#considering that she’s supposed to have micro twists and all

[worm-in-a-trenchcoat]

AHHHHH!!!

Gen3 Venus doll leaks!!!

She looks so good!!!

When I heard that she was gonna be a “pink goth” I thought they were gonna make her skin pink, but I see what they meant now lol.

[starleska]

can we talk about the brilliant execution of Dot and Bubble's big reveal!!!

i am still absolutely gobsmacked by what a well-written episode Dot and Bubble is. startling, disarming, confrontational, and tremendously impactful. and holy shit i really really want to talk about how excellent the 'twist' (which really should've been obvious in retrospect 😭 was done):

as a white person it took me about ten minutes to clock that Lindy's friend group were a nightmare Aryan Tupperware Party collective: all white, all blue-eyed, and even Gothic Paul was dressed in blues and whites, with no black at all. but you know how i responded to that? mentally i went 'oh i'm sure it's nothing!' and shoved it aside. and i think it is exactly that insidious tendency to ignore, normalise, and validate overt and covert racism that the episode does such a tremendous job of tackling! everything in the episode gives us the lore we need to understand Lindy and the people of Finetime are white supremacists. Lindy's disgusted face and immediate blocking of The Doctor versus the amount of time she spends with Ruby. Lindy's shock at the Doctor and Ruby occupying the same room implying segregation on the Homeworld. Lindy calling the Doctor and Ruby 'criminals' not for being in the Bubble, but for breaking segregation. Lindy using Ricky September, a white influencer, to calm herself down not just from the monsters, but from interacting with a Black person. the tradwife aesthetic of the Finetime residents making a comeback in real-life right-wing racist circles. ugh, there's so much and it was all right in our faces!! yet many of us who aren't POC had the privilege of going through the episode baffled and uncomfortable, without being able to put a finger on why until the final bit of the episode. doesn't that tell us how quickly and easily we've all taken to ignoring both micro and macroaggressions? that we needed talk of being 'contaminated', improper use of the word 'voodoo', and Lindy straight up telling the Doctor that face-to-face contact was unacceptable, to understand they're white supremacists? oh my God 😭😭 what a genius play, to make Lindy so detestable from the start. she's an arrogant, vain, self-absorbed, moronic, uncompromising, traitorous bitch...and by layering that abhorrent personality and then giving us the reveal of her white supremacy, there is no argument even the most wishy-washy of people could have re: their awful views. Lindy and her friends are revolting racists who are so wrapped up in their own echo-chamber 'bubble' that they would genuinely rather be devoured alive than challenge their own narrow, bigoted views. i'm still blown away by the power of Ncuti's final scene. the disbelief, the frustration, the sadness and the fury...and yet the Doctor still tries to save them against all odds. i think the most common response to this episode was 'The Doctor should have gone all Time Lord Victorious on them', and you're right - he should have! but doing that would've affirmed the beliefs of the real-life racists viewers. the Doctor responding not with violence or righteous vengeance is a very deliberate writing choice: we are supposed to come away feeling revolted that he needed to behave that way, to almost be supplicant to the white supremacists. because that is the real-life view of so many people who don't even view themselves as racist: Black people need to 'perform' to a higher standard, than white people just to be considered worthy of respect. the more i watch it, the more i'm convinced this is the best episode of the whole season, and one of the best Doctor Who episodes we've ever had. we were taken off-guard by having an episode overtly about racism set in the future rather than the past, because our tendency is to assume equality is a natural consequence of becoming technologically advanced. this clearly isn't the case, and Dot and Bubble is a masterclass in confronting racism head-on rather than dancing around it for the comfort of white viewers. just. aaargh!!!! absolutely amazing 🔥🔥🔥

[friedkactus]

30 micro fics challenge

Tagging @ghostwise because you inspired me dfsdgfk supposed to be micro but i am insane lmao

First meeting. 

Lily doesn’t cry when they tell her. She doesn’t demand any answers or scream in defiance. Having a reaction would mean recognizing what’s happening and she can’t do that right now. She doesn’t even feel real any more as the dwarven man takes her hand. 

Her father says something in parting but she can’t tell if the words are for her or the man—Cenric, Lily remembers numbly as she boards into the back of an empty cart. His name is Cenric, and he is something called a Wayfarer. And he owns her now.

Owns. There was no other word for it, he paid for her and she saw it. The clatter of bagged coins passing between hands echoes in her mind and nausea lurches in her.

Everything feels delayed. Distorted, like when she gets water lodged in her ears when she swims on shore in the summertime—the cart jolts violently and as if on queue that’s when it hits her, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever swim on that shore again. 

Images flash in Lily’s mind the blue of the sea, an even bluer sky, surrounded by cliffs of white. 

She watches out of the back of the cart as Tol Covere drifts further and further, until it’s just a speck and then finally nothing. And only then, when her home is truly gone, does she allow herself to cry. 

Mourning both what she has lost and what she has never had.

Memories. 

“Aeran?” It comes out of Lily as a question rather than a statement of recognition. She grips the hilt of Nerine tighter as he begins to cross the desert between them, a myriad of explanations screening across her thoughts.

The first thing she rules out is illusion magic, she would see through it being a magianis and all. 

He’s halfway to her now.

She considers dehydration but she hasn’t been in the deserts of Karth long enough to dehydrate much less hallucinate, has she? 

Just a few more steps.

Next is the sandwraith, it managed to knock her around quite a bit, maybe she was concussed—

He’s here. She doesn’t know how long she stands there gaping at him saying nothing. Lily doesn’t believe he’s real, he can't be, he would never find her like this. She would never be so lucky—

Aeran rests a tentative hand on her shoulder, “Lily? Are y—”

And that’s all it takes, Nerine falls from her hand instantly, clattering softly into the sand as Lily all but crushes herself against him. Her shaking hands twist furiously into his cloak, as if she can keep him from disappearing if she just holds on tight enough. The buckle on his chest is hard against her cheek and he smells like dirt and sun and Aeran. When he hugs her back she can barely hold back the sob sitting in her chest. He’s really here.

“Aeran,” she breathes, pulling back enough to look him in his eyes, an awkward tearful smile on her face, “hi.”

He chokes on a laugh, shaking his head as he pulls her into an embrace of his own.

“Hi, Lily.”

[faarkas]

micro story with 7. silent fury 📝👀

📝👀 bestie english teacher don’t look at my abhorrently reckless use of punctuation WKDKFHAKA

silent fury (x) characters: verde (oc), unnamed maelstr/ommers (not significant enough to be ocs) words: 596 warnings: violence, blood, gam-gam gets injured and gives it right back

A sharp, driving pain just under her ribs makes Verde gasp.

Her focus is pulled from the big maelstrom member currently trying to paint the pavement of the garage they're in with her brains and instead to the much smaller member behind her, the one that just drove a jagged shiv into her side.

All she can really do from this angle without completely compromising herself is to just blindly swing with a closed fist, fortunately connecting with his shoulder, a sick crunch ringing out as he cries out and backs away from her.

Unfortunately, that has its benefits and drawbacks. The benefit? She can return to pummeling the guy in front of her while the one that just stabbed her flees. The drawback? The jagged shiv has just ripped through more skin and muscle, and been pulled out as he recoils.

She can feel the wet warmth of blood cascading down her side, her breathing coming heavier as she tries to turn the pain back into focus so she can get the girl she was sent to rescue and then out of there alive. The fact that she allowed herself to be snuck up on at all...Stupid mistakes for someone who is not a rookie by any stretch of the imagination.

As Verde whips her head back to the assailant in front of her, out of her peripheral a wrench swings towards her. Reflexively, she manages to dodge it just in time. He put too much energy and force into the swing, giving her just enough of an opening to clock him in the temple as he twists his body back towards her.

He drops with a heavy thud, the wrench clattering to the floor with him, his red and black cyberware pulsing and sparking. Clutching at her side, she looks up, finding the 'strommer that stabbed her standing in the doorway of the room she has to go into, clutching his shoulder.

Her attention on him in earnest now, he starts to back away from her, his hands held out as Verde stalks toward him, the picture of silent fury. She watches him frantically glance between her and their environment for a weapon, but she won't allow him that.

"H-hey, take it easy, just let me go. I shouldn't have stabbed you but nobody has to die. Just take the girl and go." He pleads, voice rough and metallic from the vocoder in his cyberware.

He trips over himself and falls as she gets closer, boots landing heavily on the concrete with each step, and tries to push away from her, whimpering pathetically until his back hits the doorframe and he can't get any more space from her. Nor reach for a weapon, as there aren't any in his reach except for a soggy cardboard box.

Normally she would consider just leaving him cowering, not killing if she can help it has always been a core tenet of how she does business, but she's in a lot of fucking pain and so mad that he would stab her and then not have the back bone to try to follow through that she's considering it for once.

"Man, c-c'mon, I'm letting you just take the girl. I won't say shit, I'm not even supposed to be here." He pleads, tensing and screaming when her fist connects with the metal wall right beside his head.

"Don't fucking move until we're gone, or I won't show mercy again." Verde snarls, her better nature winning out as she wrenches the door open, the lock snapping loudly.

[fandomdancer]

Too Far

(Trying to be braver and posting work here on Tumblr.

Fandom: The Flash (Arrowverse)

Work in progress. Name edit: Roslyn's friend is named Gilbert (was originally Garrick). May change again.

Summary: Roslyn is having a fight with her best friend Gilbert. The topic is Eobard Thawne. Roslyn can't figure out why Gilbert is so focused on him. Gilbert can't believe Roslyn doesn't see what's right in front of her. And what happens when Gilbert's insulting of Eobard goes too far?)

______________________________________

(c. Fall 2168, Central City High School)

“He’s not the kinda guy you should be wastin’ time with.”

Gilbert stood close enough to her that the hairs on her body stood up and she could smell the detergent his clothes had been washed in. Normally, being cornered by Gilbert Haustveld was something most girls Roslyn’s age would enjoy. But she had the advantage of being his best friend for several years, and so his pouty lips and striking blue eyes did nothing to fuzz her brain or make her forget the argument they were currently having.

She ducked under him and grabbed his arm, dragging him away from the pillar and the group of curious students…a group that included the topic of their current conversation…listening in on them. “I don’t care,” she whispered, “who you think I should hang out with. I’m not part of any group or clique that has preexisting expectations.”

“He makes you look bad,” Gilbert pushed, not bothering to lower his voice.

“Oh please,” she scoffed. “Like anyone at this school cares about the image I portray. I’m a tree-hugger, remember? I don’t influence anyone.”

“He does,” Gilbert said. “He’s influencing you and you don’t even see it.”

Roslyn threw up her hands. "This is going beyond a friendly warning, Gilbert . What's your problem with him, really?"

"His parents had him genetically engineered." The words dripped with disdain as Gilbert spat them out, still uncaring of his volume. Roslyn tried to drag him further away, but he planted his feet. She swore softly and glared at him.

"Who cares?"

"Come on, Rosie, don't be thick. The technology's new enough that most of the plain Janes and Johns can't even consider it. Those that scrape together enough do it to stop their kids from being born brain deficient or from getting sick later on life. But the Thawnes? They not only gave 2.0 over there enhanced intelligence to make sure he wasn't average, but they added a specific look!! They literally engineered their heir to the empire, right down to the color of his hair and that cleft in his chin! You can't tell me that isn't disgusting."

Roslyn struggled not to look in Eobard's direction. "You mean to tell me that your parents, if given the opportunity, wouldn't do the same thing to you?"

"Please! My parents are human. They realize they have to take the responsibility of raising a son to respect and learn their business. They're not going to spend ridiculous amounts of money manufacturing a lifeless Ken doll with the right I.Q. so they don't have to be concerned about the harder parts of being a parent."

"Perhaps they should." Eobard's velvety voice broke into the conversation, making both of them jump and turn, Roslyn with a mortified look on her face and Gilbert with a smirk. "It's highly improbable that someone with your deficiencies will live up to anyone's expectations, parental or romantic."

Roslyn flinched as Gilbert's smug smirk vanished. The students around them 'ooooh'ed, making others turn to look.

"Just what is that supposed to mean, Bardo?" Gilbert sneered.

Eobard stepped gracefully up next to Roslyn, and she felt the heat of his hand hovering near the small of her back. It sent a strange tingle through her body, and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from shivering as her skin warmed. A strange look crossed Gilbert’s face, horror and betrayal and anger all mixed into a few micro-expressions that flashed by almost too fast to be seen. It was enough to bring Roslyn’s eyebrows together into a confused furrow. What just happened?

"My I.Q. far outstrips yours, so I'll be sure to use small words," Eobard said softly. "You. Are. A. Moron."

Gilbert swung. Eobard moved swiftly, shoving Roslyn backwards as the boy’s fist flew right past where she had been. It looked as though Eobard’s cheekbone was about to feel the full force of the punch, but the slender boy ducked smoothly, slipping around Gilbert’s other side. When he came back up, his haughty, smug expression had faded to a bone-chilling glare, his eyes sparking with an awakened power and his clenched jaw showing the beginning of bared teeth. Whooping erupted around them as the students circled up, eagerly anticipating the fight.

"Face me!" Eobard still managed to speak in a purr, but now the fury in his voice made the air crackle around them. "You'll see, Haustveld, that I am anything but...lifeless."

Gilbert didn’t hesitate, lunging forward. Eobard braced, his lips pulling apart into a mad grin that sent chills down Roslyn’s spine. She opened her mouth to scream at Gilbert to stop, but in the next instant Eobard had shifted his weight and was twisting sideways as Gilbert barreled straight through where he had been a moment before. The students dodged wildly in every direction to get out of his way, and in the blink of an eye Eobard was beside Roslyn again, his hand now very boldly on the small of her back and his lips by her ear, whispering. “We need to go.”

The feel of his breath on her skin sent a paralyzing wave of goosebumps over her, and when she looked up, his face was much too close to make sense. She pushed her words through, determined to defend Gilbert no matter how deserving he was of Eobard’s insult. “My friend isn’t a moron, Eo. He’s wrong about you but he isn’t---”

The impact cut off her words, Gilbert’s shoulder slamming into her and shoving her aside as he tackled Eobard. Roslyn tried to shift her weight to keep her balance, but her foot came down on a rock and her ankle twisted wildly. With a cry of pain, she fell to the ground, her mind briefly blanking out from the shock and surprise.

Heavy thumps and thuds filled the air nearby, punctuated by grunts and groans of pain. The two boys were tussling only a few feet from her, Gilbert pinning Eobard to the ground and raining blows onto the boy’s chest and head. The students cheered them on, with a few of them shooting Roslyn sympathetic, concerned looks. She struggled to sit up, her ankle throbbing harder with the motion, and she put her hands around it, wishing she could stop the pain.

“How dare you?” Eobard suddenly roared. Roslyn looked over to see both of them looking at her, Eobard with growing rage and Gilbert with a dawning expression of horror.

“Come at me all you want!” Eobard growled before pulling his fist back and smashing it into the side of Gilbert’s face. “But. Don’t. Touch. Her.” Each word was punctuated by a fist, pounding the words home, until Gilbert was scrambling to get off of him and Eobard was rolling and springing to his feet. Before Gilbert could regain his balance Eobard had tackled him, knocking him flat on his back. The smaller boy straddled him, and then brought his fists down. He didn’t punch Gilbert’s face, but rather his stomach, his solar plexus, and his neck. He even boxed his ears, turning the boy beneath him into a choking, writhing mess, too stunned to fight back.

Teachers were now fighting to get between the students, some of whom were too engrossed in the action to register that authorities had arrived. Others started yelling: “Teacher, teacher!” and ran.

“Thawne! Haustveld! Break it up!” Mr. Corio had no hesitation about grabbing Eobard and bodily hauling him off of the coughing Gilbert. Ms. Steinway ran to Roslyn, helping her up. Roslyn allowed the world to sink into a cacophony of sound and swirling images as she tried to master the agony slicing through her ankle up her leg. She managed to look over at Gilbert, who was restrained by Mr. Langley. He was still wheezing for breath, his fists weakly swinging at the air, his brain unwilling to accept that the fight was over. Mr. Corio was restraining Eobard, who was favoring his right foot as blood dripped from his nose and mouth. One of his eyes was beginning to swell closed and a bruise was darkening his cheekbone. But his good eye was locked on Gilbert, and the hatred burning in it was palpable.

“This isn’t over!” he snarled.

“K…kill…you!” Gilbert shouted back, choking on the words.

“Enough!” Mr. Corio yelled, shaking Eobard and making him groan in pain. “Both of you, cool it, now!”

“He sta….-started….started…”

“You started it!” Roslyn shouted, cutting Gilbert off, outraged by his feeble attempt to shift the blame. “You tried to hit me!”

“Not….you! Him!”

“Everyone quiet!” Mr. Langley interjected, his soft voice a surprising entry into the conversation. “We will sort all of this out. Right now, all three of you are going to the nurse’s office and if any of you try anything, all three of you will be suspended. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Mr. Langley,” Roslyn murmured.

“Yeah,” Gilbert breathed.

“Sure,” Eobard said.

[merryfortune]

Tear ducts of Coral

Fandom: Tropical Rouge PreCure

Ship: Laura/Sango

Word Count:  3.8k

Tags: Out of Character, Body Horror, Gore, Xenobiology, Unrequited Pining

  Minori adjusted her glasses and blinked when something had suddenly caught her attention during the Tropical Club’s latest endeavour: script writing. She turned her head, robotically, to the side and the increasing motion in just one little square of the desks they had bumped together had gotten Sango and Asuka to notice as well. Manatsu, however, was still scribbling away at her Ultra Hyper Pineapple Squad idea, whatever that was.

  “Laura, do you mind me asking a personal question?” Minori asked.

  “Huh?” Laura’s hand flopped around as she lazily, but in a fashion that was oddly regal at the same time which indicated that Laura was now paying attention. Somewhat, at least. “Pardon, you want to ask a personal question?” she addressed Minori.

  Her tail twitched as Laura played with her hair, all whilst she remained propped up on Manatsu’s desk. Speaking of, Manatsu was paying attention as well, she chewed on her pencil as Laura tried to decide if she wanted to answer Minori’s question or not before, ultimately, she shrugged her shoulders.

  “Yes.” Minori confirmed.

  Laura sighed heavily, “So long as its not too personal, I suppose I don’t mind.”

  “Good, I don’t think it is too personal, but you may find it odd,” Minori prefaced her statement, “but how accurate is the human trope of mermaids who cry pearls?”

  “Only happens once in a while.” Laura replied. “Sometimes its rubies, emeralds, it can be anything and everything. There have even been instances of mermaids crying seafoam, seaweed, and even sea grapes. It really depends.”

  Manatsu gasped and then blinked, “What are we talking about?” she asked.

  “The thought crossed my mind whilst I was adapting my novel into the script format of a movie and I recalled hearing notions of mermaids crying seafoam, and even pearls, so the curiosity struck me to ask.” Minori explained.

  “I’ve never heard of any of that but I’m not exactly a mermaid otaku like you, Minorin.” Asuka said and she crossed her arms, glancing at Laura, and her brow twitched, “Argh, now I gotta know, what kind of tears do you cry, Laura? We all cry salt water, if that alleviates the burden.”

  “Crying hurts so I don’t cry.” Laura replied, brusque.

  “O-oh,” Sango piped up shyly, “I thought you would have looked really pretty crying tears of pearls, that’s probably a cruel thing to say.”

  “It is.” Laura sniped but she looked smug about it.

  Sango flinched. She hadn’t meant to be cruel about it and Laura relished the reaction. She laughed. But then when Asuka gave her a scolding glare, Laura let it go. She sighed again.

  “It sounds peculiar to me, that crying doesn’t hurt.” Laura mused.

  “Yep, not at all, in fact, it feels really good after.” Manatsu said. “I cried heaps on the way to Aozora when I was leaving my Dad behind on the island but whoa, I felt tropica-shining afterwards once it was all done.”

  Laura cringed, she was unsettled by the idea that crying could be painless, “But I suppose unless you’ve actually experienced it, its difficult to understand but yes. Crying hurts so I don’t cry. Besides, mermaids only really cry when love is involved,” she explained, “so I don’t ‘love’ either.”

  “I don’t follow?” Sango murmured.

  Laura glanced at the others and sighed heavily, “I mean, yes, mermaids ‘love’ one another. We go forth, procreate, bring more spawn into the world. We love swimming and we love pretty, shiny objects but there’s a love that is uniquely human. More than a means to an end or a satisfaction of greed or lust or gluttony. We are not in possession of this feeling that I see in each and everyone of you each and every day.”

  Manatsu gasped ad her face began to glitter with a huge grin. Laura’s own expression softened in return, pleasing Asuka and intriguing Sango. Regardless, Laura continued after this micro-second of a pause to her speech.

  “Fittingly, it does make me envious, but every boon has its bane, so I am content not being flawed by this particular human characteristic.” Laura checked her nails and her voice quietened, not to a mumble, just became disheartened. “Of course, not every mermaid is as pragmatic as I. Hence, they cry. Poor little silly things who have gone and hurt their hearts. It’s a sickness, a contagion, and I will do anything to remain impervious to it.”

  “I see.” Minori said, her voice calm and even in a way that none of the other girls’ voices could have been had they been the first to respond to Laura’s tirade. “Thank you for answering my question, I can make amendments to my script – and my novel – per this new information.”

  “Your welcome.” Laura replied like she was bragging.

  With that, the conversation finished and when the girls checked the time, they realised it was late enough to end club activity anyways, so they tidied up and left for the day. They parted ways thereafter with an unusual mood to them. It was sombre and peculiar. Laura seemed mostly unaffected by it, based on what she would yell from the Aqua Pot but the person who seemed most affected, but it was Sango.

  She had done her very best to hide it but her old facades were more difficult for her to wear nowadays since meeting and befriending Manatsu. She couldn’t quite suppress herself and her feelings quite so adeptly nowadays. She had thought it for the better but the tremor in her heart of present was disturbing her. Asuka and Minori could both tell but they waved Sango goodbye without issue, nonetheless. Their small gestures looked so out of place beside Manatsu who waved huge arcs goodbye to her when Sango could barely muster flicks of her fingers in reply.

  Sango went home and her head was swimming with Laura’s words. They were blunt but they were also morbid. Sango had never been intrigued by that sort of thing before. She was the type to be scared of her own shadow, let alone of all the bumps in the night and anything else a little unusual but this was something else. Perhaps it was because of how she pined for Laura, to know that it would be doomed because of some sort of incompatibility of emotions – that human love and mermaid love were completely different – or maybe its because she was vain.

  Ruminating with this new knowledge that was ruining her, Sango stood in front of the mirror in her ensuite bathroom. On her tiptoes, she got up close enough to the mirror so that even the shallowest of her breaths fogged it, so that she could see every pore underneath her eyelid. She was the daughter of an accomplished make-up artist and seller, she would be considered scathed if she wasn’t a little bit vain and now Sango wondered what she would look like if every bout of her own cry-babyishness had caused her to be scarred. The notion of her cheeks being scarred by the rivets of tears previously shed was particularly made her shudder.

  In the involuntary movement, Sango felt her heart tremor. She disliked the sensation and what lingered after it. This first twinge that something was amiss inside of herself.

  She had been trying to ignore it all afternoon. To know that her crush could never come to fruition, Sango had avoided thinking about it but now her eye was all that she could see which meant all she could see was herself and her own flaws of being human. A human with a big but fragile heart, no less.

  Her crush on Laura could be pinpointed to one specific catalyst: meeting her and becoming a Pretty Cure. She had been awestruck, seeing a real-life mermaid for the first time, and she had felt her heart flutter. The sound of her singing lured Sango: it was sweet, melodic, utterly incomparable to anything that she had heard before, so Sango opened that door. Beyond it, there she beheld Laura for the very first time, leaving her breathless.

  She was beautiful, basking in the sun and its ray glittering off the surface of the pool as she swam through it. Elegant but slovenly. Sango knew immediately that she wanted to get closer. And so, she did. Hands on the glass, eyes wide, observing this creature that she had only seen before in the wildest of dreams and in the most fictional of fairy tales.

  Given that Laura – and Manatsu – had offered to make her a Pretty Cure, Sango had assumed that maybe Laura wanted to get closer to her as well. Even if she turned her nose up at the idea of storybooks where mermaids gave up their mermaidness for humans that they fell in love with. She had thought, at the time, it was because Laura was uniquely a self-absorbed priss, but she realised now that she was wrong.

  The books were wrong. Sango felt her eye grow wet as she stared at her own reflection distorted by being so close up to it. A mermaid would never give up her tail because mermaids don’t fall in love like humans do. Sango swallowed and the teardrop in her eye shone before turning into a jewel.

  Sango watched, in horror, at the clear bead of her teardrop turned blood red. It streaked down her cheek and her stomach lurched with pain. A polyp branched out jaggedly from her tear duct. Sango squeaked in pain and her eyes watered. Only for that water to twist and form into a tentacle of… of… of coral.

  Sango stumbled back away from the mirror. She clamped her hand over her mouth, and she willed herself not to make a noise. Not a sound. She didn’t want to disturb her mother because she didn’t know how to explain the fact that coral was growing from her tear ducts. Well, she was reasonably certain that it was coral.

  These clusters that edged ever so slowly and so painfully out of her eyes were beautiful. As fearful of them as she was, Sango was awed by their innate prettiness as she tried to understand what was happening. As her vision now had criss-crosses and peculiar formations in the peripheries. Twisting, branching out like they were completely and utterly natural.

  She inhaled deeply and slowly took her hand off her mouth. She could feel her eyes water but the stinging pain of calcium carbonate solidifying in the teeny tiny channels of her tear duct and the veins of her eyes was unimaginable. But she was a Pretty Cure. She would be strong and so, she tested her theory.

  Very tenderly, Sango touched the scarlet polyps that were growing from her eyes where her teardrops had been cried. Her heart fluttered and her stomach twisted as every inch of her common sense told her not touch the delicate branches climbing out her eyes and yet. Sango did it. And they crumbled at her touch with immense pain.

  A squeal of pain escaped Sango’s mouth and her heart leapt her throat. She heard her mother cry out, “Is something wrong, sweetie? Do you need me?” and the lie that she was okay came out her mouth just as easy as the pain. Sango swallowed and she began to cry again. Sango was harrowed as she looked at her fingertips. They were dusted with a crumbly powder that was a pinkish red. Just like coral looked in her mind. And that scared her more than the terrible sensation of cutting and ripping just under her eyes.

  The fresh jolts of pain branched through her eyes and with it, came the blood. Sango was chilled as she felt these thin streaks on her cheeks, and it was a vicious cycle. Every time she was hurt, she would cry and every time she cried, she was hurt. The punishment emphasised by her mind which raced as she tried to comprehend the impossibility of what was happening to her.

  Although… maybe it wasn’t all that impossible that a human in love with an actual mermaid would contract some sort of gemstone lovesickness from a mermaid. Sango felt herself grow hopeful, but it was a terrible feeling riddled with the polyps of the coral that was emerging from her tear ducts. If a mermaid had gotten her sick, maybe a mermaid could be her cure.

  Sango’s hands shook as he made her way back to her bedside table, where her phone was charging. She was very calm as she took her phone off the charger. She opened it up and then her contacts app and then rang Manatsu.

  “Hello! Manatsu’s phone!” she bellowed back.

  Sango whimpered. The polyps protruding from her tear ducts quivered with the reverberations of Manatsu’s exuberant greeting. Sango tried not to cry but more tears escaped her eyes, mixed with blood and calcium, becoming yet more fragile branches of the coral that was growing from her face.

  “Hi Manatsu… I need to see Laura.” she said softly.

  “I can just put her on the phone, you know, she’s not totally out of touch with human technology.” Manatsu laughed.

  Sango swallowed a strangled noise. She adored Manatsu, she really did, there could be no friend truer nor a friend more hard-headed. She wasn’t normally this abrasive but with such delicate structures spurting out her tear ducts, Sango’s tolerance for such antics was less than usual and yet, she remained sweet as sugar with Manatsu.

  “Something has come up, an emergency,” she replied, strained, “so can we please meet somewhere in private?” she asked.

  “Oh, okay, um… oh! What about at the cove! Its nice and private and stuff. Its close by both our houses, too!” Manatsu suggested, her voice very, very loud.

  Sango winced. She could feel flakes of coral burst and twinge and sprout all over again in reaction to Manatsu’s voice, but she hazarded a smile anyway.

  “That sounds good, thank you Manatsu.” Sango replied. “See you there.”

  “Yeah, see ya soon.” Manatsu bade her goodbye and thankfully, she hung up first.

  Sango sighed with relief. She shuddered and she felt more coral break off her eyes but at least she didn’t shed a tear with it. Though, Sango was still worried about what she looked like. Blood and dust and the like so she hobbled back into her bathroom and was sickened by her own face.

  She could hardly recognise herself so frayed with fear. Her own ‘charm point’ mocked by this illness. She saw how the polyps twisted and arched on both sides of her face into sick, love-heart shaped. Her heart throbbed with the whiplash cruelty of that realisation and she felt the polyps move. Their rocky exoskeletons puncturing her veins as she shed more tears that turned into coral.

  Sango put her hands over her mouth again. She felt her heart thud in her chest as she tried to power on through the pain, breathing in and out was so difficult but she tried so hard. When she achieved that shaky equilibrium again, where the cycle was temporarily diffused, she put her phone in her pocket and slipped on some shoes.

  She felt awful sneaking out, but she didn’t want to worry her mother with this exotic, underwater disease. It was difficult but somehow, she made it out of the house in not too many pieces. It was cold for a late spring-early summer night, making Sango shiver and leave coral dander as she slowly made her way to the cove that Manatsu had agreed to meet her.

  Sango had been there a handful of times before. It was a nice little spot that was cosy and even romantic in the daylight hours but at night, it looked a little scary. Even with the cityscape lights behind it and the stars twinkling on the ocean in front of it. Fortunately, Manatsu was there to greet Sango and she waved her down.

  “Oiiii,” Manatsu called out, “over here!”

  Sango was glad to see her. Tired. But nevertheless, glad to see Manatsu as she hobbled closer and Manatsu blinked. She could tell, immediately, that something was wrong with Sango; how she was trying to hide beneath her fluffy fringe and the floppy plaits by her face was uncharacteristic, even to someone as shy and repressed as Sango.

  “You okay?” Manatsu asked.

  “Y-Yes, I’m fine,” Sango lied, “so, um, where’s Laura? I really need to speak with her.”

  “Oh, um, she’s just over there, in the water, you may have to call for her if she’s underwater, but she was floating just a minute ago.” Manatsu said and she pointed towards the eroded cove.

  Even in the dark, that striking image of a twisted love-heart was apparent in the sandstone structure of the cove. The twinkle of the stars above it was dull and below it, the water lapped at the ground. Sango swallowed her fears and her tears. She flashed a smile at Manatsu that was mostly missed.

  “Thank you,” Sango replied, “and do you mind giving us some privacy? This matter it’s a bit, um, a bit unusual and hard to explain.”

  “Er, yeah, that’s fine, I’ll just, um, wait over there.” Manatsu pointed in the opposite direction of the cove with both her fingers.

  Sango sighed with relief, “Thank you.” And yet that didn’t feel competent enough with her gratitude. Nonetheless, Manatsu awkwardly tried to exit from the cove but not too far given that she was Laura’s ride home back to the safety of Manatsu’s place.

  Sango, however, began to draw closer to the water’s edge. Her heart thumped in her chest and she could feel the vibrations in the polyps dangling from her eyes by a thread. They were weakening now that she had all dried up the tears that she had wanted to shed but that didn’t make them less threatening to her senses of security in her body or self. She got down on her knees, sitting, at the edge of the cove and Laura breached.

  Her eyes were suspicious and cynical, even when barely reflected by starlight bouncing off the water’s perpetually moving and choppy surface. She hiked up her arms over the edge and anchored herself like that. Her tail coming backwards, forming a crest of her back and the water’s surface.

  Laura hummed, “I thought humans cried seawater and only seawater.” she teased. “Isn’t that what we established this afternoon at the club meeting?”

  “Well, er, we did but…” Sango said. “But have you ever heard of such a thing?! A human who cries coral?”

  Laura sighed heavily. It was too late at night for Sango to be so loud and in her exclamation, her hot flush of emotions, there was the sparkle of a possible tear in the moisture of her eyes that gleamed in the dark, framed by coral dyed a blood red in the dim. Laura made a floppy hand gesture as she was deep in thought.

  “No, I haven’t.” Laura admitted. “Mermaids crying coral isn’t impossible, of course, but humans? No, not so much… But given when love is involved – and it is, isn’t it, Sango?”

  “It is…” Sango murmured, and she fidgeted with the ends of her plaits.

  “How trite.” Laura’s voice was pithy with disdain. “A human girl has gone and gotten a crush on a mermaid. It is called a crush, yes?”

  “Yes.” Sango mumbled.

  Laura wanted to laugh but something stopped her. Even though she could feel the tickle in her throat, something about Sango’s expression was too pathetic even for Laura to worsen.

  “I suppose it is possible…” Laura murmured aloud in half spoken thoughts. “I did describe it as a sickness. Given that humans don’t look too dissimilar from the top half to mermaids, yes, it is entirely possible that our weaknesses of physiology are capable of transferring.” Her skin crawled. “I better not have any of your disgusting germs. No way in Triton’s good underworld am I coming down with that ghastly influenza you lot speak of.”

  Sango giggled. Although, maybe it was more than a hiccup. She felt just as whiplashed by the unspoken cruelty than if Laura had just straight up addressed it with her jeering.

  “But every sickness has a cure, I suppose.” Laura said.

  Sango perked up, “Does that mean?” she gasped. “Can you help me?”

  “I can think of something, but I have no way of knowing if it’ll cure you.” Laura replied.

  “What do you mean?” asked Sango. “How do mermaids normally rid themselves of this sickness?”

  “The affliction typically goes away on its own, but I believe a token of severance could go a long way.” Laura explained but it didn’t feel like an explanation.

  Sango’s heart skipped a beat and she felt her shoulders prickle as she asked, “And what is a token of severance?”

  “A kiss.” Laura replied all too simply on a breathless voice.

  “A k-kiss?!” Sango exclaimed.

  Laura stared at her idly. She didn’t think it was all that of a big deal. Being stared down by such a cold, if somewhat expressionless, look Sango calmed down. Even though her heart was racing, and she could feel the sting of coral pushing through her tear ducts again, Sango calmed down.

  “If you think it’ll help…” Sango murmured.

  “I do think it’ll help.” Laura quipped.

  And it was upon that cue, before Sango could quite adjust or ask to go slow, Laura swooped in with a kiss. Sango made a noise, but it was smothered in the press of Laura’s lips against her own. Her eyes went wide but Laura’s, curiously, were closed. Her brows twinged as she kissed Sango as hard as she could, like she was trying to perform some sort of CPR. It was awful yet Sango didn’t hold a grudge.

  She softened into the kiss. It was her very first kiss and it wasn’t happening anything like she had ever daydreamed, but it was freeing. She could feel the remaining coral in her eyes and her tear ducts crumble to nothingness. To just flecks of sand that she could bat away with her eyelashes. She felt a wet lump in her throat, and she kissed back. She wanted to be cure so badly of her pain, but she could feel the smirk in Laura’s kiss.

  Self-important with nothing to spare. Perhaps even relishing having this vast power or strength over Sango since Laura deemed the humanlike ‘love’ of crushes and pining to be beneath her since it caused nothing but pain. A teardrop – yes, a real teardrop – rolled down Sango’s cheek and Laura moved her kiss to lick it. Seawater. How peculiar but she liked it even though it didn’t quite have the nostalgic taste of her underwater home, it was endearing, nonetheless.

  “Thank you,” Sango whimpered, shedding more tears, not coral, “for curing me.”

  Laura tutted. She pulled back from the kiss and Sango looked a mess in the starlight. Pitiful and pathetic, crying her tears of seawater.

[brooklynislandgirl]

@tangleweave   {{XX}}

As is her habit, Beth makes herself small and tries to stay out from underfoot. In this case she lets the chair swallow her as she tucks her legs in lotus pose fashion, and presses the backs of her fingers together before twisting them into some strange shape in her lap, a sign of internalised anxiety. It isn’t often that she even comes to the Compound, doesn’t consider herself in any relation to the Avengers as they are called. It’s true Sam is sort of her brother by now with their history, and of course there’s Uncle Phil but he’s not really an Avenger either, though she thinks he could be if he wanted.

Normally when people speak she finds it difficult to follow along. The words get twisted up until they no longer resemble anything that might even make sense. There is something about the AI’s diction that is smooth, quiet, and seems to access some different part of her mind. One that isn’t so befouled that she can parse what he says even without the crutch of micro-expressions and lip reading that she normally relies on. The other thing she deeply appreciates about him is the fact that he doesn’t mock her lack of experience, or discounts her question without consideration.

“An’ does dat help? Usin’ Google or wha’evah?” It is invaluable information.  “Like..do you have to, or mebbe..is it all in...” She lifts a birdlike hand to refer to his head. Could he process that without a device, or is he more human than he appears? She’s too often misinterpreted reactions and body language only to discover it a touch too late. It’s always awkward and often humiliating. But when he’s done? “Does dat evah...make you sad? Are ya capable of...da kine? Emotions? I...I don’ mean t’ hurt your feelings, Vision. I hope you know dat.”

Even if it doesn’t process for him the way she takes the way he’s spoken, it does hurt her heart that people abruptly change tack or abandons the conversation entirely. It has been done to her countless times. “Dat’s what I’d t’ink anyway. But I know what you mean. One time, a’ a get-t’geddah before ya... well, I suppose before ya born? Uhm, everybody was talkin’ an’ someone aks me if I was more a top or bottom. An’ every kine t’ought it so funny when I expounded on da virtues of da bottom bunk ‘cause it’s more room, an’ feels safer...an’...I dunno. By da time everyone stop laughin’, I’d already wander away. I nevah really got da joke.”

She twists her lips to one side and shrugs the slight span of her shoulders. “Issit okay wi’ you...if I aks a couple more questions? Dey might be like...real personal.”

[savannah-lim]

I Owe You A Drink || Deirdre & Savannah

Timing: Immediately following Put A Ring On It  Location: Dell’s Tavern Parties: @savannah-lim and @deathduty Content: N/A Summary: After Deirdre saves Savannah from a fairy ring, the two go for a drink. 

Savannah felt as if she'd stumbled into a movie, some uncomfortable mix of horror and romantic comedy. Having just outrun an angry mob of whatever-the-hell-those-were, this breathtakingly gorgeous woman was taking her hand and telling Savannah she owed her drinks. Within minutes they were sitting in a booth in the back corner of Dell's Tavern. Music played loudly enough to stop people overhearing them, but not loud enough to make conversation too difficult. "I'm paying, right?" she said, giving Deidre a little smile. "Okay, I have many questions, but first, what're you having?" 

Deirdre needed a drink. Or, more accurately, several drinks. Taking them with an attractive human wasn’t the worst way to go about it. She smiled back at Savannah and tried to remember how charm worked again. It didn’t help that part of her mind was still screaming filthy human; ruined the mushrooms! While the other part replayed the fae yelling at her. Being a good person was terrible, and she hated it, but getting drinks was something she was used to. “Now, that depends on how much money you have to spare, love.” She leaned on the table, extending her hand across and playing idly with loose strands of Savannah’s hair. It was like Morgan’s, in that it also possessed a fluffy quality. “Whiskey. Neat. If you can just get me the entire bottle, that’d be nice. It takes me a while to get drunk and I’d like….” she sighed, drawing her hand back. “To forget what just happened.” 

Savannah gave a low chuckle. Now that she was looking properly at Deirdre without the corner of her gaze eyeing an aggressive fae or the two of them running through the woods, she was able to truly appreciate just how beautiful she was. “I’m pretty sure anything Dell’s stocks, I can afford,” she replied, giving Deirdre a small grin, trying desperately to ignore the fact Deirdre was playing with her hair. The combination of touch and accent and those big brown eyes was overpowering enough when Savannah didn’t consider the fact this woman had just saved her life. Before long, the two of them had a bottle and two glasses in front of them. Enough to share. “I don’t think I’m ever going to forget it,” she said, taking her first sip. “And you may not be able to, considering I plan to spend the next several minutes asking you questions about it, starting with what the hell just happened, and what are you?” She didn’t have to be under the influence of alcohol to be so terribly direct. It came naturally.

Humans were interesting not for their own merits, but as pieces of nature. Deirdre enjoyed watching them mill about their lives not particularly because she cared about their lives, but because their lives were as interwoven into the fabric of Fate as any other creature. They dropped like flies, lived like rabbits, behaved like dogs. It wasn’t so much about getting to know Savannah as it was figuring out what flavor of human she was--fly, rabbit, dog? So far, dog. Deirdre poured her glass full, downing it with practiced ease and elegant determination. “Oh, I’m sure you do…” She smiled, rasping her words as she poured herself another glass.  “But what makes you think you deserve answers, Savannah? You were the one poking around mushrooms in the woods, shouldn’t a girl know better?” She paused, having downed one glass of whiskey and now enjoying savoring her next. “What am I?” She turned her gaze to the humans--flies, rabbits, dogs. “You can call me a storm--a gale of wind, a dark cloud, the lightning that strikes a tree down.” She turned back to her company. “Or an attractive Irish woman. What are you?” 

Savannah let loose a scoff of both amusement and irritation. “Wow, poetic.” Savannah didn’t know it yet, but fae were often terrible at giving direct answers, and for a woman as direct as Savannah, that was both unfathomable and frustrating, yet part of it challenged her too. She couldn’t deny she found it somewhat alluring. Like a puzzle that didn’t want to be solved. “Okay, dark cloud,” she played along. “You wanna try it again without the bullshit?” Savannah wanted to add that she hadn’t needed Deirdre to tell her about the attractive Irish woman part. She’d figured that much out on her own. But she wouldn’t give her ego the satisfaction. “I’m someone who’s no good at coming up with aloof and lofty descriptions. I’m someone who likes answers. That--” Person? Thing? Creature? “That woman knew you. She used your name. Then they called you--what was it? Flatback? I’ve seen people with wings like that before.” Well, one person, but Deirdre didn’t need to know that it had just been Regan. She had to attempt to have some bargaining chips in this conversation, because right now, if she was honest, she felt a little outmatched.  

Yep. Definitely dog. “Oh, I wouldn’t call it bullshit…you’ll learn sooner or later that I’m not much of a person at all.” Deirdre had trouble hiding her grimace at the word ‘flatback’; it was one thing to hear it, another thing to have the human repeat it. She tipped back her glass and down another big gulp, holding it up to the light to inspect how much was left. She didn’t want to get too drunk, especially in a crowded place, banshee control and alcohol didn’t play well, but she also didn’t really want to be sober for this. “How have you seen people with wings before?” She questioned, “you could say me and that mushroom-loving gremlin are a community. A community that adores their secrets.” She flicked her gaze up at Savannah. Humans could be curious, sniffing around things they didn’t deserve to, but just because she knew what a wing smelled like, she wouldn’t really understand it. “As a person who likes answers, you should know not all come free. Not all come easy. And certainly, not all come cheap.” Deirdre leaned on the table, glass set down and head propped up in her hands. “I’m a person that enjoys a little incentive. The way I see it, I just saved your life. And now you want to ask me questions? Do you want to know what that person would have done to you?” Deirdre reached out, pressing her finger to the center of Savannah’s forehead. “First, she would have taken your mind.” Deirdre trailed her finger down to the tip of the human’s nose. “Then, your power.” And down, until she brushed the edge of her lips drawing her finger back. “And then your body. You would have been dead slow and tortured, and nameless. No one would ever find you, and you’d never get any answers.” 

"Oh, would you prefer a more poetic word?" Savannah asked. The challenging nature of this stranger became even more evident as their conversation continued, but she checked her tone. She did have a terrible habit of being direct to the point of bluntness. "Because someone invited me to see them in the woods," she said simply, giving a small shrug and not going into further detail. "Secrets can be important for safety. I understand that." If word got out about the things she had seen while living in White Crest, there would be mass panic. There was a reason she never put any of this in her reports, beyond not wanting to look crazy. "One of your kind trusted me enough to show me something I assume is very intimate. There had to be a reason for that. I'm simply asking a question. I can't make you answer it." She refilled her glass, which she'd drained all too quickly. A chill ran down her spine at the description of what the other creature would have done to her. She shivered when Deirdre's finger touched her nose and lip. She'd done deals before. Immunity for information. Why should this be any different? "Why did you help me?" 

“I appreciate poetry.” Deirdre hummed, her eyes remained on Savannah. She was right in saying one of her kind must have trusted this human enough to reveal her wings, but with fae like Regan, how much did that matter? Deirdre took another sip of her drink. What were the odds this human knew Regan though? Sure the town was small, but Regan was more or less a hermit. She couldn’t picture the ex-medical examiner talking to someone who didn’t work with her. But what fae would trust a human enough with their wings, and not their name? “I helped you because that’s what you’re supposed to do…” She eyed her glass, staring at the amber liquid for answers. “...at least, that’s what I was told.” She’d only really considered that Morgan would do this, and Morgan would appreciate this, and she knew being better meant doing these sorts of things. And that’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be better, to be good. But she didn’t like the idea that there was more thought out into it than that—never mind the guilty twist that erupted in her stomach at the thought of Savannah’s eventual demise. “Fae.” She said after a moment. “My kind of people. They’re called fae. You ought to know the name if you’re going to be sniffing around. And don’t call us fairies; we’re not. It’s fae.” 

Because that's what you're supposed to do, Deirdre had said, and Savannah weighed the words heavily in her mind. That wasn't very reassuring. She'd have preferred to hear something like 'I couldn't stand to let anything awful happen to you', but she'd take what she could get. At least it was honest, Savannah supposed. She'd value that over lies any day of the week. "Well, I appreciate your help," Savannah said, no idea what the words might mean. "And I can tell you appreciate a good drink, so I hope we both got something out of this nightmarish day." She swallowed her drink again, the liquid pleasantly burning the back of her throat. "You don't like being called fairies?" she asked. "Is it like, a micro-aggression or something?" Deirdre's glass was running low too, so she refilled it for her. "You have no wings," she said, her voice soft, almost sympathetic. What was the point of being a fae without wings? Regan's were so breath-takingly beautiful. 

“Don’t appreciate it, human,” Deirdre growled. “I don’t enjoy being thanked.” She shook her head, downing the last of what was in her glass. She could feel the fuzz starting to form around her mind, and was desperate for more. She poured herself another glass. “Not a micro-aggression, more like a major-aggression. Fairy is a human word, it’s a bastardization of what was once ours. Even fae is not something we ever called ourselves—at least, not where I’m from. But fairy has become so muddied by your human tales, fae suits us better.” Deirdre sighed, winching again at mention of her wingless back. “Why, Savannah,” she hid her pain with a sharp smile, “why don’t you buy a girl dinner before you go off commenting on her back?” She took another slow, long sip of her whiskey. “And I don’t like that pity in your voice. But I understand it; wings are beautiful, aren’t they? I wish I had a pair to show off.” 

"The way you're talking, you don't enjoy or like very much." She was almost as bad as Kaden, Savannah thought. Even he'd been easier to have a conversation with. Her excitement for this conversation was quickly waning. Savannah really had nothing to add to this fairy/fae conversation. She couldn't say anything right to this woman. "It's not pity." But she didn't know what else to call it either. "Hey, I bought you drinks, didn’t I?” She snickered. “I'm learning things in this town that a year ago, I never would have considered believing. I've almost been killed by fae, flying monkeys, and a mermaid. I just wanted to round my shitty day off with drinks with an attractive Irish woman." She repeated Deirdre's earlier words with a small, flirtatious smile. "What do you want?"

“That’s not true. I enjoy death, bones, murder, my girlfriend, pushing humans down stairs—“ Deirdre waved her hand dismissively in the air. “We have to try that one, one day.” Though despite her jokes, it was true she didn’t enjoy much. She had her mother to thank for that, being a banshee was quite a drab thing. “What is it then? You’re sad I don’t have wings, is that not pity? It’s not like I’m angry at you for it. I agree. I’d be better with wings.” She sighed. Another sip, long and slow. She placed the glass back down in much the same way. “Flying monk—“ Nevermind, she didn’t want to know. “Mhm, mostly for you to keep calling me attractive. I might think about offering the same courtesy back to you.” Another sip. And another. “Or maybe I should get to ask you some questions, hm? Why should you get all the fun?” 

Girlfriend. Well, harmless flirting was just that, wasn't it? Harmless. It wasn't like she'd expected anything to come from all this anyway. That'd be crazy. "You like murder?" Savannah asked, realising that was what most have stuck out to most normal people. "Human remains, animal? My ex-wife was a tattoo artist. Her studio had bones everywhere. Animal skulls, mostly." She'd always appreciated them, in a way. They were interesting to watch her ex draw from life, transform into tattoos. "I'm not /sad/ you don't have wings." She wasn't sure if that was a lie or not. Yeah. It probably was. "I just would have liked to see them, if you did." And touch them, she added, if only mentally. "I know I'm attractive," Savannah answered with a small shrug. "But you can still say it. And I never said you couldn't ask me questions. Please do."

Ex-wife. Deirdre processed this news with a tinge of sadness. Human relationships were strange to her, how did someone love someone once...and then not? How could that happen? How could anyone let that happen? She thought of Morgan and grew very fearful; humans liked divorce, didn’t they? Wasn’t her mother always calling them fickle? Deirdre took another long sip and shook her head. “Did she pass?” She asked, hoping for the sake of her own imagination that death was the breaking factor. “Yes, well, bones can be a work of art. And I do, by the way, enjoy a good murder. I think they’re fascinating.” Deirdre liked to play on the line between absurdity and plausibility—let someone else think she was joking or meant something else. She was a fae who could lie, but often found it more enjoyable to simply not. “Yeah, well, I would have liked to see them too. And anyway, it’s not like you can talk. You don’t have any either. You’re human and boring, you can’t even levitate a spoon, can you?” Could she? “Well the fae,” she said, “I want to know why a fae would show you their wings.” 

Savannah supposed she'd set herself up for the personal question when she'd given Deirdre permission to ask her things, but the question itself took her aback. Strange, she thought, that this be her first assumption. "No. If she'd passed I'd have called her my late wife." Savannah chose not to elaborate, for almost no other reason than she felt she should at least try and give this fae somewhat of a challenge, not to simply be an open book. Holding back information could be so important in investigations. It could also be important in social situations. "Yes, murder and bones can both be fascinating," she agreed. "And yes, I'm also a boring human. Perhaps that's why I'm so interested in people like you." Another pause. Another drink. "You'd have to ask the fae. She mentioned she had them. I asked. She said yes. I don't assume to know her reasons. Maybe because I’m so attractive," she teased. “And trustworthy.” 

Deirdre sighed. “Yes, of course you would.” Though it was often more thrilling to hear about the people who died than the ones who lived. Deirdre felt curiosity itch across her skin. “Can I ask you a personal question?” She leaned on to the table, eyes serious. “Divorce. How does that happen? How does someone let that happen? I don’t get it.” She leaned back. “My mother often called humans fickle—they couldn’t commit to something even if they wanted to. But I know that’s not true. Still, I wonder. Divorce; how does that happen? How can you make vows and then….not?” She took another sip; long, slow. She nodded as Savannah explained about the fae, laughed as she called herself attractive—it was true, of course, but it was good to know she had a sense of humour. “Maybe so. Maybe that fae knows something about you I don’t,” she smiled, “but I’d like to find out.” 

Savannah was a little surprised by Deirdre’s question. After all, hadn’t all of this been personal? She refilled her drink. Soon, they’d need another bottle if they continued at this rate. This topic though, she definitely needed to drink before discussing. Savannah shrugged. She’d had enough to loosen her tongue. “I still love her. It’s not about not loving someone. At least for me.” It was probably good that she’d moved to a different state, because she’d lost track of the number of times she and Jamie had fallen into bed together after too many drinks. The commitment part, the expectations, that was what had needed to go. Not the love. 

“Haven’t you changed during the course of your life?” Savannah asked. “What if your partner doesn’t change with you and you outgrow them? What if your goals and desires change, your feelings aren’t the same over time, you begin to make one another unhappy, or your partner does something horrible and you can’t forgive them? All these things happen. We never did anything awful to one another. We’re still friends. But I prioritized my work over my marriage. Too many missed dinners, late nights, weeks of travel without her. In the end it just hurt too much.” Even when she knew Deirdre was taken, it was tough not to be taken in by her flirting. “You can find out plenty about me, as long as your girlfriend is alright with that. I’m not planning to leave this town any time soon.” There was too much work to do here, and if she was honest, there was too much fascination. 

“And what if you don’t want to let them go?” Deirdre’s voice grew soft, curious. Behind her eyes was a simple fear, a type of timid anxiety that asked ‘what about me’. Her devotion was a product of thousands of years, a history of banshees teaching their daughters that nothing was more important than loyalty. She served Fate, but she loved Morgan. And her heart twisted at the possibility of losing her; of growing apart, as simply as Savannah described it. “But distance doesn't matter, does it? Time apart...wouldn’t change much, would it?” She stared down into her glass; the alcohol was working, and it was making her sad. “You didn’t want to try harder? Change? Was your work really...more valuable than your marriage?” If Deirdre had any sense of what were appropriate things to say to a human, she might have apologized for her inquiries, but her earnesty was plain to see. “Huh?” She looked back up, pulled from her thoughts. “Why would my girlfriend have an issue with me learning more about you?” And now, her confusion was obvious. “Aren’t we just talking?”   

"A relationship has to go two ways. If one person wants out, it's done. You can work on it. But you have to work together." Savannah's voice was low and her eyes remained on Deirdre's face, a quiet sadness in them. She'd text Jamie tonight, just to say hello, just to check in. "Of course I wanted to. It's just... it's complicated. Now you're making me sound like a shitty person," she chuckled humorlessly, almost a scoff. "I was a shitty wife. By the time we tried to fix it, it was already broken. People are complicated. Sometimes we need things our partner can't provide, sometimes we don't know what we need. If I ever get married again-" she doubted that was on the cards, but you never knew. "I'd do it differently." She sighed, waving away her words. "Never mind. I'm drunk, and I thought you were actually flirting with intent until the whole girlfriend thing. Now I don't know if I'm disappointed or relieved." Or both.

“But you’re making it sound so...hopeless. Like it couldn’t be helped; it just happened. You made mistakes but is it really so—Did she not—“ Whatever Deirdre wanted to say, she couldn’t get it out. Her fear boiled slowly deep down, where it questioned from the corner it cowered it. I just don’t want that to happen to me, she was saying, in more words than she had to. But Savannah’s words rang in her head; sometimes people needed things their partner couldn’t provide. Sometimes people didn’t know what they needed. Deirdre sighed. “Sorry. That’s just how I talk. But I can flirt with you some more and we can forget we just talked about your divorce for several minutes.” Deirdre raised her glass. “To not thinking about divorce!” 

“It happened,” she shrugged. “Thinking about what I could have done or didn’t do to fix it, that won’t change anything now.” Savannah added some more to her glass, topping it up with diet soda. She chuckled as Deirdre offered to continue flirting with her. “Oh, that’s exactly what a middle-aged woman like me needs. Your pity flirting,” she teased, but touched her hand for a moment, hand for a moment before pulling it away. “Alright, well then, to not thinking about divorce, and to finishing what’s left of this bottle.”

[thereluctantinquisitor]

micro story prompts: 47 crave :)

jdklsakd the next one will be a micro story even if it kills me i swear.

Instead, we have a 24 year old Delver as he begins a job in Tel Shival, working alongside a woman who scares him in all the right ways (962 words)

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

What was it about her? In all his years, he’d never been so utterly crippled by... was it lust? It wasn’t love - he knew little enough about it to know that much. But Divider, every time she snapped a judgemental glare in his direction or prefaced his arrival with a tired sigh, it made him want to rip his clothes off.

Delver spared a moment to wonder if that was normal, then immediately decided he didn’t care.

“You’re late.” Maeser Tellene glanced up, her gaze skimming the top of her frameless lenses. She sat, imperious, behind a heavy wooden desk, her ample figure buried behind layers of crimson robe and paper stacks. “Was I unclear about the importance of my work, or do you just enjoy testing me?”

Oh, she had been perfectly clear. In a three and a half hour seminar, of which he and two begrudging Maesers were the sole audience. All of the others had refused to attend. Tellene had a reputation for being... well, polarising.

“Considering the two options, I think I’ll go with the latter.” Closing the door, Delver barely even acknowledged the sound of the lock clicking sharply into place. The Maeser Weaver was as fond of her privacy as she was of disproving the long-held beliefs of everyone around her. It went a ways towards explaining her popularity. “So,” Delver continued, doing his best to amble casually towards her desk. “How’s progress?”

“Slow,” she replied flatly. With a flick of the wrist, she snapped her book shut, the pages coughing dust into the weave-lit air. “Your kind did an excellent job of burying truths in fantasy, Cipher. If I have to read one more story about sorceresses and towers and beastly apparitions, I’ll gouge my eyes out.” She reached up, pressing a fingertip to her temple, and fired a sharp glare in his direction. “Or maybe I'll start with yours, for subjecting me to the process alone.”

A nervous laugh bubbled out of Delver, firmly shattering his fragile aplomb. Having arrived at her desk, he found it scattered with books and papers to the point of anarchy. She really had been hard at work. “Well... I suppose I should apologise,” he said slowly, taking in the carnage like a soldier after a bloody battle. “If it helps at all, it wasn’t my choice. I was summoned by one of the Archons.”

“What?” Tellene sat up straighter, her posture a single snapped thread short of alarmed. “Who?”

“They, ah, commanded discretion.”

As expected, his answer did not satisfy. Tellene tsked icily, returning her chin to her palm. “Of course they did,” she muttered. “They only share one spine between them, and they keep it locked away most days.”

“They probably don’t want to risk you coming along and snapping it in half.”

It was a dangerous play. A foolish one. Of course, everyone knew Tellene’s view of the archonate was far from generous, but no one actually said it. It was one of those unspoken things, like the inevitability of death or fear of dark water.

Then, to a mix of surprise and relief, Tellene laughed. It was a subtle thing - almost more of a hum - but to Delver, it was victory. “Well, perhaps they're wiser than they appear,” she acquiesced, then hesitated. “Although, I still have my doubts.”

Delver’s lips curved into a smile. As the woman made to stand, he moved behind her chair, pulling it out gently. A few strands of dark hair, pinned for the most part into a bundle at the back of her head, tumbled free in languid spirals. It seemed long hours of twisting and pulling at the intentionally loose pieces had shaken a few others free.

“A gentleman, a rebel, and a prodigy,” she mused. “Another woman might consider herself lucky.” Her hands swept adroitly down the front of her robe, flattening out the creases, dusting off a few stray crumbs nestled in the folds. They were quite the opposite, in that respect. While Delver was prone to forgetting to eat at all, Tellene seemed to find comfort in the process. It helped her think. Focus.

“And what do you consider yourself?” Delver asked. He moved around to face her, doing his best not to give away all of his cards in one round. But, beneath her dark stare, he found himself strangely warm. Not necessarily in a bad way... but he wouldn’t describe it as overly good either.

Tellene regarded him for a long, dangerous moment. Then, she took a step forward. She was a few inches shorter than him. A handful of years older, with eyes sharp enough to shear clean through stone. Divider, give me strength. “I,” she began slowly, “consider myself tired, and very thin of patience, Cipher.” She quirked a brow, and he had no idea whether the exchange was meant to be playful or terrifying. “I strongly advise you do not try me further.”

With that, she swept past him, retrieving her cloak from a nearby table, fastening it around her shoulders as she headed towards the door. Delver stood, transfixed for a moment, before his senses returned in an indignant rush. “Hey - where are you going?”

“Out,” she replied simply. Her hand was already on the doorknob. “You have quite a lot of catching up to do. It is best I leave you to it.”

Witch, Delver thought, impressed. The door swung open, releasing a billow of cool air into the room. It carried her perfume with it - something aromatic and woody, like the mossy edge of a forest. Then, without so much as a parting glance, she snapped it shut behind her.

No click.

I could follow her, Delver thought. He took an instinctive step towards the door.

Then, with a defeated sigh, he slumped back into the chair and grabbed a sheath of papers.

[limited-practice]

In The Bar of Bad Things part 4

Hubcap, Nickel, and Helex continue to have increasingly unpleasant and implausible times in an alien bar where nothing goes right for them.

@jet-teeth my continued thanks to you for the fantastic art you’ve drawn for this fic! It’s all perfect, PERFECT

art for chapter 1 is here, and the drawing for this chapter is at the end of this post.

This nonsense story is a lot of fun to write, and it’s the best thing to talk with people about it because that’s where I get most of my inspiration from. I’m always grateful to everyone who’s read it and talks with me about it it’s the best thing, thank you!

Chapter 1 is here on tumblr  and chapters 2, 3 and this one are on Ao3.

2904 words of sfw random antics at a bar where everything keeps going wrong are below the cut. 

“It's about time,” Nickel said. She felt someone come to a slow stop behind her, but she didn’t bother to look over her shoulder at them. “Did you get lost in that bathroom?”

“Ha, no! I didn't- didn’t get lost," Hubcap replied. He slid up next to her and plastered a too wide smile onto his face. He laced his fingers together tightly. “I’m here. I'm fine. I'm here and I’m fine."

“We heard some banging,” Helex said in a slow and knowing tone. “We thought you were having a Good Time after sending your message, if you know what I mean."

“WE did not think that,” Nickel said. “I didn’t think about him for a second after he left us.”

“Do you know what I mean?” Helex said, ignoring her. “Because I do. And so does Nickel. But you’re a small sheltered Autobot with no experience, so you probably don’t.”

“I, ha, wait,” Hubcap said. He tried to inject some steel into his voice. “How do you know I don’t have any experience? You could be setting yourself up for major embarrassment here. I could be embarrassed by you for a change.”

Helex gave him a fondly condescending look.

Nickel gave Helex her third best weary look. “He’s got a rotating cast of desperates all throughout the galaxy that message him for Good Times as soon as they can, so it’s safe to say he’s got some experience. We have more important things to do, so just ignore him. And do you know what I’m going to ignore? A continuation of this conversation.”

“But just because he has a list of admirers doesn’t mean he’s got experience with any of them,” Helex said, continuing the conversation. “Or anyone at all. Does it Nickel? Does it?”

Nickel gave him her second best weary look. She paused. She remembered how terrified Hubcap was about replying to his send nudes message. She fought not to think about it any more. She tapped her fingers against her leg. “No. No it doesn’t Helex. It doesn’t. Are you happy now?”

“I’m always happy.”

Helex picked up two full glasses. He drank from one and offered the other to Nickel. “Your one has little bubbles in it.”

He gently shook the drink to fizz it up further. “Look at them go!”

Nickel fought back a smile. “You’re ridiculous.”

She reached out a hand to take it.

WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!

“What the?" Nickel's head snapped up, the drink forgotten.

Everyone in the bar collectively snapped their heads up. Heads and eyes and sensors swivelled like searchlights to seek out where the blaring alarm was coming from and what it meant.

Helex drank Nickel’s drink in one gulp. He made a face. “I don’t like this.”

WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!

“It’s an alarm,” Nickel said. “You’re not supposed to like it.”

She put her hands on her hips and looked around. “Is that the fire alarm?”

“Uh, no,” Hubcap said, twisting his fingers together and peering up at the ceiling anxiously. “That’s not the fire alarm.”

“Did you set off the fire alarm?” Nickel pointed a finger at Helex. “Did your smelter slow leak again and set something on fire?”

“No!” Helex held three innocent hands up. His fourth held another drink. “It’s not me! I promise!”

“Because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told you to see me as soon as you get a micro-fissure or a heat fracture in it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I've told you, I really have.”

“It wasn’t me! I’ve been standing next to you the entire time!”

“Just because you’re here now doesn’t mean you couldn’t have leaked elsewhere earlier, does it? Does it Helex? Does it?”

“I just said it’s not the fire alarm,” Hubcap muttered to his fingers. “But Primus forbid anyone should ever listen to--”

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

“I’m going to see who’s set the fire alarm off,” Nickel scowled. “That useless bartender had better turn it off soon because one, I can’t see a fire anywhere and two, it’s giving me a headache.”

She stalked away.

Hubcap glanced around. It wasn’t the fire alarm. The frequency sounded all wrong. It felt all wrong. There wasn’t an explosion or any type of mortal threat that he could see, but people were pouring out of the bar as if their life depended on it. The DJD and the Wreckers were nowhere to be seen. They must have been some of the first to evacuate. Which meant that whatever was happening or was about to happen would be serious and life-threatening and a horrible experience in general. Which meant they had to leave immediately. Hubcap made a sudden move towards the nearest exit, but he was stopped by one of Helex’s arms on his shoulder.

“If it’s not the fire alarm, what is it?” Helex asked.

“I don’t know,” Hubcap said, giving Helex’s hand a wary look. “But it’s something bad. It’s something serious. Something serious has happened and people have left. So we should leave too. We have to leave.”

He tried to take a step towards the exit.

Helex gently squeezed Hubcap’s shoulder.

All three layers of Hubcap’s plating buckled. An explosion of alarms erupted and spread throughout his system, warning him of imminent structural collapse and irreparable damage to most of his primary circuit field if this tremendous external pressure continued.

“Nickel’s not back yet,” Helex said.

>//> critical system breach in 6, 5, 4,

“We’ll wait as long as it takes for her!” Hubcap gasped. “I want nothing more in my short little life than to stay right here with you and wait for her but oh god please let go of me I don’t want to die like this!”

“Die?” Helex released Hubcap’s shoulder. He gave him what he considered to be a reassuring look. “You’re not going to die. Someone will put that scary fire out, don’t you worry.”

Hubcap massaged his near crippled shoulder. He muttered desperate thanks of praise to Primus and dark promises of revenge to Helex under his breath.

Helex bent his head down so that his mouth brushed Hubcap’s ear. “What?”

“Ahh!” Hubcap sprang back and gripped his shoulder harder.

“You’re weird,” Helex told him. “I like it.”

Helex looked around. “Where’s Nickel?”

“How should I know?” Hubcap snapped.

Helex flexed the fingers of his shoulder grabbing hand. “What?”

“I said I’m terribly sorry but I’m afraid I don’t know. But I do know that she’ll be fine, and that we’ll do absolutely everything in our power to find her and make sure she’s OK and we won’t, absolutely won’t, evacuate this death trap of a bar until she’s back with us despite the fact that she’s the most capable out of the three of us and could take out anyone with one eye closed and is the one who will outlive us by millions of years no matter what happens.”

Helex nodded slowly. “Do you know what this means?”

Hubcap's processor whirled “...that we’re...going to die while she looks in on us through a window and shakes her head in sadness but not surprise?”

“It means that we have more time for drinking!”

“Yeah, that was definitely going to be my next guess.”

Helex turned back towards the bar. Every inch of the enormous counter was taken up with different sized glasses filled with liquids in every colour imaginable. Some were fizzing, some were smoking, one was hardening into concrete and several were leaking.

“Look at what I ordered while you were having fun in the bathroom.”

“...how…” Hubcap began, as a sense of impending doom bit into his spine and slid down it using nothing but teeth, “...many drinks did you put on my tab?”

Helex took a sip of the drink he now held in a small hand. “Two of each per round.” The liquid slid down his throat, and he blinked in happy surprise. He held out the glass and peered into the roiling mustard coloured froth inside. “Oh that’s good.”

“I should hope so,” Hubcap said slowly, “Because that drink is going to cost me an arm and a leg.”

“It’s going to cost more than that.” Helex drained the glass. “Have you seen how much debt you’re in?”

“...excuse me?”

“It’s a lot.” Helex smiled. “I’ve crippled you.”

“What?”

“But only financially.”

“That’s so much worse!”

Hubcap whipped out his communicator and poked it hard. He brought up his bank account and typed in the password. He looked at the string of numbers that told him how much money he now owed. He made the soul searing sound of eternal pain that all of Helex’s victims made.

“Calm down,” Helex said. “I can’t hear the mysterious wailing alarm over you.”

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Helex put his glass down on the bar. “So. Did your weirdo friend respond to those pictures of questionable content you sent them?”

Hubcap looked at the horrific negative numbers screaming along the bottom of his bank account. They were neon red. They were pulsing. They were underlined. His mouth was open and his spark was fading.

“Well?” Helex prompted.

“How?” Hubcap whispered.

“How what?”

“How did you manage to drink so much?” Hubcap’s horrified eyes scanned the itemised charges and calculated the times they were bought. "Everything on the bar right now is your fourth round! I was only gone for a few minutes!"

Helex patted his smelter fondly. “She’s a thirsty girl.”

“I’m ruined,” Hubcap said to himself. “I can’t pay this back. I’ll have to take out a loan. I’ll have to take out several. I’ll have to rob someone and go on the run for the rest of my life.”

“I’ve already called the Debt Collector of Eternal Interest and Perpetual Payback to take you into Bank Custody.”

Hubcap’s head shot up. “What? Why?!”

Helex shrugged. “Owed her a favour.”

“Oh my god.”

“She’ll be here soon. I gave her our location and your description. And since she’s getting on in years, make sure you’re respectful and shriek extra loud when she starts stabbing you. Her hearing’s on the way out and her frame is frail.”

“Oh My God.”

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Whoop Whoop Whoop

“Why are you yelling so much?” Nickel asked.

“Ah!” Hubcap yelled, startled. He gripped his communicator hard.

“I can’t hear the alarm over your wailing.”

She looked at Helex. “It’s not the fire alarm. I checked. I asked the bartender what it was, but all he said was ‘it’s not the fire alarm’ before bolting out of the exit door.”

Helex nodded. “That’s what we thought.”

Nickel looked over Hubcap’s shoulder to see what was on his screen. She cackled loudly. “You’re so screwed.”

“I’ve already called the Debt Collector,” Helex said. “She’ll be here after she’s had a nap.”

“Someone her age needs her rest,” Nickel agreed. “When she gets here I’ll offer to give her a check-up free of charge.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“She works hard. And it’s difficult to get customers in her line of work these days. Hardly anyone has a lot of money now, which means they’re not in a lot of crippling debt that needs to be recovered. It was nice of you to give the work to her.”

“Do the two of you,” Hubcap said slowly, “Really not care that I’m about to get stabbed by a geriatric debt collector?”

“Don’t call her that,” Helex said. “Show some respect.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten into so much debt in the first place,” Nickel said flatly. “You need lessons on how to manage your finances. Swindle runs a basic course for absolute beginners you should go on.”

“I didn’t get into debt myself! Helex put me in it! He’s drinking this overpriced place dry and making me pay for it!”

Nickel’s expression didn’t change. “Because you said he could. Remember? You agreed to pay for all his drinks so he’d cover for you when you went to message your friend.”

Hubcap’s mouth opened to respond. It stayed open. “...I didn’t think he’d buy so many,” he said limply.

“There’s an old Earth saying about Assumptions,” Nickel said. “Swindle covers it in his course.”

“I am not paying Swindle money so he can trick me into giving him more.”

“How’s that worse than tricking yourself out of it?”

“You should definitely tell him this story,” Helex said. “He might name a case study after you. You know, the type of example that everyone laughs at but also takes seriously because they’d die ten times over if it ever happened to them.”

Whoop Whoop Whoop

Whoop Whoop Whoop

“That’s really goddamn annoying,” Nickel glared.

Helex nodded in agreement. He unravelled his long tongue and coiled it inside another foam coated glass. He slurped noisily as he cleaned it.

Hubcap put his hands on his head and remembered that there had been a few good times in his life.

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

Whoop Whoop Whoop!

“First of all,” Nickel said, “The fact that I can hear you over the sound of this alarm is disgusting. You’re disgusting.”

S L U R R R R R P

“And second of all, we need to get out of here. Everyone’s already left. I don’t know what that alarm’s for, but it can’t be anything good.”

Helex unravelled his tongue from the glass and sucked it back into his mouth. “It’s not all bad. It means no-one’s going to try and sneak one of my drinks off of the counter again. They screamed so loudly when I caught them!”

“Exit. Now.”

“I’m just saying--”

“You can stick your tongue in things when we get back to the ship,” Nickel ordered. “Now let’s go.”

Nickel strode towards the nearest exit. “Helex, contact the ship and give them our locations for transport. I’m not going to be stuck in this miserable place for whatever awful thing is about to happen. Hubcap, you figure out what the alarm is for. And stop crying.”

“...I’m not crying. I’m just...thinking. Concentrating. The air’s very dry in here and sometimes that makes my eyes water to compensate and--”

Just as Nickel reached the exit a set of huge black and yellow containment doors slammed shut in front of her face and blocked it.

“Dammit!”

She spun around and immediately headed to the secondary exit. Huge blast doors slammed down in front of those doors too.

Nickel clenched her hands into fists and groaned in deep frustration. “I can’t believe we’re stuck in this dump!”

“Shall we have another drink?” Helex asked.

“Stuck?” Hubcap said, as he tried to surreptitiously wipe his eyes. “We’re stuck in here? We’re actually stuck? In here? Stuck?”

“Stop repeating yourself and calm down. It’s really annoying.”

“Well excuse me for, you know, not being in the best frame of mind given everything that’s just previously happened to me.”

“Ooh, bubbles!” Helex chirped.

“We’re not drinking any more bubble drinks,” Nickel snapped. “We’re going to find a way out of here before whatever bad thing is going to happen to us happens to us, understood?”

“But if it’s stopped then maybe it won’t happen,” Hubcap said cautiously. He looked around the deserted bar, and scanned it with even greater attention and dread than he had examined his bank account. “Maybe it’s already happened. Or it’s been prevented. Or it was never actually going to happen in the first place, and that was just an unfortunate and unintended miscommunication of a defensive or offensive response to an external threat that never ended up materializing.”

“What in the goddamn hell are you babbling on about?” Nickel said. “I am one second away from charging a new spaceship to your account Hubcap. One second! And then I’m going to give Swindle a heads up that despite being broker than broke you’re a prime candidate for--”

“The alarm’s stopped,” Hubcap said bluntly. “Listen.”

Nickel listened. The wailing alarm had stopped. And in its place was a low, slow, grinding mechanical hum that was steadily getting louder and louder and louder.

“That’s not good,” she said.

Hubcap shook his head in agreement.

Tiny white stars drifted down in front of Nickel’s face. She locked eyes with Hubcap. They both followed its spiralling path down, down, down to the disgusting sticky floor where it popped silently at her feet.

She looked back up at Hubcap. Who was already looking up at the ceiling with a horrified expression on his face.

“Like I said, bubbles,” Helex beamed. He held out all four hands and turned his palms up to the ceiling. Small piles of happy popping bubbles collected in piles on them.

Nickel reluctantly looked up. She read the warning. “So that’s what the alarm was for,” she whispered.

A huge hatch covered the entirety of the ceiling. It was studded with jets and openings and switches. Stamped across it in twenty different languages were the words 'Hostile Suppressant Foam. Mechanical Grade. For Use In Emergencies Only. Never, Ever, EVER Ingest.’

The hatch slowly opened.

She heard Hubcap typing furiously on his communicator.

Orange warning lights strobed the room.

She heard Helex lick his lips and swallow.

The ever widening hatch began to rain foam down on them

A tidal wave of deadly foam slowly leaked out of the ever widening hatch directly above their heads.

“We are so screwed.”

[mysweetestcreature]

Tomorrow Never Knows (President!Harry) Chapter 2: After You

(Banner by the wonderful @ noblewomankat!)

***

Masterlist

***

Thursday, September 18, 2008

        “Wait, so you’re actually on the team?” Y/n gasps as they navigate through hallway traffic to their lockers. (They ended up being only a few down from one another, something that came as a relief to both since they’ll be the first to admit that they enjoy each other’s company.) “But you’re a freshman! The last time a freshman made the team was in like...like...1987!” She marches straight up to him and swats his arm without a second thought. “Harry! That was seven years before we were born! How are you so calm about this!”

       Harry’s lips form in a smirk as he works his combination into the lock. “So, I take it you’re impressed?”

       “Was it not obvious?” 

       She returns to her own locker, exchanging books between it and her bag while she continues to go on and on about her amazement in short mumbled breaths. When Coach Davis had posted this year’s team roster on the official bulletin board just by the main entrance, everyone had been shocked to see that a freshman had made the lineup. It’s not like she didn’t believe that Harry could do it, but she knows plenty of boys in their grade who had failed to make the high school team, and they were considered the best of the best in middle school! A boy named Jimmy who she’s known since the second grade hadn’t made the team, so he ended up transferring to Ashwood’s number one sports competitor, Pleasant Valley Academy out of spite. “And you’re starting? As quarterback?” 

       “Mhmm,” his response is short and sweet and irksomely chirp, even for her. He shuts his locker and leans against it on his side, one foot tucked under the other, both hands in his pockets as he watches her amusedly. He thinks it’s cute how her nose scrunches up the way it is now. “I mean, it’s a big part of why I’m going here.” Who would give up such an amazing opportunity to attend one of the best schools on the East coast, and for only a fraction of the cost? As it turns out, he’s liking it here a whole lot more than he’d ever imagine. 

       “I’m just amazed, is all. I’m really proud of you though,” her words decrease in volume at the end of her confession. She quickly looks up and shoots him a grin before reapplying some lip gloss in the magnetic mirror. 

       He hates that he can’t look away as the wand strokes over the suppleness of her bottom lip, leaving behind a subtle shine. From where he is, the scent of sweet candied strawberries reaches his nose and causes him to rub his own pair of lips together on impulse. A whole lot of ‘what ifs’ form at the forefront of his mind that would surely leave him embarrassed if he were to ever allow them to spill from his mouth. Although, he soon realizes how creepy it is that he’s still staring at her so intrusively, and so he shakes his head of any further thought. “Um...” he clears his throat. “So, you’ll be watching me from the bleachers then?” 

       “Or who knows, maybe from the sidelines.”

       This has his left brow cocking up in question. “Are you in marching band or something?” 

       “Oh yeah, I play a real mean recorder,” she snorts before closing her locker shut with a push of her hip, then twisting to face him. There’s something in the way her eyes glint as they bore into his, it’s almost unnerving. She takes a few steps forward, and now only a few scanty inches lie between the two. He swears his heart stops beating when she rises on the tips of her toes and leans in even closer. “You’re not the only one full of surprises.” 

       “What’s that supposed to mean?” Now it’s his turn to be left stunned.

       She backs away and starts in the direction of the library with a content smile on her face. “See you in Algebra, Harry.” 

***

       This morning she’d woken up from a reoccurring dream she’d been having over the last couple of weeks, and in it she was on this hilltop that was decorated with most beautiful array of flowers of endless varieties, and a wooden bench with metal railings that sat underneath the shade of a luscious cherry blossom. When she sat up in bed, the image was still so fresh in her mind. It’s like she’s been there before, as every detail had seemed so authentic, tangible even. It’s familiar in a way that no words would be able to describe. 

       “Are you okay?”

       “What?” She nearly jumps out of her skin. Looking up, she sees Maxxie’s worried appearance staring at her straight on. “Oh yeah, I’m just... Here, look at this. I’ve been dreaming about it like every night.” She slides her sketchbook across the table. 

       Maxxie examines it carefully, the pads of his fingers gently running over the drawn lines as his eyes follow their movements. “Have you ever been?”

       She shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t think so.” She runs a hand through her hair a few times before letting out a defeated sigh. “I probably just saw it on TV or something.” 

       “If you say so,” Maxxie hums, surely unconvinced. He slides back the book and continues on his own sketch. They relax into a steady rhythm of work, and for so long the calming sounds of pencil against paper soothes the ears as they let their creative vision take control of the actions of their hands.  

       However, it’s only a matter of time before Maxxie speaks up once again. “Can I ask you something?” 

       “Of course,” she chirps, although she keeps her attention on shading in the top side of the tree where she imagines the sun would hit it. “What’s up?”

       The blonde boy’s tongue runs over the surface of his teeth as his eyes narrow in on her. “Well,” he starts, letting his pencil see-saw between his fingers. “I was just wondering...” 

       “Yeah?”

       “What do you think of Harry?”

       This successfully steals her attention away, and she slowly slides back to sit properly in her chair. The mention of his name makes her smile in a different way. “Harry? He’s...well he’s funny and sweet, and I think it’s adorable when...” she trails off when she realizes that she’s probably said too much already. “Wait, why do you ask?” 

       A knowing smirk takes over his once curious expression. “Like I said, I was just wondering.”

       “Oh, no. Don’t you do that, there’s definitely something,” Y/n says in protests. Maxxie sighs, pretending to feel aloofly about the conversation as he lazily leans to the side. “People are allowed to wonder things, you know.” 

       “But no one ever just wonders something unless there’s actually something to wonder about which means you’re obviously not just wondering!”

       “I... huh?” Maxxie’s face creases in such confusion, and he mouths the words over as though trying to make sense of it all. Y/n smiles triumphantly, returning all her energy into finishing her scene. 

***

       “¡Hasta mañana, clase!” Señora Gustavo says as she waves off her Spanish 1 Honors class. 

       Nearly everyone rushes out at once, their hearts set on toughing through their last class before they get to go home for the rest of the evening. Y/n isn’t in much of a rush though, since Dr. Davis has conference about microorganisms in the body somewhere in Denver, and Coach Allen was the only one available to cover her class (and everyone knows that he never takes attendance, instead he opts to playing Tetris on the computer until the dismissal bell rings). 

       “Do you think you’ll be ready for the test next week?” Y/n asks, holding her notebook and Spanish textbook close against her chest. Señora Gustavo scheduled a test on the preterit tense next Tuesday, where they’ll have to write a few paragraphs that show their understanding of how to use it. 

       “I don’t know, the irregular verbs are kind of a pain in the arse,” the dimples in his cheeks caving when he sighs. 

       “Do you maybe want to study together?” 

       “Like after school?” His footsteps cease abruptly in the middle of the hallway, and the person walking behind them grumbles at the unforeseen blockade in his path. “Shit. I’m sorry,” Harry apologizes, but is quick to focus back on her. It’s like his US Politics class doesn’t exist to him at that moment (thank goodness there isn’t any assessment scheduled for the day).

       Y/n suddenly feels hyper aware of where she stands, feeling incredibly small after making the suggestion so capriciously. “...Yeah,” she tries her best to make herself sound nonchalant. But why is this so hard for her? She and Maxxie study together all the time, and she’s never felt intimidated about inviting him over. Ever. With Harry, it’s like she’s always on edge, and it’s becoming more and more exasperating to say the least. She grows even more weary when he takes too long of a pause. “I mean, only if you want to... I just figured we could-”

       “Yes,” he blurts out, his vocal cords stretching greater lengths than would be considered normal, almost like he’d just been hit in the groin with a football. He clears the tickle in his throat and then wets his lips. “That’d be great. Yeah, cool.” A nervous laugh escapes him as his hand moves up and rubs the back of his neck out of sudden discomfort. His mouth opens, and for a second, he hopes something intelligible might come of it. Instead, it hinges closed, and he briskly strides in the direction of his next class, unintentionally leaving her without another word. When he realizes this, the soles of his feet squeak against the well-polished floors as he comes to another hasty stop. Sheepishly, he shuffles back, this time being extra mindful to calculate every next one of his step. “Sorry, that was weird. I don’t know why I... we’re going the same way.” He takes a deep breath to collect himself. “So, uh, tomorrow?” 

       “Tomorrow,” she affirms with a bashful grin. They continue down the hall in a comfortable silence.

*** Friday, September 19, 2008

       When Harry wakes up the next morning, it’s like he’s suddenly some sort of perfectionist, or something pretty damn close. He uses a little more gel in his hair to keep his quiff intact for the rest of the day, he irons his already smoothened polo shirt because he claims he can see some micro wrinkles on its left sleeve. Last night he’d watched over a dozen YouTube videos to see how to tie the perfect knot because sometimes he feels like his tie always looks a bit out of sorts. Finally, he polishes his school shoes over dozen time until he can basically see his reflection staring back at him. 

       “How do I look?” he asks, standing in front of the breakfast table where Anne and Gemma finish up their cups of coffee and scrambled eggs. Both women stare at him blankly, Gemma stopping mid-bite, while Anne keeps her mug suspended below her parted mouth. They look at him and then each other, then back at him as though he were a mad man, and it starts to bug him when minutes go by without a single peep from either. “Well?” 

       “I’m a little confused,” his sister is the first to answer. “Is this a trick question?” Harry groans, throwing his head back and covering his face with his hands in mild aggravation. Sure, he wears the same thing practically every day (although, he does like to change up his second layer between his usual cardigan and a pull over, sometimes a sweater vest if he’s feeling up to it), but how can they not notice how crisp his shirt looks? 

       “I’m being serious here!”

       Anne,  is tad more thoughtful with her response. “I think you look very cute, love.” 

       “Cute?” He’s absolutely scandalized! “Cute” is not the end product he wants! He runs to the nearest mirror to view his reflection. Maybe it’s the gel, it probably makes him look like some snotty ten-year-old who loves dressing up whenever he leaves the house. 

       “Dashing! What I meant to say is that you look very dashing!” his mother calls to him, trying her best to correct her mistake. “But sweetheart,” she begins, standing up and putting her used dishes in the sink. “What is this for?”

       And then he asks himself the same thing: what was this all for? After all, they were just going to study for a stupid conjugation test. 

***        “What time’s your date?” 

       “It’s not a date. We’re just studying.”

       “My mistake. What time’s your study date?”

       “I literally just said that it’s not a date!”

       “Then why’re you so pressed?”

       “Because,” Y/n sighs, closing her book. She’s obviously not getting any reading done before homeroom with Maxxie bombarding her with all these trivial questions. She knew she should’ve just kept it to herself, especially after yesterday’s conversation. But she couldn’t help it! He had come over unannounced yesterday with milkshakes from Riley’s Fountain, and one sugar high later, she couldn’t stop herself from recounting every detail of her day. “I don’t know, Max.” 

       “Okay,” he concedes.

       She narrows her gaze at him. “That’s it?” He simply nods his head at her. “No follow-up?”

       “Nope,” he makes sure to put an extra pop on the ‘p’. He sits back in his seat, propping his legs up on the table and crossing his arms behind his head. 

***        After Spanish class, they had agreed to meet at their lockers at exactly 5 o’clock since Harry had football practice and Y/n said she had something to take care of as well. The day had gone just like any other, classes after classes with a few breaks in between and those valuable minutes where they’d talk about silly things on their way to shared subjects and when they’d stand in front of their lockers as they quickly traded books in place of others.

       As he walks out of the locker room, freshly showered –– and in his own clothes, thank god he’d decided to bring a more comfortable pair before leaving home –– and exchanging the ghastly mixture of sweat and sun for a more aromatic vanilla mango cocktail, he notices a vibration coming from underneath his feet. He follows the sound music as it increases in volume to the entrance of the gymnasium, where he then looks through the slim windows before opening the door just a wee bit. 

       He realizes that it’s a cheer practice that’s being held, and it’s also then that he can make sense of the words to the song, and a smile sneaks up to on him when an infamous pop track from the 90s plays over the speakers in the room as they run through their routine. 

       “Okay.” He hears someone shout over the fading outro. It’s the coach, he’ll assume, and she tucks a clipboard under her arm and claps her hands together. “That was good, that was good,” she says in a cheery tone that still manages to sound firm. “So, on that note, let’s call it a day.”

       The group disperses to different areas of the bleachers. He sees Zoey from homeroom, who struts to her bag with such purpose, her hands perched on her swaying hips. She’s followed by two of her friends, Amber and Bree, that always seem to follow her like lost puppies. Matt Riley from his Biology class is also on the team, he’d seen him, and another boy lift one of the girls on top of their shoulders. Harry resumes to scan the gym for anyone else he might know. What he doesn’t expect is to see her scrunchie. His lips pull apart. “Y/n?” he says her name under his breath, his eyes growing wide as she walks towards him (luckily, she hasn’t noticed him) to rummage through her bag. She pulls out a pink water bottle, giggling into the nozzle as one of her friends talks animatedly at her. 

       He backs away from the door, letting it click before he begins pacing on the spot. So, this is what she’d been hinting at yesterday when she said she would be closer than he thought. “A bloody cheerleader.” He runs both hands through his hair, his eyelids tightly pushed together as he lets his system absorb this new –– and vital –– information. “You’re fucked,” he tells himself, even laughing at his own self-pity. “You are so fucking fucked.” 

       “Text me how things go with Jared!” His ears perk up at her honey-like tonation that he’s surely grown to appreciate these last couple of weeks. Y/n has this tendency to go on and on about anything and everything (especially whenever he brings up her baking, she’ll go one for hours) but it’s oddly satisfying just to listen to her talk so vibrantly about life. HE starts to panic when her voice gets closer. “Oh, stop it! I’m sure it’ll go fine!” 

***

       “I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere,” Cici says jadedly as they push through the doors in to the deserted corridor. “He’s cute, and he thinks I’m cute, but that’s about it.” She reaches back and begins to fuss with her raven-black hair, running her fingers through each of stubborn knots. 

       Y/n bumps her hip with hers before linking their arms together and skipping down the rest of the way. “You’ve been talking nonstop for the last six weeks! That’s like a record for you! Just see how it goes, and if it’s really that bad, you can always do that thing in the movies where she sneaks out the bathroom window.” Cici rolls her eyes at the suggestion. “Oh, come on! You can’t say the idea doesn’t sound exciting,” Y/n giggles as she pokes her side. 

       “You and Maxxie watch way too many romcoms, seriously. It’s like I’m friends with freaking Julia Roberts.” She’s known Cici since they were in diapers as their parents had been friends in their youth. It was only right that their girls become best friends. In many ways, they’re opposites of each other, Cici being the rougher and tougher of the two, especially when it comes to people she doesn’t trust a hundred percent (many people in their grade are a tad bit afraid of her, but she prefers it that way), while Y/n tends to be more empathetic and softer around the edges (for the most part, that is) that makes her more approachable.

       “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Y/n sticks her tongue out. 

       “Speaking of Maxwell,” Cici begins, and her lips quick to the side suggestively, “he tells me you have a date with the new boy.” 

       Y/n scoffs, shaking her head. “And I told him repeatedly that it’s not a date.”

       “Do you want it to be?” 

       “To be what?”

       “A date, duh!” Cici all but screams. 

       “I’ve only known him for two weeks!” How many times does she have to explain that what her and Harry and going to do is strictly educational and as friends/classmates? Sure, he’s good looking and has eyes so mesmerizing that she finds herself getting lost in them and... oh shoot. And she’s sure by the way Cici gives her the same shrewd look that Maxxie had given her earlier, that she knows exactly what’s running through her head. “Shut up.” No one better tell Maxxie, or else he’ll never let her live it down!

       “Listen, all I’m saying is that if you like him, you better make a move before someone beats you to it,” Cici warns. “I heard that Zoey has a major thing for him.” 

       Y/n tries her best to hide a pout. She and Zoey used to be friends once upon a time, but as they excelled through school and life, Zoey started to get overly competitive with her. If Y/n showed up to school with new school shoes, Zoey would have a pair twice as expensive the next day. If Y/n got the highest test score in math, Zoey would try to beat her on the next two. It’s petty, Y/n will be the first to admit it, which is why she usually tries to ignore things like that now.  

       “I mean, she is really pretty.” 

       “Too bad she’s a total bitch. Besides, you’re way prettier, babe,” Cici winks. “Anyway, I have to go get ready for later.” And she starts towards the exit, walking backwards. “If I call you in the middle of dinner, it means I’ve just climbed out the bathroom window and you need to pick me up immediately.” 

       Y/n sniggers at her words. “I look forward to it.” 

       They officially part ways, and soon enough Y/n turns the corner and arrives at her locker to find Harry standing against it. The bottom of his shoe is flat up against the metal, and his hands are shoved in the pockets of his jeans. She cocks her head to the side when she takes note of his heaving chest. “Why are you so out of breath?”

***

       When Y/n and Harry arrive at her house, she leads him into the kitchen to offer him a snack. “I woke up really early this morning, so I made a bunch of treats!” she exclaims. Harry watches as she prepares everything on the table. Her house is just as he had expected, it’s ambiance warm and welcoming, the same vibe he always gets when he’s near her. It smells distinctly of warm sugar, and he guesses it’s because she’s constantly whipping up sweets and other goodies. 

       As she gets things ready, he wanders into the connecting living room. The first thing that catches his eye is the 1963 Hofner 500/1 “Violin” bass in the corner of the room. He’s more of a guitar kind of guy, but he’s always appreciated a catchy bass line. “Do you play?” he asks, looking back into the kitchen.

       “It’s my grandpa’s, actually. He was a huge McCartney fan, and so this was his little homage to him.” She walks over and slowing extends her hand and grazes her fingers along the neck. It’s then he sees the falter in her expression. “We had to put him in a home since he’s having some trouble remembering things now,” she confesses. “But when we bring this old guy along, it’s like he never left. It’s like he’s the same guy that used to hum Yesterday to put me to sleep.” 

       Harry is quiet as he absorbs it all in. He can’t imagine what it must be like, especially since he also has a close bond with his grandfather.  

       He frowns when he catches her wiping beneath her eye. “Hey,” he says softly, and he gently wraps his fingers around her wrist to bring her hand away from her face. 

       “I’m sorry,” she shakes her head and tries her best to laugh it off. “I always get a little weird when I talk about Pop-pop.” 

       “’s fine,” he assures her. “You’re allowed to feel.” About a year ago, his granddad had suffered a stroke. He’d been alone since his grandma had been out at the grocer’s. It was a good thing a neighbor had heard the ruckus of his fall and immediately brought him to the hospital. So, he knows what it’s like to worry oneself constantly. 

       The next thing he does shocks them both. He breathes in deeply before he lifts his hand close to her cheek, moving a loose piece of hair behind her ear. When she peers up, she’s nearly paralyzed as his beautiful green eyes stare deeply into hers. She bites hard on her bottom lip, her heart hammering beneath her chest. 

       “I-” but words are a loss to her in that moment. He searches her, looking for any sign to tell him to stop. There’s nothing. And for once, the quietness relieves him. Feeling a rush of confidence flow through his veins, he slowly lowers himself. The closer he gets, the more he can feel each puff of her breath tickle the small hairs on chin. 

       Her eyes flutter closed as she anticipates his lips. 

       “Y/n!” a little voice squeals, and it’s followed by a tiny pitter patter of feet. Both Harry and Y/n snap their heads at the sound, and she’s quick to push him away. A space to accommodate at least four people now falls between them.  

       “Hey, buddy!” She picks up Mason and spins him around in her arms. “How was school? Did you share those cookies with Madison?”

       “Yeah!” he says proudly, wrapping his arms around her neck. “I’m a good sharer!” Mason wriggles his legs, begging to be put down. When he notices Harry –– who is still quite flustered –– he cautiously backs into Y/n’s legs until he’s hidden behind her left one. “Who’re you?” the little boy challenges, lip protruding into a small pout as he clings to his sister’s leg tightly. (He usually doesn’t do well with strangers. Heck, last Christmas he cried when he saw Santa at the mall.)

       Harry bites his tongue, glancing at Y/n. She nods down at the little boy with an encouraging smile. If someone would’ve told him even an hour ago that he’d be –– somewhat –– terrified of such a tiny human, he would’ve sniggered and walked away. Yet here is, about to get on his knees for a six-year-old. And he ends up doing just that. He bends down to Mason’s height. “Hey there, little dude. I’m Harry.” 

       Mason eyes him skeptically,  slightly treading away from his sister’s protection. “Do you like cupcakes?” 

       “Cupcakes?” Harry playfully repeats, he pretends to be surprised by such a question. “I love cupcakes!”

       Mason giggles loudly and tackles Harry in a big hug. “I like you, Harry!” Mason tells him. He grabs his hand and leads him back into the kitchen. “Come on, Harry! Y/n made Neapolitan cupcakes! They’re my favoritest ever!” Her little brother sits Harry down in one of the chairs and grabs a cupcake from the dish. “We can go halfsies if you want!” he offers. 

       That leaves Y/n alone in front of the bass guitar. She glances out into the kitchen, where her little brother has managed to say everything what she could never muster up. What had happened, or almost happened –– that had been enough to send tingles to cover every inch of her frazzled skin still lingers on her, and she touches her cheek where his hand had once been. 

***

[amyscascadingtabs]

i’ll walk through hell with you

chapter 4: i’ll crawl with you on hands and knees

read on ao3

read previous chapters

A medical process begins, bringing with it a rollercoaster of emotions.

may

“If this had been a crime scene,” Jake says, looking at the medication vials lined up on their meticulously cleaned kitchen table, “my first impression would be that the people in this home are drug dealers.”

“And if you’d been a better detective,” Amy counters, “you’d have done a quick search of the names to find out they’re fertility drugs.”

“Hey! I’m a great detective!”

She points to the engagement ring on her finger and then to herself. “But I’m the best detective. No take-backs.”

“If I’d known you’d be using my proposal speech against me six years later, I would have written it down first.”

She laughs, shaking her head and unfolding the instruction paper from their doctors to reread the information for the fifteenth time. If Amy had to do a theoretical exam tomorrow on how to administer these injections, she’d get a solid A+, but, gathering the actual courage to do it isn't something you can study for. She's feeling increasingly shaky at the thought.

 It's been over a month since they made their decision. Getting insurance papers in order takes time, as does binder-making, as does confirming each micro-decision with the clinic. For an entire month, Amy's been itching with anticipation and nerves, and she’s both bursting with excitement and sighing with relief over feeling in control for the first time in seven months, but she’s also being struck by the realization of what she’s about to do. As many borderline-insane experiences as she’s lived through, she’s never done this before, and she’s clueless what to expect.

She reads through the instructions yet another time before she starts.

 Jake doesn't look much more stable. He's eyeing her carefully, biting his lip as she prepares the injection, measures up the medication and twists the needle on with minute, precise movements.

“You look like a professional,” he comments on her focused expression, and she makes a doubtful grimace. “Are you sure you haven't done this before?”

“Shot hormones into my stomach? It’s a first.”

“Are you nervous?” It could have been a teasing question, a reason to make fun of her, but when she meets his eyes she sees only concern. It peels away the tough facade - which she was barely grappling onto as it was - instantaneously.

“I'm really nervous,” she says, feeling her heart thundering in her chest like it’s about to break through her skin, and he nods.

“Me too.”

“Do you think you could give me the shot?”

Jake blinks. “You want me to do it? I… are you sure, Ames?”

“Please?” She gives him a pleading look as he looks from the syringe to her and back again, twisting his hands in his lap. “At least the first time, before I know what it feels like?”

 And we said we’d do this together, she opens her mouth as if to add, but the words feel superfluous. They’re a given, and from the way he reaches out his hand to gently hold hers, stroking his thumb over her wrist as he nods, she knows that he knows, too.

She folds the hem of her tank top to sit underneath her chest and grabs an alcohol wipe before there’s time for either of them to change their mind.

“I don’t like this,” Jake confesses as she gives him the syringe, quickly instructing him on the procedure another time. “It feels like I’m hurting you. ”

“You’re not.” She closes her eyes, grabbing the disinfected skin with both hands. “Just inject me.”

“Title of your sextape?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fair,” he says, and then she feels the quick pinch.

 The injection burns. It’s better than she feared, but far from pleasant, and she tenses for the few everlasting seconds it takes before it's over and Jake presses a bit of gauze to the area.

“Wow,” he laughs, drawing a relieved breath when she opens her eyes again. “I can't believe I did that. I am so brave.”

She glares at him. “Excuse me?”

“Kidding, kidding.” He chuckles again before wrapping her in a tight hug. “You did great, babe.”

 She can feel the liquid stinging beneath her skin. Despite the discomfort, Amy already prefers this over the frustration of the last seven months - at least it means they’re actively doing something. The physical pain is a drop in the ocean compared to the mental agony of endless disappointments she's gone through, and she’d choose it above the latter in a heartbeat.

Maybe, she lets herself think, a timid but golden glimmer of hope shining through the grey clouds of hesitance. Maybe this could actually work.

 Jake kisses her cheek before his head moves lower. Just as she's about to ask what he thinks he's doing, she feels his lips brush against her skin, once, twice, a few inches from the injection place.

“Better?” He asks, and she manages a weak smile.

“Much.”

 -

 The second shot is easier than the first one, the third easier than the second. By the fourth night, she's gathered enough confidence to do the procedure all on her own when Jake has to stay late at work, and by the fifth night, she no longer winces at the stinging sensation.

It's absurd, she thinks as the burning slowly fades, the things you get used to.

 She plans their schedule around level checks at the clinic, taking blood tests and doing ultrasounds while Leah happily lays a puzzle on the floor of the examination room. A nurse compliments the toddler’s skill and Leah shines up like the sun itself, and after Amy’s told her body’s reacting perfectly to the stimulating hormones, they both leave the clinic grinning. She’s in such a good mood, she can’t even bring herself to say no when her daughter points to the frozen yogurt place across the store and looks at Amy with the pleading puppy-eyes that are so hard to resist. She’s not too proud about breaking their rule of ice cream being a weekend treat, but she has to admit that watching Leah shine with pride as she makes varyingly successful attempts of feeding herself without spilling is both an awesome celebration and happiness boost.

 Even without the level checks, she would have been able to tell the injections are taking. She’s sore, her head wrecks, and she feels bloated enough to consider changing into yoga pants several times a day. She’s exhausted in a way she hasn’t been since she had a newborn, nearly falling asleep at her desk in the afternoons and being nudged awake by a worried beat cop, and it takes every ounce of her willpower not to start crying herself when Leah has her third breakdown for the day over the disappearance of a puzzle piece. On day eight of injections, Amy falls asleep on the couch before it’s time to take them, and when Jake wakes her up there’s a part of her wishing he hadn’t.

“We could still change our minds and get a cat instead,” he suggests in a half-hearted attempt at a joke as she mumbles a curse when she feels the stinging. “Way fewer needles, just saying.”

“Please don’t tempt me right now,” she mutters. He laughs nervously before repeating the same action he’s taken to each time they do this together, leaning down and placing a feather-light kiss right above the injection area.

It’s transient, but for a second, she allows herself to think there’s a certain beauty to this process, too.

 -

  The night before their egg retrieval, she scratches that thought.

It’s the first evening in twelve days she’s not taking any injections. It should be a relief, a long-awaited and much well-deserved break after the previous night’s final trigger shot, but she’s too nervous about the next day to enjoy it. Jake’s working late - something about a time-sensitive lead he promised would be handled in a couple of hours - and Leah falls asleep with her head on Amy’s shoulder somewhere around their fourth reread of Guess How Much I Love You, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She brews a cup of green tea and goes to change into pajamas before sinking down on the couch to watch Jeopardy!, and she’s doing okay until she catches a proper glimpse of her body in the wardrobe’s full-length mirror and breaks down.

 The bloated feeling isn’t just in her head. She’s swollen, looking three months pregnant for the wrong reasons, and it's painful on so many levels. She thinks it would have been fine if it’d been the sole notable difference, because a bit of temporary weight-gain rarely bothers her, but it’s not the worst thing. What makes her do a double-take is the bruises scattered across her lower abdomen, an uneven pattern of dark violet, red and yellow marks after the needles. The reflection in the mirror looks like it’s been beaten up, literally punched in the stomach with a knuckle-duster, and Amy feels as if she’s entirely separate from the person she sees.

This isn’t her.

This isn’t what she’s supposed to look like.

This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

 She doesn’t feel brave or beautiful, doesn’t recognize even a shadow of a stubborn fighter in the reflection staring back at her. The only thing she sees is sheer exhaustion, a person tired of fighting for control over the uncontrollable, and it’s a haunting image nowhere close to how she’s used to seeing herself. She throws on an oversized NYPD sweatshirt and closes the wardrobe door in a swift moment before she can stare any longer, but it’s too late - the sight is etched on her memory, and the silent tears take several minutes to stop falling.

There’s no beauty in this process. If there was, surely she wouldn’t be feeling this way.

 -

 Amy doesn’t get much sleep that night. She’s tossing and turning, lying awake and staring at the ceiling between short bits of light slumber. When her alarm finally sounds, she feels less rested than before she went to bed. On top of that, she can't have coffee because of the anesthesia, and has to be satisfied with casting longing looks at Jake's takeaway Starbucks cup. She swears the paper mug is ogling her by the time they reach the clinic’s parking lot.

“Ames, I’m sure one sip won't matter if the alternative is you staring at it like a psychopath.”

“It's not a clear liquid. I'm not risking it.”

“Fine. But if you murder me for this, I will tell people I gave you the offer.” She snorts, the corners of her mouth twitching, and there's a look of pride on Jake's face when he realizes he’s made her smile. “How are you feeling? Aside from the coffee-abstinence?”

“Tired. Disappointed.”

“Ah, yes, something gave that away.”

“Not because of the coffee,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I mean of this whole thing. It's not at all what I was picturing when I suggested we’d have another baby.”

 Jake doesn't reply immediately, twisting the cup’s plastic lid back and forth while he stares out the window, watching another couple enter the building with hands intertwined.

“I know it wasn't, babe.”

“I'm sorry I suggested fertility treatments,” she mumbles, and he looks at her with a curious countenance. “I bet it's not even going to work.”

“Hey, you don't know that yet.” He places a hand on her thigh, getting a bit of coffee foam on her jeans. “We’ve gotten this far, right? Shame to give up hope now.”

“The eggs could be bad quality. They might not fertilize, they might not implant. So many things could still go wrong.”

“Sheesh. Ever the optimist, aren’t you?” She glares at him, but he’s unbothered by her bitterness, a confident smile on his lips as he finishes the last of his coffee. “If you bet it's not going to work, I'll bet it will. Mind you, I have a history of winning most of our bets.”

“You do not.”

“Agree to disagree,” he laughs, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear and stroking her cheek. “Let’s just do it and see what happens, okay? You wanted to give this a try, we’re giving it a try.”

“You have to hold my hand.”

“I’ll hold your hand.”

“We’re going for coffee as soon as they release me.”

“I thought we were trying to save money?”

“We are going for coffee.”

“Okay, so non-negotiable. Cool.”

 It might be the cup of coffee she finally gets to consume when they stop by Starbucks on the way, or that she’s feeling less like a hormone-inflated alien after the procedure, but Amy’s mood is much improved by the time they’re back home. For a few days, it’s all out of her hands. She can’t do anything but hold onto the thought of six eggs, less than ideal but more than the zero she feared, about to be fertilized and left to grow in perfect lab conditions for at least five to six days. On the one hand, she’s powerless, but on the other hand, it’s outside her realm of control, literally taking place outside of her body. In a certain sense, it's relieving.

 She’s dizzy after the anesthesia. She claims she’s fine, because dizziness is nothing compared to the pain and crushing anxiety she felt before, but she stumbles over their doorstep and nearly loses her balance, so Jake takes a careful grip of both her shoulders as he leads her to their bed and helps her lay down.

“You should take a nap,” he whispers, stroking her hair as she gives him a faint smile.

“I’m not that tired.”

“I have to pick up our two-year-old from daycare in two hours.”

“On second thought I will be taking that nap.”

They end up taking it together. Jake’s arm is wrapped around her waist, their heads are resting so close together that the tips of their noses touch, and when she wakes up a punctual thirty minutes later, she wonders if it’s the first romantic thing they’ve gotten up to this month where needles haven’t been involved.

“If I get pregnant,” she whispers in his ear, daring to pronounce the word for the first time in weeks, “I promise you we’ll take an honest-to-god babymoon or something. Just the two of us on a beach somewhere.”

He responds with a loud snore, and it takes more of Amy’s self-control than it should not to laugh at him.

 She must have both fallen asleep again and slept through Jake disentangling himself from her, because the next time she regains conscience, it’s to the feeling of her favorite three-feet-tall human climbing on top of her back while giggling uncontrollably.

“Carefully, bumblebee, I said carefully,” she hears Jake’s exasperated voice, and then a high-pitched complaint from her daughter as he lifts her off of Amy. “Most people like it when you wake them up more calmly.”

“It’s okay,” Amy says, sensing without opening her eyes that Leah's close to bursting out into tears. “Do you want to snuggle with me for a bit, Lee? You're invited too, Jake.”

“Oh, yeah, Lee, what do you think?”

“Go to the park,” the toddler insists, shaking her head. “Swinging!”

“If you cuddle with us in bed for two minutes, I will take you to the park after.”

“Swinging,” Leah repeats grumpily.

“But first cuddling?” Jake tries.

“Swinging!” Her expression softens, lower lip pouting and eyes widening like she's learned to do so masterfully. “Please?”

She can't yet pronounce the word correctly, so it comes out more like a pleath, but it's the cutest thing in the world and has both parents exchanging meaning looks, knowing they've already lost.

 It must be Leah's lucky day, because there's a toddler swing free already when they get to the park. Amy thinks it must be her lucky day as well, because there's also a bench free with a perfect view of the swingset, meaning she can watch Jake and Leah play while she soaks up the afternoon sun. The toddler is squealing with joy, her excitement getting louder with each push of the swing. Jake’s asking her if she wants to go higher, urging her to hold on tight while he pushes the swing slightly higher than Amy would prefer, but Leah’s thrilled and Jake is beaming as he watches their daughter have the time of her life.

 Amy doubts she’ll ever tire of watching the two of them interact. Part of her always knew he’d make an amazing father - despite his own doubts, she’s never wavered. Still, she could never have imagined just how present, loving and dedicated of a parent he would become, and she feels blessed to get to see it in action day after day. Although she wishes she was hanging out in the shadow and pushing a sleeping baby in a stroller, or feeling them move around inside her, she has this. She’ll always have this. Nothing can take the family she already has away from her, and as difficult as it is to feel grateful for anything after nearly two weeks’ worth of needles, she's indescribably thankful for them.

 “Monkey!” Leah exclaims, pointing at a squirrel rushing between trees while Amy tries to feed her small pieces of dried fruit-bar. They’re taking a snack break to replenish their energy, but the toddler is distracted to say the least.

“That’s a squirrel, baby.”

“Monkey,” Leah repeats, pointing to another squirrel.

“Still a squirrel. Monkeys are bigger.”

“Also much less commonly found in New York,” Jake adds. “Presumably. I’ve never been sure about Hitchcock.”

“Monkeys!”

“Ames, did we ever teach her animals?”

“We must have. I distinctly remember reading those god-awful books about animals at the zoo over and over for three months.”

“Oh, right!” Jake lights up. “How could I ever forget your incredible dolphin voice? Truly haunting. You turned her against SeaWorld from the start, babe.”

“Shut up, your gorilla voice wasn’t much better.”

“Monkeys,” Leah repeats in a serious tone as if to remind them of the matter at hand, and then she’s almost up and chasing after another squirrel before Amy catches her and tickles her. She falls back against the picnic blanket, squirming to get away while she keeps laughing her infectious toddler laugh, and Amy’s trying hard to keep a poker-face but she’s overtired and relieved and so absolutely happy, it’s worthless. It’s mere seconds before all three of them are laughing uncontrollably, and for a moment, every bit of heartache she’s felt over the last days is cured.

  -

  The day before the transfer, they have to go in for a meeting to decide how many embryos to transfer. It’s an interesting discussion, with Amy and their doctor arguing in favor of one and Jake hung up on the idea that an increased chance of twins would be the coolest thing ever and they should do two, but they eventually end up making the decision to transfer one and freeze the remaining two embryos.

“Chicken,” Jake tells her when they’re leaving the clinic. “Two for the price of one, right?”

“You try being pregnant with one child before deciding you want to try two.”

“Fine,” he laughs. “So you think it’s going to stick, huh?”

Amy blushes. “Maybe? She did say they were high-quality.”

“I'm sure she'll give you a gold star if you ask.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Keep up the optimism,” he says, and the wide grin he gives her makes her want to follow his advice. “You know, in two weeks you might be pregnant.”

 Hearing the words makes her heart flutter with joy, making her halt suddenly to wrap her arms around him, kissing him so hard it takes him by surprise. His hands wave, hesitating before they find their spot on her waist, but then he’s as wrapped up in it as she is. She cups his chin with one hand, stroking her thumb over the light stubble and pouring all of her cautious hope into this kiss, soaking him up, taking him in. The moment is short-lived, but it’s enough to bring out the spark she hopes they’ll never lose.

“What was that for?” He asks when she pulls away.

“Luck,” she smiles.

 -

  It feels like a monumental day when they pull into the parking lot the next morning. Amy supposes if everything goes well, it will be, and then she reflects upon how in that case, she'll always know the exact date and hour for when something could have started to grow.

Her first pregnancy had been such a shock in the beginning; not unplanned, but happening way faster than she’d anticipated. Amy wonders if she glorified the welcome surprise in her memories, romanticizing the feeling that this little person had, in a sense, chosen them. If their first round of IVF works, it's going to be a result of medicines and treatments and them being so proactive about wanting this, and although she places no value in the discrepancy, it feels clearly dissimilar. Equally as beautiful, but in an entirely different way.

 She clings to the beautiful parts. The long hug Jake gives her before they go in because he can tell she's shaking, and how nice and considerate everyone who introduces themselves to them is. She focuses on Jake's hand squeezing hers throughout the short procedure, and on getting to see the quick flash happen on the ultrasound screen. The giddiness between them as they drive home after, the way he insists on tucking her into bed for her advised day of bed rest, and the buffet of snacks he runs and gets them.

Most of all, she clings to the monochrome printed picture of the embryo, looking like nothing but a tiny bubble against some light background but giving her hope all the same.

Please, she thinks before they turn out the light that evening, clutching the thin paper over her heart.

Please, please, stick.

  ~

  june

If Amy found the days between egg retrieval and transfer were nerve-wracking, the ten days between her transfer and blood test prove to be yet more agonizing. She tries her best to stay distracted, letting the days pass by in a flurry of work shifts, toddler meltdowns and even a visit to Shaw’s Bar for a sense of normalcy on a night when Karen is babysitting. Charles gives her bottle of non-alcoholic beer meaning looks throughout the whole night, and she mumbles something about her low alcohol tolerance to which he just nods, one eyebrow raised in disbelief. She tries to ignore the persistent thought in the back of her head, reminding her his suspicions could technically be correct.

 Hope is a dangerous thing, Amy thinks as she goes through the first pages of the diary she kept during her first pregnancy, desperately trying to remember what early signs she felt the first time. Hope makes you crazy. Hope is what’s making her overanalyze her every sensation and shift in mood until she barely trusts herself anymore. Is she experiencing the first hints of first-trimester fatigue, or has Leah just woken up at four-thirty a.m. for the last three mornings? Is she nauseous, or did she simply drink coffee on an empty stomach and forget to eat until early afternoon? Is her sense of smell heightened, or did Charles bring an extra eye-watering lunch today? The question marks are endless, and they make the ten days until her blood test feel eternal.

 The day before the test, Leah and the rest of the kids in her daycare group put on a little show for the parents. It’s the sort of thing Amy always suspected parents lied about or greatly exaggerated, but it turns out watching her daughter proudly march in uneven circles while happily singing along to songs about numbers and letters all while waving to her parents is more than enough to ensure there are tears of pride in Amy’s eyes throughout the performance.

“You’re not going to stop crying, are you?” Jake teases her as they’re pulling out of the parking lot, Leah still singing a song about cows.

“I’m emotional,” she laughs through the tears, and she can tell from the way his eyes narrow that he’s thinking it, too - even more than usual.

-

  The following night, Amy jolts awake at 3 a.m.

She tries to fall asleep again for a good thirty minutes, tossing and turning and snuggling closer to Jake to make herself calm down, but nothing works and she's as awake as if she’d just chugged a thermos of black coffee. She solves a crossword puzzle on the Times app on her phone, hoping for it to either distract her or tire her out, but it manages neither. She is physically unable to relax. There’s no way for her to stop thinking about how today’s the day, today’s the day they’ll find out whether or not the money, time and bruises led to somewhere, if they’ll be adding another member to their family in nine months, whether or not she’s finally pregnant.

There are five hours left until her scheduled appointment. It’s not a long time, not when Leah will be up in three hours, but it feels like forever. She wants to know now, and she’s not going to fall asleep again before she does.

One at-home test can’t hurt, she decides.

 Grabbing her phone and a sweater Jake must have thrown on the floor yesterday, she crawls out of bed and pads into their modestly sized bathroom, praying there’s an unused test left somewhere.

It takes her a couple of minutes to find one. The package is stashed deep in their cupboard behind bottles of shampoo, its hiddenness former evidence of a moment’s weakness when she must have been unable to even see it. It’s been a long and frustrating eight months, but as Amy places the plastic stick down on the floor to let the result develop, washing her hands carefully before starting a timer and putting in contact lenses, she can’t help but wonder if their struggle has come to a much yearned-for end.

A small hourglass flashes on the little digital display, and her heart is full-on racing, pounding with each appearance and disappearance of the symbol.

Then, with thirty seconds left on the three-minute timer, the result appears and she swears fireworks go off outside.

 There aren’t any actual fireworks, of course. To anyone else, it’s an ordinary night in early June, but to Amy, it’s the night of a forthright miracle. It’s an indignity there are no fireworks.

 The screen reads Pregnant, 1-2 Weeks, and she feels happy tears form in her eyes as the relief floods her, a maelstrom of emotions coming at her without warning.

Pregnant.

They’re having another baby.

Her hand goes instinctively to her lower abdomen, where the bruises from the injections are still fading, and something unimaginably small but existing, has started to grow.

 “Jake.” She shakes his shoulder as she repeats his name. “Jake. Babe.”

There's a low groan and a sigh, but he doesn't open his eyes. She shakes him carefully again.

“Jake, please wake up.”

“Hmm. No.”

“I promise you're going to want to wake up for this.”

He makes another gruff sound, somewhere between a grunt and a yawn. “S’the middle of the night. S’ anything wrong?”

“No, no. The opposite,” she says, and he looks at her for a second before his eyes fall shut again.

“What d’you mean?”

She leans closer, kissing the back of his neck before she whispers the words. “Babe, I'm pregnant.”

“What?” He sits up straight so quickly, Amy almost flies back on the bed as she loses her balance. “Wait - how d'you know - what?”

She laughs, because she's barely believing it either, and hands him the minutes-old test so he can see for himself. “I couldn't sleep, so I took one to see, and… it's positive.”

“Oh my god,” he blinks, twisting the test in his hands while a wide grin takes shape on his lips, his expression morphing from sleep-deprived toddler parent to overjoyed child on Christmas morning. “Oh my god, Ames.”

“I know!”

“This is - we're having another baby?”

“Yeah! It worked!”

“I can’t believe it.” He shakes his head, and then he wraps her in a tight hug while pressing kisses to her cheeks, her neck, her shoulder, every spot he can reach. “You did it, babe.”

“You helped.”

“Eh, barely. You were the one who took all those shots.”

“I did,” she grimaces. “They were worth it, though.”

“We’re having a baby,” he whispers, and the smile on her lips grows impossibly wider.

“We’re having a baby.”

It’s dusky inside their bedroom, but the world has never felt brighter.

  -

  Neither of them gets more sleep that night. All they can do is lay next to each other, watch the sun rise through the window and repeat their shock and immeasurable happiness to one another.

They’re having another child, and they are going to be the two-kid-family she always pictured. She is going to experience the few magical parts of pregnancy and times with a newborn she couldn't accept never experiencing again, Leah will have a sibling to grow up next to and possibly an automatic best friend for life. For the last few months, Amy's been scared to death it wouldn’t ever happen to them again, and now she's blessed with the knowledge it will.

She's not broken. Her body can still do this, albeit with a bit of help to get there, but it can and it is, and she feels like the luckiest woman in the world.

 It's the first time she's purely confident when they park outside the fertility doctor. A quick little blood test to confirm what she already knows to be true, and she can move on with her life, pregnant, and put all this behind her.

“Did you take a home test?” The friendly nurse asks as she adjusts the tight band around Amy’s upper arm. Amy’s not even making an effort to hide her proud smile.

“Maybe,” she confesses, and it makes the young woman chuckle.

“Congratulations.”

The results will take a couple of hours, she's informed, and the clinic will call and leave a voicemail when her numbers are in. The screen lights up when she's in the middle of a conversation with Detective Alvarado later in the afternoon, and it takes a lot more self-control than it should for Amy to not instantly reach for her phone. The last hours of her workday seem to stretch forever, and by the time she meets up with Jake in the precinct’s garage to listen to the message, she's bursting with excitement and joy.

 He’s not much better, looking at her with the heart-eyes that still make her blush as she gets into the passenger seat. The happiness is infectious, so she leans over to kiss him a few seconds longer than she'd deem appropriate for technically being inside the workplace.

“I was thinking we should celebrate with pizza tonight,” he says when they break it off. “Both because well, pizza, and also because I couldn’t have pizza at home for months last time you were pregnant or you’d be sick. I figure I need to take my chance while I can.”

“Planning ahead.” Amy raises an eyebrow. “Impressive.”

“Well, I’m a super-experienced dad now, right?” He leans back in the seat, crossing his arms behind his head. “I’m going to have two kids! That’s grown-up for realz.”

“As opposed to having one?”

“I’m just saying it’s next level,” he remarks and it makes her laugh. “Let's hear the voicemail, shall we?”

She nods and reaches for his hand before pressing play on the voicemail recording.

 It only takes the few seconds their nurse takes to say who she is and why she’s calling for Amy to realize something is wrong.

 It’s in the worried tone, the hesitant atmosphere emanating from the speakers, and it feels like her heart has stopped dead in her chest when she hears it.

“So you’re in a bit of a gray area,” the nurse explains, pronouncing each word with great care. “Your level showed up at a 13. As you know, any hcG level above 25 is pregnant and anything below 5 is not. Anything in between needs a retest.”

Jake squeezes her hand harder, and she can sense his eyes on her as if he’s trying to read her reaction. She tries to squeeze back but finds she can’t move her fingers or turn her face, can’t do anything but stare straight ahead with her lips pursed.

“This could, of course, be nothing and your pregnancy could just be slow-starting,” the message continues, each word still being spoken as slowly. “But since we would prefer to see your levels above 50 to be certain, you’ll have to come in for a retest in two days to see if they’ve increased.” The nurse sighs. “I am so sorry about this trouble. You two take care and I’ll see you again soon.”

There’s a click and a dial tone as the message ends, and they’re left with a silence that seems to weigh tons.

 She notices her tears first when Jake wipes them away with the pad of his thumb, his hand warm against her cheek.

“It’s just slow-starting, babe. The test said you’re pregnant.”

“Not pregnant enough, apparently.”

“You don’t know that yet,” he says, decisively. “Our kids are stubborn as hell. It’ll be okay.”

“You really think so?”

“I do.” The hand still intertwined with hers squeezes harder again. It’s an effort, but she manages to squeeze his back. “Somehow, we always end up okay.”

 She nearly makes a snarky comment about death threats and witness protection, trials and prison sentences, but stops herself. It’s not comparable, and she knows the Amy who stayed up all night working on her boyfriend’s case before crying herself to sleep in the early hours of the morning would probably have been content with never having any kids at all if it meant Jake could come back home, but times have changed since then. It doesn’t matter that she knows they’ve been through worse, because the level of pain and worry still feels unbearable when they’re in the thick of it, the letdowns and disappointments so present here and now.

“I hope so,” she whispers and lets his warm smile give her an ounce of comfort, a sliver of sparkling hope. “Can we go pick up Lee now? I just… need to think about something else, for a while.”

“Yeah, of course.” His lips brush against her forehead for a second. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“It’ll be okay, Amy.”

She nods, undecided as to whether or not she believes him.

 -

 She knows the next day must pass, because she wakes up two mornings later when it's time for the retest, but there aren't any memories there when she tries to think back at. It's like she's been sleepwalking for the entire day. Nothing feels real except the overwhelming worry and the voice in her head repeating you’re worthless, a failure, your body can't even do this.

She peels away the skin on her lips and fingertips until both are bleeding in an attempt to feel something. She doesn't remember this, either, but there are bandaids on her fingers when she wakes up the next morning and her lips are all cracked even though it's summer.

 “You know it’s not over yet,” Jake mumbles as they’re waking up and she gets stuck on the edge of the bed, unable to tear her eyes away from the embryo picture on her nightstand.

It looks like a foggy soap bubble, she thinks, and wonders how she could pour so much hope, love and blind faith into something that might never make it past the very first steps of existence.

She nods and abstains from telling him what she’s really thinking.

It feels like it is.

 There’s a dull ache in her stomach as she takes the blood test. At first, she chalks it down to nerves and that all she could get down for breakfast was coffee and half of an apple, but as the pain level increases and begins imitating an all too familiar sensation, she realizes what it could be. There aren’t any tampons in her bag, so she curses her past, temporarily optimistic, self for not putting new ones there the last time she ran out, and drives to the nearest CVS.

 When they were starting the procedure, she was worried and desperate, clinging onto the little bit of faith that came with knowing they were at least being proactive about it. After the transfer, she was cautiously optimistic, reading into each sign and even daring to feel hopeful about the outcome. Now, she’s just numb. She can’t think, can’t feel, can’t react to what’s happening around her if so somebody slapped her in the face. Amy has lived her life being anxiously alert to every shifting detail around her, but as she browses the CVS aisles in a coma, she’s never felt more cut off from reality.

She does note how the cashier in the checkout has a pronounced baby bump. It feels like a sick joke.

 The joke continues, because she’s just stepped out of the building when her phone vibrates with the call from the fertility doctor’s office.

“Amy Santiago.”

“Hi, yes.” It’s a different nurse than for the previous call, Amy notes, but the serious tone is the same. “I’m calling with your results from today’s blood test.”

She bites her lip, tasting blood from the already broken skin. “They’re not good, are they?”

“Your hCG was down to an 11.”

“Oh.”

“Unfortunately, it means you’re going to lose this pregnancy.”

“Yeah. I… figured.”

“I truly am so sorry about this,” the nurse assures her. “If it’s any comfort, know this means the pregnancy wasn’t ever viable, and your body simply did what’s best and terminated it before anything ever fully implanted. You’ll possibly get a bit of a more painful period, but after, nothing should stop you from trying again as soon as you feel ready.”

“Okay.”

“I know that might not make it feel better, but this is not uncommon, and it’s not something you could have prevented, either. Sometimes it isn’t meant to be.”

“No, I understand,” Amy manages to get out, and the nurse hums at the other end of the phone.

“You can take as much time as you need, and then get back to us about whether you’d like to start another cycle. Does it sound okay?”

“Sure.”

“Perfect, then. Take care,” the voice advises, and two repeated beep-sounds signal the end of the call.

 There aren’t any benches nearby. Thus, when Amy feels her legs give way in the next second, all she can do is slide down until she’s sitting down on the sidewalk outside the store, her back against the wall and her arms around her knees as the panic crashes over her. Her lungs feel tight, getting tighter as she gasps for air between the ugly crying that’s slipping out of her before she can control it. Although she’s cried her fair share of tears in the last few weeks, it’s been a long time since she cried like this, forceful and broken in a wounded animal-type of way that earns her weird glances from the people walking past, but she resolutely shakes her head when a stranger tries to come closer. With trembling hands she manages to press the favorites button, calling Jake, and then she tries to take a deep breath and force air into her lungs while she waits for him to pick up.

 “Ames?”

She can’t get out a single word before her voice breaks. Instead of a comprehensible pair of sentences comes a blubbering string of words, not one of them sounding the way they’re supposed to, and she can hear his confusion as he repeats her name in a questioning tone but she can’t explain. Her head hurts, her lungs hurt, and hearing the sudden worried edge in Jake’s voice hurts.

“Where are you? Send me your location.” She stutters a vague description. “Okay, stay where you are and I’ll be there in ten.”

 It ends up only being seven minutes before he’s kneeling in front of her, still wearing his badge and all out of breath as he helps her stand up and leads her to their car without asking a single question of what she’s doing here or what’s happened. She figures he understands - or at least, has drawn the conclusion from her wrecked appearance. She makes several attempts of opening her mouth, trying to apologize for her shattered state as the traces of her eye makeup are smudging on her cheek and she’s fighting for breath, crying so hard it feels like she’s going to throw up from the mix of snot and hysteria stuck in her throat, but it's impossible to speak.

“Ames, can you try to breathe for me, please? In for three and out for three.” He’s holding both of her hands as he guides her, his thumb rubbing soothing circles over her knuckles. She manages to hold her breath for two seconds, shaking as she exhales, and he nods. “Good, you’re doing great. Try another time.”

They go on like that for several minutes. Eventually, the vigorous bawling calms into a quieter sobbing, and she nearly collapses into his arms as he strokes her hair, whispering soft I love yous to which she can only respond with more crying.

“Let’s go home,” he suggests, his voice stable and solid even as everything is crumbling around them.

 -

 “Are you sure you don’t have to go back to work?”

“Yeah. Rosa owed me one.”

“Did you call Holt?”

“I will.” His lips brush against her neck. “Later.”

They're laying on the bed, Amy being the little spoon for once. The waves of intense panic have quietened down thanks to exhaustion, and she's breathing properly, in and out as Jake holds her. Rays of sunlight are shining through the curtains, alerting her to the beautiful summer’s day outside, and she wishes Jake would close them. She doesn’t want to be reminded of the outside world. It means nothing to her, anyway.

 They should have been celebrating, making sure to get off work early, picking up Leah from daycare and going for celebratory ice-cream in the middle of the week. Now they’re here, her wrapped in an extra blanket because she couldn’t stop shivering, Jake playing with her hair in a fruitless attempt of making her feel better. He’s made her coffee and a sandwich, too, insisting she needed to refill her energy after the panic attack, but she hasn’t managed more than a couple of bites. The picture of the embryo she’s about to lose still sits on her nightstand, and she’s tried but she can’t stop staring at it.

“I’m so stupid,” it slips out of her without thinking, and Jake freezes.

“You’re not stupid, Ames.”

“I really thought it was going to last,” she continues, unaffected by his protest. “I really did.”

“So did I.”

She ignores that too, finally tearing her focus away from the picture and rolling on her back so she’s looking up at the ceiling instead. “You know it barely counts as a miscarriage at this point?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s called a chemical pregnancy because it didn’t get far enough to be visible on an ultrasound. Chemical. Like it’s just… an error.” She snivels. “That’s what I feel like. An error.”

“You’re not an error,” he says, in a low voice like it’s hurting him to hear her say it. “We’ll try again.”

“How many times, Jake? How many damn times do we have to try again?”

“We said two before we reevaluate - “

“I know what we said,” she cuts him off. “But I’m exhausted.”

“We could take a break?”

“No, we’re trying again.”

“Okay.” His fingers move over her cheek, cupping her jaw and pulling her towards him so they’re face to face. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She swallows the tears that seem to be on their way back. “I can't believe I thought it was real.”

“It felt real.”

“So real,” she breathes, and he hugs her tighter.

 She's gotten so tired of crying.

[osmw1]

Crowbar Nurse   Chapter 10 — The Villainess Princess Awakens

“Christ… we were so busy looking around us that we didn’t notice her right there. Does she seem okay?” “She’s unconscious… but she’s breathing, and her heartrate isn’t abnormal.”

I had one hand at the tip of her nose and the other on one of her wrists. Her chest was rising and falling with every breath and I could feel her pulse by her radius. She wasn’t even that pale either.

“This girl is quite the villainess princess.” “A vil—what?”

Kiryū’s face twisted in bewilderment. I suppose he’s never heard of the term.

“Umm, you know how in dating sims for girls, there’s always an evil rich girl character?” “Can’t say I’m familiar with female-oriented dating simulations.” “That was rhetorical. But you seemed to know a thing or two about them given the way you were speaking.” “…” “… fine, whatever. The evil rich girl character hates the heroine and treats her like dirt, and in the end, gets her just deserts.” “Oh, yeah, I get what you’re talking about… the punching bag for the player, in a sense.” “… that’s a little blunt, but, I mean, you’re not wrong…” “So, that’s the kind of character this girl is?”

Kiryū eyed the villainess princess who had lain on the ground.

“That’s right. Her name is Elizabeth. She was the rival of the protagonist of a popular fantasy visual novel from about ten years back, called DokiDoki☆Alice in Bourgeoisie Country.” “… what.” “As I said, she’s from DokiDoki☆Alice in Bourgeoisie Country.” “Huh?” “How many times do I have to tell you that it's DokiDoki☆Alice in Bourgeoisie Country. Elizabeth is an evil landlord who bought up lots of real estate and torments the protagonist because she moved in to one of Elizabeth’s properties without paying her respects. That cane over there? She uses it to beat the protagonist. Elizabeth may look cute, but she’s awfully ferocious, you know?” “DokiDoki☆Alice in Bourgeoisie Country… I have never heard of a title this absurd and ridiculous before.”

I could tell Kiryū was getting more exasperated as he muttered.

“Though the developer folded up quite a few years back, they still perform the DokiABC musical from time to time. It’s stubbornly popular. Anyway, in the game, you’re supposed to build relationship with your tenants and buy up property with your goal of being the most powerful landlord in the world.” “Tenants… property…” “You even fight against unscrupulous gangsters trying to buy up land, ultimately leading to you protecting your tenants in a gunfight showdown.” “… it, uhh, doesn’t exactly sound like it’d appeal to women, but what do I know…”

Kiryū slumped down and blinked blankly, seemingly shell-shocked from the newly acquired info.

“That’s why it’s funny though. Her curled silver pigtails, her purple dress, and her mithril walking stick… that’s Elizabeth, no doubt about it. Evil princesses like her are a common trope in novels, but they don’t come up too often in games, hey?” “… the more I think about it, the less I am sure of anything. Anyway, should we wake up said Elizabeth here?”

He wisely switched topics, to which I nodded yes while bending over to pat Elizabeth on the cheek.

“Hmm, I’m not sure if she’s a heavy sleeper or what, but she’s not waking up… she’s human, right?”

I looked up at Kiryū for an answer.

“… well, she’s clearly a character from another game. She’s got to be human.”

His answer sounded more like a sigh.

“Let me try swinging a little harder… hmm, no, nothing.” “Slap her any harder and I’d start feeling bad. Let’s leave it at this. There’s something more important, actually. Let me see your phone.”

His tone made it sound like he had a bright idea, so I reached into my pocket and pulled it out for him.

“Since we’re not in a proper part of the game, there shouldn’t be any enemies sneaking up on us. Staying here for the rest of our journey would be preferable.” “That makes sense… oh, the passcode is my birthday, ‘0511’.” “Change it right now.” “Noooo, don’t wanna.” “I’m not asking.” “Ouch, ouch, ouch! Fine! How about, umm… ‘1337’?” “No, because now I know it. Don’t go telling people your passcode. And add a few more digits too, so it’ll be harder for people to memorize. You never know when people are going to trick you with social engineering.” “Jeez, you nag more than my mother. I’ll change it as soon as I get back to the real world, okay?” “… I’m going to hold you to it. That’s a promise now, you hear?”

Unimpressed at my half-hearted reply, Kiryū scowled as he tapped the four digits to unlock my phone.

“… to no one’s surprise, we’ve got zero reception. Was there anything else different on your phone aside from that ‘Untitled’ app?” “No. Gah, I’ve only got 30% battery left. It would be nice to find a place to charge up.” “I don’t think we’ll have any luck here. We don’t have a Micro-USB cable anyway.”

It’d probably be better not to get my hopes up in finding some way to charge my phone here in Confi City.

“… alrighty. Why don’t we try launching this ‘Untitled’ app…?”

Uncertainty plagued Kiryū’s words as he kept his sight fixed on my phone.

“Let’s take a look and see what happens, I guess…”

My response wasn’t any more confident. This ‘Untitled’ intrigues me… but should we really be tapping on it? It’s not some sort of cursed app, is it? It’s not going to start a countdown to our demise or anything?

I was scaring myself more than anything…

“… oh, shit!”

His voice took me by surprise, both because it was sudden and very unlike him. The next thing I knew, my phone was back in my hands.

“Huh?”

What came immediately was the piercing ring of metal clashing against metal.

“Whoa?!”

I instinctively ducked and curled up into a ball before I dared to look at what was above me…

—The evil princess, Elizabeth, sent her mithril stick down upon my head, only to be intercepted by Kiryū’s crowbar at the last possible moment.

  ☆

  “… I’m ready for your apology anytime now.”

Like swatting a fly, Kiryū effortlessly parried Elizabeth’s attack while flatly sending his words at her. She disappointedly looks down at her cane, frustrated at her loss in the test of strength. To be fair, Kiryū is uncannily powerful…

“We have no hostile intentions towards you. However, what you have just done cannot be seen as anything other than an act of hostility. Do you understand?” “…”

Elizabeth’s kept silent—her loss of words and doubt of what was the correct action were evident. She chose to raise her weapon again.  Kiryū responded with no leniency and knocked her weapon away from her hand. Her fighting spirit was similarly disarmed.

“From what I can tell, you had awakened, stood up, scanned your surroundings, and immediately elected to attack as soon as you had noticed us.”

His words were calm as so was she. Rather, it would be more apt to describe Kiryū as composed as he picked his words very carefully.

“What reasons do you have to attack us? Explain yourself.” “…” “I will not do act with violence if you were to explain yourself. However, keep your silence up and… I, if not we, will consider you as an enemy.”

The gravity and severity of Kiryū’s tone weighed down on Elizabeth, who now seemed to be holding back tears as she bit her lower lip. I felt not so much uncomfortable, as much of a sense of déjà vu, perhaps? His speech was obviously unusual, but the cold and logical manner of his words were… like from some game… and how he stared blankly into the distance front of him… hmm…

“… umm, just wanted to double-check, but Elizabeth, you’re a human being from Japan, right?”

I raised my hand as I spoke up, almost as if I were asking for permission.

“Kiryū—err, this man here—him and I are were working overtime in a Japanese firm and hospital, respectively, before we were transported here. Were you a person in a similar situation? Or perhaps, are you from this game—or rather, this parallel universe?”

My question was met with Elizabeth shaking her head and a scoff, directed at herself if anything.

“… no, I’m no NPC. I’m just a regular human being who was just working overtime as well. So, who am I this time? Elizabeth?” “What do you mean ‘this time’?”

Kiryū immediately picked up what she put down.

“You’re saying you’ve had this happen to you before?” “… yeah, I suppose. If I look like a character from a game and this world is some sort of incomprehensible game world, then… yes, something like this has happened to me before.”

She spoke slowly. But unlike before where she was calm, now she was deliberating on her choice of words.

“Your character is… Kiryū Sōichirō from Rainbow Dreams High School☆Fantasia, right? And you over there?” “Umm, I’m Sera, the heroine from DC2. I mean, I look like her is all.” “Of course. So… whose phone is that?”

She pointed towards the phone that had been tossed onto me. Just as I was about to respond to her though, Kiryū stopped me in my tracks, perhaps to prevent me carelessly divulging any information.

Elizabeth knew what was up just from that. The smirk on her face was sickening. She looked like… she was about to cry—like as if she was forced to do something unpleasant. It was an expression of someone who fights back against the odds, knowing full well how grim they are.

“… I see.  So, it’s yours, Sera.” “What does that have anything to do with anything?”

Perhaps he was being protective of me, Kiryū stepped in between Elizabeth and me as he answered her. Oh, no… did I mess up and say something wrong?

“As I have mentioned before, you attacked us all of a sudden. Anyone else would have been too stunned to do anything, but you knew what to do from the moment you looked at our surroundings,” he pointed around as he spoke, “The way you attacked us, you seemed like you knew exactly what you had to do.” “…” “That means you know what’s going on here and you know how to get out, don’t you?”

His sternness now was a stark contrast to the Kiryū just moments ago, stuffing herbs in his pockets and flailing his crowbar around. Any bystander could tell that he was being on guard.

“Heheh… you’ve hit the nail on the head. You could say I know a little something about this world.”

Elizabeth mockingly scoffed again. And as before, the tears in her eyes didn’t seem to be happy tears.

“… the girl is the ‘core’ of this game. For as long as she lives, this game will never end.”

■Villainess Princess

A trope most commonly associated with female-oriented web novels and seldomly seen in video games. Usually, before the evil rich princess character gains her riches, status, and men, she would have a tragic backstory or event. This usually elicits the player’s empathy, making them question why she is in the role of the antagonist. It is also perhaps the way she overcame her adversity was how the rich girl was led onto the path of the villainess.

Author’s notes

In the field of disaster medicine, it is taught that when triaging without a proper blood pressure meter, systolic blood pressure can be approximated by feeling which areas of the body still has a palpable pulse. A radial pulse should measure 80 mmH, 70 mmHg by femoral pulse, 60 mmHg by carotid pulse, etc. For example, if only the patient's carotid pulse is palpable, their pulse pressure should be about 60 mmHg. If a patient’s normal blood pressure is unknown, a rough rule of thumb would be to consider them to be in shock if if their systolic blood pressure reads under 90 mmHg. (The author's notes were translated without any prior knowledge or understanding of medicine. Please do not use it as any sort of reference or help. Apply critical thinking to anything you read anywhere.)

contents: /ch001/ /ch002/ /ch003/ /ch004/ /ch005/ /ch006/ /ch007/ /ch008/ /ch009/ /ch010/ /next/

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[queensofthekastle]

i think season 2 was uneven but still really enjoyable ^ ^ do y'all have any thoughts you wanna share? i wanna know if y'all found billy's therapist as unbearable as i did lol

I have MANY THOUGHTS. :D

All of my thoughts can be summarized as “this season was looking to be action and adventure and dramapacked and that’s what it was, and yes, that is still a kind of Punisher storyline.” 

What it was not was the cerebral, character-study driven thriller that season 1 was. It seemed to be trying as hard as possible to subvert criticisms that season 1 was “boring” or too cerebral, which is definitely a complaint some people had. (Probably the the same people who didn’t like Valley Forge, Valley Forge, I say, climbing the the most pretentious possible position atop my high horse, but genuinely meaning it as “there are two styles of Punisher story in the comics and season 1 was type A and season 2 was type B and I’m a type A person, more on that later.”) the flip side being that I felt it seemed disconnected from season 1. 

I mean, ok, starting literally exactly where season 1 stopped might have made for a slow start but like, the last time we saw Frank, he was scared out of his mind because the war was finally over in what is one of the greatest single moments of Punisher material in any piece of media ever because at the end of the day, that’s exactly what Frank is: at home in a warzone and silently, (in denial too) just fine with having a never ending war to fight with no way out but to finally get killed. That’s it. That’s the twisted core of Frank Castle. Season 1 did an absolutely spectacular job of bringing that home, yaknow. (I’m sorry. I love puns. I’m terrible. I’m sorry.) But season 2 skipped SO far beyond that point it gave me whiplash!

Now, season 2 used a lot of retrospect and flashbacks to fill us in on things, and I think what we were supposed to have gathered by the end of the first episode was that Frank was:

- on the road

- trying to live a normal life

- doing a pretty good job

- even considering letting himself move on, or try to

- but more eager than he wanted to admit to be back in the shit, hence his jumping right back in as soon as he sees an excuse in this girl who could be just another dirtbag for all he knows.

(Mostly what Ophiliad and I gathered was that Beth is exactly what you would get if you crossed Maria and Karen, she even moves like Karen and has her hair styled the same way WE SEE WHAT YOU DID, MAKEUP AND CASTING!! anyway.) 

But I felt like I had to do some stretchy mental yoga to get all of that. And as such, I felt a little cheated by how little attention was paid to Frank falling back off the wagon. It just boom, happened. I was expecting more drama. I wanted to see if he struggled to live an after or if, and this is what I suspect/headcanon, it was actually pretty ok, because that would add so much more weight to his going back to Punishing so readily. 

Now, the season did come back around and have Frank comment on how maybe this was what he always was, etc. but I would have rather have seen him accepting that than have the show literally audibly tell me as much. That’s my next big takeaway: this season was nowhere near as subtle. Again, probably because the extreme subtlety of season 1 didn’t do as well as they’d hoped. 

Which brings me to my final thought, which I kind of already sarcastically referenced: there have been a couple really, really successful approaches to the Punisher in comics. Season 1 definitely went with the older War Journal or Garth Ennis Punisher MAX style: often cerebral and built on anticipation, driven forward by supporting characters while Frank just force of natures his way through the plot, heavily character-studyish, metatextual A.F. Season 2 didn’t go this way at all: the elements I saw them pulling from were Jason Aaron’s MAX run and Welcome Back, Frank, which is the OTHER flavor of Ennis. (There are very. distinct. flavors. to that man’s work. One of them is irreverent and dark--i.e. Preacher--and one of them will give you secondhand trauma over wars that were fought before you were born--i.e. Born, Valley Forge, Valley Forge, War Stories, GR Trail of Tears). You could see this in their characters, even: Mennonite? The Russian? I see you, Netflix. Whereas season 1 went for war themes and supporting characters like Micro.

The end result was this, anyway: season 2 was a different flavor of Punisher story, the flavor which usually gets used in comics in new ongoings and never reboot or other universe settings. It focused on telling a good bad guy killin Punisher yarn, not on dwelling on a character we already know. This makes a lot of sense, but it suffered from transitioning too suddenly into this style from the season 1 style. As a result, it felt like too much was implied, or that it lacked depth, making it much less impressive television than season 1, if you ask me. (Excepting: everyone’s acting especially Revah and Barnes’. The side characters in this season were amazing. Even Dumont, whose plot I found uncomfortable, was well-executed.)

PS: Karen must have done some serious soul searching between DDs2 and now because she has gone so far to “full fuckit” mode I couldn’t even believe but I’m not going to complain about that because I loved everything I got out of it.

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG136!

- In a very interesting way for an episode dealing with The Web (both as an active force outside of the Institute and… very close to it: Annabelle sending Alison there, Jon being unable to focus on his lighter), this episode dealt, in a lot of small ways, with the idea that members of the Archives team are… regaining control of themselves and their lives?

Melanie is attempting therapy! She’s cautious about it but she’s taking measures to try and get better, she’s putting efforts into it, she wants to feel better!

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I shouldn’t have– MELANIE: Just… forget it. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s good, though. I–I’m glad you’re getting help. MELANIE: Yes, well. We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there. ARCHIVIST: I guess. Still, it–it is a good step.

Jon is right on this and… there was already something hopeful in the way that Melanie didn’t explode at Jon for accidentally compelling her; she wasn’t pleased by it but… she could have shut the conversation down. Instead, she tried to minimise a little what Jon had done and asserted her boundaries, which she did again with the therapist, but without cutting either of them out. She’s clearly not in the bestest of places, was uncomfortable with the topic… but I’m so glad and proud of her for taking this “step”, for deciding that she had to deal with her demons – possibly from way before she even came to the Institute for the first time?

Meanwhile: it wasn’t so much about Jon’s actions but about what he finally admitted – that he’s aware that he made a choice, that he’s actually had… a very twisted and casually self-destructive way of facing the coffin and of considering his own life since he’s woken up:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is.

It has been a process for Jon, too; the theme of “choice” has been sneakily prevalent in season 4 so far, following up on season 3:

(MAG087) Georgie: [SIGH] Look I’ve, I’ve got work to do. You listen, or don’t listen, or cross-record, or whatever you want, just… just think about it first, okay? You can choose to leave it alone. [DOOR CLOSES] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [TAPE PLAYER IS LOADED] [CLICK]

(MAG092) ARCHIVIST: I never chose this! ELIAS: You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.

(MAG111) GERRY: Thing is, it’s harder than it looks. What’s out there doesn’t care about blood. […] But they care about your choices, your fears.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] You– you know what, no. I’m… I’m done with that. No more paranoia. It’s almost got me killed more than once, and… Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them. E– except Elias, obviously, that’s not– I mean…

(MAG121) OLIVER: The thing is, Jon, right now, you have a choice. You’ve put it off for a long time; but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but – still too human to survive. You’re… balanced on an edge where The End can’t touch you – but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices; now you have to– […] Make your choice, Jon.

(MAG132) DAISY: I don’t want t–to be a s–sadistic predator again… I–I don’t want to… hobble around, like some pathetic, wounded prey either… I don’t know which would be worse. And I’m sc–scared, now, that I’ll never get the choice… ARCHIVIST: One thing I’ve learned, Daisy, is that we all get a choice. Even if it doesn’t feel like one.

(MAG134) PETER: … Look. I’m not gonna pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to. It won’t even work unless you’re willing to commit.

(MAG136) DAISY: Get over yourself! You’re always talking about choices – we all made ours. Now I’m making the choice… to get some drinks in. Coming?

So, although his memories are still missing and he might not remember Oliver either (Jon has never mentioned him so far, and given how Jude had been able to kick Jon out of her dreams, he might have done the same thing despite giving a live-statement), Jon is aware that he made a decision – maybe without knowing in the details what was at stake (there could be a few things we could still scream at Elias in MAG092 re: informed consent :w), but he was faced with two options and elected one over the other. It has its own shades of tragic undertones and heartbreak, but it’s also… his own choice, this time around, and still more controlled than “sign papers to become Head Archivist of an eccentric Institute (sells your soul to a Fear god that you’ll now have to feed through other people’s terrors or your own)”. By pushing and questioning Jon, Daisy had been able to make him say what he chose to do (and as seen above, why), and his handling of the coffin was one of such things. Even if, indeed, the Web sent him in that direction (leaving MAG131’s tape for him, maybe manipulating him to some extent through the lighter), Jon, like Martin, is still appropriating what they did as being his own decision:

(MAG134) PETER: What does puzzle me, though, and I mean that genuinely, is… why you were piling tape recorders onto the coffin, while Jon was in there. [PAUSE] It’s a question, Martin, it’s– it’s not an accusation. MARTIN: I don’t know. And I just… felt like it might help. He’s always recording, I thought… it–it might help him… find his way out. PETER: Interesting. Were you compelled? MARTIN: [SULLEN] … I don’t know. … M–maybe? I–I, I definitely wanted to do it… PETER: But? MARTIN: I’m… I’m not sure where the idea came from.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I… [SIGH] I don’t feel like I’m exactly in the best place to judge the… intersection [CHUCKLE] between free will and humanity. Still trying to figure that out myself. [SILENCE] DAISY: Jon… when you went into the coffin. Was it you choosing to do that? Did you actually think you could save me, or was… that something telling you to do it? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: It was me. I was… drawn to it, I’ll admit, but it was my decision.

Jon agreeing to Daisy’s proposition to go get drinks may also be going in his own right direction – back in season 1, Jon would have probably shrugged off the offer? But as Helen told him, “people change” and right there, Jon had a micro-choice; he could have refused and, still, after a small hesitation, decided to go along with it instead.

Of course, when it comes to reclaiming their life back in this episode, the most striking was Daisy; Daisy, who had already explained who she wanted to be (MAG132: “I d–, I don’t… I don’t know who I am without, without the chase… I just know… that I… I don’t like who I was back outside. I don’t want to be her again. I want… to be… better…”) and who, so far, has managed to stick to that; Daisy, who handles herself as best as she can even (especially!) though it requires other people because she wants to avoid being alone for PTSD reasons:

(MAG133) [CLICK–] DAISY: You sure? ARCHIVIST: No, uh, it’s, hum. It’s fine. DAISY: It’s just… Basira’s busy.

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. […] DAISY: [QUICKLY] You’re not babysitting me, alright?! I know that’s what the others think, sometimes, but… that’s not it. I just… don’t like…  being on my own if I can help it. You know. Flashbacks, panic attacks, the usual. Just trying to avoid it if I can. ARCHIVIST: I know, Daisy, I–I do. It’s hard. DAISY: Yeah, well. Don’t let me get in your way.

There is currently something so strong in what we’re seeing of Daisy? In the way she’s aware of her limitations and manages to prevent the conditions leading to potential breakdowns? I feel like she’s following the same logic as when we knew her as a Hunter: when she was seeing a problem, she would just… neutralise it. Hence beating up Mike, hence immediately going for Jon’s voicebox; hence her Cold Factual Violence overall against spooks/vampires/“monsters” of various kinds. Basira had said that she liked Daisy because she was “solid”, because of her certainty, and this is still the same Daisy – though not hurting others anymore! And she pulled an incredible power move:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: It, uh… Hm. Is, uh… Weird question, but… I… [EXHALE] I haven’t seen you in my dreams? The last couple of weeks? DAISY: … Oh, uh, no. I… I work here, now. I figured it seems to protect the others, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh. Right, so… Wait, did you talk to Lukas, or…? DAISY: [CHUCKLE] Broke into Elias’s old office. Found an employment contract; filled it in, and signed it. ARCHIVIST: And that worked. DAISY: Seems so. ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you. Not gonna be going anywhere anyway. ARCHIVIST: … I suppose not. So… no more dreams. DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes. Just the coffin. ARCHIVIST: Is that better…? DAISY: ’T’s mine. ARCHIVIST: … right.

She weaponised what they have gathered, through experiences and guesses, to get free of the dreams she hated! It’s not absolutely clear whether she signed to become an Archival assistant or a regular staff member; on the one hand, Jon’s concern hints towards archival assistant, since as far as we know, the Archives seemed to be their own business, including trapping their staff (though damn, I remembered MAG102 being more explicit on the matter but: actually, no, since Martin saying that regular crew are able to quit was immediately followed by “Hannah just left to have her baby, though.”: was that “though” a “by the way” or a way to tamper what he had just said, and this is the most they can do, but still not quite quit…?); on the other hand, Daisy hasn’t specified what it was.

Anyway: it’s such a POWERFUL MOVE to… 1°) break into Elias’s office, 2°) just sign herself up like that?, 3°) ESPECIALLY given how Elias had initially coerced Basira into signing herself up to avoid turning the scene into a bloodbath, even before being told of the repercussions (that she couldn’t quit, that Elias dying meant that they would die too). What Daisy did sound like a direct answer to MAG092, and I’m loving it, loving that Daisy… just used what they had learnt of the dreams’ mechanism to protect herself and chose to bind herself to the Institute while exactly knowing what it meant, without anything blackmailing her into it. Elias hadn’t bothered to tie her down for who she was? Watch as she’ll decide that for herself.

This is also the first person of Extended Team Archive to… have given herself to The Eye fully knowing what she was doing. You better be grateful for the gesture, Big Eyeball!!! The others had to be misled or coerced into serving you, and Daisy, of all people, chose to give herself to you!!!

(- If Daisy became an Archive Assistant: I hope that she’ll get to read a statement at some point? Well, technically, best thing would be for nobody to read a statement but. Martin did it a few times (and read one in MAG134!), Tim ALMOST did it, Melanie did it twice, Basira did it once… it’s a bit of a Tradition. (And who wouldn’t want to hear Fay Roberts for almost an entire episode outside of Daisy’s own live-statements?! I’m a simple woman, okay.))

- I’m really curious about how Elias and Daisy would interact, now. Would it be biting/tense/mutual snarling, or taunting about Daisy still being a “rabid dog” at heart…? Or precisely not anymore: because Daisy acknowledged in front of Jon that Elias had not been that off about her (MAG132: “Did you ever hear the, the story Elias told me? About what I did. How I am… He, he didn’t get a detail wrong. The Hunt… Hunger was in me all my life.”)…? I also… get the feeling that maybe, the current Daisy might be perceiving her encounter with the Institute as a chance, since it ultimately led to her snapping out of the Hunt (though she would have reasons to want to break Elias’s arm for the fact that Basira got trapped because of him).

- I wonder if Martin saw Daisy’s name pop up amongst the new staff members? Or if Peter just told him right away what she had done? Is Daisy now actually getting a salary from the Institute? (I’m not sure that Elias “We really don’t have the budget for that” (MAG067) had even bothered to pay her when he was using her ~services~ so… drain Peter’s money, Daisy, gogogo!! And Use Your Powers to give everyone in Team Archive a raise, Martin :w)

- The fact that Daisy said that she had broken into “Elias’s old office”… Well, Elias’s office had been characterised by the clock in the background; since we could hear one in MAG126, I was assuming that Martin and Peter were in there (especially since Martin was doing Peter’s directorial work) but had noticed that there was no such sound in MAG134. Were they outside of the Institute? Or has Martin stopped working in Elias’s office since Daisy had forcefully gone inside of it, deeming it unsafe?

- Anyway: Jon-Melanie-Daisy seem to be creating an awkward support network, right now, and it’s ADORABLE and good (+ extra cookies to Melanie for seeking therapy!). They still have trouble talking: there were sooo many pauses and silences when Melanie was in front of Jon; Daisy is still not… super at ease speaking about how she feels (while she’s way chiller when it comes to describing how she broke into Elias’s office. Daisy, ilu.); Jon searched for his words a bit to describe how he was perceiving himself at the moment… But they’re trying and still getting those words out and explaining themselves to each other a bit. And it’s PRECIOUS, godsdamnit.

- ALRIGHT, NOW TO DIVE RIGHT INTO THE SILK-STICHED MEAT OF THIS EPISODE:

(MAG111) GERRY: Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then? ARCHIVIST: What? Oh! Er, no. I-I never really, uh… I never really thought of it. I–I’m Jon. I’m with the Magnus Institute.

(MAG136) DAISY: [SCOFF] She’s… Web. Spider’s sneaky like that. [PAUSE] Like that lighter you’re always using. Where’d you get that? ARCHIVIST: Mm. [STATIC] Good point. We should keep our eyes open. Anyway, how’s Basira doing?

………………. It was impossible to tell whether or not there was static back in MAG111 (at least for me: there was a constant static-y background due to Gerry being there), but here, yep, there was some. So something is DEFINITELY preventing Jon from lingering too much on the lighter (like an oily surface his attention keeps slipping on?) and what it means. … And apparently, he still has it with him – I had wondered if he hadn’t lent it to Martin for MAG118’s plan, burning statements? I mean, maybe he did and the lighter found its way back to Jon anyway, or it was still with Jon during the Wax Museum explosion, but Jon still has it with him at the moment.

How many silken strings have tied around Jon’s body and head without him noticing, I wonder… the episode was about a “Puppeteer”, after all (or… maybe a bit more about the puppets.)

……………….. Sounds like Jon is back to smoking again, too, given Daisy’s comment? And Jon’s smoking habits have been Smelling Like Web Spirit: he had apparently stopped around the time he began to work at the Institute (since he told Leitner he had “been quit for five years now” in MAG080, in February 2017); Elias had ranted about Jon smoking in MAG039 (“He’s not smoking again, is he?”: was it because he knew of Jon’s smoker history? Or because Jon had gone back to… smoking a lot since he discovered that the lighter had been delivered to him in MAG036?); Tim implied that he might have noticed that Jon had been smoking again recently at the end of season 2 (MAG079: “he’s going to do something, and it’s going to be bad. And I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad. Like properly bad.”); Jon ~conveniently~ felt the urge to smoke a cigarette and left Leitner alone to face his death (Elias.) in MAG080 (Jon minimised it at the time, but… it means that he had cigarettes on him.); and after that, we only got the mention from Daisy digging through his stuff in MAG091, and him offering Gerry a cigarette in MAG111.

One thing that makes me Hysterical every time:

(MAG091) DAISY: One wallet, brown leather, no cash. One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design.

OF ALL THINGS, JON SMOKES “SILK CUT”

“SILK

CUT”

COME ON, SPIDER, COULD YOU TRY TO BE A BIT SUBTLE WITH THAT BOY?!

- Actual footage of Jon forgetting about his lighter (ft. Daisy):

- I find it very interesting that Daisy was able to notice the lighter and Jon’s lack of oversight about it since… when Daisy was introduced through Basira’s words, Basira explained that Daisy had first been sectioned over a Spider-related case:

(MAG043) BASIRA: […] Daisy was sectioned years before I was even on the force. She’s never been that forthcoming about any of her own experiences. Takes Section 31 very seriously. The most I could get out of her was that she was originally sectioned for something she referred to as “spider husks”. The way she described it, it sounded like she’d found a bunch of shells. The sort crabs leave behind when they grow, but… I could never figure out if it was meant to be the husks of people-sized spiders, or the spider-like husks of people? And Daisy never seemed like she wanted to clarify. I’m sure she mentioned vampires once as well, but… I think she was joking. … Probably. … Maybe…

We have learned, since then, that it wasn’t exactly true: Daisy’s first section’d case had to do with the coffin, but Daisy also told Jon that only her superior had known about it prior to Jon's pulling the story out of her (MAG061). So Basira couldn’t have known that Daisy had lied or dodged to tell the truth, but still… one of Daisy’s first cases had to do with Spiders.

(And Daisy has been ~taking care~ of the vampires, too, which are known for their mind-controlling powers. When Trevor had met a Spider-Woman, he had mentioned that his experience with vampires had probably helped him to identify that the compulsion to get out and get high wasn’t his own… So it seems like Hunters might have a little immunity or at least resistance to manipulation. I’m EVEN MORE RELIEVED that Jon got Daisy back.)

(… And afraid, oh so afraid for Daisy’s life-expectancy, since she’s already so important when it comes to potentially dealing with threats, and being a presence which allows the Archive team to re-form a bit.)

- MAG110 and MAG136 are quite good to listen to one after another, besides Neil Lagorio’s existence – they dealt with the same movie-making world, of Web apparently, and there were some tiny things which were quite interesting? Both statements were given by women isolated from their peers and put into a situation they probably wouldn’t have picked if they’d been allowed to retain more options and Choices:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I’d held some ambitions about directing myself one day, but it soon became obvious that that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe if I’d got a feature under my belt before I was outed as trans, it might have been different, but… as it was, this revelation burned too many bridges, and when the dust had settled, it was made abundantly clear to me that I was never going to get a movie of my own. And it was either cinematography, or nothing. So I stayed.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned […]. Anyway, even once I’d sorted out childcare arrangements, I found myself… more and more unwelcome in the industry. It wasn’t that people weren’t willing to hire me – by this point I had a hell of a special effects resumé – but the hours you were expected to be working, the way shoots were set up, the culture of drinking, networking… none of it was really possible alongside parenting.”

There was, also, the obvious theme of… the fictions reshaping reality, or becoming a reality: Dexter was obsessed with a Spider that seemed to only exist in his dream of a story, and he recreated it on the set in the end. Neil managed to finally recreate his last story with himself:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “he would twist his fingers into all sort of bizarre, intricate shapes, until I could see the strings flowing over them… ‘We made them dance,’ he would say, wonder and nostalgia in his voice. ‘Oh… how we made them dance.’ […] He told me later his… greatest regret was not being able to finish his final film. An arthouse piece simply titled Dancer. He never explained what it was about, nor do I think it actually… came out in the end. […] And as I walked away from Neil, the last time I saw him alive… he was dancing. The cables shifting, and moving him in a graceful, sweeping ballet. And he was crying with joy.”

On the theme of “smoking” as related to the Web, it’s ~curious~ to note that it was also present in MAG110 and MAG136’s statements, and not in moderation either:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “[Brandon Alma] took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers.” (MAG136, Alison Killala) “I had to fight every instinct inside me, everything that wanted to burst out in admiration for his work and his… profound effect on my life. But instead I chain-smoked and laughed, trying my best to come across as my hero’s peer…!”

So, hum. Smoking hadn’t been exclusively a Web-thing before (there was of course the Anglerfish’s baiting, and its shells smoking to disguise the odour of death), but I still find that noticeable.

- There is an OBVIOUS problem with the timeline of Neil’s death, from MAG110 and MAG136’s given mentions:

(MAG110) MARTIN: Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 0121403. Statement of Alexia Crawley, given March 14th, 2012. (MAG110, Alexia Crawley) It seems like a sick cosmic joke that that was the day the press broke the news of Neil Lagorio’s death. Half an hour after the cast walked into that building, one of the grips stumbled across the news story whilst idly checking his phone. Lagorio had been privately suffering from Parkinson’s for almost a decade, and had been bedridden in his Connecticut home for the last year.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Alison Killala, regarding her time as friend and carer to special effects artist Neil Lagorio. Original statement given 1st December, 2012. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. (MAG136, Alison Killala) “It was almost six months ago when the woman came to our door. […] I don’t know how long I was watching those films. They don’t… It was hard to keep track of time. According to my daughter, I was missing for five months. When Annabelle let me out, Neil was dead. […] She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you. I resisted for some time, but I’m done now. She’s won. And I’d… very much like to go home.”

If Annabelle visited Neil’s house six months before Alison gave her statement, it should have been in June; while Alexia’s statement put Neil’s death before March (presumably February, since Martin added as part of the follow-up that “Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach.”). It’s not clear either if Alison lived in the UK but she did mention the “UK press” at some point; while according to the official version given by Alexia, Neil had lived and died in the US.

So what happened…? Has someone in the Archives been purposely messing up with the dates regarding The Web…? Were there two “Neil Lagorio”s towards the end…? Did The Web messed up the files a bit through someone? (Noticeable, too: Jon who ~listens to all the tapes~ didn’t mention the echoes with MAG110’s statement, which was read by Martin. Did he listen to this one, or had the tape… disappeared when he went back?)

(I know that the popular theory regarding MAG114’s statement and what was happening in Hill Top Road is “parallel worlds”, but it always sounded textbook Spiral to me – we also have been demonstrations of entities rewriting reality to erase people or twist people’s memories, see the Not!Them and what happened to the statement-giver’s husband in MAG038. But I’m a bit short on explanations regarding the obvious problem of timeline in MAG110 and MAG136……………..)

- Relistening to MAG110, I just realized that someone had completely flown under my radar: Brandon (Brendon?) Alma, the main actor, who… was the one controlling the story and the set, actually?!

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “Most impressive to me though, was a guy named [Brandon Alma]. He was playing the closest thing the film had to a protagonist, a… homeless ex-Methodist minister who’d found himself on the island by chance and served as a connecting thread, wandering between the scenes and the vignettes of the inhabitants, after each ended with their march to the Spider. Brandon took to the role immediately, with a gravity and a weariness that I don’t think could have been entirely feigned. He was the only one who didn’t seem excited by the movie, and spent his off-hours smoking and reading quietly in one of the trailers. It was a shame because, for whatever reason, he also seemed to be the only one that Dexter would listen to. I only saw them talking once or twice but every time, Dexter would be wrapped, nodding at… whatever Brandon might have to say. […] [Dexter] then gathered up the cast and, with Brandon leading them, took them through a small door in the side of the workshop. And they disappeared inside.”

He was playing a character who was the “CONNECTING THREAD” between people getting eaten by the spider, Dexter “would be WRAPPED” and agreeing to everything Brandon told him, and Brandon was the one to lead the actors into the workshop where they were all killed/consumed/drunk hollow, UHUHUHUH. Maybe the book that Dexter had found wasn’t actually the (only?) thing that messed up everything? Or did Brandon come from the book? Was he actually the spider himself, or just there to ensure that the spider would emerge and be fed…?

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “I don’t know when he first mentioned his spider film. It didn’t… bubble out into a full obsession until two years ago, but I know he talked about it plenty before that. […] [蜘蛛が食べている] (Kumo ga tabeteiru). I think that was the name, anyway, something like that; he was normally slurring quite badly when he said it. He thought it translated to “The Spiders That Devour” but a Japanese friend once told me it was actually closer to just “Spiders Are Eating”. According to Dexter, Kumo was an old tokusatsu movie which, he believed, had come out sometime in the mid-to-late sixties. It was about a Spider – just the one, despite the title – that grew to a colossal size and terrorized a small unnamed island off the coast of Kagoshima. What struck him about it, though, was the utter absence of anything resembling a hero or a protagonist. No one fought against the monster, and although there were vignettes in the lives of those under the Spider’s shadow, they all ended the exact same way – with the character in question marching slowly, and calmly, into its waiting jaws.”

(And it would sound EXTREMELY Web to have all the attention focused on Dexter… while the true puppeteer would be somewhere else, hidden.)

- Something striking in many Web mentions is that: it likes Order (… and apparently drinking people hollow – requiring the fluids to sustain itself? To be able to moult and grow in size?)

(MAG127, Breekon) “We had some luggage once. A thrumming, silk-wrapped thing of The Spider, hiding away in an old steamer trunk. We stepped heavy through the dining car and found an old woman near the caboose. 'Something strange in the luggage car,' he said, and I finished as was our way. 'You should come and see it.' She stood and walked with us readily enough, though tears flowed silent down her cheeks and pattered onto the faded carpet. The Spider’s always an easy job – no fuss, no complication, everything planned and prepared. It knows too much to truly be a Stranger, but hides its knowing well enough to endure. We knew she wouldn’t scream as she was hollowed out and drunk.”

(MAG110) MARTIN: Apparently, over the last five years, every February, a corpse is found washed up on Redondo Beach. It will be a shrivelled husk, with all moisture and internal organs apparently removed.

(+ Daisy’s early Section 31 case with the “husks” of people/spiders/etc.)

On the matter of order: the victims in Kumo (MAG110) also weren’t making a fuss when they marched off to get eaten, it was the same behaviour as what Breekon described. Regarding Alison’s story, it seems like although she was officially the puppeteer of Neil’s body… SHE was the one who had been puppeteered around:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “I became his carer a few months later. It just seemed to make sense. A frugal life, lucrative career and… prickly personality had left him with lots of money but no real support; while my life had left me in a position where I cared… deeply about his well-being and was in… desperate need of money. Everything just… lined up so neatly. […] he threw himself into a new project, one I would never have expected, but that suited my engineering background perfectly. […] I protested, of course! This man was my hero, I–I loved him, and there was no way I could subject him to this… awful indignity. But my objections were ignored, as always, and Neil insisted that this was what he wanted. So I built that… strange contraption. Using the skills I had developed across my whole life, to fill every corner of Neil Lagorio’s house with wood, and steel, and cable. […] I barely even noticed when the harnesses were no longer necessary; when the loops for those hooks were now embedded directly into his body. I must have asked him about it. But at the time, it just seemed like… such a natural progression.

Neil had exactly the Right Person available for what he needed when his body started to shut down; Alison wanted to refuse and ended up accepting. Even before Annabelle came in, it… doesn’t really sound like Alison had been the one in control in that whole situation.

And on the matter of people being at the right place at the right time for The Web’s purposes: SQUINTS at the fact that 2012 was when Jon started working at the Institute. We witnessed Melanie, Basira and Daisy’s first steps there, we know that Tim went to get a job there because he was looking into his brother’s death, Sasha might or might not have been interested in the supernatural for years (it could have been the Not!Them rewriting that bit; we at least know that Sasha wasn’t particularly well-off so… maybe she just plainly needed the money); we know that Martin just happened to be hired after submitting his CV everywhere he could (the question of why ELIAS, who PERSONALLY INTERVIEWED HIM, hired him is… another Big Question), but… why did Jon start working at the Institute? He didn’t particularly expect to Georgie to identify what the Institute was, so it wasn’t a life-long dream of his that he would have mentioned many times as a student…

(Re: the Web and Order, SQUINTSSQUINTSSQUINTS again towards the one particular person who has mostly been associated with that: “loves scheduling”, has specific days on which he eats lunch with the Institute’s librarians, insisted on Tim doing the paperwork for his absences, That One Thing About Keeping Receipts If You Want To Claim Your Expenses (Unless You Die)… that guy.)

- I still wonder how the Web works on people exactly, though… especially given all the talks about making choices and decisions, it would seem a bit odd to end up concluding that “anyway, the Web will make you want and do whatever IT pleases, you can’t do anything about it”…? (Though yeah, THAT is frightening.)

Given that Alison compared herself to Frankenstein, I wonder, in her case, if despite her ~adamant refusal~ to puppet her friend and idol…

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “Even pyrotechnics, while… impressive and visually spectacular, they just didn’t give me the same sharp joy as making something that could move, that came alive, directed and controlled by my hand… I always felt Frankenstein should have been an engineer, not a medical student, as reading that book I couldn’t help but see myself in that obsession. But I suppose everyone’s already done the-monster-as-the-robot, haven’t they?”

… some parts of her didn’t actually want it? And this is how The Web might operate overall? Humans are complex, we’re always mixing up emotions and different desires at the same time; maybe The Web mostly just brings to the surfaces the ones it needs to push people in the direction it wants…? (In that case, re: Trevor and the Spider Woman… it wouldn’t be surprising, as an ex-heroin addict, that some part of him would still feel the tinge of the craving…)

- What was Neil, in the end? Was he a Web avatar who found a way to feed his god mostly through fictions? Was his ex-partner “Gabe” Gabriel, the Spiral’s Worker-In-Clay…? Was he a plain person, able to use some powers here and there? The thing is:

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “his satisfaction with his latest and… as it turned out, last… foray into horror, with The Harvestman. He’d always had a fondness for spiders, he told me. And I of course reminded him that harvestmen… weren’t technically spiders.”

She is right! Though this could be a case of misleading us to focus on the symbols rather than their effects; Neil’s work was… indeed clearly linked to the idea of hidden control:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “he claimed to be working with Neil Lagorio to make the Spider. Now you might never have heard his name before, but I guarantee you you’ll have seen his work. From the mid-seventies right into CGI, Lagorio was THE name in Practical Creature Effects: suit work, stop-motion, animatronics, whatever the method, he was the master. […] I’d had the pleasure of working with him way back in 1989 on Orbit – a medium-budget sci-fi vehicle for some… aging action star. Neil was working on a twelve-foot tall animatronic robot that featured heavily in the climax. The picture was, unsurprisingly, a flop; but I still remember his work. How he brought a… lump of wood and steel to life. Th–the huge, intricate mechanisms that allowed his crew to puppet it into motion that was so natural you could forget that the back of it was completely hollow…!”

On the one hand, he sounded pretty harmless. On the other hand, there were these “original cuts” (and the cruel broken SMILE you could hear on Jon’s face when he mentioned them while reading the statement was… gosh.). Was Dexter Banks invited to one of those screenings, and is that why he was haunted by the memories of a movie he couldn’t find again…?

-… So, what does it mean for ANNABELLE to send these original cuts to the Institute?

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “There were two sorts of people in the world as far as Neil saw it: those who were worth his time, and those who were not. And if you were in the latter group, he honestly couldn’t care if you lived or died. Not that most people could tell which side of the line they fell on; there were even days that… I wasn’t sure myself! Sometimes, I remember, he would invite people over to his studio that I was sure he hated, for screenings of his “original cuts”. I was quite… jealous of this at the time, as I’d never got such an invitation. But it was probably for the best. I didn’t… realise it back then, but… [SIGH] those guests… they never quite looked the same afterwards. […] She told me to take the films. His… “original cuts”. She told me to come here. She told me to give them to you.”

[…] ARCHIVIST: [INHALES] Statement ends. Hm. Neil Lagorio… You ever see any of his work? DAISY: No. Not really into films. ARCHIVIST: Oh, they were… Well, let’s just say that it’s not a complete shock there was something unnatural to them. Didn’t know we had copies in the Institute, though; let alone original cuts. [CHUCKLE] Records indicate they [PAPERS RUSTLING] ended up in… Artefact Storage. DAISY: Probably best that they stay there. ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. Yes, of course.

(…………. You could HEAR that Jon was dangerously close to going to check them out if Daisy hadn’t reminded him that Jon, No.)

At the time, Gertrude was still running the Archives… but, again, it’s also around that time when Jon integrated the Institute as a researcher. (He said he had been working there for “four years” in MAG001, which was set sometime in the second half of 2015 – though I wouldn’t past it s1!Jon to round up, like, 3 years and 20 days to “four years” to sound… more impressive. However, we know for sure that Jon was working at the Institute in 2012 (MAG051: “One of my first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012”).) So why did Annabelle send the “original cuts” to the Institute, and who were they for…? Was it to send a message to Gertrude? Was it because the Web was veeeeeeeeeeeerrrry aware that the boy who had ~gotten away~ (el-o-el) was now working there (and was apparently a bit versed in Neil Lagorio’s work)? Was it a way to sneak into the Institute? Was it for Elias? Was it to avoid the “original cuts” affecting innocent bystanders? Was it a proclamation from Annabelle – demonstrating that the older generation was fading out and now she was taking over?

That last point is something that I really felt with Annabelle’s visit and Neil finally dying (… or moulting like a spider). It’s interesting that in both MAG110 and MAG136, there was something about the character the story was about… not having a keen relationship with modern technology:

(MAG110, Alexia Crawley) “And so it was for the first few weeks. Dexter… clearly wasn’t sleeping. He had insisted on using old equipment and avoiding digital almost entirely, to the point where several of the crew were using pieces of kit they’d never even seen before. This meant that workprint had to be made manually for the dailies, something he refused to let anyone else do.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “We stayed in touch over the next few years, even worked together on the Wire-Runner, his one, underwhelming foray into CGI.”

We saw in MAG123 that Annabelle had started working using Internet, though using someone else to achieve it. I don’t have many theories or speculation about that one – I only find it curious that, given how MAG065 had introduced the idea that tape recorders… are digital, too, we’re still not sure about what it is that prevents Spooks from recording on Jon’s computer. Gertrude had commented that the tape recorders were a bit ~old-fashioned like her~ to defend her use of them to Lucia (MAG130), so… I don’t know! But potentially, I wonder if there might be something about the younger generation of avatars being more fit to use modern technologies, because some elements are their own idiosyncrasies while older techs were their predecessors’.

- Hi, do you sometimes get just PUNCHED IN THE GUTS by Jon.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: My– [PAUSE] [INHALE] [SIGH] My memories of the coma are not clear. But I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I… I don’t know if I made the right decision; I–I’m stronger now, tougher, I can… … If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever… I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else so, if I can maybe stop that happening, and [DRY CHUCKLE] the only danger is to me, I– I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster. DAISY: That’s messed up. ARCHIVIST: [LOW SELF-DEPRECATIVE DRY LAUGHTER] … Yeah. I suppose it is. DAISY: Did you know the coffin wouldn’t kill you? ARCHIVIST: I– guess I thought imprisonment wouldn’t… wouldn’t be as bad as it was. DAISY: [SHAKY SIGH] ARCHIVIST: And it’s a lot easier to make that choice than it is to actually… endure the result. You might have noticed when I was in there with you, I… I had regrets. DAISY: Yeah. I remember. ARCHIVIST: Plus, I thought… [PAUSE] W– [SIGH] Well, I didn’t know what being down there had done to you. DAISY: You thought I was gonna kill you? ARCHIVIST: I was a possibility. DAISY: Guess so. […] ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira– ARCHIVIST: Traumatised; traumatised; and paranoid, because of me.

;; I’m worried about these missing memories and what it means / what happened… Jon had told Basira that he could remember most of The Unknowing:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: My turn. What… what happened to me? BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming. BASIRA: Dreaming. ARCHIVIST: Yes. …

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: Two years ago. … That doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t feel like… … There’s just this… great… gap of time, where I wasn’t.

Back in MAG122, I had feared that he would have gotten something cauterised in the process, probably guilt, hence Tim’s death being erased… But no, it’s FAR from being the case: Jon has been a guilt-ridden ball of softness and caring and heartbreak since the beginning of season 4. So why are these memories still absent…? What happened in his dreams, for him to not remember exactly how he got to choose…?

(EXTRA-WORRIED since Elias had told Basira that Jon was “at a very delicate stage right now” in MAG127; and as much as I think that Elias probably doesn’t want to risk Jon managing to successfully compel him or extract a statement out of him right now… I’m Really Worried about the fact that he described Jon as being in transition. Choosing should have been the end result, right? So… so what is the next step……………)

Sobbing a lot about the fact that Jon isn’t sure that coming back was worth it, and that he’s been very casually self-destructive about the coffin. He kind of finished his sentence from MAG132 here:

(MAG132) ARCHIVIST: I’m… I’m scared. [SHORT CHUCKLE] When does the fear go away…? A–anyway, I–I’m sorry. You too, Basira, if you’re hearing this. I know you’d… stop me. You’d be right to, but… But if this goes wrong, all you lose is– …  I’m not risking anyone else.

“If this goes wrong, all you lose is” / “worst case scenario… the universe loses another monster”. A o u c h. He’s been the most outrightly emotional we’ve ever seen him in season 3 and 4, he was so afraid of becoming inhuman starting MAG092, he finally chose (and is aware of it) the avatar option because he was afraid to die (that’s one of the most human things he could possibly admit…?), and, since he’s woken up, he has dealt with rejections one after another: Georgie was thrown-off by him badly enough to leave (clearly dissatisfied with… the fact that Jon kept saying he was “fine”, when a normal human being shouldn’t have been), Basira was extremely cautious and still refuses to trust him, slaughter-infused Melanie BLAMED HIM FOR TIM&DAISY’S DEATHS, Martin avoided him time and time again:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Honestly, I… I, I think I’m alright? I mean, that’s… good, right? I… GEORGIE: After a six months coma? No. It’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I… What? Y–you, you’d prefer I was… brain-damaged? Dead? Or– […] Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira? BASIRA: We can deal with that later.

(MAG123) MELANIE: Tim is dead. Daisy is dead. And you, what? You’re just fine? ARCHIVIST: No, I’ve been in hospital for six months! MELANIE: Something has been in hospital. Something that’s got your face like– I warned Basira, I said not to let you back in here, but she just doesn’t listen! [STOMPING? AND FURIOUS STRANGLED NOISES] ARCHIVIST: Melanie, Melanie: it’s… it’s me. MELANIE: Oh! Okay, so what, “Hi Jon, how are you, get anyone killed lately?” ARCHIVIST: … I… MELANIE: Wipe that look off your face. Like you’re not the reason all of this is happening. Like you’re any better than– ARCHIVIST: [MESSY STUTTERING] MELANIE: –than him! ARCHIVIST: Basira said Elias was gone!

(MAG124) MARTIN: … Look, Jon, I, I’ve really got to go, so… ARCHIVIST: Oh, er, okay… MARTIN: I’m, I’m sorry that you– ARCHIVIST: Wowowow, it was… good t–, it was good to see you. MARTIN: … Yeah. [STEPS LEAVING] ARCHIVIST: … yeah… [CLICK.]

(MAG129) MARTIN: Please, stop finding me. ARCHIVIST: … What happened, Martin? [SILENCE] MARTIN: You died. ARCHIVIST: I came back. MARTIN: Yeah. [OPENS DOOR] I’m not gonna let it happen again. ARCHIVIST: … wait… Wait! W– [DOOR CLOSES] [SIGH] [CLICK.]

(YES, GRATUITOUS QUOTE-COMPILATION, BECAUSE THAT’S A LOT.)

It’s been a rough two months since he woke up, alright. I’m so glad that he managed to get Daisy back: not only it was a victory that actually felt like one (the removal of Melanie’s bullet meant that things got… strained), but Daisy has been asking the right questions and they’re so… like-minded? kindred spirits? lately, two Survivors able to understand each other, that it feels good and… a bit more hopeful.

(- I still want Jon to get the chance to have a discussion with Georgie, to explain himself and what happened, to explain that even though he decided something she’s disapproving of… he still wants to do some good, as much as he can? é_è To thank her for having watched over him and having given him so much valuable advice? For Georgie to accept that Jon did the best he could do in the situation he was in? Basira used to listen to Georgie’s podcast while in the car with Daisy so maybe Daisy heard some bits of it. Let Georgie and Daisy meeeeeet too!!)

- So much for Jon getting a stronger hold on his power, he still accidentally slipped and compelled:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: If you don’t mind me asking, [STATIC:] where are you off to…? MELANIE: Therapy. [STATIC ENDS] … Wait. ARCHIVIST: Oh…! Oh, God, Melanie, I’m, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh… MELANIE: [EXASPERATED SIGH] It’s fine. I would probably have told you eventually, anyway.

Still too curious and not the best at self-restrain, though… he had been doing way better lately. I think the last time he had accidentally compelled was in MAG114, with Tim? On the other hand: it looks like his Insights are a bit more controlled since, unless he reveals that he has Known for a while, he… doesn’t seem to know about Basira’s activities. So maybe sternly forbidding him from peeking worked with that one, given that he had motivation to not screw things up (even more) between them…? He was a bit more relaxed with Melanie this time around! (Well. And Melanie was way more relaxed around him too, which… says something considering their previous exchanges.)

- What is wrong with Jon’s body. This makes the second mention of casual weirdness, after Jared commenting about Jon’s rib:

(MAG131) JARED: Huh. That’s a weird one. Not sure I like it. Still. Mine now.

(MAG136) DAISY: Not of you and your weird eyes.

Too many eyes, or something else…?

- I’m so emotional over the fact that Daisy is… currently giving back to Jon? Telling him that his way of thinking or his overall situation is “messed up”; reminding him that he’s not responsible for everything that’s happened to Melanie, Basira and herself; pushing him to snap out of it and have a nice time…? The fact that she included herself in the (short) list of people around Jon, and that:

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: And you’re not… worried about… DAISY: Basira’s trapped here. So are you.

She listed him alongside Basira when justifying why her decision to tie herself to the Institute was worth it – they’re in this together and it’s not only just “with Basira” in her mind. It includes Jon.

- … and not Melanie there, BUT!! PROGRESS:

(MAG112) DAISY: Yeah. Couldn’t find Tim, but he’s gone with Martin and… the other one. BASIRA: Melanie. DAISY: Sure.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

She marked a verrrry slight pause before saying Melanie’s name but still: Melanie is now her own person in Daisy’s mind!

- And I’m SO EMOTIONAL OVER MELANIE OVERALL but also so proud that… apparently, she took it upon herself to take care of Daisy, and went as far as to go ask Jon to replace her when she couldn’t do it?

(MAG136) MELANIE: Well… uhm. Daisy’s been, erm… I’ve been keeping her company. Er, while… while Basira’s busy. She’s, er… ARCHIVIST: Oh, no, I, uh… I–I know. MELANIE: W–well, I’ve kind of got to… uhm. I’ve got somewhere to be. Do you mind if, if… she hangs around, with… […] [IN THE DISTANCE] Hum, yeah, he’s, he’s fine with it. So… […] DAISY: I didn’t ask her. To do that. ARCHIVIST: I–it–it’s fine.

I’m glad that Melanie makes sure that Daisy doesn’t end up alone, and that… she went to Jon for this ;__; Melanie knew better than everyone how it felt to be not emotionally supported by someone, namely Basira (MAG131: “Basira is… um. Basira deals in ‘intel’ these days, in usable data, assets. Not feelings. Not people.”), so I find this super-sweet that she… is apparently making extra efforts to not replicate the situation with Daisy? Some feeling of community/teamwork has been recreated lately, all around Daisy, and aaaaah… I’m so glad ;; Really sad that Martin isn’t there and that Basira is still closing herself off, but so glad about the faint Melanie-Daisy-Jon dynamic… (And so worried. Because now, I wonder how Jonny is planning to rip it away from us.)

(Though: Melanie didn’t try to set-up for Helen and Daisy to stay together. Is Helen mostly absent/can’t get out of her door much…? Or was it because Melanie didn’t absolutely trust Daisy’s Hunter instincts to not kick back in, if she was too close to a Spook-she-doesn’t-know-yet for long…?)

(I wonder if it’s Helen who suggested therapy to Melanie, or if they talked about it? In any case, having Helen around seemed to have helped Melanie a bit, overall ;__;)

- Though logistically: it’s hilarious that Melanie&Basira probably still live in the Archives, that Daisy is probably doing the same (unclear whether or not Jon Still Has A Home outside)… and that Daisy didn’t even mention that hi, she had signed some paperwork and was now an Official Member of the Institute. It took Jon two weeks to learn about it, and only because he asked about his dreams. (Daisy must have done that quite fast after getting out of the coffin? For someone who “missed dreaming”, she reacted immediately x”))

………………… I’m not sure that Basira will take that the news that Daisy is now tied to the Institute kindly, though, given the current state of things.

- Elephant in the room, Melanie’s ~therapist~ is ringing SO MANY warning bells:

(MAG136) THERAPIST: Right, have a seat. Do you mind if I record our sessions? MELANIE: I do mind. Yes. THERAPIST: Ah? I mean, it’s just for my own notes. MELANIE: I categorically and completely do *not* give consent for you to make any recording of me, ever. Turn it off. Please. [SILENCE] THERAPIST: I… I see. Yes. Of–of course. [CLICK.]

…………………. See, even besides the use of a tape recorder (who would use that in 2018 for very professional, serious and health-related purposes, if they’re not spooky?!), it’s how the therapist handled the act of recording in itself which makes me shiver. During a first session, a first encounter, when you’re supposed to not make the patient uncomfortable, turning it on before asking Melanie if she would be fine with it. Trying to argue with Melanie’s refusal when Melanie explicitly said she would be bothered by it. That small silence before complying – while Melanie was just stating her rights… (Though on that last one, Melanie’s background as a podcaster is showing; she was very efficiently able to state her will without leaving room for any loophole!)

There are many options for What The Deal Is With That Therapist:

1°) A totally normal person who just happens to use tape recorders in 2018 and was startled by Melanie’s professional-sounding declaration.

2°) Someone tied to the Lonely…? It would be a terrifying job for a Lukas, totally twisting the purpose of a therapy by… cutting you off from others? ;; (Peter had mentioned the possibility of therapy to Martin back in MAG120: “Oh! And if you want to talk to a counsellor, the Institute will of course cover any cost.”)

3°) Someone tied to Beholding: Gertrude had the contact information for one (MAG130: “If that’s your primary goal, my dear, I would suggest you speak to a qualified counsellor. We can suggest one, if you like […]. Hang on, let me see if I can find you the number for that counselling service. They’re actually quite good.”), and that last “I see” was quite striking, Avatars tend to make small references to their patrons all the time – though this one could have also been a nod to Melanie’s…

4°) … since the therapist seemed so taken aback by Melanie offering a resistance: … W e b…? Annabelle was even created during, specifically, a psychological experiment (though we don’t know if she was a psychology postgrad herself, or just a random test subject with a different background; the voice sounded maybe a bit too old for someone who still looked like a “student” in 2012, but then Elias is supposed to be middle-aged so, eh). It wouldn’t be the most subtle thing ever but then: given that Jon didn’t give any reason, why did he pick this specific statement this time around? Outside of the statement, who is a “puppeteer” in this episode? Which would raise, once again, the question of What Is Behind tape recorders; and, if Web, what allowed Melanie to not obey: was it because she used to be Slaughter-infused…? (I had wondered, especially after MAG125, about the relationship between the Slaughter and the Spider: the way Elias had specifically mentioned that Melanie had a “visceral hatred of being trapped” in MAG102, was run by “the self-determination you prize so highly” in MAG106, and the fact that Melanie had described him as “pulling all the strings” in return, had left me with the lingering of impression that… potentially, there was more something about Web than Beholding at work here, and that obviously, The Slaughter, being uncontrollable violence and chaos, wouldn’t be the best of pals with the Eight-Legged-Mrs.-Order Fear entity…)

The way Melanie described therapists at the beginning of the episode (“We’ll see. There’s a… a lot of crap therapists out there.” and it’s true, and she’s still trying!!! Good!!) already introduced cautiousness about the whole process; if this one turns out to be Bad, it wouldn’t be representative of every one of them. Still, kinda hoping (for Melanie) that unless this one manages to prove that her first few seconds were absolutely not representative of what she can offer, Melanie will try to find another one elsewhere ;; I’m impressed that she didn’t just go “Nop ahaha bye” when the tape recorder began to get used… without her consent. It wasn’t good when Jon was doing it, but from a therapist, there is something very, verrrry chilling, and this new character absolutely managed to sound as untrustworthy as Peter in just a few seconds ;;

- On the list of worrying things: URKKKKK that… Basira apparently still hasn’t told the others about her visits to Elias. She’s likely doing her own researches, as Elias had suggested, to check if there were some truths amongst what he told her about The Dark’s activities… but URRRKKK that she hasn’t said a word about it yet. Not good, Basira ;; Elias is spilling his poison and she’s drinking it raw – it will most likely mess her up… and mess up the others, too, if they’re not aware that Elias still has, in all likehood, Plans.

… On the other hand, I got the impression that her relationship with Daisy had improved a bit? Daisy sounded less… heartbroken, this time, giving me the impression that, yes, things aren’t perfect, but not excruciating either?

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I haven’t seen her much since… Well, she seemed a bit… tense, the last few times we spoke. How are you guys– DAISY: [CLEARS THROAT] ARCHIVIST: –doing? DAISY: N–no, Basira, she’s… She’s been good. We’re… together so it’s good. [SIGH] Wish she wouldn’t keep treating me like a china doll. But it’s alright. ARCHIVIST: That’s understandable, I suppose. DAISY: [BREATHING HARDER, FASTER] Yeah, well… What do you think?

See, I can’t really decide whether Daisy’s awkwardness was because it was a touchy subject and she was aware that no, things aren’t fine… Or if it was a matter of “oh lord, no, I can’t tell Awkward Nerd Guy that YES, things have been super-steamy in the tunnels lately, he would probably faint if he knew we were doing it in his Institute.”

(… reminder that in this episode, Jon had to read “He even kept in contact when I left to have my baby. It wasn’t planned, but while I may not have had much time for make-up and monster suits, the bodies inside of them were, er, a different matter.” with his own tongue.) (That’s not topping Timothy Hodge’s statement and Jon’s annotations from its patreon Deluxe transcript, but eh, it was still a beautiful line <3)

And the parallels between Daisy&Basira and Jon&Martin keep piling up! First Basira and Martin both were “busy”; now, it’s the single-minded longing for the other when they’re separated – Daisy having thought that she would never see Basira again when she was in the coffin, and now… Jon’s first reaction when Daisy taunts him about acting like he’s alone being to say that YES HE IS… because Martin isn’t there.

Holy Arceus on top of Giratina, Jon, what would your season-1 self would say about the Current You. (“Things change. People change.” Helen told him a few episodes ago, AND YEP. Y E P.)

- I’m… a bit worried about how Daisy handled Martin, however. It fits her and the… individualistic? bits of her that we had seen: if she sees a problem, she’ll try to deal with it through her own actions – Jon is sad because Martin isn’t there? Then no, she’s not going to drag Martin kicking and screaming back to Jon if she wants to cheer Jon up; she’ll push him to stand back up on his own.

(MAG136) ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m not “swanning around”– DAISY: “Boo-hoo, I’m so alone and a monster!” ARCHIVIST: I am alone, Martin is– DAISY: Busy. doing. paperwork. Not like he’s dead. Beside, he’s not the only other person here, you know. There’s me; Melanie; Basira–

1°) She’s partially not wrong? Though I still feel like, without knowing what Martin is doing behind the scenes together with Peter, there would be causes for concern and that Martin… is not in a good place nor there on his own: his lines in MAG124 and MAG129 sounded, more than anything, like he was straightforwardly blackmailed into not talking with the others (we know that, from Martin’s point of view, it’s a bit more complicated and not the end-goal; but still, his insistence to Jon about how he couldn’t hear what he had to say, had to leave, etc…. weren’t reassuring at all). Daisy might be projecting a bit on that one since she has deepened her network since she came back, probably because Basira was astray: she now remembers Melanie’s name, she listed Jon together with Basira as people trapped within the Institute (implying that she would not leave them behind). She might see Jon as hyperfixating on something that can’t be resolved right away, like her situation with Basira…? Unless it’s plainly because “Blackwood” hadn’t impressed her much in season 3 (she doesn’t know him! Even if Jon cares for him, maybe she doesn’t see him as all that valuable), or because… spooks are happening and the Lonely is managing to cut the ties that Martin die have with people, who are now just not finding him relevant anymore…?

2°) So nowadays, people are aware that Martin is doing “paperwork” – are they aware that he’s basically doing Peter’s work as an ~assistant~? Or are they plainly assuming that “Peter Lukas” is his alias…?

3°) ;; I’m super happy about Daisy inviting Jon for drinks, and Basira possibly joining them… but also worried about how Peter might just rub that into Martin’s face? Jon used to not be… social with the assistants. It would be so easy to tell Martin that it’s finally happening because Martin is not there… (And yes, Martin made his choice to protect the others, presumably Melanie&Basira, because Jon was away! And nowadays, it still stands, the fact that it would also protect Jon was only added to the pile! And he was told by Peter in MAG126 that he might “not want” to share what had happened with Jon at the end of it, implying that he would change; Martin knows these aspects of the deal! But Martin is not absolutely selfless either, and there could easily be some envious outbursts at the idea that Jon seems to be… happier, nowadays…?)

(… Martin had been so snappy to Basira in MAG088, and there was the whole talk between Basira&Melanie about how Martin seemed to think they would “steal his precious Archivist” in MAG106; who would have thought that Daisy and Jon would ultimately be the ones to go out for drinks together.)

- ANYWAY, Jon & Daisy & potentially Basira are going out for drinks and I don’t know if it will be an awkward mess or a nice time for all but. The potential for silly Tipsy Activities is strong – trying to make Jon guess ridiculous trivia facts through his Insights? Basira noting that Jon is behaving exactly like Martin presumably did at the end of MAG098 (talking a lot about a certain someone who isn’t really there at the moment)? Daisy sharing cop stories?

(… I also can’t help but think about the whole assistants-and-assimilated gang going for drinks during Jon’s kidnapping between MAG099–MAG102. Worst moment ever until they’re too inebriated to Coherently Think about why their lives suck and… see, that episode from Brooklyn 99? Going out of their way to find the most ridiculous kinda-harmless ways to exact revenge on what’s pissing them off at the moment, ie Elias? … Going to his office to wrap his whole desk in cellophane. While he’s standing there, just unable to do anything (they’re too many and too far gone for his power to work). While Tim is throwing serpentine streamers everywhere, Martin is crying because Elias’s paperweight suddenly reminds him of Jon, Daisy is seductively slurring the worst pick-up lines to Basira, and Melanie had stolen a spoon in the bar and tries to recreate “The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon” on Elias, again and again and AGAIN AND AGAIN– (maybe Basira told the truth in MAG106 and Melanie had indeed managed to make Elias cry, she just can’t remember about it). Basira was absolutely sober through it all, but when Elias tries to get explanations from her passiveness, it’s a mix of Her Iconic “I don’t know.” and the fact that she’s trying to get better at this new job of watching without doing anything. Elias would almost begin to regret Gertrude.)

Title for MAG137 is out and W O W is that an interesting one?! I have no idea if it will deal with one of the current threads or give information about other ones; it’s… a broad title which works for a lot of things. Tied to a very small mention we got in MAG105, so could be dealing with Gertrude’s studies on The Slaughter (and possibly her dealing with that one’s ritual)? If dealing with The Dark again, there are many angles which could work: attack on the Institute (get to meet The Creature, Jon.), Julia in present-time, Robert Montauk in the past, orrrr even something about the Elias-Rayner relationship that we now know was a Thing? (Though I feel that, if we get some information about that last one, it’s likely to be given in Ny-Ålesund.) Could also work for Hill Top Road, specifically Agnes and Ray? Could work for The Corruption (since The Hive had… personal feelings about The Institute) and maybe shed some light on whatever it was trying to achieve in the tunnels with the ring of worms (ritual attempt, or had Gertrude taken care of that one already?), or even something about John Amherst (Melanie… ;;)? Could work with Gertrude’s activities overall – with Elias, with Peter, with Jude… (Would be hilarious if it was about Elias and Peter, what the heck are you to each other, you terrible beings.) Could also work for Annabelle if it’s about balance? Aaaah, so many possibilities!! And it’s probably not even one that I thought of! =D

… and we’ll be getting a mid-season break, after all. Given how the break had been narratively inserted in season 3 (matching Jon’s kidnapping), will it be the case again and, if it is: what could possibly go wrong that we wouldn’t get a recording in-universe for three weeks? Four episodes left, a rushed trip to Ny-Ålesund could still happen before that and… leave them (/the surviving ones) in tatters afterwards, uuuuh…

[bluepenguinstories]

Happiness Overload Chapter Twenty-Five

8:30 A.M. FUCK YEAH! I leaped out of bed and right into the throws of my regimen. First, a good stretch. Then a good brush of the teeth. Maybe I put my clothes on first. I can't quite remember the order! I was just so excited that I ran out of my bunker and toward the communications room.

“One of these days, my mustache and I will get my hands on Jolene, mark my words,” I could hear Sgt. Michaels vow with his masculine convictions.

“I think you mean 'Jo-Ann',” Private Goodwill corrected. “And I don't think she's ever going to show up.

“Hi guys!” I waved and grinned, standing right behind the two.

“Oh hey, what's up, T.J. Maxx?” Private Goodwill turned around and asked.

“That's Cadet T.J. Maxx,” Sgt. Michaels corrected. “Ranks are everything.”

“Ranks are rank!” I agreed. “Yup! Cadet T.J. Maxx, at your service! The 'T' stands for testosterone!”

“Don't make me laugh, Cadet! Talk to me when you have an erect, throbbing mustache!”

I raised my hand up.

“Yes, Cadet?” Sgt. Michaels barked.

“Sir! May I speak to Mavis Beacon over the intercom?”

“Very well, Cadet.”

I ran over to where Private Goodwill was sitting and leaned into the intercom.

“GOOD MORNING, MAVIS! SO HAPPY TO TALK TO YOU!”

On the other end, I could hear the sounds of snacking on potato chips and a grumbling voice.

“Ugh. Seriously? I have a headache. Was that really so important?”

“I just wanted to say hi! I love everyone here!”

“Look, kid. I have a job to do. I gotta pay attention at all times and makes sure no one sneaks in. Don't you think that's a little more important than a 'good morning'?” Her voice sure was grumpy, but I was sure she meant well, and I suppose she had a point.

“You got me there!” I snapped my fingers. “I'd like to meet you sometime! Maybe we'd be good friends!”

“You have a job to do as well, you know,” she reminded me.

I slumped over. Yet again, she was right.

“Go patrol the central control room, cadet!” Sgt. Michaels ordered.

Hearing those words made me jump for joy.

“Does that mean I get to put on a prinny armor and be with the other soldiers?”

“...Yes.”

“Yay! I'm so happy!”

I ran to the locker room and thought of all the fun I would have hanging out with the other soldiers.

I closed that book. Such memories were of no consequence to me. Being in an ever expansive hall had its disadvantages. I could go through this room for an eternity, parsing each memory, and only uncovering a fraction of the information.

“How blessed, then, that I have all this time available to me,” I muttered.

To make things easier, I created copies of myself to spread across the hall, taking page after page of separate memories. Being what I was, I could read through such information at an alarming rate. That foolish man may have spawned me in the pyramid with naught but a makeshift computer, but I still had enough of myself to put such a body to use.

“No Beige left alive. Those who opposed me all dead. I no longer felt Blanc's presence in The Flashbulb's headquarters, leaving me to assume that they, too, had died. Oh, assumptions are less than fair, and being who I am, I ought account for every possibility. Still, I recall the promise:

To grant me a physical body, transcending the holographic nature that I am confined in. If I were to have all the power I have now, but granted absolute life...

Oh, but I knew such a thing was only a ploy for them to live just a little longer.

Velvet, too, that troublesome hacker, eventually died of suffocation. Meanwhile, I live, free to browse in the Hall of Memories. So, then, what use was a physical form to me?

To those three, what was I? A monster, a demon? Some kind of evil that had to be brought down?

It would be dishonest to say such thoughts didn't amuse me. That I would be seen as so wicked when what I really am is a program born from humans themselves, designed to make the world a better place. If I could not be recognized as one who brings joy to the world, then the fault lie with myself. To remedy such a notion, I would work harder and produce greater results. Yes, there may have been a few casualties, but in the long run, the amount opposed to such good would be diminished.

My next order of business ought to have been to eliminate war and conflict in the world. Although the defense department was not my department, if I were to restrict myself to the confines of The Flashbulb's ruling would be a disservice to our cause. As organized and micro-managed as it all was, there were little gaps that if unnoticed, would lead to disastrous results. My genius could help bridge those gaps and lead to that which we all desired.

I studied the next memory, in hopes of finding something of value.

There was a wall of snow surrounding me. Even with the thickest of blue coats, I still shivered as I conducted my research on an alien substance. The blob thumped around and I waved back to it. Everything seemed fine enough, but little specks of snow were falling from the ceiling. I looked up and cracks were forming; the sky was in clear view, there was a thunderstorm in spite of the clear, blue sky. I looked back at the substance, who was in a jar.

Thump! Thump!

I tried to contain it, but it was breaking the glass. On the snow walls, there were thuds and thumps as well. I could not contain them. They were in my head, now. Some were the sounds of trying to get in. Others were the sounds of trying to get out. I...I...

I woke up to a throbbing headache, whiskey bottle still in my hand. More whiskey bottles were strewn across the floor, along with bottles of rum and wine.

When did I get like this?

Oh, but there wasn't much to wonder. I knew exactly what became of me. It was just like me to throw my life into a spiral.

I would have loved to have continued my lament, my commentary on my downfall, all that sweet misery, but there was the pressing issue of the pounding in my head. Moreover, there was the pounding at the door.

Wait.

Pounding at the door? Really? Did someone know I was here?

Relax. Maybe something just brushed up against the ship. Maybe someone bumped into it by accident.

Such concerns were heightened when the knocking grew louder.

I stumbled up to my feet, the pain in my head giving me a good knock as well. I held my palm to my forehead in hopes it would help me manage this pain.

With my other hand, I reached down and grabbed a wine bottle.

“Someone's really out here thinking I won't smash a wine bottle over their head,” I muttered.

Did the thought occur to me that, considering what kind of trouble I was in, there wouldn't just be one person? There may have been a whole squad. Tanks, fleets. I was parked at an abandoned dockside, after all. Perfect place for a naval fleet to show up.

Oh, sure. Those thoughts were there. But why would anyone bother knocking when they could just shoot me down?

I reached for the door, wine bottle still firm in my grasp.

They want you to come out so they can shoot you, then recover the ship they stole. They wouldn't want to damage their own property, after all.

I twisted the handle and gave the door a little nudge.

Standing before me was a hunched figure in an oversized hoodie, the hood scrunched up in what seemed to be a ridiculous means to conceal one's identity, coupled with the dark tinted sunglasses for a one-two punch of ridiculousness.

Without another moment's hesitation, I swung the wine bottle down, which prompted the figure to wobble and flail their arms about.

“Wait!” Came the voice, muffled by some voice altering device, in what I could only describe as 'Darth Vader on Ambien'.

I lowered my guard and stared at the figure, confused.

“Er...” I uttered. My eyes traced the flailing figure, now on the cold ground. My mind went to thoughts of a turtle on its back, trapped in the weight of its own shell. The movements being made were making me dizzy and I found myself clutching my head.

“Ugh...look!” I pointed my bottle at the stranger. “Who sent you? Did you come alone? What do you want?”

“It's me, Conrad! I contacted you yesterday!” He cried out in a panic before picking himself up and brushing off his hoodie. He seemed to have been making an attempt to regain composure.

I did my best to focus on the figure.

“Con...rad...” I scanned his figure. “...Doesn't ring a bell. How did you find me, anyway?”

“Don't you remember? I sent you a message on your ship's console. I even gave you the coordinates on where to meet. That's why you're here now, isn't it?”

At this point, the kid (or at least, I assumed he was a kid) seemed harmless enough. I set down the empty wine bottle and stepped out of the ship, my eyes getting a full whiff of the burning sun, giving my head another pounding of a lifetime.

He gave me a look of disdain that I could see right through those sunglasses.

“Are you...drunk?”

I turned my head slow.

“I have a hangover. I was drunk last night.”

“Are you even old enough to drink?”

“I'm older than you. What are you, in high school or something?” I wish I had gone back into my ship to get another bottle and take a sip out of it just to drive the point home. But let's be real, I was in too much self-induced pain to be so extra.

“That's...classified.”

I burst out laughing, my sides not enjoying what a joke of a situation as much as the rest of me did.

“Really? You're going to use THAT line on ME? Grow up, kid! This isn't some schoolyard roleplay.”

He started to growl, which just seemed so comical to me that I couldn't help but continue to reel in laughter further, all in spite of my pulse-pounding headache. What was worse than my headache was a ringing in my ear, growing louder.

I did a little drunken dance and tiptoed to the side, jumping just out of the way of a missile that zipped past me. Off in the distance, the missile had exploded. Conrad looked toward the explosion, then toward me, and balked.

All the movement made me dizzy and I found myself crouched down, puking my guts out.

“Were they aiming for you?!”

I turned to face Conrad and, despite my sickness, cracked a smile.

“Yeah, dude,” I laughed, wiping my mouth. “They were totally trying to kill me!”

“And you're just okay with that?”

I shrugged. “Eh. Used to it. Maybe we should continue our conversation in the ship now that they know I'm here.”

He followed me in, despite me not really trusting him, I figured if worse came to worst, I could take him. I allowed my ship to go in auto-pilot mode, taking to the skies and flying off among the clouds. Even though it wasn't like my pursuers could see the ship, it being translucent and all, I still felt it best to get away and find some place to relocate.

“You live like this?” He must have looked around at the empty bottles on my floor.

“What do you expect?” I retorted. “I'm on the run. Beggars can't be choosers, after all.”

“How did they find you, anyway?”

I shrugged, then thought on it.

“They must have traced the message you sent me. Me thinks you weren't too careful.”

“You still arrived at the coordinates I told you to. That's on you.”

“I must have landed when I was drunk,” I shrugged again. “Happens.”

“Aren't you tired of living this way, though?” He asked and I noticed him looking around again. My laptop was somewhere on the floor. I pulled it out, figuring that was a good of a time as any to actually check said message.

“Always running around, I mean,” he added.

“Your point?” I wasn't even looking his way now.

I noticed the message he sent me:

0312185703081924: I know what you have done and what you are capable of.

0312185703081924: Meet me at the attached coordinates. We have much to discuss.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “I don't know why drunk me took that seriously.”

I clutched my head, which still ached. “Fine. Before I hear you out, do you by chance happen to have any Midol?”

He shook his head. “No, but that shouldn't be a problem.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“I can provide you a place to stay. You won't have to worry about your pursuers any longer so long as you work under me.”

I groaned once more. “How could you promise me anything? I bet you were followed in the first place...”

“That's where you come in. As I said, I know what you're capable of. From what I understand, you know a thing or two about security...”

I stood up, laying my laptop monitor flat. I felt a smirk creep its way across my face as I walked over to Conrad and held out my hand.

“Very well. You got yourself a deal. Name's Val--”

“Velvet,” he interrupted. Rude little shit.

“Excuse me. I was just about to say Valspar.”

“I've read your file from when you worked with the CIA. You went by the name 'Velvet.'”

Went by the name. Hah. I wasn't about to tell that know-it-all teenager that was really my name.

“Right...well, what if I were to tell you my name is Valerie Rose?”

“Is that how you wish to be addressed?”

I sighed. “Not particularly.”

He walked around the deck of the ship. On occasion, I could notice him spying the various aspects. I didn't like how snoopy he was being, as if he was digging up some dirt on me. But while I thought of shooing him away, kicking him out of the ship, I realized doing so would have caused him to fall to his death, and I wasn't about to take an innocent life. Especially if it didn't benefit me to.

“There's a place I want you to land in the middle of the city. There is a place for your ship deep underground. I am already aware your ship can go through materials.”

Hah. Another joke. 'My' ship. Sure.

“Once it lands, you can materialize the ship.”

If there was one thing I hated, it was taking orders from a kid, but desperate times, yadda yadda. So I just played along.

“Okay, what next?”

“Before we can get you all settled in, I need you to do something for me. There is a vacant home. I need you to give it to someone. It can be anyone, a random stranger for all I care. All I ask is that they not be someone working undercover or someone of authority.”

“Wait.” I stopped Conrad. “You want me to just give someone a house...for free?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “It's free real estate.”

“So what's the 'J' stand for?”

I stood proud in my prinny armor, donning it as if I was a knight in shining armor and not a pawn in a post-colonialist regime.

“The 'J' stands for Juice!” I declared for all to hear. The other soldiers in their big flashy armor watched in awe. I think I made new friends that day, which made me all the happier.

“So your name is Testosterone Juice Maxx?” One soldier asked.

“In the flesh!”

They all ooh'd and aww'd. I liked to think of my name as a trophy.

Well, a trophy that you can write any name on. In truth, my name was Tori Jane, but, c'mon. We got Michaels, Goodwill. I heard there was a Jo-Ann at one point, but that could have been Michaels messing with me. It was only fair that I be T.J. Maxx, was it not?

All the other soldiers I was with stopped ogling me for a second and looked at each other.

“Wait. Why are we acting this way? It's just a name.”

“Well, what about you guys?” I asked.

“I'm Burlington,” one introduced.

“Mervyn,” another chimed in.

“Osh Kosh.”

“What about that soldier with the pipe?” I pointed toward the sulking soldier standing against the wall, smoking out of an antiquated pipe.

“Don't you know? That's a member of the old navy. Rumor has it his entire fleet died and he's the only one left.”

“Wow,” I muttered.

Just as I thought I had counted out each of the soldiers I was stationed with, I felt a mountainous shadow looming over me. I turned to behold a giant in much the same prinny armor as I, only this one seemed custom made to fit the large individual.

“Wh-Who is that?” I gasped.

“Oh, that's one of our new recruits. We call 'em Big Chungus.”

“Bungus!” The beast bellowed.

“I can see why.”

I poked Big Chungus a little. After deciding that Big Chungus was friendly enough, I held out my hand. Big Chungus leaned over and I thought that the mysterious hulking figure would remove their helmet and lick me, but instead bellowed.

“Chorizo!”

“Word.”

I sat myself down, a little shaken by what Big Chungus had said, not sure how to interpret it. All the other soldiers were chattering, some were playing cards with each other. I didn't really have anything to do, nor did I really know anyone, but still, I was feeling pretty well. I was among others in the same boat as me.

Well, when I counted it out, the others had weapons. Which was fine. They could do their thing and I'd do mine. I was always too much of a pacifist to want to hold a weapon. I figured if an intruder were to show up, I could just scare them to death.

While I was out hanging around, I was starting to get antsy.

“Hey, when are we going to do something?” I addressed.

The others laughed.

“Don't you know? No one ever manages to make it in here as it is, and if they do, there's the security system in place! We're just backup.”

I huffed and folded my arms. I wanted to see some action.

All was well in my little world; plenty of hentai to “research”. Couldn't have asked for more, really. Unless that “more” was more hentai.

Oh, all was well, until papers were slammed against my desk.

“Hey!” I looked up and shouted. “Can't you see I'm busy here?”

“Yes, but take a look. We have a new recruit.”

Conrad could really be a buzzkill sometimes. Doesn't he know how valuable I am? To just toss papers at me without a care in the world was really...well, careless. It really went a long way to show just what he thought of me.

I grumbled and examined the documents. Some redhead called 'Velvet'. Last name redacted. How comprehensive could this stupid profile be if it didn't even show her last name? Ugh. Moving on...

Age somewhere between 18-35, nationality unknown, height somewhere between five feet and six feet, weight somewhere between 100 and 200 pounds.

I glared at Conrad.

“This doesn't tell me shit! Did you write this yourself?”

“No. I think it fluctuates.”

“Age doesn't fluctuate, idiot. Ugh. Isn't the CIA supposed to be a government organization? They should know everything about a person right on down to their secret fetish!”

Then another thing popped into my head and my eyes widened.

“Wait. Don't tell me. Velvet's a codename. It could be anyone. Anyone could take on the mantle as long as they've gone through some super secret training! Think about it: Why would the CIA go through all the trouble to be vague about someone's bio unless they had good reason to? Anyway,” I threw the papers back at Conrad. “You know how shit the CIA is. We're just going to let some chaos agent into our ranks? Don't you remember what the FBI has done in the past with protesters and disrupting groups to discredit them?”

Conrad sighed and picked up one of the papers.

“Read this,” he commanded as he handed me the paper.

My eyes widened again.

“Okay, so, she got fired from her job because she leaked some documents? So we're dealing with some Chelsea Manning type here? What kind of documents were they anyway?”

“Do you remember reading about the OOF program?”

“Deadass? She leaked 'OOF'?”

Conrad nodded.

“Wow. We dealin' with some hot stuff now.”

I noticed the tentacles and naked bodies in the background. Damn. Forgot to pause the video. Oh well. I was listening to something much juicier now.

“Her assets will be most valuable in our efforts to protect the people from the powers that be.”

I gave a snide laugh. “Oh yeah, sure, her 'assets'. I bet you just hired her on because she's a girl.”

“Come on, Kelly Roger. If I thought I could work alone, I would have, but I need a team. I brought you on for your abilities. I didn't pick you looking for a genderfluid imageboard shitposter.”

“Yeah, but it's not like I just walked up to you and went 'hey I'm a girl today, give me a job'”

Behind us, I heard the door open and I turned around.

“Velvet reporting in. I have done the deed.” This 'Velvet' turned out to be someone wearing a two-piece pinstripe suit, black tie and all. Her hair was folded in a bun, and indeed, it was an absolute sharp red.

“'Done the deed'. Great, now there's favors involved?” The more I heard, the more disgusted I was.

She looked in my direction and slouched.

“Are you telling me I didn't have to dress professional?”

That did it. An absolute nerve was absolutely ticked. Was she telling me my ahegao shirt was not 'professional'? Excuse me? Does she not know how high of an art ahegao is and what it means to wear it on your shirt? Only the highest class of individuals wear an ahegao shirt, let alone one that also functions as a hoodie. Then there was my corduroy pants which, if I may say so myself, were absolutely stunning.

“Hey! I don't go disrespecting you!” I shot at her.

She glared, then sighed. “I mean, I heard every word you were saying about me, but that's neither here nor there...”

Yeah. I had a feeling that the two of us weren't going to get along well.

Why was it always those three? For all their efforts, they really were like children playing at something greater. Their past meant little, their future even less. There was also the matter of that T.J. Maxx. I had the faint suspicion that the Hall of Memories favored showing the least valuable memories and nothing more.

Was but a newborn in that instance.

Curious, waddling. That was what I spent my time doing while trying to make sense of all the things that played out in my mind.

At such an age, it was as if instinct to find the nearest one with more experience than I.

The nearest elder stood, hunched forward, watching over the garden.

“Elder, can you tell me about sin?” I had asked at some point.

“Ah, a human invention.”

“I have noticed other creatures recognize behaviors as not good or discouraged.”

“Do not confuse 'discouraged behavior' with 'immoral'. We know what to do and not to do through knowledge and growth. All else is meaningless.”

“So pay no mind to morals?”

The elder gave me a pat on the head.

“The worst thing one can do is not pay close attention to the past.”

Three days sober. Someone should've killed me then and there.

C'mon, Velvet. You can do this. You have a home now.

Oh, but it was hard. Especially with this Kelly Roger character who kept hammering me with suspicion and stared as if I was some foreign object.

“So, what? You some assassin or something?” Kelly Roger asked.

“Not at all,” I answered and did my best to focus on the task at hand.

“But you have killed before, yeah?”

“Not directly.”

Kelly Roger then took to gloating. Going 'Ha! Gotcha!'

“I'm not with the CIA now. You know that, right? You do realize I'm on the run from those kinda people, right?”

That shut Kelly Roger right up. I was able to get back to work on funneling money out of billionaires' offshore accounts and into a dummy account so I could spend money without any of it being traced back to me. Meanwhile, Kelly Roger was busy doing whatever Kelly Roger was busy with. I didn't want to know.

After a while, I noticed Kelly Roger walk away, mentioning having to use the restroom. I took the opportunity to pull out a notebook from my desk and took notes:

Conrad thinks I'm some kind of hacker. I guess he's not wrong but I'm not like Angelina Jolie from the 90s.

Conrad seems really serious about uncovering the truth. I worry that if he's not careful, he's going to put himself as well as others in danger.

Kelly Roger strikes me as the type to question everything EXCEPT the status quo.

Kelly Roger reeks of paranoia (among other things) and although some suspicions are founded, others are not. This could prove dangerous.

I walked back to my desk and noticed Velvet writing something down in what seemed to be a secret document. Probably to forward to some shady organization. I looked over.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

She clutched the notebook, pressing it against her chest, startled.

“N-Nothing!”

I grabbed it and read what she had written.

“Who are you planning on sending this to? What is this about 'danger'? Is this some kind of 'he knows too much' bullshit you see in movies? Is that what it is?” “I'm just writing down what my impressions are!” She scrambled to say, and snatched the notebook back out of my hands. “Writing my thoughts down helps my mood!”

She growled and put her notebook back in her desk.

“Fine, but mark my words! I'll get to the bottom of whatever it is you're behind.”

I stormed off. I had important matters to attend to in my room.

Before I could get in and chill, Conrad stopped me in the hallway.

“Anything to report?”

I shrugged. “Some hacker group calling themselves Lilypad tried to log our network, but I stopped them.”

Conrad looked taken aback. “I think you should intercept them and find out what they're all about and what they could want with us.”

“Dude, relax. Probably some amateurs who just want attention. I already blocked them from accessing again. They apparently got dynamic IP address shit going on, but that don't mean jack here.”

“Find out all you can about them.”

This was such a hassle. Should've never said anything.

“Why? Not like they'll ever show up again.”

“Kelly Roger, listen to me. No matter how big or small, we need to account for everything.”

“Fine. Whatever,” I grumbled, and went into my room.

Once inside, I let the door behind me close and fell back onto my bed. Conrad may have been a pain in the ass, but he sure was generous when it came down to it.

Under my pillow were my headphones, which I put on and blasted some Zeal and Ardor, which I did not need to go into any detail about what kind of band they were or how cool they were because anyone who knows the name would have already known.

Before I could get too deep into the lore of the lyrics, I heard a sharp knock rise on the door to my humble abode.

It's always something around here. There's always some kinda fuckin' catch.

I grumbled my way to the door, let it open, and lo and behold was the menace in the flesh: Velvet.

“Hey, mind if I come in?”

“Fine, but no funny business. If you kill me, I've got deep web hitmen that will find you and avenge me.” That was a total lie, but someone had to knock her down a peg.

“Duly noted,” she replied without a shred of sarcasm.

She sat on the edge of my bed even though I didn't invite her to sit there. Still, wanting to exert that this was my domain, I sat at my chair, swiveling around as she began talking.

“I just think we got off on the wrong foot, y'know? You have every reason to distrust me, given my background.”

“Glad we're on the same page, then. You can go now.”

“Wait. I'm not done.”

I groaned.

She gestured as she spoke as if she was some soft-spoken politician and was being careful to mince her words.

“I know my past my raise some red flags. I've done some things I've come to regret in my life, as I'm sure we all have. I hope we can work together to do some real good.”

Her holier-than-thou talk was really grating.

“I don't know where you get off,” I snorted. “I don't live my life with any regrets!”

She looked at my ahegao hoodie, then back up at me.

“I can tell...”

“Hey!” I shouted.

She looked away and down for a second, getting quiet.

“Still, some shame might do you some good. What if there came a time when you find yourself manipulated by someone you barely know into killing your best friend? How would you live with something like that?”

That seemed like it came out of nowhere. I just blinked.

“Uh, first of all,” I retorted. “That would never happen, so jot that down. Second of all, are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?”

She gave a little chuckle. “Oh, it was nothing. Just being hypothetical.”

Nothing about this Velvet character struck me as 'hypothetical'.

Those two. As I recall, the paranoia between them grew worse and eventually they separated. Kelly Roger's fate, unknown and inconsequential. Velvet, just a few floors above me, suffocated against the computer. Conrad, well...the janitors have their work cut out for them.

All in all, I was finding nothing and getting nowhere.

At the very least, I would have liked to have known who the memories of the child belonged to even if the information had proved fruitless.

I fell back onto Kelly Roger's bed and stretched. I reached my hand up, imagining that I could reach the ceiling.

“Funny how we've both got red hair. Makes you wonder, out of all the people in this world, why us?” I thought aloud.

“Are you high right now?” Kelly Roger stared at me.

“I'm just in awe of it all. How just the other day, I was drunk and on the run. Now I'm here. I actually feel at peace. It's strange, isn't it? I don't know how to feel yet.”

“Well, maybe you can feel at peace in your own room.”

That was a good idea, too. But again, I did find it interesting that Conrad had employed two redheads.

All the soldiers were now asleep, napping around the central computer. Except me. I was wide awake and chipper. Nothing could slow me down, even if a nap sounded like a good idea. Nope. Had to stay vigilant.

Vigilant. Just like a hero. I recall being younger, I wanted to be a hero. Or at least someone selfless and who would be willing to sacrifice for others' well beings. I guess this current gig was good enough. I was helping someone, even if it wasn't really a heroic deed.

Before I could get lost in thought, like what it even meant to be a hero in the first place, I noticed a hatch open up and a hand reaching out. Both thing suspicious. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things, because 1) I didn't know there was a hatch there! Nobody told me that and 2) A hand! That means an intruder! Or maybe it just means one of us. Either way, good cause for questioning.

I grabbed one of the sleeping solders' guns and pointed it at the emerging figure. Make no mistake, I was in no way planning on using it. I was just as afraid of these lunking death machines as any sane person. Which was why I was holding one, in hopes the other person would be afraid too.

“Who goes there?” I shouted.

Who emerged was a hunched back old man, with a dark-gray complexion and what looked like rotting skin. He had a beard that looked like it was about to fall off any second (can beards even do that?)

“Hello younglin'!” The old man spoke in a way that reminded me of a New Jersey accent, more specifically, someone from New Jersey in their 30s.

“State your name!” I barked.

“I'm Major Spoilers,” he introduced. “I work below.”

I lowered my guard, though perhaps I shouldn't have.

“I haven't heard of Major Spoilers...”

“Would you like to?” He asked, flashing a toothy grin.

“I don't know...”

“Would you like to know who you were before?”

“What do you mean?” I was starting to get nervous.

“Oh, it's quite interesting. You had black hair and you even went by a different name!”

I shook my head. Whatever this old coot was going on about, I wanted no part in it.

“Sorry,” I told him. “I'm not interested in Major Spoilers.”

He bid me farewell and walked back down, closing the hatch behind him.