!"
He is yelling by the end of it, and Eleven is beaming at him like she's proud of him.
"Yes! Yes! Now, wake up!"
-
Eddie does wake up. Sort of. He's already awake, sitting in what appears to be someone's living room. He blinks several times before exhaustion washes over him and he sags back into the chair he's sitting in. "Wh-" he tried to speak but his vocal chords don't seem to want to work.
"Holy shit." A voice says off to his side. It's vaguely familiar. Like a distant memory. "Call Owens! Call Owens right fucking now!"
-
Bad news is this. He's been stuck in his own head for several years. His fucking body has been moving around without him yet the amount of physical therapy he has to do is torture. Fucking Owens won't let him contact anyone until he gets the all clear from his new therapist. Oh, and his uncle believes he's dead.
Good news is this. He's alive.
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st-just · 2 years
Quote
Conservative arguments for “parental rights” are one reason why the US remains far behind so many other developed and prosperous democracies on a range of issues, from education to health outcomes to really basic stuff like rates of child marriage and adolescent pregnancy. The conservative demand for “parental rights” has left millions of Americans kids under-educated; it has consigned them to physical abuse; it has denied them medical care. They have the audacity to impose laws that do such broad harm to kids and then claim the mantle of protecting them.
Jill Filipovic
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steddierthings · 1 year
Text
So the response to Part One of my Sad Steddie Scenario was overwhelming in the best way? Like, y’all. You said the nicest things. I read and squealed over everyone’s comments. Thank you so much for all the responses, reblogs, and likes. As one person said, I’m kissing you all platonically on the mouth right now (or high fiving you or smiling really big in your direction, pick your poison). 
I never planned to write a part one the way I did (it was just going to be a quick couple paragraphs of summary, but here we are!), but so many people asked for a part two, I got motivated. Someone commented they were curious what Robin’s reaction would be, so this is some of that.  
“I don’t know where I went wrong,” Steve groans, head buried in Robin’s pillow. 
After he left The Hideout, he had no idea where to go. But his body decided for him and without intending to, he found himself tapping on Robin’s window. Despite the fact that he’d clearly woken her up, she opened it quickly as soon as she saw his face. “That bad, huh?” 
Now he’s wallowing across her bed as she paces, awake and determined. Steve rolls to his side to watch her.
“Ok, let’s figure it out,” She says, snagging a pen and pad of paper from her desk. She opens the pad to a blank page and stands in front of him ready to take notes. Steve smiles at how Nancy-like she looks, even in an oversized Cure t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Even when he’s aching, he can never be completely sad when he’s around her. “Tell me everything that happened from start to finish. Everything you said, everything they said. Any weird looks you can remember, anything.”
“Rob, I barely remember what I said to you five minutes ago.” He went over the entire night in his head a hundred times on the way over. Aside from when Eddie said...what he said, and the disaster that came after, the rest of the night was a blur. 
“Ugh, Steve, can you just try? I need you and Eddie to work out. I can’t be the only adult friend you have!” 
“Hey, that’s not fair! Nancy’s my friend.”
“Nancy’s your ex.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to.” Sure she’s his ex and they had that whole weird...thing in the Upside Down and now he’s with Eddie and she’s moving to Boston with Jonathan in the fall. But they still talk. Sometimes.  
“Steve.”
Steve quirks his lips, but it’s resigned. “You gettin’ tired of me already?” 
“No, dingus.” Robin’s face softens. She stops her pacing and sits next to him on the bed, bops him on the head with her pen. “I just want you to have people.” Steve catches her hand, smacks a kiss to her palm.  
“Fine,” he sighs, scrubs a hand across his face, and tries to think. “I don’t know, I was late because of some stupid shit with my parents and that put me on edge--”
“I didn’t know your parents were home. Steve, why didn’t you call me?” 
“They literally came home as I was leaving to see Eddie. There wasn’t time. Anyway, Eddie didn’t seem upset that I was late, at least after I explained. His friends gave me a little shit but I bought a round, and everything seemed fine.”
“Hmm.” Robin makes a note in her pad, then taps her pen to her lips, thinking. Her eyes widen and she points the pen at him. “You let them talk? You didn’t join in?”
“I mean, a little? But they were talking about their game the whole time, I didn’t have much to contribute.”
“Eddie talks to you about Dungeons and Dragons all the time and you always pay attention and ask him questions.”
“Yeah, But that’s because I’m talking to Eddie. I want to pay attention to everything he has to say.” Eddie gets so excited about things. He’s interested in things. Steve’s never excited. And Eddie’s the first thing he’s been interested in in a long time. 
“God, Steve, you kill me.” Robin motions like she’s going to strangle him. 
“What? What’d I do?”
“You’re the most emotionally unavailable guy I know and yet you come out of nowhere saying the most romantic shit.”
“Is that…bad?”
She smiles at him, mushes his forehead with her fingers. “No, it’s just very you.” She turns back to her paper, writes some more. “Now, is there anything else you remember about the conversation?”
“Not really? It was hard to hear everything they said over all the noise, so maybe I missed something. Oh.” Steve winces. “Eddie told me I called one of them the wrong name a couple of times.”
“Yikes. That’s not great.” Robin makes a face as she writes the new info down on her pad, including a few ominous underlines.  
“Yeah,” he really did fuck that part up. He’s going to have to apologize to...Jeff. “But I don’t remember them correcting me, so that seems like it’s only partially my fault.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Robin says skeptically. “They definitely should have corrected you.” Steve knows she’s throwing him a bone. He should’ve remembered the guy’s name. Eddie was right, it was a douchebag thing he would have done in his other life. 
Robin flips through the pad. Steve didn’t realize he’d said enough for multiple pages of notes, but it was a small pad, he guesses. “So far this doesn’t seem like you did anything to warrant a big blow up fight in the parking lot. When exactly did it start to go wrong?”
Dammit. Steve had been hoping they could figure out what happened without delving into why he lost his shit in the first place. “Well…”
Robin narrows her eyes. “Well?”
“I got mad at Eddie first. He said something that…pissed me off”--hurt him so badly he’s still struggling to fill his chest with air--“and I didn’t react well.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not important, but it was something that I’d asked him never to say, and he promised that he wouldn’t.”
Robin gapes at him. Steve gets it. He’s told her literally everything about his life since Starcourt. He tells her about his dates, his encounters with his parents, hell, he tells her when he’s constipated. Not telling her that he’s asked his boyfriend never to say something to him is a big deal. 
“Steve, what was it?”
“It was nothing, it doesn’t matter, but he’d promised, and then he said it anyway.”  
Steve feels like a little kid, complaining about a broken promise. He feels like the first time his dad promised he’d be at Steve’s tee ball game, but stayed late at work for a meeting instead. But you promised you’d be there, he’d whined in his dad’s office later that night. He couldn’t stop crying even though he knew how much his dad hated it. Promises don’t mean shit, kid, unless you get ‘em in writing, his dad told him, not even looking up from his newspaper. Now pull yourself together, this is embarrassing.  
Steve hadn’t believed a single promise from anyone since then. With one exception.
“Okay, so what did you do?”
“I may have snapped at his friends a couple of times, tried to drink too much, then he made us leave. But when we were in my car, he said it had been bad the whole night, and I swear, Rob, I thought I’d been doing okay up until he said what he said.”
Robin looks back over her sparse notes. “Yeah, Steve, I don’t know. Unless you remember more, I don’t think we’re solving this one.
Steve slams his head back on the pillow a couple of times. “Fuck.”
“You knoooww, you could always ask him.” Steve immediately shakes his head. 
“You didn’t see him. He was pissed at first, but then it was like he was just…done. He called me ‘King Steve.’” Steve can tell her that. She knows how much he despises being called that, knows how much hearing it from Eddie would hurt. It’s easy to tell her things the hurtful things he knows she would never say. But how can he tell her what really happened without sending her on a spiral of guilt and shame? Or maybe she wouldn’t feel either of those things. Maybe she wouldn’t even recognize the behavior. He’s not sure which outcome would be worse. So best he keeps his mouth shut. 
“Fuck, did he really?”
“Yeah.”
“That asshole. God, I could wring his neck for that alone,” 
“Don’t do that, please. I don’t have enough cash to bail you out.” 
Robin laughs, like he was hoping she would.  
She studies him for a moment then reaches to turn off her nightstand lamp. She tosses the pad and pen in the vague direction of her desk and nudges Steve to the other side of the bed where he tugs her blankets over him. She slips under the covers too, snuggles into him Steve will end up on his stomach stretched away from her eventually, but they always start off with her head on his shoulder, his arm tucked under her, holding her close, sharing secrets as they fall asleep. 
“What did he say to you, Steve?” Her voice is a whisper in the dark room. “What could have been so bad?”
Steve shakes his head, the burning behind his eyes starting up again now that things are dark and quiet. 
“Do I need to kick his ass?” she asks, and he can feel her smile pressed to his neck. 
He wants to laugh but it gets stuck in his throat. He simply pulls her tighter.
_________________________
Part Three
This part is finished! Wrote some of it drowsy on Benadryl so we’ll see when I wake up in the morning if everything made sense. 
A bunch of people asked to tagged for part two, I don’t know if I’ll get everyone (the Benadryl is hitting me hard), but I’ll try, Please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed.  
And finally, thank you all again for the warm reception for my first Steddie ficlet. Happy New Year!! 
Tag list: 
@thosemessyvibes @afewproblems @soulminyg @paperbackribs @ramyayaya @doilooklikebees  @occasionalartthings  @minjintea @kodaik97 @miss-hit @mydaroga47  @anunashamednerdgirl @lexyvey @theysherobinbuckley @hotluncheddie @sifutoph 
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aita-blorbos · 6 days
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AITA for hunting down a 12 year old child around the world?
long story short, I (16m) got kicked out from home a couple of years ago and my father promised to welcome me back if I can find this one guy who's a threat to his business plans and maybe ask him to stop doing that. maybe kill him idk. I thought he'd be some old guy but he turned out to be 12. this was fine with me and I proceeded to kind of hunt him down anyway since my father demands it, but I've sort of attacked a whole village and gravely antagonised one of his friends in relation to her mother (who turned out to be dead) and other. stuff. anyway some other things happened and me and my uncle 50m) have had to get hired in this coffee shop. I started letting go of the idea of finding this guy since living in this new city wasn't too bad. but it turns out him and his group are also here and now I'm stuck in this cave with one of his friends (this is also fine). anyway she's kinda mad at me about everything and, I mean. I kinda see it??? I don't know anymore
so: have I been the asshole this whole time?
UPDATE: since some of you have asked, I got kicked out for a very reasonable reason (I interrupted a meeting) and have also been properly punished by being burned (this is also fine because I had it coming).
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obsidiancreates · 3 months
Text
Henry Spencer Is A Bastard (With A Broken Nose)
Shawn and Jules have been living together for two weeks when Jules storms into the precinct, grabs Lassiter by the arm, and drags him into the interrogation room.
“O’Hara, what the hell is-”
“You’ve spent time alone with Henry,” she says, sitting Lassiter in the suspect chair. “What was he like?”
“What?”
“This is important, Carlton.”
Lassiter sighs, looking around the room for a moment before answering. “Unpleasant and judgemental. He had every quality of a great cop but none of an actual person I’d spend time with.”
“Which for you is saying something,” Jules mumbles, looking to the side. “Would-would you say you think he’s capable of intentional child endangerment or neglect?”
Lassiter sits up more. “What? O’Hara, what is this about?”
Jules takes a deep breath, looking down at her hands. “I was helping Shawn get some stuff from his old room, and we found an old journal from when he was a kid.It was mostly just doodles and half-finished homework, and he said to just throw it away, but… I kept it. I thought it was cute, to be able to look at what went through his brain as a kid.”
“O’Hara. If you’re alleging what I think-”
“I read more later while he was out with Gus and one of the pages was a failed writing assignment. He was supposed to write about what he did over the weekend and he wrote that his dad locked him a trunk and made him pretend to be kidnapped.”
Lassiter lets out a breath. “Okay. But you and I both know Spencer’s imagination-”
“Carlton, remember the kicked-out tailight? When he got shot?”
“O’Hara, I was with Henry through that whole investigation, and I don’t think I can say that the man I investigated with would purposefully hurt or neglect his son. He was like a machine through the whole thing.”
“There was more, though, Carlton. One of the assignments was to write about how they spent Easter and Shawn’s said he got cut on some glass trying to dig up his eggs. He drew a picture, it-”
She pulls out her phone and hands it to her partner. Lassiter looks at a crude drawing of a small stick figure on it’s hands and knees, overly-large shards on the ground in front of it, and an egg a good few lines below it. There’s a taller stick figure behind the small one, with a wide-open mouth and the words ‘You can do better, Shawn,’ written beside it.
The teacher’s note on the side says that Shawn needs to stop making up stories for assignments about his real life.
Lassiter hands the phone back. “O’Hara…”
Jules sits back in her chair a bit, the tension giving way to a slumped tiredness. “I know they’ve never had an… easy relationship, but Henry has always been so present, ever since we’ve known Shawn. I thought that was a good thing and Shawn’s discomfort was just Shawn being… Shawn.” She looks down at her hand in guilt. “What if I completely missed that he has reason, Carlton?”
Lassiter grabs one of Jules’s hands. “O’Hara, Henry Spencer is a bitter, unlikeable, and overbearing old man- but I really don’t think he’s capable of child abuse.”
Jules holds his hand back and gives it a squeeze. “I just… don’t know how to ask Shawn if these are real. He’s not exactly forthcoming about messy emotions and memories.”
Lassiter nods, and then blinks. “So let’s ask Guster. They’ve been stuck together like flies on a flytrap forever.”
Jules shakes her head. “If Shawn isn’t going to say anything, I really don’t think Gus will.”
“Well, you can either ask Guster if these are real, or you can worry about it forever and never get any answers.” Lassiter knows his partner well enough to know that’s unacceptable to her.
She gives his hand one more squeeze. “I’m just worried. Henry works here. He’s in charge of Shawn.”
“And I’m sure that when we talk to Guster about all this, we’ll learn that Spencer was just exaggerating like he always does.”
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gus reads the page with wide eyes. “Wait, he was serious about that?”
Lassiter stifles the urge to shout ‘Come on!’ when he hears Jules suck in a breath.
“You mean you knew about this already?”
“I mean, Shawn told me once that he liked Easter at my house way more because there was no ‘manhunt training’, but I thought he just meant something like when his dad would have him stakeout their porch.”
“He what?”
“It, sounds worse than it is. … I think.” Gus looks down at the old notebook again. “I thought. … I mean, Henry was always a little intense. When Shawn and I were boyscouts he used to set up challenges that were impossible to win, and then make us feel bad for not winning.”
“What do you mean, impossible to win?” Lassiter is starting to get concerned now. Shawn’s incessant need to show everyone up has been a pain in his ass for years, and if Henry reinforced that grating attitude and now acts like he tried to quell it-
“Stuff like telling us to go find a rocket in the middle of the woods and then going and grabbing it himself. He used to promise us ice cream if we won, then say he’d eat it himself if we didn’t win next time.” Gus’s face pinches the more he talks about the memories. “Gosh, I haven’t thought about that in years. I guess I didn’t realize how messed up that is until I said it out loud.”
“It’s horrible,” Jules says.
“But not criminal,” Lassiter reminds her. “And as… weird and dangerous as the eggs thing is, that’s not criminal either. … I think.”
“What about the trunk, Carlton?”
“... Yeah, that part’s looking pretty bad.”
Gus shuts the notebook. “We need to talk to Shawn about this. I don’t know if I’m even remembering right, but I know he will.”
“He’d never open up about something like this,” Jules says, gesturing to the notebook and letting her arms drop back to her sides with a flop. “He barely tells me about his childhood at all.”
“Well I was there for most of it, and I need to make sure I didn’t miss some serious abuse going down for our entire lives. Do you know how many times I’ve defended his dad to him, Juliet? … Oh my god, on that same boyscout trip with the rocket, he told me his dad had never said he loved him!”
Lassiter doesn’t need to look at Jules to know she’s probably seething with the rage of the entire underworld- if he believed in such a thing. 
Henry better hope they find out it’s not as bad as it’s seeming.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Shawn gets home, Jules, Lassiter, and Gus are all sitting on the couch looking somber. Well, Jules and Gus look somber. Lassiter looks mildly offput.
“Guys! What’s all this, are we having some kinda surprise party?” Shawn looks around for decorations, but there’s nothing. He looks back with excitement. “Is it a case? A big one?”
“Shawn, sit down, we need to ask you about something.” Jules gestures for him to take a seat on a different chair.
“Uh-oh. That’s not your happy voice.” Shawn sits down and leans forward. “Hey, babe, what’s wrong?”
Jules takes a deep breath, and pulls out the notebook. Shawn looks at it. “Oh, that? Please don’t tell me that my drawing skills when I was eight are a dealbreaker.”
“Shawn, did Henry…” Jules falters. Shawn’s expression… 
It doesn’t harden, per say. It just… shifts. Becomes a little closed-off.
“Spencer, did Henry actually make you dig through broken glass to find ridiculous holiday candy?” Lassiter says, offering Jules his hand for support. She takes it.
Shawn’s mouth quirks up in the corner, a huff-laugh escaping him. His eyes aren’t as amused, a dark look in them. “What? How-how’d you know about that?”
“Oh my god.” Gus looks sick.
“Guys, seriously, what is this?” Shawn reaches out and snatches the notebook, flipping through it. Fast at first, and then slower. The slight smirk disappears completely, and Jules and Gus know that habit of sticking his tongue over his teeth means Shawn is not in a good emotional space whatsoever as he reads.
He closes the notebook and tosses it onto the coffee table, sitting back into the chair and sniffling. “It’s uh- it’s nothing.”
“Dude, that is not nothing. I thought you were making that stuff up when we were kids!”
“What? Why would I make that up?” That just seems to confuse Shawn.
“Because you were always making things up!”
“Not about my dad! You were like, the one person I could talk about him with! You thought I was lying about everything the whole time?” Now he looks hurt. 
“Not everything, but crazy stuff like him locking you in a trunk in the middle of a hot day and putting broken glass over your eggs, yeah! Oh my go- this makes me look back on everything I know in a completely different light, Shawn!”
“Okay, you can’t actually be this surprised, Gus. I mean, you were at my house all the time, you know how he was. We couldn’t even play hide-and-seek without me getting a lecture about hunting perps the right way.” The bitterness in his voice is familiar to his friends, the way he keeps from meeting their eyes, the arms crossed over his chest and tense body language. It’s not that they’ve never seen him like this. But they’ve never seen him like this and truly understood it. Even Gus.
Gus, who looks increasingly horrified as he thinks back on more and more memories. “When we were really little and you told me your dad would throw you out for reading comics, were you serious?”
Shawn scoffs a little. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Did he actually ban them?”
“... Yeah. That part he did. He said they made cops look bad.”
“Good god, Spencer, you’re talking like everything in your house was about cops twenty-four-seven.”
“Gee, Lassie, I wonder why. You’ve met my dad, right?”
“But you’re talking like he expected you to be a perfect cop from the second you were born.”
Shawn goes silent. He still won’t look at any of them.
“Oh, my god.” Jules reaches out to put a hand on Shawn’s knee. “Shawn, did he expect that?”
“... Look, guys, it’s… it’s done, alright? It is what it is, and… I’ve accepted that, and I’m working on making things work with my dad. I don’t… I don’t need this. Okay? I don’t want to think about it and get all…” He huffs. “Last time I thought a little too hard about all this stuff I ended up on my motorcycle with nowhere to go, and-and I don’t want to do that again, alright?”
“Shawn, this is important. We’re all working with Henry constantly, watching how he treats you, and this changes how some of that looks.”
“How?” Shawn finally looks at Jules, right in the eyes. “How does this change anything? He’s the same person, Jules. He-he’s controlling, and-and expects way too much, and is disappointed in me. That’s not different now just because you know he went overboard with stuff when I was a kid.”
Lassiter lets out a deep breath. He’d really… really been hoping this wouldn’t be the case. “How overboard, Spencer?”
Shawn looks at Lassie, and then clicks his tongue and looks away again. “Not in that way, man. He never hit me or anything.”
“So what did he do?”
“Why is this an interrogation?” Shawn stands up, pulling away from Jules’s outstretched hand. “This is stuff for me, and my dad to hash out, okay? Just me and him.”
“Did your mom know about this stuff?” Gus asks. 
The mention of his mom seems to make Shawn shut down even more. “Now this is really over.” He walks away, and pauses for just one second to turn around and say, “Don’t- don’t go my dad about all this. I don’t want…”
“... Don’t want what, Shawn?” Jules’s voice is soft and careful.
Shawn doesn’t seem to be able to find the end of the thought. He just shakes his head and walks back out the door.
The three sit in silence for a minute. Jules has tears in her eyes. Gus looks almost shellshocked.
Lassiter stands up. “Alright, I’m officially taking lead on this case.” He looks down at his partner. “O’Hara, find out who in the precinct knew Henry well and still works there. We’ll interview anyone who he might’ve talked to his son about, see if we can dig up any leads there.”
“Whoa, Shawn just said he didn’t want his dad finding out we’re asking about all this, and we just learned he’s way worse than we thought,” Gus says, standing up too. “We can’t start poking around the precinct, because in case you forgot Lassie, he works there!”
“Part-time.”
“He’ll know something is up.”
“Please. I think I know how to run a discreet investigation, Guster.”
“Could you hide something like that from Shawn?”
“... Of course.”
“No, you couldn’t, and if you can’t hide it from Shawn it’s a safe bet that you can’t hide it from his dad.”
Jules stands up. “No, Carlton is right. None of us realized how these pieces fit together until we all talked about it with each other, right? If Shawn won’t… can’t, open up to us about it, the next best thing is getting as many witness statements as possible.”
“Why? It just feels like digging things up to dig them up at this point.”
“Because Henry is currently in charge of Spencer’s livelihood, Guster.”
“I know! He’s in charge of part of mine too!”
“Right.” Jules looks up at Lassiter. “And if we can prove to The Chief that Henry has a negative, unreliable bias against Shawn, we can lessen some of that control!”
“As much as I’d hate to see Spencer off the leash again, I’d hate to be helping enable an abuser even more,” Lassiter agrees. 
“Abuser is a strong word.” Gus doesn’t look like he feels that sentence is 100% true. “He wasn’t all bad a lot of the time. I mean, he loosened up on the comic thing when we were older.”
“We know he cares, Gus,” Jules assures. “But, caring doesn’t mean he didn’t do something wrong. Really, really wrong.”
Gus swallows, and then nods. “I know.”
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They collect a good few statements over the next week.
One statement claims that Shawn would play poker with some of the officers when Henry brought him to the station- why Henry was bringing a seven year old to an active police station and then not keeping an eye on him was something that went unanswered- and that Henry was obviously upset when he discovered this. Another statement corroborated the story, and added that he caught sight of Henry taking all the money Shawn made from the games and shoving it into the police donation box.
One statement was from an elderly file sorter, who claimed that Shawn was sometimes sent down to grab files for his dad and used to complain to her that henry would only buy Shawn cop car toys, and no others. When she’d asked Shawn if he wanted to be a cop when he grew up, Shawn had reportedly said quote, “Something about not getting a choice.” Other statements claimed, when this was brought up, that Shawn seemed very excited by the idea of being a cop when he grew up- until his arrest.
One statement, given by someone Lassiter vaguely remembers being rookies with back in the day, lends more credibility to the recollections of the elderly woman. The statement claimed that when the rookie would go on ride-alongs with Henry or work under him, Henry would almost always complain about Shawn. Everything from Shawn having an interest that didn’t relate to being a cop, to Shawn ‘acting like a child’ when he would have been under twelve according to the timeline, to Shawn ‘not even trying’ during a specific incident where Henry claimed Shawn forged his signature to go on a field trip and quote “hesitated for a second with his pen or something- I remember it was something really minor, and Henry couldn’t stand it. I thought it was weird that he was teaching his son how to forge signatures and then expecting the kid to never use the skill, but it wasn’t really my place to say.”
By the end of the week, Jules is steaming and Shawn hasn’t come around the precinct at all. Gus keeps dropping by, digging up old journals of his own to use as cross-references when possible. Shawn is quiet with Jules at home, like he’s waiting for something big to happen and he’s worried he could trigger it early.
It makes Jules more upset at Henry, because now her boyfriend’s emotional immaturity seems a lot less like a natural childish nature and a lot more like having genuinely never been taught how to handle anything.
No, according to the information she and Lassiter have gathered, it looks like all Henry taught Shawn was that winning is everything, being the best is non-negotiable, and Shawn was born to be a cop and anything that didn’t align with that idea just… shouldn’t be there.
“Wow.” Lassiter tosses the latest statement onto his desk. “And I thought Henry didn’t discipline Spencer enough as a kid. Some of this stuff makes it sound like Spencer grew up in a boot camp.”
“He basically did,” Jules says bitterly, reading over one of Gus’s old notebooks. “Gus wasn’t even looking for evidence of it, and these journals are full of casual, offhand observations that look worse and worse the more we know. Listen to this one. ‘Today Shawn was in a bad mood, and when I asked him why he said his dad stole his mood ring after showing him to turn the box upside-down. I said that’s cheating, and Shawn said it can’t be if his dad said to do it.’ Who the hell steals a mood ring from a kid?”
“You’re getting caught on the small stuff again, O’Hara.”
“I know, I know. I just- now that we know some of the major things, even the small stuff is making me just unbelievably angry.”
“Yeah, it’s rough to read. At least you and I wanted to be cops.”
“Right? No wonder Shawn ended up a psychic detective, how do you just do something else after being raised so specifically like that? And no wonder he-he buys EasyBake Ovens and goofs off all the time, he had it so strict as a kid…”
“Mmmmm… let’s not excuse every antic, O’Hara. A lot fo it is still just him being a jackass.”
“I won’t get into this with you again, Carlton.”
“Good, I don’t want to get into it again either. … Heads up.”
Jules closes the notebook and tucks it into a desk drawer as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible, Lassie doing the same for his file. Henry walks past them, barley sparing a glance as he makes his way somewhere else.
Jules stares daggers at him so intensely that if dropped to the ground covered with enough puncture wounds to imitate Julias Caesar, Lassiter would think it was a mild scene all things considered.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s three weeks since Jules found the notebook when Shawn rolls over in bed, puts his arm around, and mumbles “I have an eidetic memory.”
Jules puts her book down and looks at Shawn with furrowed brows. “What?”
Shawn sighs and sits up properly. “I have an eidetic memory,” he says again, “And… I don’t like looking back, because I remember everything perfectly. Which means I usually remember what I felt perfectly too, and it usually wasn’t great feelings.” He can’t look her in the eyes this time, either, but instead of the tense, protective body language of before, he’s holding a pillow close to his chest and slightly burying his face into it, almost sagging around it.
Jules starts to rub his back. She knows how hard this kind of… difficult emotional discussion, is for him. Now she even knows why- suspects why, really, because not all of it is proven in full, but still she thinks she can cout is as knowing. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“About the memory?”
“Yeah. That sounds… really difficult to deal with, Shawn. Does Gus know?”
“Yeah, he knows. I think other than my dad, and… and you, he’s the only person who knows.”
“Shawn…”
“I just, I just want you to know… that I’m not asking you to drop it for no reason,” Shawn says, “Or-or because I don’t feel like it’s important. I know it is, I do. I just…”
“Don’t want to relive a lot of it,” Jules says softly. “... Shawn, does this mean you remember everything perfectly? All the time?”
“Eh… fifty-fifty. The ADHD gets in the way sometimes.”
“... But when it doesn’t?”
“I just try not to think about a lot of it.” Shawn moves again, to look her in the eyes, He takes a deep breath, and he looks a little pained. This kind of thing is painful for him, he’s so unsure how to navigate it. “I have to keep moving forward, Jules. It’d be so… so easy to just get stuck, forever, in all the stuff stored in my head. And I’m really, really trying to, I mean that. It’s difficult, and I’m not… always great at it, but I’m trying.”
“And you’re worried we’ll set you back?”
“No! No, I… I don’t know.” Shawn lets Jules pull him close to her chest and begin running her hand through his hair. “My dad and I don’t solve stuff, Jules. We just… argue over it. I’m getting tired of it.”
“... I understand.” She kisses the top of his head. “But I don’t like him being in charge of you when you’re a grown man anymore.”
“You think I do? … But it’s making him a lot happier than he’s been in a long time.”
“You should be happy too, Shawn.”
“Hey. Hey, I am happy.” He looks up into her eyes. “Look at me right now. I’m being cradled like a sweet little baby seal by the most beautiful, badass woman in the entire world. Of course I’m happy.”
Jules laughs a little and contorts a bit to kiss him on the mouth. “I’m glad you told me that, Shawn. And I promise, I won’t ask you to relive anything else for me.”
“... But you’re not going to stop investigating my dad, are you?”
“Did you stop with mine?”
“... Fair enough.” Shawn lays his head back down, and soon enough Jules hears soft snoring from him and mumbled phrases in his sleep.
An eidetic memory. Perfect recall.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Jules goes over everything they have so far knowing Shawn has a perfect memory, it makes her angry to such a degree that she thinks it might kill her. Not literally, but it feels strong enough.
She has some of Shawn’s old report cards, some statements she got from former teachers via social media contact, and some copies of pages of one of Gus’s old journals laid out in front of her, and she sees a pattern.
Shawn didn’t do good in school. His report cards are less than average, and are packed with notes about how he doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t seem to absorb any information, and doesn’t remember anything he’s taught. The statements from the teachers describe Shawn as hyperactive, passionate about everything but his schoolwork, and having difficulty with staying observant in class.
Gus’s old journals are full of the same, but also the opposite. Shawn didn’t pay attention in school, but sometimes he could pull something the teacher said from his memory word for word without even trying, and then a few entries later Gus would mention Shawn failed a test on that exact subject. Shawn got beat up because he told a bully he memorized the pattern of answers used in the math tests, but his dad told the teacher and let Shawn know he was doing it. And most of all, Gus writes about how freaky his friend’s ability to look at people and figure them out is. How Shawn notices almost everything almost all the time, and usually makes some dramatic conclusion that isn’t right, but he still notices things and Gus can’t figure out how Shawn fingers things out.
Detective training, and an eidetic memory, and psychic visions. Jules is now pretty sure that Shawn covers up some of his deductions using his visions- he’s known enough impossible information that they can’t possibly all be deductions in disguise, but when she thinks back there’s a few times where it’s obvious in hindsight he used his abilities to cover up the fact that he’s an incredible, highly-trained detective.
Maybe she’s jumping to a conclusion, but she finds herself thinking ‘Because Henry made him hate that he can do it so well,’ as she pieces it all together.
Gus’s journals lend a lot of credit to that theory. Shawn is smart, and Gus knows it, but Shawn acts dumb sometimes and Gus doesn’t understand why, and then Gus mentions that it’s weird that Henry kept Shawn up all night before to stakeout their porch and now Shawn is tired during Little League and Henry tells him to get his head in the game because Henry is the coach.
Henry is the coach, Henry is the chaperone on the field trip, Henry is their Scout Master- he’s in charge of every part of Shawn’s life except for school. And Maddie is rarely brought up, even when Gus writes about spending all day or night or even weekend at the Spencer house. Jules hasn’t seen Shawn’s Mom since Yang almost blew her up, and she just figured that Maddie wanted to stay out of Santa Barbara after that, understandably. She’s getting a different feeling about Maddie staying away now. It seems a lack of presence was her main impression in Shawn’s life, or at least, Shawn’s life through the lens of Child Gus.
So it was basically just Henry. And her heart aches for the thought of someone being stuck in a bad marriage, basically raising a kid alone, and that kid being as hyper and curious and chaotic as Shawn. But the ache is smothered in the sense of righteous rage when she reads other entries about things like a girl throwing a ball at Shawn and missing, and an ostrich choking on the ball, and Henry dragging Shawn away. The entry goes on to say that Shawn told Gus that Henry didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t do it, even after then-superior officer Captain Connors came in and tried to vouch for Shawn.
Henry always assumed the worst. Assumes, the worst, still.
Shawn tries so hard, sometimes, with his dad, and Jules is starting to realize that Henry doesn’t put the same effort in. He tries some, she knows it, she’s seen it, but she also sees him constantly berate, put down, and insult Shawn, publicly and privately. 
Suddenly she remembers something from when Shawn went undercover on the dating show, something she’d been too upset over about Shawn being there at all to really take in in the moment.
“I’m sorry, this woman is way too good for my son. If it was me, I’d vote no.”
She doesn’t have Shawn’s memory, so without rewatching the clip she can’t be totally sure those are Henry’s exact words, but she’s certain that it’s the exact sentiment.
First of all, she takes a little offense to that for herself. But secondly and more strongly, she takes offense for Shawn. As she thinks about it she can remember the way Shawn tried to cover up the awkwardness in the clip, the way the girl on the show whispered “Is this a joke?” and the way it absolutely was not. The way Henry said that on TV, to Shawn’s face, with no hint of shame.
“O’Hara.” She looks up to see Lassiter holding a cup of coffee and a bagel for her. She takes them and Lassiter says, “There’s more steam coming out of your ears than there is that cup.”
“Sorry,” she sighs. “I just… I don’t know if I can control myself tomorrow when Henry comes back in. The more I dig into this, the more I want to just- go back in time and pick little Shawn up and take him somewhere better.”
“Well as much as we don’t like it, O’Hara, Spencer is who he is because he was raised the way he was raised.”
“I know. And I like, who Shawn is!”
“Inexplicably.”
“Carlton.”
“Mmm.”
“Anyway… I love Shawn, and who he is, all of him, but I still wish he could’ve been who he is without going through all of this. It’s not okay.”
“No. No, it’s not.” Lassiter sighs. “Look, O’Hara, put the case down for a while. At this point we’ve got enough to at least make The Chief doubt some of Henry’s intentions and judgements when it comes to Spencer and, well, that was the goal.”
“... Yeah. Yes, okay, I will… I will put this down for a few days.” Jules closes up the file and puts it back into her drawer. “Shawn is still less than happy I’m working on this, anyway. He understands why, but I know he wishes he didn’t.” He probably understands a lot of things he wishes he didn’t. Jules has had to grapple with the realization that she actually doesn’t know as much about how Shawn’s mind works as she thought she knew, and that it’s possible she’ll never know a lot of it. There’s more than just psychic visions to the mystery of his mind, and some of those mysteries are locked up with a key cast out of self-resentments and resentments of his dad.
God, she hopes she can keep up a poker face when Henry comes in.
—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her file is missing from her desk the next day, and so is Lassiter’s. They both know why.
They march over to Henry’s desk just as Gus comes in to collect a check, and all three end up standing over Henry as he openly and unashamedly reads through the Spencer Upbringing Case File. Gus takes a step back when he realizes that’s what’s happening, as does Lassiter.
But not because of Henry.
Jules looks murderous.
Henry purses his mouth in a frown and nods, raising up the file and then closing it and tossing it onto his desk in one smooth movement. “It’s comprehensive,” he says, like he’s grading a paper. “But it’s a bunch of biased bull.”
“Give them back.” Jule’s voice is ice-cold. 
Henry shrugs, moving his head side to side for a second, still frowning, and then says, “Nah.” He takes the files, and drops them in the trash. “I think you owe me an explanation for why the head detective and his partner are investigating the way I raised my son. Why’d Shawn put you up to this?”
“He didn’t.”
Henry scoffs. “Yeah, right.”
Jules slams one hand onto Henry’s desk. The whole bullpen goes quiet.
“I was helping Shawn get something from your house, and I found a notebook,” she says. 
“Oh, so, you found one of Shawn’s little projects where he exaggerated things to make himself look like a victim of the world?”
“I found the writings of a little kid who didn’t seem to realize at the time of writing that being locked in a hot car trunk and digging through broken glass for Easter Eggs wasn’t normal.”
Henry laughs, crossing his arms. “That’s what you have a problem with? It’s called training, detective. You went through it yourself.”
“When I was an adult, by my choice, and I sure as hell never had to dig through glass.”
“You’re really hung up on that.”
“Because it’s genuinely evil!”
Henry’s smug look melts into a scowl. “How dare you.”
“How dare I?! Do you understand how much all of this is still affecting Shawn, even right now?! He can barely talk about all of this!” “Oh, well, he sure seem capable of reminding me of it.”
“Because you did it! You’re the only other person in the entire world who understood what was done to him in the name of training because you did it!”
“Done to h- you’re overreacting, detective!”
“I, agree, what is going on out here?” Chief Vick hurries over to Henry’s desk from her own. “Detectives, there had better be a damn good reason-”
“There is, Chief.” Lassiter reaches into the trashcan and pulls out the files.
“Karen, Detective O’Hara has allowed her romantic entanglement with my son to-”
“Henry was borderline abusive during Shawn’s childhood,” Jules interrupts, facing her Chief. Chief Vick’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open, a disbelieving laugh escaping her even as she accepts the files and flips them open. “You understand what it is you’re alleging, O’Hara, and against who?”
“I do, Chief, and I think our case file speaks for itself.” All eyes are on them now. Jules doesn’t back down. “I’m well aware of my emotional ties to this case, but I assure you I’m not allowing it to cloud my judgment. If I was, I wouldn’t have used the word borderline to describe the conclusions I’ve come to.”
“Karen, this is ridiculous.”
But Chief Vick is focused on the files in her hands. Her eyes flick up to Henry. “Is it?” She looks over to Gus, who’s been watching with the quiet tension of a prey animal waiting to make a run for it. “Mister Guster, can you genuinely testify to the validity and accuracy of the claims in these files?”
“Oh, um, well, most of those are from my own journals.” Gus’s eyes flick between Henry and Jules. “I’d say that’s even more reliable than just plain memory.”
“It certainly is.” Chief Vick turns her eyes back to the file. “Henry, I think after I’m done going through these we’re going to have a chat about some of your current responsibilities and extent of authority over consultants.”
“Oh, come on, Karen!” Henry looks around at the entire precinct staring, and judging. “This is completely unfounded, and-and blown way out of propor-!”
Henry doesn’t finish the sentence because Juliet O’Hara punches him in the nose.
There’s gasps from everyone in the room. Jules’s fist is bloodied. Henry’s nose went CRUNCH! when her fist made contact.For a long moment it’s like the whole room has collectively stopped breathing. 
“I don’t make unfounded accusations, Henry,” Jules breathes. “Especially not when I have been building a case for over a month, and have watched Shawn completely close off whenever I asked him about this.”
Henry holds his nose, looking at Jules with fear that Lassiter and Gus don’t think is nearly intense enough. “Juliet,” Henry pants, blood streaming out from between his fingers. “This is insane.”
“Quiet, Spencer.” Lassiter moves Jules a little farther away. Her fist is still raised. “I won’t tolerate you disrespecting my partner, especially not in the same way you do your son.”
“What?! You can’t believe all this too, Lassiter.”
“You know I’m not Shawn’s biggest fan, but if you think what O’Hara has done over the last month is anything less than the best damn investigation possible then I have to seriously reconsider some of our shared opinions of your son’s work.”
Gus glances at a box of tissues on Henry’s desk- and then subtly moves to knock them on the floor and kicks them away.
“Herny, I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the precinct for a few days while this gets handled. O’Hara, I’m going to need to speak with you in my office.”
Jules lowers her fist, and nods. She knows she can’t just punch Henry and get away with it scot-free, and she accepts that.
No-one moves to help Henry. Not a single soul. He grumbles as he makes his way past Gus to grab a different box of tissues.
“It’s like he just sucks the respect out of people,” Henry grumbles. 
CRACK!
No-one is more surprised than Gus when his fist slams into Henry’s jaw. Gus reels away immediately, shrinking and cradling his hand, as Henry goes down.
“Mister Guster!” Chief Vick moves forward to try and catch Henry.
“Uuuuh!” Guss whines, shaking his hand. “I-I mean, you don’t get to say that about Shawn! He asked us not to keep doing this! You gotta stop assuming the worst of him all the time!”
“When he earns it!” Henry barks out, then groans and spits. It’s mostly blood.
“You won’t let him earn it!” Jules is furious again. “How many killers does he have to catch for you to see that your son is an amazing man?!”
“It’s not about catching killers,” Henry says, spitting again. “It’s about growing up.”
“Says the grown man who can’t even tell his son ‘I love you’.”
“He doesn’t say it either.”
“That’s not helping your case, Spencer.” Lassiter has his eyes on Jules and Gus. “And considering I’m the only one on said case who hasn’t taken a shot at you yet, I’d say keep your mouth shut.”
“Oh, what do you know.” Henry spits a third time. The Chief looks about ready to punch him herself. “Father-son relationships are complicated, especially when the father wants what’s best for the son and the son just wants to throw everything away and get himself killed!”
“You wanted him to be a cop, Spencer, you didn’t exactly put him on a path to a peaceful and easy life.”
“I put him on the right path, and he never appreciated it, and that is what your case file should say!”
“You know what, Spencer?” Lassiter takes a step closer to the bleeding man. “I’ve put up with a lot of crap from both you and your son over the years, and you two are a lot more similar than you think. But one thing I can say that Shawn has over you is that he doesn’t mean it when he says stupid crap like that.”
“He looks up to you, you ass,” Jules adds. “And he is willing to put aside all of the things you say and do to him to have a good relationship with you. Do you understand how incredible that is? That you don’t even have to work to have him in your life? That he comes to you no matter how many times you tear into him for it?”
“He comes to me because he never listens when he needs to.” Henry’s face is starting to become very purple as the bruises set in. “I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but he needs, my help.”
“Exactly! And he feels like you’re reliable enough to give it to him, and you do! So why do you treat that as though it’s a fault? Do you have any idea what I would have given as a kid, and even now, to be able to just-just go up to my dad and say ‘I need help,’ and have him be there to help me? That means the world!”
“Not to Shawn.” Henry looks pained beyond just the broken nose and possible broken jaw. “The kid is too focused on himself.”
“You don’t know your son at all, then.” Jules turns and walks with The Chief to her office.
Gus shakes his head, grabs the check out of Henry’s paperwork pile, checks that it’s signed, and leaves. 
“Oh, really? It’s up to me to take him to the hospital?” Lassiter looks around and then huffs. “Alright, Spencer. Don’t bleed on my seats, or my dashboard, or anything but yourself.”
“I’m not a bad father,” Henry says, still holding his nose. “I care about my son.”
“Yeah, and somehow Shawn knows that even though you act the way you do.” Lassie buckles Henry in for him so that the nose remains pinched. “But here’s the thing, Spencer. Your son is an arrogant, attention-hogging, impulsive, completely absurd person, and he didn’t just become like that out of a vacuum.”
“Yes he did. I did everything I could. I did everything right as much as possible.”
Lassiter sighs as he gets into the driver’s seat. “You seriously think that? You’d be okay with your grandkid being raised that way?”
“If they had Shawn’s potential, yes.”
“... Dammit.” Lassiter turns to Henry, and punches him in the gut. Henry coughs, and then chokes on his own blood, and then coughs again.
“What the hell?!” Henry gets out between hacks.
“O’Hara would’ve done it. I feel like I owed it to her. … And honestly, Spencer, after compiling that damn case, I’ve been wanting to do it for myself anyway. I already knew you were an overbearing perfectionist with a control issue, but you wishing your son was more like that than he is is even worse.”
“Shawn’s no perfectionist,” Henry wheezes. 
“But he is overbearing with a control issue more often than not. Like I said inside, you two are a lot more similar than you think, and frankly I blame you for the parts of Shawn that go past mild annoyance and into infuriating obstacle.”
“I’d never just hand a collar over to save someone’s ego,” Henry coughs out.
“See, that’s where I wish Shawn wasn’t like you.”
“He’s handed you a collar twice.”
“What? He has not.”
And Henry must be a little delirious from the repeated blows, because Lassiter is pretty sure his next words of “See, this is why Shawn should’ve been head detective,” wouldn’t come out of him otherwise.
Lassiter grips the steering wheel tighter and makes a sharp turn into the hospital parking lot. “Well he’s not, and from the sound of things he never would’ve been anyway.”
“He could’ve been a perfect cop.”
“He’d have been miserable and you know it.”
“He’d be doing things right.”
“You’re hopeless.” Lassiter isn’t any gentler helping Henry out of the car than he was helping him in. “I’m not picking you back up when they’re done with you.”
“I’ll call Shawn.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you will.” And Shawn will come, and probably be mad on his dad’s behalf, and will definitely be mad at all three of the punchers, because he loves his dad enough to overlook years and years of mistreatment that most people would probably consider ground for cutting contact. “And Spencer? If you ever insult O’Hara’s work again, or say anything that gets her that angry, I will help her cover up your disappearance.”
“You don’t mean that,” Henry scoffs.
“Try me.” Lassiter gets back in his car. “And if I hear from her that you’re still badmouthing your son to his face, I’ll make you disappear myself.”
And then he drives away. 
And Henry walks into the hospital alone.
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