#crosscountry apocalypse

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

for the record whichever one wins I'm gonna do some ask games for to try and get myself back into creative mode on something.

a brief blurb on each, for context:

crosscountry apocalypse: the world Stops. Dany (not her real name) is trying to get to her family. instead (or maybe as well) she gets a traveling companion named Robin. neither of them knows what they're doing but at least Dany can act like she does. they're both scared. over the course of a year, they grow closer and learn to trust and find purpose in a world that's so much quieter than the one they know and so much more dangerous. all things end or stop. some things have to keep going too.

a tale of two Marjories: two cousins who share the same name meet up annually during family reunions at an ancestral lakehouse for most of their lives. this story covers their final summer together as they learn to grow up and let go and keep their heads above water through change and trials and pain.

untitled wedding story: a multicultural family tries to navigate cultural and interpersonal tensions while preparing for the marriage of one of their daughters. Hailey, the older sister of the bride to be, is trying to figure out the trajectory her life should take as both her siblings seem to already know, so she takes up the role of Wedding Planner(TM). as the two vastly different sides of the family butt heads and tension builds as more guests arrive, the wedding itself may be the most normal part of the situation.

eldritch places: a post-grad enviromental sciences student (is that even a thing?) is tapped by a shadowy government organization to take part in a remote research project inside the enormous sarcophagus hiding a mysterious island from the world. along with her handler/research partner, Tom, Olive will experience things she's never even conceived of being afraid of. the epic highs and lows of noneuclidean research, as it were. at least she's not alone.

[hollers-and-holmes]

my beloved Ms. Holmes i am working on a new chapter in crosscountry apocalypse JUST for you 😌 thank you so much for prompting me out of my writer's block/procrastinating <3<3<3

My beloved Lu I am so glad to hear it and now I crave an update. What’s the latest on this glorious story?

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

See in my mind my apocalypse-verse and @swinging-stars-from-satellites 's crosscountry apocalypse are the same apocalypse she's just dealing with how it went down in North America and all of mine are set in the UK

[carriagelamp]

Since it’s Pride Month, I decided this year I wanted to raid the library for a bunch of different queer books to read. Mostly graphic novels in this case, because I’ve had a hard time settling into much reading lately... thought hopefully now that it’s summer and I finally have my second shot I’ll be able to relax a bit more and dig into some heavier novels again. For now, enjoy some light, queer reads that I indulged in this June.

A Wolf Called Wander

A beautiful novel I had been hearing lots about. This story follows the young wolf Swift, who grows up knowing that he and his pack are the mountains, and the mountains are them. It’s in those mountains that he grows and learns and loves… until disaster strikes and he finds himself viciously torn apart from his family and forced out of the mountains that have always meant home to him. Forced to survive on his own. Swift then begins a gruelling journey that makes him face injury, starvation, and the everpresent danger of humans as he seeks a new place he can call home, and new people with whom he can form a pack.

This is all based on the true story of a tagged wolf known as OR-7, following the unbelievable route he took through Oregon and northern California! It was a very neat read, and I’d definitely recommend it if you enjoy stories told from an animal’s perspective because this book is a master class in it.

Bloom

I decided for June to try to read a handful of different queer books, and this was one of the first graphic novels I picked up. It is a super sweet story and the art is lovely. It’s about Ari, a boy who has just graduated high school and is now desperate to move away from his small town and his family’s struggling bakery, to join his band in the city where they hope to make it big. An agreement is finally reached: Ari’s father will let him leave, if he can find someone who can replace him in the bakery, which is how Ari meets Hector, someone who sees artistry and peace in baking. For anyone that’s read Check, Please, it gives off those types of vibes!

Boule et Bill: Bill est Maboul

Another book of Dupuis comics, because I can’t get enough of them! This one I just stumbled across and ended up reading on a whim but it was very cute. Geared younger than the others I’ve read, but still quite funny. It’s the charming hijinks of a young boy, his dog, and the family they live with. Each page or so is a different stand alone joke, a bit like Calvin and Hobbes except expanded beyond a single strip.

Chicken Run: Chicken Pies for the Soul

This was a ridiculous urge I got and had to follow. I recently rewatched Chicken Run (which is, of course, one of the best movies ever made) and felt the need to see if it had ever been novelized. Well, I found something better than a novelization! This is a chapter book with “advice” and stories written by the various characters, post-movie. It really does a good job with grasping the different characters’ voices and making something simple and funny out of it. It was very cute (and available on The Internet Archive if anyone else feels like reading something ridiculous!)

Doodleville

I picked this up on a whim and honestly, I shouldn’t have bothered. It was not very impressive. Very mediocre, awkward feeling artwork, and a story that only slightly manages to redeem it. The concept was kind of neat, and I did like how the ending came about, the rest was rather… plodding. I did not like the main character at all, her friends felt very Intentionally Quirky Aren’t We Cute :3 in a way that just tries too hard, and… yeah. Meh. It technically gets the “queer graphic novel flag” but it’s so in-passing that it feels rather excessive to give it that.

If you are interested, it’s about a world were doodles actually exist as living creatures that can be drawn into existence (the rather unsettling implications of which is never fully explored). This is all well and good, until the main character draws a monster and takes it with her to her art club... where it begins ravanging not only her doodles, but those of her friends. Together they need to work together to figure out how to stop this menace.

FRNCK v4

Phenomenal. I adore the FRNCK series, and book four wrapped up the first “cycle”, revealing several of the big secrets dogging the series so far, and changing how things are going to be able to run in the future.

If you haven’t seen me talk about it before, FRNCK is a graphic novel (a franco-belgian bande dessinée) about a young orphan, Franck, who’s chafing under the constant parade of uninterested foster parents that visit the orphanage he lives in. Determined to learn about his mysterious abandonment instead, he flees the orphanage… but finds himself tumbling through time, landing among a family of cave-people who rather reluctantly take him in and ensure this modern boy doesn’t die in the strange, dangerous new surroundings he finds himself in. You can get these ones in English as e-books, so if you want a really kickass graphic novel series to read please try these.

Haikyu!!

I’ve heard so much about Haikyu!! that I finally gave in and picked up the first book from the library. And I gotta say, it’s well worth the hype! This series really does capture the best parts of a good sports manga -- which is to say the team is filled with interesting, enjoyable character who all need to learn to pull together, boost each other’s strengths, and cover for each other’s weaknesses. Love me some found family tropes and this series oozes it in the best possible way. And then you also get some very cool action scenes as it makes high school volleyball seem like the most intense thing on earth. I can’t wait to continue it

Queer Eye

I haven’t been keeping up with Queer Eye but I was watching it ravenously when it first came out, and this seemed like a very cathartic book to read… and it really was. It had the same gentle, loving encouragement as the show. It doesn’t expect you to change your entire life, but to learn to embrace who you are, and take small steps to enhance those things. There a segment written (presumably) by each member of the Fab Five, explaining the mentality behind what they do on the show and how you can grow in those areas too. It’s very zen.

Spinning

I got this graphic novel out at the same time as Bloom, but it was the one that interested me less of the two... though that’s just because I have less interest in “real world” slice of life as a genre and this one is meant to be autobiographical. If you’re into that, you’ll probably love this because it really is stunning. Very pretty, and the format and pacing is all really well done. It’s a coming of age story for Tillie as she grows up dealing with a crosscountry move, complicated friendships, a burgeoning attraction to girls, and attending competitive figure skating classes.

This Place: 150 Years Retold

A stunning and heart-wrenching graphic novel told by a collection of different First Nation’s authors/artists, recounting oral histories about the 150 years since the colonialist formation of the country known as “Canada”. In other words, this is a post-apocalypse story, but one that really happened and that entire peoples are still fighting to survive. It’s very eye opening and beautifully told. Very strongly recommend the read, especially if you’re at all interested in history.

Torchwood: Serenity

Whoops, not technically a book. I had thought these were technically audiobooks at first, but rather they’re audio dramas that were played on the radio. Still, I decided to include one because I’ve been listening to them like a person possessed and they’re too fun not to at least mention. Let me indulge in my obsessions.

If you don’t know Torchwood, it’s a BBC series that spins-off from Doctor Who, focusing on the enigmatic and flirtatious Captain Jack Harkness, who is running the covert organization known as Torchwood, which is tasked to protect humanity from and prepare them for alien contact. It’s goofy and campy but also more adult and heavy than Doctor Who tends to get, so it is (in my opinion) a really fascinating series. Though it also has content warnings coming out the wazoo so maybe make sure it’s for you before delving in.

Serenity specifically is possibly one of the best Torchwood stories I’ve ever experienced. The Torchwood team concludes that there’s an undercover alien hiding in the idyllic gated community Serenity Plaza, and so that means it’s up to Jack and Ianto to go undercover as a happily married couple and flush out the alien without being discovered first. Even if it means being sickly sweet together, pretending to care about the local neighbourhood barbecues, and actually caring a bit too much about the Best Front Lawn competition. What is truly magical about this one, is that it manages to make it a Fake Dating AU despite the fact that Jack and Ianto are actually dating in canon. But they’re both used to dating as a pair of alien hunters with insanely dysfunctional lives, and who now need to figure out how to deal with domesticity. It is marvellous.

Wilderlore: The Accidental Apprentice

A middle grade novel that felt a bit like a cross between Harry Potter and Pokemon. It’s about orphan Barclay Thorne who wants nothing more than to be accepted in the rule-bound village of Dullshire, and live up to his apprenticeship as a mushroom farmer. He certainly wants nothing to do with the fearsome Beasts who live beyond the village, deep in the Woods or the sinister Lorekeepers that bond with them. It was, after all, a Beast that had killed his parents all those years ago. But when he finds himself at the very edge of the forest, hunting for an elusive mushroom, he is suddenly unable to avoid any of that. Not when a wild girl and her bonded dragon appear to summon a horrible Beast and end up getting Barclay bonded to it instead. Now, if Barclay ever wants to be welcomed back into his home, he has no choice but to venture into the Woods and find a way to sever the bond imprisoning him to the massive, monstrous wolf now imprinted on his body as a living tattoo.

I honestly can’t decide how I felt about this one. I feel like it’d be a really fun read for maybe a grade 5 to 7 student? I was a bit more meh about it. It was fine, but it was very hard not to draw unfavourable parallels to Harry Potter. But for a kid who’s never read Harry Potter? Or even an adult that has but is looking for something different to scratch that itch, this might be a good book to try. I’ll probably try reading the second book when it comes out.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Also, "wracked with chills" and "body aches" for whoever you choose

ohohohoho Dany's turn!! reminder that this is non-canon, I have something different planned for The Big Event (emotional or physical) during the autumn part of the story proper. but for the sake of whump...

The fall is a relief. After fighting through the heat of summer by the skin of her teeth, cooler days and downright chilly nights are more than welcome. Dany relishes in the ability to wear her coat again. She feels right for the first time in a while.

They'll be sleeping outside again tonight. She doesn't see any nearby towns on the maps, no motels or cabins to take cover in. Hopefully it won't rain. It's already cold by mid-afternoon, as Dany and Robin sit perched on the maintenance platform of another train car. Robin is wearing a grey sweatshirt, zipped as high as it can go with the hood over his head, underneath his letterman jacket. Even Dany is shivering periodically, much as she's enjoying herself.

Sometimes, the rumble of the trains over the tracks can lull her into distraction or sleep. Just now, she's staring silently into the cloudy grey the train is departing. The diffuse light is giving her a headache. She shuts her eyes, since she doesn't have sunglasses, and listens to the clacking of wheels over the tracks. Now that her eyes are shut she realizes how tired she is. She doesn't usually sleep on the train, but between the sudden exhaustion sweeping over her and the throbbing building in her head, she's almost willing to let herself drift off.

She shifts position, tries leaning her head back against the ladder she's sitting against, but it juts into the back of her neck. The metal is icy cold, triggering a deep, convulsive shiver down her spine. She doesn't open her eyes to button her coat, just does it by feeling. Her fingers feel stiff as she feels for the buttonhole. She'll need to dig her gloves out of her bag here soon.

Maybe it's the silence, the fact that Robin is just as zoned out staring into space and thus not talking or making much of his presence at all, the empty space to be aware of her body, but the longer Dany sits still like this with her eyes closed, the more her head and neck hurt. There's a building pressure in her sinuses, and tension in her shoulders. Sleeping on the ground will do that to a person, she supposes.

She almost drifts off. Almost being the key word, because the train goes over a hard bump and it jolts her awake, hard metal poking into a more and more sore body. She must have really slept wrong last night to feel this stiff and uncomfortable, or else something else is wrong, and she's both doubtful of that and wary of considering the possibility. She shivers again, pulls her coat closer around her, squirms to try and find a position that doesn't make every muscle in her body sore.

Robin says something and she doesn't hear it over the sound of the train. She opens her eyes, squinting and frowning at how everything seems out of its proper depth, how there feels like there's pressure behind her eyes. Robin is looking expectantly at her, like he's waiting for a response. Dany blinks hard and shifts forward a bit.

"What'd you say?" She asks.

Robin shrugs. "I said, you can like... lean on me, if you want," he offers.

Dany stares at him, opens her mouth to snark something sharp at him for even thinking she'd accept that, but. But. She's exhausted. She's sore. Her eyes hurt. Begrudgingly, but all too willingly, she moves closer to Robin and lets her weight drop against him. Her head on his shoulder, far more comfortable than before.

"You have a watch?" She asks.

"Yeah, why?"

"We need to get off in an hour." She explains.

If Robin says anything else after that, she doesn't hear it, too caught up in how poorly she feels. When Robin nudges her an hour later, she sits up, bleary-eyed for a few seconds, and winces with every move as she loads up her bags.

The jump from the train to the ground is far less graceful than she usually makes, and the landing sends her head spinning for a few moments. She stays on hands and knees, muscles trembling although she's been resting these past few hours, until the dizziness goes away. The ground is cold under her hands, dampness soaking into her trousers, and she shudders because of it. Robin disembarks just as gracelessly a few moments later and yards up the track, but he stands immediately and makes his way back down to her.

Of course, when she tries to stand, the world spins violently around her. Or, maybe, violet-ly, the color the evening is around them. Either way, it sends her lurching against the nearest tree, breathing carefully and deliberately until her head clears. When she looks up, Robin is watching her with a furrow between his brows.

"You okay?" He asks cautiously.

Dany nods, which makes her head hurt more. How did she not realize how cold it is out here until now? She's freezing. "Lost my balance," she says, which is true, but not entirely. "Come on, we need to find a place to camp for the night." She needs to get into a sleeping bag, is what she's thinking. She needs to get warm.

Every step is a challenge the way her joints throb as she moves. The trek deeper into the woods, into a nicely hidden spot where they can both safely sleep for the night, doesn't take that long, but it feels like hours. Dany struggles not to show how hard she's shivering, but her breath hitches with every shudder. She feels like she's never been warm in her life and never will be again.

When they set up camp, she snaps an order for Robin to start a fire. She knows he knows how to. She dumps her bags on the ground and unzips the large one as deftly as she can with stiff, shaking hands that barely obey her commands. By the time Robin has the fire started, with a nice ring of rocks around it to keep it contained, she's struggling with the sack her sleeping bag is in. The fabric is slippery, the plastic slider difficult for her to manage.

She eventually gets it open, though, as Robin is pulling his own bag out and rifling through it for his sleeping supplies. She sets up as close to the fire as she dares. She may be freezing, but she's not stupid. When she glances over at Robin, settling in a dip between mossy rocks that will probably wind up soaking his sleeping bag in the night, she doesn't move her head, but just the movement of her eyes hurts badly enough to make her grit her teeth.

She's only dizzy when she moves too fast, like when she tosses and turns in the night and tries curling herself up inside the sleeping bag to keep warm. The shivering is constant now, her breath hitching and teeth chattering when she isn't careful enough to stop them. She rolls over, tries placing an arm under a head that feels like it's about to explode, but as she blinks blearily at the weakening fire, the orange of the flames twists and swirls before her eyes. She closes them again.

She spends most of the night coiled as tightly as the sleeping bag and her proximity to the fire will allow, while Robin sleeps quietly, with only the occasional soft snore, a couple yards away. Dany's arms ache as she wraps them around herself, she can feel goosebumps on her legs. She doesn't want to rise, expose herself to the chilled morning air as the sun rises, but hopefully the light will make it warmer. As it is, for once Robin rises before her, clearly trying to be quiet for her sake as she lies uncomfortably on the ground, head lolling to the side as it throbs.

When she finally sits up, it's slowly and painfully. She keeps her eyes screwed shut as she pushes herself up on trembling, deeply aching arms. The hood of her sleeping bag is still over her head, and it slips off as she moves to extricate herself. She bites back a moan at the sudden cold, feels her entire body tense in a violent shudder. The chill turns into a searing heat for a moment that does make her gasp this time, as she's struggling to stand up.

"Dany, you okay?" Robin asks sharply. She's sure he's watching her, but she doesn't care right now.

She shivers and hauls herself up using one of the boulders he'd been sleeping near, keeps her teeth clenched so he won't hear them chatter together. She nods once, tersely, and immediately regrets it when a nauseating rush of dizziness overtakes her. She brings a stiff hand to her forehead, immediately registering the throbbing heat there as not a good thing, and feels her legs tremble.

Robin catches her before she hits the ground, awkwardly lowering her to the ground with his arms wrapped around her middle. Dany jerks away, brow furrowed.

"Don't touch me," she growls, half a pained gasp, because there's gooseflesh all over her body and wherever he touches her aches, like the careful way he caught her is going to leave bruises. When Robin lifts his hands and carefully releases her, she scoots toward the nearest tree and leans back against it, shaking all over.

Another hot flash grips her, followed by an even deeper chill. She tries not to think about how warm Robin's momentary touch was.

"Dany," Robin says slowly. "Hey."

She forces herself to blink at him, shoots a weak glare his way when his face stops swimming in front of her eyes.

Robin frowns at her, bites his lip. "You're sick," he says. It isn't a question. "Can I touch you?" He asks cautiously, misunderstanding why she'd jerked away before.

She catches herself before shaking her head this time. "No."

"Why?" It sounds almost challenging.

"Hurts," she grits out. Once she's admitted it, it's almost easier to continue. When he asks what hurts, she replies automatically, "Everything. Everything hurts and I'm," she closes her eyes again when the forest starts spinning around her, "So cold," she finishes in a defeated whisper.

"Okay," Robin says. "Okay. I'm gonna just..." She feels a cold hand touch her face and tries to move away, but Robin's other hand catches her by the shoulder before she can topple sideways. "Holy shit, Dany," Robin mutters. "That's not good."

"Fever?" She asks even though she already knows the answer. Her body is like a block of ice, but her whole head feels like it must be on fire. She lifts a hand and brushes her fingers against her own cheek, somehow feeling outside her own body in the moment. If only she could capture the heat from her face and spread it through the rest of her, at least she'd be warm all over.

"A bad one, I think," Robin says. "I know you don't like me going near the medical bag, but-"

"Just make it stop," she mumbles, hating herself for begging, but miserable enough to do it anyway. "It's- there's a list," she explains, voice low. The vibrations of her own voice seem to rattle through her entire body. "Of all the meds and what they do." She realizes she doesn't know off the top of her head what she needs. Fever reducers, probably. Something to make the aching go away.

She keeps her eyes shut as Robin moves away, rustling around in their little camp. She hears the bag unzip, bottles rattling as Robin goes through them and checks the labels. She knows what probably a majority of it is. Her father made sure they had extra. She wonders what else he packed in there. She should have done an inventory at the start of all this. The one time she tries to squint over at Robin, see what exactly he's doing, the movement to turn her head hurts so badly she wishes it was bad enough to make her pass out. She stares blankly at her limp hands curled in her lap until they go blurry and then the dizzy feeling returns, so she stops paying attention.

Robin returns a moment later, a bottle in hand. "Okay," he says. "Here." He takes her hand, turns it over and places two tablets in her palm. His hand under hers doesn't feel cold anymore.

When Dany slowly lifts the pills to her mouth, she feels a water bottle lifted in front of her face and to her eternal humiliation, lets Robin hold it to her lips. She reaches blindly for his wrist as he moves away again, weak fingers colliding with the sleeve of his jacket. His hand wraps around hers for a moment before he returns to the medical bag and she hears it zip back shut.

Dany lets her head loll to the side, focuses on listening to Robin move around instead of her own misery. She hears it the moment he lowers himself to the ground beside her. She doesn't risk opening her sore eyes this time.

"Hey," he says quietly. "Dany?"

"What?" She says.

"Can I touch you now? Please? It might help you feel warmer."

Dany is about to protest, but she hears warmer and her stubbornness dissolves. "Mmhmm."

Maybe it's because of how uncomfortable she feels, the exhaustion weighing down her aching limbs and keeping her mind sluggish, but she doesn't expect it when Robin wraps his arm around her back and pulls her nearer to him. She's about to push away, weakly snap something at him, but. But he's right. Her head rests comfortably against his neck and she immediately feels warmer. Her skin hurts when he first touches it, but he starts rubbing hesitantly up and down the arm that isn't pressed between their bodies, and it's shockingly comforting.

"Okay?"

Dany doesn't know if he'd said something before that or if it was the question itself, but she doesn't care. She mumbles an affirmative and for the first time all year lets herself be taken care of. She'll regret it layer. She knows that. Someday soon the bottom is going to be pulled out from under her. But for now, the fall is a relief.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Previous | Next

It's foggy and getting foggier with a smell of humidity in the air. Something is crackling around them and Dany doesn't like it. Rain might put out the fires already burning, but lightning will only start more. It's darkening by early afternoon even though summer is nearly upon the still earth. Something cracks nearby and Dany jumps like it was a lightning strike; it was just Robin a few feet away, obscured by ugly gray mist.

Dany grits her teeth, rolls her eyes. At Robin or at herself, she isn't sure. The weather has her jumpy. The fog is too yellowish, an eerie shade of gray that elsewhere might warn of tornadoes, but here... she doesn't know. She just knows she doesn't like it.

"I think it's going to rain," says Robin, barely visible just out of arm's reach.

Dany snorts. "You don't say."

At least they're following a road. The pavement is cracked in places and hasn't been tended in months, but their direction is consistent. It would be too confusing to trek through more woods or fields in weather like this. As it is, Dany is afraid they'll get turned around even on the street. She keeps one careful eye on the useless power poles to their right.

Robin moves closer as they walk, probably just as unsettled by the threats in the air around them as she is, but far worse at hiding it. He bumps into her briefly and static crackles between them for a moment. Dany glares over at him, but he's too busy watching the path in front of them. She shifts the bags on her back into a more comfortable arrangement.

"I could carry something, you know," Robin offers, as if they haven't had this exact discussion twice before already.

"No." Dany curls a hand around the layers of straps crossing her body. These are hers. These are her family's. No one else can touch them. She won't risk that.

"I'm literally not even carrying anything!"

Dany shoots him a look. "That's not my problem." If he's really coming with her, which she needs to stop questioning at this point, they need to find him more supplies. Heaven knows she doesn't have enough to share for as long as this trip may take.

Robin shuts up after that. Good for him. Dany doesn't startle again when another crack sounds off from nearby. If Robin wants to wander off, she won't be responsible for him.

"Uh, Dany?"

But Robin is right beside her still, and he's stopped short. Dany instinctively reaches for her holstered pistol and turns on her heel in the direction he's facing. There's a thicker line of fog trailing through the air, dark, oily gray and ominous. Dany's eyes follow it up to the faintly visible line of one of the electrical poles, wood singed and smoking where lighting has stuck it. They're only about two yards away.

"Move," she says. When Robin doesn't, she turns and shoves him. "Move!"

Another crack — lighting does strike twice, more often than people realize — and the flash nearly blinds her as fire ignites. Dany loses the feeling of Robin's sweatshirt against her palm as they both scramble to avoid the falling power lines. She stumbles with the awkward weight of the medical bag at her hip and barely dodges the falling pole.

It crashes down beside her, barely missing her body with its heavy wooden weight, and with a suddenly vibrant spark, everything she can see through the fog turns to flames.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but not with a whimper, either. It ends with a whisper.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Fever Whump Bingo: Tepid Bath for Robin! you can combine it with others if you want >:)

ohoho I'm going to combine it with "glassy eyes" for something vaguely adjacent to some actual canon plans!

Dany's hands don't shake. She's not a freaking coward. The hotel is too quiet when she steps back inside, having set herself at ease with a quick loop around the exterior. There are several exits and no one around. She slings the rifle off her shoulder as she walks back into the room, leans it in the corner next to the door. Her pistol will stay on, anyway.

Robin is sitting on the edge of one of the double beds, hands hanging limp between his legs where his arms are propped on his knees. He's bent over awkwardly, head hanging. His back is to Dany, shoulders rising and falling heavily with labored breaths. She can hear his breathing from the door.

"Outside's clear," Dany reports, pausing for a moment that she's glad Robin doesn't see before bending to untie and take off her boots for the first time in... she doesn't know how long. They haven't slept indoors for days. The conversation is normal enough. That's why she says it, even when Robin doesn't respond. "This room opens outside, but there are general exits on either side of the hall out the other side, and one from the front lobby. The pool is gross, but it's indoor/outdoor, so it could function as an escape route if we needed it."

Dany walks into the bathroom. No lights, obviously, but she blinks at herself in the mirror. Her hair's gotten longer, her face pale since summer — she never tanned, just burned and wound up paler than before. There are circles under her eyes belying her lack of sleep and more fear in the gray than she wants to admit.

Robin isn't doing well. There's a part of her that's afraid to check his fever. If she doesn't know how bad it is, how much he's been pushing through, then they don't have to deal with it. If she doesn't know, it can't be as bad as she fears. Schrodinger's Robin, she thinks suddenly, ridiculously, and snorts quietly. The uptick of her mouth in the mirror looks like it belongs to somebody else. Somebody she was before all this. Before the world ending and meeting Robin and nearly dying and jumping on trains. She turns away from it.

"Robin?"

"Yeah?"

Some of the tension in Dany releases when he finally responds, though his voice is weak and painfully raspy. They'd had to stop several times walking today while he caught his breath, coughing into his elbow until Dany worried he was going to fall over. She steps over to the bed, crouches on front of him.

"You doing okay?" She asks, already knowing the answer.

Robin looks up at her with glassy, vacant eyes. His hair droops over his forehead, damp with sweat. He blinks slowly at her. It doesn't add much more awareness to his gaze. "'M'fine," he whispers. It's a lie that Dany knows all too personally. A moment later he's toppling forward and Dany's catching him, scrambling to support his awkward weight as his strength gives out.

"Clearly," Dany says sharply, snapping out her fear with sarcasm, "You're not." Even his nose, poking into the side of her neck, is hot. She struggles to move onto the bed beside him, cradling his limp form against her. "You're burning up," she says, you know, like a cliché. "You with me at all?"

"D'ny..?" He mumbles, shifting slightly. "I don' feel good..."

"I hadn't noticed." The slurring isn't a good sign. He's barely, barely conscious and raging with fever.

She has, and Dany knows this, antibiotics and fever reducers, tucked safely away in the medical bag she'd dropped on the far side of the other hotel bed. But her fear is, and it's gripping her almost tighter than she's holding Robin right now, is that he's deteriorating too quickly, won't last the time it takes for the dose to enter his system. At least, won't last without permanent damage. She finally understands what Robin must have felt month prior, watching her suffer. Only, he depended on her. She can survive without him. But... can she really, anymore? She doesn't want to think about that.

Water, out here, is most often run off of wells. She'd seen the septic pipes as they came in. If she's lucky, or incredibly blessed, they're far enough off the grid that the pump doesn't require electricity. Where she grew up, most people living off-grid had solar well pumps. Funny, how things have changed with the weather: she prays there's been enough sun.

"Come on," she urges, wrestling Robin into a semi-standing position. "Robin, hey, you gotta help me out here." Robin isn't particularly big, but he's mostly dead weight and unwieldy. She manhandles him into the bathroom, where he collapses onto the lid of the toilet, barely holding himself up.

Dany holds her breath as she twists the lever, thinks pleasepleaseplease too desperately in the silence. She gasps in relief when she hears the rumble of water flowing, when it starts pouring out of the faucet. The heating won't work, and she knows you're technically not supposed to use cold-cold water for this, but it's all she has. It's the best only chance of keeping Robin okay.

She plugs the drain and turns back to Robin, once again kneeling in front of him. This time he doesn't look up at her; it must take too much effort that's being expended on just breathing.

"Neither of us is going to like this, I don't think," Dany mutters. She's basically talking to thin air, and his glassy greenish eyes, but she feels the need to say it anyway. "Sorry."

As quickly as she can with hands that even she has to admit are now shaking, she strips him down to his boxers. Robin doesn't even respond until she tries to maneuver him into the tub. All he does is mumble her name again, which he made hers in the first place, in between ragged breaths.

"Yeah, it's me," she whispers back. "I've got you."

She realizes with a sinking feeling that the only reason she, as strong as she may be but still skinner than she'd been four months ago, is going to get Robin's lanky, limp form into the tub is by getting in there herself. So she says screw it, pulls off her socks and resigns herself to soaking these leggings, and through some feat of willpower or a miracle, manages to get them both into the water.

It isn't freezing cold, isn't even that unpleasant, but Dany likes cold, has a higher tolerance to it, and against Robin's fever-hot skin it must feel like ice. She's positioned behind him, arms around him to keep him still as he writhes in the chilly water. He struggles against her blindly, even as Dany tries to tell him to relax, it's okay, she's trying to help him. When the last vestiges of his strength finally abandon him, he slumps back against her and shudders with a coughing fit.

His head lolls back against her shoulder. Dany shuts her eyes for a moment, prays not for the first time today. She is scared. She doesn't know if she's more afraid of losing Robin, or afraid of the fact that she's afraid of that. She rests a hand on his chest, where she can feel his heartbeat, and forces herself not to think about it. He'll be okay. He has to.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Prev

The sudden flames in the mist and puddles along the road cause a steam reaction that temporarily blinds her, and Dany spends too much precious time scrambling to her feet. What before was ugly gray-yellow in the mist is now blazing orange, and the beam of the telephone pole is blocking her best pathway out of the flames. All her bags weigh her down and trip her over and over again, and by the time she gets untangled from the straps that tangled when she fell, she's surrounded by fire and heat.

"Robin!" She shouts, not knowing if she's yelling for help or to check that he's still alive. There's no reply, and her heart thumps in her chest. "Robin!" She can't see anything. Before all this she probably needed glasses. But the blurriness in her vision now is caused by heat and fear, though she refuses to acknowledge the latter.

Her ears are ringing nearly as loud as the fire is roaring around her. At least the wind is still, held down by humidity. Dany stands in the midst of the building inferno, turning slowly, frantically. It's nearly impossible to see. Something drops against her face and she reaches a hand up to touch it. It's a raindrop.

She prays for miraculous timing, but as the rain picks up, it only becomes harder to see and hear. It's all she can do to avoid the heat around her, but there's a path clear now and she takes it. The drainage ditch on the other side of the road is wet enough to be safe, she thinks. It's the best chance she has right now. Something keeps her tethered to that street, much as it may be safer to get far away.

She looks up, staring through the smoke and steam and mist, when she hears a cry of her name. "Dany!" It's Robin. Dany can't see him, but she throws a hand up and waves it on the off chance he can see her.

"Robin!" She shouts again. "Over here!" Her voice is ragged and dissolves into a barrage of coughing the more she tries to yell, but at least they're both alive.

"Dany!" Robin stumbles toward her, nearly falling into the ditch headfirst and looking like he's about to hug her. "Are you okay?"

She nods. "I'm-" she's about to say fine when the air crackles sharply again and she sucks in a breath. She grabs Robin by the back of his hoodie and drags him with her. "Get down!"

Lightning doesn't often travel horizontally. But it's the end of the world, so it may as well do now. The flash of white light hits nearly right over top of them, drowning out the still-crackling blaze of the electrical pole that had been knocked down in the first place. Dany doesn't let go of Robin. When they look at each other next, with his sweatshirt twisted by her grip on it, their eyes are wide.

The rain keeps falling for nearly an hour. Lightning strikes three more times, once close enough that the hair on the back of Dany's arms stands up, with thunder loud enough they can't speak over it. The entire time, until it's been twenty minutes without thunder, Dany doesn't let go of Robin. She doesn't think he's stupid, not stupid enough to try and move, but this is security.

She hangs onto her bags, and she hangs onto him. That's just the way it works. She doesn't think about it any deeper than that. She can't afford to. And Robin doesn't mention her death grip on him, either. He's smart enough to know not to question things that even she won't address. He just walks a bit closer when they take back up the trek afterwards.

Dany, attention fixed on seeing through the remaining fog and listening for any telltale warning noises, doesn't speak. She thinks maybe enough was said through the looks exchanged in that ditch. Maybe too much, she thinks. Maybe she'll never know why she's let Robin stick around. She doesn't really want to, anymore.

She won't give him her full trust, either way. That's one thing she can't do. The list of those is growing. She grits her teeth and adjusts the bags again. She keeps trekking on.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

What to do: Copy to a new post and bold themes in your WIP. Italicize ones loosely covered.

@kanerallels left an open tag so I'm going to do this for Crosscountry Apocalypse (better title pending a la AO3 crosspost)

addiction | beauty | betrayal | change vs. tradition | chaos vs. order | choosing life | circle of life | coming of age | communication | community | convention vs. rebellion | corruption | courage | crime and law | dangers of ignorance | darkness and light | death | desire to escape | dreams | displacement | empowerment | facing darkness | facing reality | faith vs. doubt | fall from grace | fame and fortune | family | fate | fear | fear of failure | free will | freedom | friendship | fulfillment | good vs. bad | government | grace | greed | guilt and forgiveness | hard work | heroism | hierarchy | honesty | hope | identity crisis | immortality | independence | individual vs. society | inner vs. outer strength | innocence | injustice | isolation | knowledge vs. ignorance | life | loneliness | long road home | lost love | love | man vs. nature | manipulation | materialism | mercy | motherhood | nature | nature vs. nurture | oppression | optimism | peer pressure | perseverance | poverty | power | power of words | prejudice | pride | progress | quest | racism | rebirth | reconciliation | relationships | religion | responsibility | revenge | sacrifice | secrets | self-awareness | self-preservation | self-reliance | servanthood | social class structure | survival | technology | temptation and destruction | time | totalitarianism | weakness | vanity | war | wealth | wisdom of experience | youth

tagging @brown-little-robin and anyone else who wants to do this!!

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

WAAUUGFHH I need to write more CCA

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Next | Latest

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but not with a whimper, either. It ends with a whisper.

A metaphorical whisper, of course, because not a word is spoken when it happens. At least, not that she hears. She doesn't even realize anything has happened until she runs out of gas and stops for more.

"Didn't you hear?" an attendant asks, and when she shakes her head no, he becomes solemn. "If you have gas cans with you, fill them."

She does, and she looks over her shoulder and sees smoke on the horizon. Wildfires, maybe. They're common out here, even in spring. It's not close enough to smell, yet, just close enough to see because the sky is otherwise shockingly, incongruously clear. It should be overcast, she thinks, because then she would have an excuse for the dread creeping slowly into her.

By the time she first catches a whiff of the smoke she'd seen before, she already knows it isn't from a wildfire. Half of the radio stations she scans through are static, the other half are frantic and forcibly calm, chattering and trying to explain or give hope. The smoke through the cracks of her car windows only confirms it; it smells different, not like the fires she's used to. It smells like someone whispering a warning in her ear.

She has a knife, in the waistline of her trousers. She has a handgun, in its case on the seat next to her, just in case, and a shotgun in the backseat because she'd been in bear country. She's glad she'd decided to bring it; the weapons, her ability to use them if she has to, are a security blanket. She can protect herself if need be.

She is not helpless. She will not become helpless.

Her family, hours and miles away, manage to call her once. Only once; the only chance they've had. They can't stay. They're leaving, and there's a plan, one that she knows only as a half-joking hypothetical tossed out in doomsday discussion like a story. She had never — none of them had ever — thought it would become reality. Nothing is left, now, though, but to make it real. She whispers through the phone, I love you, I'll be there, before the line goes dead.

The world ends with a whisper of a girl to herself in her car and the darkness: I am not helpless. She doesn't look at the growing clouds over the horizon; if she did, they would look like cumulonimbus, regular rainclouds. Rain puts out fires.

She is not helpless.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

the thing is that Dany is not suicidal, she's the farthest thing from, she's desperate to survive! but she also on some level believes that she is a dead girl walking, a tragedy on two feet, that there's no hope for her in the end of all things. and she is so so tired. even at the beginning when we first meet her she is so tired. and she never gives herself a break or a moment to rest, she just pushes and pushes and pushes and eventually she's going to snap and break and find herself at a point that she's sure she's going to die and for a split second can't even care. she wants so badly to survive that she doesn't even remember what it's like to live.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

👀 Cross-country apocalypse?

👀 - A piece of lore you’ve been waiting for an excuse to share

idk if there's really anything I've been waiting for an excuse to share tbh?? but one thing is that both Dany and Robin are kiiiiiiinda nerds. their first moment of connection was Dany making a Batman pun about his name and Robin actually playing along. I think there could be more moments of shared nerdery in their future.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

🏆 for both stories, or whichever you're more excited to rant about!

🏆 - What is the end goal? What are your characters fighting for?

in V. Sawyer Vs the Narrative, our darling Ronnie is fighting to escape the loop she's trapped in. in some ways it's a representation of the vicious cycles of her own behavior and the behaviors of the people around her, and in some ways it's a pointless tragedy. she's studied Shakespeare in school; got the best grade in her class. she's gonna turn this tragedy into a comedy, so help her.

in CCA, the end goal is for Dany to reach her family. I'm perfectly comfortable saying publically that she DOES achieve this goal!! no horrible tragic endings here. the kids are gonna be alright.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

Well you know I'm gonna ask about crosscountry apocalypse !!

🕳 - What’s a plot hole you just can’t seem to fix?

💡 - What inspired the wip? When/how did you first get the idea?

🕳️ -

honestly the biggest issues in this specific area are just like... filling in gaps. I lost a lot of my really early drafts of dialogue between Dany and Robin so a lot of my "filler" stuff that stretches the story out just... doesn't exist anymore, and building that back up is REALLY hard. that's part of why I write such short chapters most of the time. I'm just figuring it out as I go.

💡-

OK THIS ONE I ACTUALLY KNOW THE ANSWER TO!!!!! last spring, like during breakup, so when it was really dreary and soggy and windy, I was going for walks more to take the trash and stuff down our (very long) driveway, and whenever it was windy I would throw on this big long brown coat I have (often thought of as my "Scully coat") and as I walked I just... kind of came up with the idea? it was originally kind of a "What if I was in an apocalypse scenario and also what if I was cool and tough and confident?" and that's how I created Dany. and then I went "and what if there was a slightly annoying guy who I could chat with and basically wield my hypothetical incredible wit and cool-ness at?" and that's how Robin came to be. and the image of the train hopping was kind of my first idea other than the walking and motives for the journey itself. the more I've worked on it though the more Dany has become her own character instead of just "me but cooler" and honestly I'm glad for that.