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bensolosbluesaber · 2 years

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You’ll Never Keep Him (Poe Dameron x f!reader)

EVERYONE STOP! Please read the warnings below as this fic deals with the aftermath of rape, severe trauma, and abuse.

Warnings: Mentions of rape and sexual assault, non-explicit references to rape, reader was a victim of sexual assault and violence, reader’s trauma is shared without her consent, reader is in a very dark mental place, generally very mature themes. PLEASE do not read this fic if these might be triggering or uncomfortable for you.

Summary: Your trauma is your best kept secret, a secret even from Poe, the person you love more than anyone else. Well, it’s a secret until a meddling ex of his gets ahold of your medical records and promptly leaks them to the whole Resistance. ~3,600 words

Angst, angst, and angst (Happy ending though)

Pairing: Poe Dameron x f!reader (she/her pronouns)

A/N: I’m serious about these warnings. Dead dove and all that. Bonus for you guys, I listened to these songs while writing this: Atlantis (Seafret), Till Forever Falls Apart (Ashe), Line Without a Hook (Ricky Montgomery)

For the first time in as long as you could remember, your life was good. Not just livable, but really and truly good. The First Order was nearly extinguished and with it the worst of your night terrors. You found friends, good friends: Rose, Finn, Rey. And of course there was Poe, your doting and charmingly arrogant boyfriend who - despite his reputation - had never been anything but patient at your unwillingness to have sex.

Not that he knew why. Not that anyone except Rey and a few medics knew why. You want Poe to know, and you want to sleep with him. Sleep with him that is, since you practically live together anyway. But every time you so much as think about sex your skin gets clammy and your stomach twists into knots.

That is what you are thinking about as you eat lunch with your friends. Poe is coming home tonight, and as you stare at your now empty plate, you can’t help but think that maybe tonight is the night. The usual clamminess is hardly present and your stomach is twisting, but you think that maybe this time you are feeling the same nerves anyone would feel. You might be ready. You might have finally summited your mountain of trauma.

It was a stroke of cruel irony that just as that thought had the audacity to emerge so did she - Poe Dameron’s ex. She was a brief fling during the war, and that’s all it was ever going to be. But things ended… poorly. That was how Finn explained it last week, with a pregnant pause before ‘poorly.’ Maker, it had only been last week that the woman had shown up, smiling far too big, greeting Poe with an uncomfortably long hug, shooting you a sneer over his shoulder. She transferred to this base just to get close to Poe. At least that was Rose’s working theory.

You weren’t afraid of her. Years as a spy and months of torture saw to that. Not much scared you anymore - sex not withstanding. She was no threat to your relationship; you trusted Poe’s whispered promises.

In retrospect, you should have been more wary of her, especially when she volunteered to stitch up your arm yesterday. She had done a good job, been friendly. Too friendly.

She stands behind you and drops a data-pad on the table with a bang that makes you turn. Her arms are crossed, her mouth pulled into a smirk that was all-too familiar. ‘Guess what I know,’ it seemed to taunt you.

You glance down at the data pad then turn back to her. She raises a single eyebrow, and only then do you realize what is on the screen. Your head whips around and you snatch up the data pad. Your medical records. How had she gotten her hands on these? Only medics and nurses who treated a patient could access their records, and yesterday she had… Shit.

No. No, no, no. It’s all you can think as you stare at the bright screen with wide eyes.

“Interesting read.”

“This is private,” you hiss quietly.

“Sweetie, I’m your doctor.”

Do not make a scene. Do not make a scene. Rey is tense beside you, and across the table Finn and Rose have gone silent. The rest of the mess hall continues with their lives like this woman isn’t casually ripping open a barely healed wound in the middle of lunch.

“I thought this part was particularly interesting.” She points to the screen as she leans over you. “I never knew you went through so much after your cover was blown.”

‘Patient demonstrates behaviors (documented below) suggesting she was subjected to prolonged torture and sexual abuse. Her physical injuries (see attached scans) corroborate these findings.’

You didn’t need to read any more. In your worst months you had committed this file to memory as some sort of fucked up coping mechanism. You can recite your long list of injuries and trauma induced behaviors from memory.

The woman in front of you looks around then leans in inches from your face to whisper loudly, “What was it like to tell Poe about all of this?”

The situation has caught you so off-guard that you can’t hide the expression that clearly says you have not told him.

“Oh, sweetie!” Her tone is so condescending you want to put your fist through her throat. Obviously she already suspected Poe was clueless about this whole thing. “You haven’t told him? Well… I mean, why does he think you won’t fuck him? You know sex is essential to maintaining a good relationship with a man like Poe. He has needs.”

You’ve never been concerned with how much the Resistance gossips, how involved everyone is in each others personal lives. Not until now since clearly your sex life, or lack thereof, is the subject of interest.

“What would you know about having a good relationship with Poe?” Finn snarls from behind you. Without looking at him, you shake your head. Not here. Not where everyone can see.

“What do you want?” You need to diffuse this situation and fast.

“I just want Poe to know the truth about his little girlfriend.” Her voice grates on your ears. She straightens up, her voice getting louder with each word. “I mean if you fucked half the First Order, why not Poe? Maybe you think he’s not good enough for you? You’ll never keep him if-”

“Stop!” You bite out as you jump to your feet.

It’s becoming a scene. Her raised voice has caught the attention of a nearby table, and the silence ripples through the mess hall slowly as you stare each other down. Soon the quiet in the large space is thunderous. The woman taps at a data pad calmly. All eyes are on you.

“Don’t worry about it, hon.” She shows you the screen, and it takes a moment to realize what you are looking at. A few data pads ding, and in your mind the sound reverberates into a violent, endless ringing.

She just sent confidential medical files, your file, to everyone stationed on this base. She just sent your file to Poe.

“Sweetie, don’t be mad. Poe deserves better than some bitch who will whore herself out to the enemy for fun but not fuck…”

For an instant it is not her voice you hear.

You might make it out of here alive, but then you’ll just be some bitch who slept with the enemy.

Tears sting your eyes. She is grinning that monstrous grin. One second your eyes drop to the ground. The next they fall on her curled lips. And then you have a fistful of her crisp, white, standard issue medical jacket and are shoving her to the ground.

You hit her once. Hard. Then again. Warm red blood sprays from her nose and coats your closed fist. The next strike she tries and fails to block. She’s screaming something about how crazy you are, but you could care less as you strike her again and again. She already spilled your best kept secret to the whole Resistance. Honestly, what more did you have to lose?

“Stop. Y/N, stop!” Rey grasps your biceps and pulls you back.

“You’re fucking crazy!” The woman spits blood as she pushes herself into a sitting position.

“Rose, get her out of here before I kill her myself,” Rey snarls.

You couldn’t say how you made it to Poe’s room, just that you did and managed to seal the door behind you before you crumpled onto his bed. No doubt Rey lingered outside, maybe with Rose and Finn, trying to touch your mind through the Force without being invasive.

You sobbed into the pillow that still smelled like the man you loved. You cried until your eyes physically couldn’t produce another tear, and then you walked on shaky legs to the small bathroom to clean the blood from your hands and change into something more comfortable. The clock told you it was nearly dinner time. You wouldn’t be going.

Instead, you curled back up in Poe’s bed and clung to his pillow, imagining it was him. Even as you lay there with your clouded mind and wished Poe would come home soon, part of you dreaded his return. He’ll have seen the file. He’ll know what they did to you. He was never meant to find out this way.

He’ll know what you did. The last thought you have before your exhausted body caves into the lure of the warm sheets is that woman’s voice echoing in your mind.

Why not Poe?

You’ll never keep him.

Poe smiles at your sleeping form, and heads right to the fresher to clean up. He is blissfully unaware of today’s events; he ignored incoming messages all day, trying to get home as fast as possible.

Soon, he’s tucking himself into bed and pulling your back flush against his chest. It wakes you up: his warmth, a few soft kisses on your head, the wiggle of his hips against you. It is as far as he will take things with you. You set that boundary, and he respects it completely.

“Hi baby,” he whispers.

Poe is home. There is a second of relief, then you’re wide awake.

You’ll never keep him. You have to keep him.

Normally, his return would bring nothing but joy, but now the anxiety coursing through your body has you shaking in his arms. It is utterly irrational. Poe never pressured you before, never hinted at wanting more than you were comfortable with, but your racing thoughts - poisoned by that woman - tell you that he must be lying, that he will get bored of you. That he is bored.

So you turn and kiss him. Hard. Kissing Poe is nothing new, so he wraps his arms around you, sinking into the kiss easily and thinking nothing of it until you’re half on top of him with your hand dipping to the waistband of his pants. There you hesitate.

You’ll never keep him.

His skin is soft under your fingers and there’s a rough smattering of hair along his lower stomach.

As you start to move lower, your fingers ghosting over the curve of his hips, he whispers, “Are you sure?”

Answering him will only force you to reveal the truth. You are sure. Sure that you don’t want this and equally as sure that he does. Sure that he needs this. So instead of replying, you swing a leg over his hips, settling atop him and working your hands up and under his shirt as you kiss him again and again. It gives you a second to steel yourself for what you must do.

His hands grabs yours tightly, freezing your movements at his chest.

“You’re crying,” he murmurs.

You hardly hear him, struggling to free your hand from his grasp to give him what he must have wanted for ages. But he is much stronger than you.

“Stop,” he says kindly but firmly. “Stop.”

It’s not until he whispers your name that you finally snap out of it just enough to realize what you are doing. You’re straddling his hips. A prominent hardness pokes at your thighs. Poe’s eyes are big and confused.

“You don’t want this,” he breathes, and much to your surprise there is not a hint of anger. That doesn’t stop your desperation.

“You do,” you whisper back, and your voice is so pathetic you drop your gaze from his in shame. “I can feel it. You do.”

You grind your hips down on him. He exhales through his nose, grabs your waist, and holds you still as he fixes you with an utterly lost look.

“Not if you don’t,” Poe insists. “This is- this is a physical reaction. It’s just because I haven’t had sex in a long time.”

The words settle like rocks in the pit of your stomach. The reason Poe hasn’t had sex in a long time is you.

“I want this.” You lie and bite down on the inside of your lip until warm coppery blood fills your mouth.

You swallow it and lean down to kiss his neck, working your lips along the rough stubble on his jaw, over the tiny scar on his cheek, back to his neck.

“Baby, please. Stop.”

Warm hands guide you off him. The rejection shouldn’t sting, not when this is hardly something you actually want. But sting it does.

Light flares in the room, bright but a soft white that you shut your eyes against as you sit and pull your knees to your chest.

“When I told you we could wait as long as you want, I meant it.” Poe sits up to lean against the wall.

You open your eyes to see his hand extended, offering you a spot on his chest. Instead you turn away to stare blankly at the wall in front of you. It’s white. Clean and sterile and white. No pattern. Just a uniform white wall that you wish would swallow you up.

You turn to him. It takes all your strength to look at his face and make your eyes focus on his handsome features. A few of your tears still linger on his cheeks. Curly brown hair sticks in every direction. The chain of his necklace peeks out from under his collar. He’s beautiful. He’s perfect and kind. And he deserves better than a girl who can’t even bring herself to sleep with him. Especially when… especially when…

“I’ve had sex.” You force the words out before you can think better of them. “Now that you’ve seen m- my medical records, don’t you feel entitled to… something?”

“Baby.” He swipes a lose strand of hair from your eyes, not missing how you shy away from his hand for a split second. You hadn’t done that in ages. “What happened before us doesn’t matter. I promise. I will-” Then his mind finally processed your question. “Now that I’ve seen what?”

You stare at Poe because how could he not have seen it? Without a word you grab his data pad, open the file from his unread messages, and pass it to Poe. Worry is written across his face. The second he realizes what he is looking at, he slams his eyes shut.

“Why would I have seen that?”

He truly has no idea.

But the dam already broke. You’ve already made the leap. There is no going back now.

Poe sets the screen aside to wrap an arm over your trembling shoulders and draw you against his chest. You let him only because you are too emotionally drained to push away the one person who might bring you comfort, even if that is the same person with the power to bring terrible pain.

He is struggling to put the pieces together on his own, not because he’s stupid but because the truth is painful to accept.

“Talk to me.” Poe presses a kiss to the crown of your head, and your arms wrap around his waist to hold him tight. “Please, talk to me.”

You curl yourself tighter and closer to Poe so you can bury your face in the crook of his shoulder. You can’t look at him; you can barely form words. Instead you blindly grope for the data pad and hand it back to Poe.

“Are you sure?” He asks. “If you don’t want me to-”

“Everyone already knows.”

You can picture the mess hall tomorrow morning. Poe eating breakfast, blissfully ignorant of your past when, ‘Hey, Dameron. Heard your girlfriend only fucks First Order officers. Sorry for your loss.’ More likely the words would be kinder, gentler, pitying the handsome pilot who had given up his playboy ways for someone like you. And he’d… Stop! You fight back ideas about this scenario that you simply would not let happen.

It is best that he learn about it in private. Then you can try to explain.

Poe’s brows knit together, but he doesn’t question your statement. He’ll figure out what ‘everyone already knows’ means later.

You feel his chest rise shakily underneath you as he steadies himself for whatever horrors are hidden here. With his free hand he absentmindedly trails feather-light touches along your cheek.

His eyes roam the file: your name, date of birth, a picture taken the day you first arrived. It’s all standard stuff. Regular check ups. Medical tests for your flight clearance. Post-mission blood work. You had been a spy, so you had more comprehensive medical records than most. Otherwise though, it’s a normal file. Until it’s not.

He never mentioned it to you, but he had suspicions that something like this might be in your past. It was a suspicion, however, that was easy to ignore. Poe hadn’t known you in your spy days, and like most former spies, you chose to keep your past in the past. Until now.

When he gets to that part, you feel his hand still. Poe’s whole body goes tense beneath you, the muscles of his neck tightening as he swallows hard. Each word makes his heart ache for the woman in his arms, for you who had been suffering through the aftermath of such horrors alone.

A few soft taps fill the silence as Poe searches for an answer to his other question - how did ‘everyone’ know about this?

Then Poe hisses aloud, “Fucking bitch.”

He is looking at the name of the sender.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper into his neck and choke down a sob.

“No, baby. Not you.” In an instant he has your head cradled in his hands, thumbing away your tears, bringing your reluctant gaze up to him as he realizes his mistake. “You have nothing to be sorry for. She should never have done this. No decent person would do this.”

“I should have told you before.” You try to protest, but Poe just shakes his head. His face is inches from yours, and his dark brown eyes implore you to believe him.

“You don’t owe me - or anyone else - an explanation.” His words are firm but kind.

Another few moments pass in a heavy silence. Poe holds your face between his hands, supporting the weight of your head that suddenly feels too heavy for you to hold up yourself. The callouses on his thumbs are rough against your skin. They are the only thing that feels real right now.

“I- I-” Just say it, you think. Just say it. Tell him what the file doesn’t. “I wouldn’t give them any information.” There is a certain pride in your voice as you say those words. “When my cover was blown, they tortured me, and I was strong. I was so strong.” Your voice cracks on the last word making Poe swallow hard. Your words sound like you are reading from a book rather than recounting your memories. “They thought they could try a new way to break me. It didn’t work. Eventually they weren’t even looking for information anymore. It was just fun for them. So I used that. I got close to the right people, and when they let their guard down I escaped.”

Your whole body is shaking as memories drown any rational thoughts you had left.

“I did it to survive." You meet his gaze and hold it desperately. “I did it to survive. It wasn’t fun. Poe, you have to believe me, I did what I had to. Please! Please, Poe. Please.”

“Of course I believe you.” His voice is a calm low rumble, and he repeats the words with even more conviction. “ I believe you. Come here.”

He wraps his large hand around the back of your neck, his fingers splayed wide across your skin as he pulls you into what you will later call the best hug of your life. Your head tucks under his chin. His other hand comes around your waist to hold you close.

The second he has you secure against him, he lets his own tears spill over. He didn’t want you to see him crying, knowing one of you had to maintain a calm facade through this. You deserved the entire galaxy, and what you had gotten was a slimy alley on some shit planet. He wanted to pull down the stars and bath you in their light. He wanted to kill the people who had done this to you. He wanted revenge on the woman who had made your trauma part of some sick game to get him back. Only his faith in Rose, Rey, and Finn kept him from hunting her down right now. He was certain they had dealt with her, and you needed him here.

“I love you,” he whispers the words. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

He really isn’t angry with you. The realization comes slowly then all at once. It brings with it a bit of embarrassment at your earlier actions. Before that thought can really settle, the exhaustion hits. Exhaustion from spending hours crying and worrying until your nerves were so shot you could hardly think straight.

Poe feels your body relax. Your breath has fallen into steady and slow inhales and exhales. He slides down in the bed, bringing you with his so you can curl against his chest with your head on his shoulder. You look up at him.

“Please don’t cry,” you murmur and wipe a tear from his cheek.

He grasps that hand in his, playing with your fingers. There’s a few light bruises along your knuckles that his touch lingers on like a question.

“I punched her. In the mess, during lunch.”

“Good.”

Poe raises your bruised knuckles to his soft lips and kisses each one reverently.

“I’m with you,” he breathes between kisses. “Whatever people say or believe.” Another kiss. “You’ll always have me. Promise. You’ll always have me.”

My Masterlist

I am contemplating a part 2 (if I can write it tastefully) where the reader and Poe do have sex for the first time.

Tags: @ay0nha

#poe dameron #poe dameron x reader #poe dameron x female reader #poe dameron x you #poe dameron x f!reader #poe dameron fic #oscar isaac #oscar isaac x reader #oscar isaac fic #bensolosbluesaber #bensolosbluesabermasterlist #poe dameron fanfic #poe dameron fanfiction #oscar isaac fanfiction #tw: r*pe #read the warnings

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kamimarroco · 7 days

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Laplace's Demon

Strade burst into a maniacal laugh of admiration, his hand lightly slapping his thigh as you flinched in fear. Of all his victims, you are certainly something different.

"So you're telling me you can't die?”, before you could respond to him, Strade started laughing again, the concept too absurd for him to believe to be true.

Even though the idea was very bizarre, it was still a true fact. Every time he killed you, you came back after minutes of being dead, waking up again in this basement that smelled like death. It didn't matter how or how many times he did it, you just couldn't die. It was as if some force was preventing you from resting from this torture that seemed endless.

“Right, right. Let's see how true your statement is, huh?”, he asked as he moved the hunting knife from side to side methodically, almost mesmerising if not for the circumstances of the situation.

You internally cursed yourself for having this power that you couldn't even control on your own. You couldn't relax knowing that you would be back soon after an intense torture session. It all seemed like a joke, a cruel, conspiratorial joke.

By an irony of fate, you remembered one of your physics classes. According to a certain concept, if someone had knowledge of the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, that individual could predict everything that would happen in the universe. This way, there would be no uncertainty and the future, as well as the past, would be present before the eyes of this being.

And you felt exactly like that. You already knew you would die at his hands, you already knew you would come back and everything would repeat itself. In the end, you were destined to be his little toy throughout this endless moment.

“Come on, sweetie. I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to try out lots of things”, he spoke sweetly as he got close to you, starting to cut your delicate skin as if it were silk.

And he would do it again, and again, and again. Each death worse than the other, but always bringing the same feeling that it would all never end. And you would be unable to stop him, tied to a pole and condemned to live the same situation every fucking day. Your immortality was your curse, unable to give you the feeling of peace you so desperately wanted after a painful death.

You hate him, you hate the way he enthusiastically inflicts pain on your flesh, smiling maniacally as he hears your screams of pain and desperate pleas. But most of all, you hate yourself for not being able to die.

#boyfriend to death #boyfriend to death 2 #btd #btd2 #btd strade #ykmet strade #boyfriend to death strade #strade btd #fanfic #reader insert

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sigritandtheelves · 1 year

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So i went to meetings and the grocery store and there was Discourse. I can’t believe there’s “Mulderist” vs “Scullyist” discussion happening… have i traveled back in time to 1998? What’s going on? Where am i?

The problem with the “Mulder suffered too!” argument—aside from the fact that it hits me the same way as “not all men”—is that every single time Mulder suffered and was tortured etc. etc. was a product of his own agency: his choice to run head-first into danger, to hurl himself at it because of Quest, because of Truth, because he saw himself as the Hero. This is precisely what @leiascully was saying but i want to say it again louder. Mulder made active narrative choices as the Hero, which led to his suffering.

Scully never had choices.

Additionally, the “wHY dO wE nEvEr tALK aBoUt mULdEr’S sUFfeRiNg?!?!” complaint is like… the whole goddamned show is about his suffering? He’s literally a Byronic hero? Scully’s tragedy is much more subtextual, and I think it took me a lot longer to be able to see it fully—partially because I was a kid during the original run and now i have Wisdom or whatever—but it does strike me as deeper, just because you have to do a bit more work to see how cruel the narrative was to her over the whole run.

The thing about the X-Files is that some of it is about misogyny—evil men experimenting on women, not seeing them as fully human, Jerse’s and Pfaster’s hatred of women made monstrous, etc.—but much of it is misogynist (even if unintentionally) in its writing and narrative structure. That’s kind of the great irony: that it treated its female characters almost as badly as the evil men in-universe did. (Not jumping back into my "CC is CSM" diatribe, but… he is.)

Anyway, we are not comparing suffering, we are comparing writing that gives some characters agency and continually strips it from others. We are talking about narrative choices that seem exceptionally cruel when you examine the storyline end-to-end, but which were written off quickly because of… laziness? various external constraints? an inability to see the big picture and understand your own story?

tl;dr: It’s heartbreaking and infuriating to be a fan of this show.

#every time i do feminist critique of this show people get mad #but i'm just... not going to defend sexist writing?#i love mulder and i love exploring his character #see: all the fic i've written #but also 'mulder apologist' makes me want to climb screaming up the walls #because i think the flaws in his character reflect the creator's beliefs about the show #and what it was 'really about'#i.e. the wrong kind of romanticism

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thestobingirlie · 9 months

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The thing that I seriously don’t understand is the urge to sorta demonize the Party and make them say or make them extremely rude and meat to Steve. I just saw a take in which an author says that they like to think that the things that the Russian guards did to him were much more serious and cruel and I wanted to like it but I saw a paragraph in this same post which said that the Party probably were joking about Steve being unable to protect himself during torture and I was like… I don’t want to insult anyone. But I disagree. Because in my opinion, the Party will never do it to Steve. They all understand what happened. They don’t know anything, but they get that it was horrible. In my opinion, Steve in this au (and in canon) could watch the 1981 film the Professional in which the main hero is also recklessly tortured and THAT could trigger him.

And these shovel talks aus… Again, I don’t want to offend anyone. Every author can write whatever they want. I just think that the real person whom they’ll (the Party & the older teens) give shovel talks will be Eddie. Even Mike will say something like “you’re cool guy Eddie but I know Steve longer. Just try not to do or say shitty things to him”. And when they also make Robin mean to Steve in this aus… it doesn’t seem right to me.

the irony is, people aren’t writing the characters as being cunts to demonise them. or even to aid in any kind of character arc. the characters treat people (steve lmao) horribly, and do terrible, ignorant things, and they’re treated like they’re in the right. like they’ve done nothing wrong. and that’s why it gets annoying.

because obviously a lot of the characters are bitchy teenagers, so they are gonna be a little cunty. it’s their duty! but we shouldn’t… like reward that good behaviour lmao. it should be acknowledged that they’re being mean, and they should be aware of that, and grow and change etc.

though i will say, the reason why people in the fandom treat characters like this is because we do see this in the show. we can argue that it’s ooc, and the duffers terrible writing, because they rely on cheap jokes rather than consistent characterisation. but there’s a reason writing the party treating steve like shit is so popular.

anyway!! yeah, i don’t think the party would make fun of steve for the russian bunker. and it would make me upset is they did lmao.

shovel talks are just a popular fandom trope that people love to force on characters even if it doesn’t make sense. if we’re being real, none of the kids would give anyone a shovel talk. they’re teenagers. the only steddie-relevant character i could see giving a shovel talk would be robin. and she’d obviously give it to eddie. (and people that write robin as being mean and cruel to steve are dead to me lmao. they’re actively hurting my heart)

#steve harrington #robin buckley #eddie munson #the party #stranger things #asks #anon

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macarensesangles · 1 year

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Emetwol Week Day 5: Stars Long Dead

Elpis is heart-achingly beautiful at night. The night sky, familiar yet alien, casts a gently twinkling blanket over the buildings and people, flora and fauna, and it is peaceful and lovely and all so bittersweet it hurts. What is most lovely, although not most peaceful, perhaps, is Emet-Selch.

Earlier that day, Emet-Selch had learned the truth. Emet-Selch had not liked what he had learned; he had accused Pfeil of lying to him and rushed out of the little room in a stormy rage, followed by an overwhelmed Hythlodaeus, and abandoned his tea half-cold on the table. Pfeil had drunk it and cried so hard he nearly vomited, and Venat had had to teach him how to breathe again, lest he lose the proper use of his lungs forever and abandon the procedure of taking breath in favor of perpetual weeping. The tea, he recalls, was not even very good.

The rest of the day had passed in a blur. Now Emet-Selch sits alone in the moonish half-light, reflecting beneath a stout tree, with starlight playing on his hair where it can filter between the shadows cast by thick and healthy leaves. Pfeil watches him unseen, and feels it strange to see him so young, so different and somehow so unchanged. His face moves the way it always had, despite everything. He recalls nothing of Pfeil, refuses to believe what will come, does not respond the way Pfeil hopes he will. Pfeil cannot help but notice the irony.

He is a little afraid to approach. The Emet-Selch of this time is not weighed down with the bitterness of centuries, but he loves Pfeil less — a feat, considering he feels sometimes the real Emet-Selch had not loved him at all — and he is quick to snap mercilessly for the sake of it. There is no joviality in his barbs; the Emet-Selch Pfeil knew had teased, and this one merely spits. Hythlodaeus has insisted on a kinder man buried within, and Pfeil knows in his heart it must be true, but it does not always seem that way, if it ever does. Worse, he has angered Emet-Selch with the truth, a thing that he has learned from cruel experience Emet-Selch cannot stand.

There is a gesture Pfeil does not recognize: Emet-Selch sweeps long hair behind his ear and sighs deeply. His Emet-Selch had worn it too short to do such a thing. He hates that he is making these comparisons, knows Emet-Selch had done it to him with ever-superior Azem, and despite his best efforts begins to weep bodily. Emet-Selch as he is now, twelve thousand years in the past, young and beautiful, realizes he is being watched, and turns to glare at Pfeil. The weeping intensifies; Pfeil feels acutely sick of his body's awful habit of acting against his will.

"Stop crying," Emet-Selch demands simply. "You are distracting me."

Pfeil's legs stumble toward him, although he does not want them to, and he collapses pathetically onto Emet-Selch's lap, tears soaking a little patch in his robes. He is surprised that Emet-Selch does not push him away or strike him, and the thought makes him cry harder.

Without warning or explanation, Emet-Selch's fingers card through his hair. They feel the same as they always had, raw-boned and warm, and he is gentle, focused, does not stroke too fast or too hard. Pfeil cannot for the life of him make the tears stop, can barely breathe or will himself to speak; Emet-Selch is stony and patient, the hand in Pfeil's hair never wavering from its course. He cries for what feels like hours, or a lifetime, or twelve thousand years.

"I loved you," Pfeil admits, when he can breathe again, "and I don't think you loved me."

"That is not true."

"When you died I was so guilty I wanted to kill myself."

"I know." His tone is unwavering, but it is not cold or cruel. "You hardly have to tell me. It was written all over your face."

"I'm sorry," says Pfeil. "I know this isn't fair. You don't remember, and you don't even believe it's true —"

"Be quiet." A beat passes. "Please. Do you stop at nothing to torture yourself?"

He bites his lip. It embarrasses him to be asked such a question by this Emet-Selch, who does not even know him the way his own had. "Sorry."

"Stop apologizing." He ruffles Pfeil's hair a little, and it feels very good. "I detest these sorts of conversations."

Pfeil thinks of their time together in Norvrandt, how often Emet-Selch refused to speak. There is something terribly familiar in the way he favors touch here and now — the words are atrociously unhelpful, but the feeling of Emet-Selch's fingers against his scalp is a balm for his tattered soul. He remembers so much it is difficult to stop, and words rise unbidden from his mouth.

"I told you everything," says Pfeil. "Before my family. About — about everything, and now —"

"Hush." Emet-Selch strokes his hair, and his cheek, and the back of his neck. He rubs circles against Pfeil's shoulder with his thumb and lets the fabric of Pfeil's shirt catch against his hand until Pfeil is sleepy, half-dreaming of a violet dusk and stars over Il Mheg.

#emetwolweek23 #suicide ment

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synchronousemma · 2 years

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16th-20th June: The invitations are rendered

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Read: Vol. 3, ch. 6 [42]; pp. 233–234 (“Mr. Knightley had another reason” to “appearing exactly right”).

Context

Mr. Knightley invites his chosen guests, including Mr. Woodhouse, to the strawberry party. The carriage-horse recovers and the Box Hill outing is planned for the day following the Donwell party.

Readings and Interpretations

The Horror!

We are told that Mr. Woodhouse is invited to Donwell “on good faith. No lurking horrors were to upbraid him for his easy credulity” (p. 233). Jenny Davidson writes about how this sort of exaggerated diction is used to effect in Austen:

One of the effects I’ve always found most attractive in Austen’s fiction concerns the prevalence of ironic sentences that are largely unanchored in an individual character’s consciousness, though they have the “feel” of a personal comment. Emma is full of sentences in which lurking irony becomes outright irony. Here is one of my favorite examples: “After being long fed with hopes of a speedy visit from Mr. and Mrs. Suckling, the Highbury world were obliged to endure the mortification of hearing that they could not possibly come till the autumn. No such importation of novelties could enrich their intellectual stores at present” (E III.6, [230]). That initial verb “fed” already underlines the preposterous nature of the idea that there would be something nourishing to the community about a visit from this couple (their name invokes the “suckling pig” of feastdom), and the sentence that follows takes the diction up a notch and restates the assertion even more preposterously.

A similar effect can be found later in the same chapter when Mr. Knightley deems it important, if the hypochondriac Mr. Woodhouse is to dine with them at Donwell, to have the meal served indoors: “He was invited on good faith,” the narrator proceeds. “No lurking horrors were to upbraid him for his easy credulity” (E III.6, [233]). Again, the hyperbole of the second sentence can’t really come from Mr. Woodhouse’s own consciousness—he is neither so verbally acute nor so self-aware. We feel instead a certain narratorial relish at the sheer power and possibilities of language, at what happens when an obvious thought or sentiment is restated in sharper, more elevated diction that implicitly turns its effects toward satire. (p. 111)

Per Kim Wheatley, this sentence is an example of the “domestication of gothic diction” in Austen: “I see the gothic as so integrated into Austen's depictions of everyday life that we barely blink when we encounter ‘torture,’ ‘violence,’ ‘danger,’ ‘horrors,’ and ‘evil.’ Austen’s play with gothic character stereotypes and vocabulary throughout her career in a blend of gothicizing and degothicizing makes her fiction more, not less, realistic” (n.p.). In general, “[t]he traces of gothic in Emma are […] challenging to interpret, given the slipperiness of free indirect discourse in that novel”:

The difficult question of the degree of authorial sympathy for the heroine is bound up with Austen’s—and Emma’s—use of gothic diction. Susan Allen Ford analyzes Austen’s resort to gothic vocabulary when depicting interiorized “threats from within, ‘the real evils ... of Emma’s situation.’” Ford notes, “These are interior, psychological actions that nonetheless seem to require Gothic articulations” (“Gothic Mirrors” 112). Ford identifies in Emma “something beyond the confines of realistic fiction” (115): for her, at one point Emma even “sees her own role as that of the Gothic villain” (117). I suggest that Emma’s own passing sense of herself as “brutal” and “cruel” [vol. 3, ch. 7 [43]; p. 246] occludes the harsh tendencies of Mr. Knightley, who earlier takes on shades of a gothic villain in his “tall indignation” [vol. 1, ch. 8; p. 38] and “angry state” [ibid.; p. 42], and whom Emma at one point accuses of “‘turn[ing] every thing to evil’” [vol. 1, ch. 18; p. 98]. On a more satirical level, Emma is capable without conscious irony of imagining herself as a gothic heroine, when she sees “dangers and evils before her” in the shape of Frank Churchill’s supposed attachment [vol. 3, ch. 1 [37]; p. 205 and she also casts Jane Fairfax as a victimized gothic heroine, wishing Jane would “‘betray’” more “‘sensibility’” of the “‘horrors’” of (figurative) imprisonment in her home [vol. 3, ch. 6 [42]; p. 238]. Yet Emma evades the narrator’s implicit mockery when she dreads “all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second rate and third rate of Highbury” [vol. 2, ch. 1 [19]; p. 99], since readers are allowed to infer that she may be amusedly aware of her over-reaction. (ibid.)

By contrast, the sentence describing Mr. Woodhouse’s acceptance of Mr. Knightley’s invitation, with its talk of “lurking horrors,” casts “Emma’s father [as] the target of straightforward mock-gothic” (ibid.).

Discussion Questions

Are terms such as “horrors” and “evils” in Emma in fact borrowed from the diction of Gothic novels? To what end are they used?

What elements of Mr. Knightley’s and Mr. Weston’s characterization are revealed or attested to in this section?

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma (Norton Critical Edition). 3rd ed. Ed. Stephen M. Parrish. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, [1815] 2000.

Davidson, Jenny. Reading Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2017), pp. 144–8. DOI: 10.1017/9781108367974.

Ford, Susan Allen. “How to Read and Why: Emma’s Gothic Mirrors.” Persuasions 25 (2003), pp. 110–20.

Wheatley, Kim. “Jane Austen: Gothic Novelist?” Persuasions 41 (2019), pp. 62–74.

#Emma #Jane Austen #Mr. Knightley #Mr. Weston #Frank Churchill #e

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adamwatchesmovies · 1 year

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The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)

See? I told you Mockingjay - Part 1 was building up to something big! This final chapter in the Hunger Games series satisfies. It ties up all of the loose ends, doubles-down on the series’ best moments, and concludes the heroine’s story arc. It’s still based on a Young Adult novel, meaning we have to address the love triangle and the fact that adults can’t be trusted, etc. but for every genre there’s got to be a few stories that stand above all others and this is one of the brightest contenders.

Now a symbol for the Colony’s defiance against the Capitol, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) has grown increasingly mistrustful of the rebel leader, President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). Unfortunately, the discovery that Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) has been tortured and brainwashed by Capitol President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) forces the young woman to fulfil her duty as Mockingjay nonetheless. As she, her friends Gale (Liam Hemsworth), Finnick (Sam Claflin) and a small band of soldiers make their way through the war-torn streets of the Capitol, they find them booby-trapped with the same obstacles she sought to escape in the last two Hunger Games.

While some of the traps Katniss and the other heroes encounter raise some eyebrows - they seem awfully complex and destructive to the property around them - this setup is still an ingenious way to bring Katniss back to her “roots”. She’s been in all sorts of cruel games for the pleasure of the higher-ups around her, from the fights to the death back in the 74th annual competition to the schemings of Alma Coin and her propaganda videos. Even now, she's seen as a plaything or a tool by others. To ensure her usefulness doesn't run out, Katniss must become the leader she’s been pretending to be. If we examine the series as a whole, this is the culmination of all the character development we’ve seen. Before, we never could’ve believed that a single teenager could topple a totalitarian regime. Now, we see that there might be a way. While Katniss may not be the one sitting in the tall chair once the dust settles - if anything, she’s so damaged it’s unlikely she’ll survive - she may be the last tiny push required to bring down the cruel system in place.

As a final chapter there are a couple of moments you could call predictable and the plot also highlights the fact that we always knew who Katniss was going to end up with between Gale and Peeta. In terms of weaknesses, that’s about it. The action scenes are exciting as the rebels have to shoot and cut their way through all sorts of enemies, some of which recall horror rather than action films. While Katniss shows the biggest growth in the picture and Jennifer Lawrence delivers a strong performance to match, all of the characters have been handled with care and developed thoroughly. There’s a lot of irony in the role Katniss’ younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields) plays in the film’s conclusion, and there’s a lot to think about when it comes to the way Peeta has changed. Snow’s villainy is at its best here because he shows little moments of humanity. These make him more sympathetic… but they also make you want to see him dead even more. You're constantly reminded of why you came into the film dead-set on seeing him skewered with some of Katniss’ arrows.

Little details about the ending make it particularly emotional. All of the games’ major players end up dead or irreparably broken. There are people who come out as winners, but they were the ones who adopted spectator roles, who strategically took a step back while they waged their bets with a smirk on their faces. It’s a bittersweet ending to say the least but it should be, and I applaud the series for giving us the conclusion we deserved, rather than pandering to the audience and making it soft. Teenagers - the ones this series has always been aimed at - will be delighted with this concluding chapter and with the Hunger Games series as a whole. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 proves this story is strong enough to appeal to adults as well. (On Blu-ray, December 7, 2018)

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quittingfiction · 2 years

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First, We Make the Beast Beautiful

Now, a strange thing happens when you realize that some gargantuan, all-looming issue you'd been fretting over no longer needs to be fixed. You take a deep, free breath, expand a little, release your grip and get on with better things. (3)

It's the most incredible relief to know that we're all wearing masks... and to see them slip on others. (6)

"We must suffer alone. But we can at least hold our arms to our similarly tortured, fractured, and above all else, anxious neighbors, as if to say, in the kindest way possible: 'I know...'" ... When you realize there's no guidebook, an opportunity suddenly presents itself. If no one knows what they're doing, if there's no "right" way to do life, then we can surely choose our own way. Yes? (6)

I can now tell you it was all anxiety. All of it. Just different flavors. (7)

I take off my mask and share my not-knowing. (11)

To be told that we have an illness that is not our "fault" relieves some of the doubt and uncertainty, and absolves us of the guilt we feel that we should be able to cope better. Which in itself turns down the anxiety dial. (22)

I am not my sickness; I have a condition that can wander all lonely and cloudlike into view from time to time. I (the whole me) can choose to sit back and witness the clouds, let them be, let them pass. Pfft. (23)

For some of us, it does get to the point where the bloody clouds take over the sky. There is nothing left but black clouds. It becomes medical. (23)

Take on board all the theories. But given no definitive causes, diagnoses or treatments have been found yet, why not see this as an opportunity? An opportunity to define anxiety as something other than a problem or disorder that has to be fixed as such. ... "Perhaps the problem, sometimes, is the notion that there's a problem." (25)

"... a diagnosis can be a safe place to plant things until you have the wisdom and learning to take you into deeper understanding." (26)

cruel irony #1: The curious nature of anxiety is such that it defies its own diagnosis and treatment. (27)

Anxious behavior is rewarded in our culture. (27)

Many of us deny we have a problem and keep going and going. (27)

Depression is stigmatized, anxiety is sanctified as propping up modern life, which ironically sees depression treated as a legitimate illness, and the anxious left in a cesspool of self-doubt and self-flagellation for not being better at coping with life. And so we buy each other Keep Calm and Carry On mugs as though that's something you can just do. (28)

It's a self-perpetuating pain—we use anxiety to fight our anxiety. (28)

Many of us with anxiety don't look like we've got a problem because outwardly we function ludicrously well. ... We are a picture of efficiency and energy, always on the move, always doing. ... Sure, we look busy, but mostly we're busy avoiding things. (30)

cruel irony #2: The more anxious we are, the more high-functioning we will make ourselves appear, which just encourages the world to lean on us more. (31)

cruel irony #3: The less you sleep, the more anxious you get, the less you sleep... and so on. (32)

Some of us, though, do not learn how to self-settle, or have a reason to unlearn this ability to trust later on down the track. ... We feel unsupported and unsafe and so we must remain hypervigilant. (33)

... this need to reflect quietly (to reacquaint ourselves with ourselves), without the distractions and obligations of our daylight selves, outweighs the benefits of sleep and so we subliminally make the call: think, not sleep. (34)

When I can't sleep now, I remind myself that it might just be about a need to reacquaint my self with my self. (34)

I was running around with a hot potato with nowhere to drop it off. I got even more anxious when I became aware that no one else seemed to be feeling the same things. (38)

SIT ON A SMALL BENCH WITH YOURSELF (41)

It’s like we’re searching for a Something Else that makes us feel... what? Like we’ve landed, I suppose. And that things are all good on this patch. (44)

Anxiety is a disconnection with this Something Else. (44)

It’s this lack of connection and clarity that leaves us fretting and checking and spinning around in our heads and needing to compensate with irrational, painful behaviors, whether it be OCD, phobias or panic attacks. It’s this sense of missing... something... that leaves us feeling lonely and incomplete and fluttery. Something is not right. We haven’t landed. (45)

I’m really fretting that I’m not able to exist calmly, happily on my own, on my own bench. ... I’m really fretting that something is missing that should be making me feel supported, comforted, and assured that everything’s going to be okay. (45)

You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day. (46)

This is what else life naturals do: they see a flower. And find it beautiful. That’s it. They don’t wonder if they’re liking it enough, or if the whole experience is a waste because today they’re too stressed to appreciate lovely things like flowers. Nor do they fear that the flower won’t last. And they don’t try to draw on that Zen proverb about how a flower doesn’t try to bloom, it just blooms on its own. And then despair that they’re failing to do the same. They simply grasp the is-ness as a matter of course. (47)

Some might say this move marked the turning of a new leaf. I wouldn’t. They leaves have never stopped turning. (49)

These approaches are rooted in working with what “is” and easing our way into the life we want, gently, kindly. Instead of building a bridge (with happy-clappy language and unicorn emoticons) and getting over it, we make the most of the river we find ourselves in, even if it might be a little dank and overgrown with reeds at times. By doing so we may find happiness, among other different, rich emotions available to us. Happiness is a lovely by-product of the process. Not the (mostly unattainable) end goal. (52-53)

... the search for happiness is making anxiety worse because “the expectation of how happy you should be are so high, you always feel you are falling short.” ... our pursuit of happiness—including the recently fashionable route via mindfulness—is particularly privileged. (53)

Happiness is put forward as a choice, not as a matter of luck. Yet happiness derives from the Middle English word hap, meaning chance or good luck (thus “happenstance” or “perhaps”). We’ve twisted the meaning in recent times such that it’s now something we just have to work hard to get to the bottom of. As though it’s an endpoint that exists. We just have to sift through various options and decisions and choices. But, of course, getting to the bottom of options is anxiety-inducing. ... the more relentlessly we value and pursue happiness, the more likely we are to be depressed, anxious, and lonely. (53-54)

We can’t blame those of us with a highly sensitive amygdala for being anxious. (54)

... even our best attempts to avoid or combat or criticize our anxiety will only make it worse. Instead, self-compassion is the way forward. (55)

They acknowledge that it’s easier for self-flagellators like myself to activate compassion for another than it is to activate it for ourselves and conveniently supply studies that have found showing compassion for others will have the same comfort system activating response in the brain, this dampening the anxiety-riddled threat system. (56)

TALK TO A KID (56)

Tell them they can’t be blamed for feeling as they do, and that they won’t feel this way forever. (57)

WRITE A “NO BLOODY WONDER” LETTER TO YOUR ANXIETY (58)

Yes, yes, I know it feels like it’s too hard. But you deal with this every time we land here. Let’s just look back on it all for twenty-seven seconds. The shittiest days have always led somewhere. Haven’t they? (58)

“Bad habits... can’t be reversed or eliminated. It’s not how the brain works,” he explained. He drew a line on his notepad with his fountain pen. “This is a habit, a series of thoughts. They clump together to form a neural pathway and the more thoughts you add to this the thicker it gets.” He draws more lines over the top of the first. “You don’t delete a bad habit, you build a new, better one. You feed this new habit, over and over,” he tells me. He draws a new line, this time parallel to the first clump of lines, and thickens it with more and more strokes of his pen. The new thoughts clump, layer by layer, and eventually create a habit that is stronger than the old one. You build habits that trigger the comfort system, instead of the threat system. (59-60)

My new habit was getting the urge, and resisting it calmly. I visualized this in a calm, meditative state of self-hypnosis, the best state for drawing new lines. ... I reproduced the calm of the imagined scenario. I stayed. I stayed. I kept breathing. I was aware of the visceral urge to check. But I stayed. To see what happened. (60)

It wasn’t about changing myself. It was about creating ease and gentleness around who I was, which allowed me to make better choices. (60)

If you don’t use it, you lose it. This is why it is easier to form a new habit than maintain an old one. (61)

MAKE YOUR BED. EVERY DAY. (61)

“It’s easier to do something every day, without exceptions, than to do something ‘most days’... It sets us up for decision overload.” (62)

Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed there is nothing to fear but fear itself. I’m kind of saying the inverse. Don’t fear the fear. Instead, see it for what it is. You’re feeling anxious. You just are. No need to berate yourself for this; it will only make you more anxious. No need to think that things should be otherwise and that you’ve got it all wrong somehow. For this, too, will just make you more anxious. ... Do the anxiety. Then leave it there. This is our challenge. (63)

JUST SAY IT: “I’M ANXIOUS” (64)

DO CORE EXERCISES (64)

... the primary motor cortex linked to the axial body muscles (our core) is directly connected to the adrenal glands. (64)

... when you’re an anxious type, mediation is non-negotiable. (65)

You can be crap at meditation and it still works. (66)

It turns the volume down on the thoughts. (66)

You recite a mantra, faintly, in your head, for twenty minutes. That’s it. If your mind wanders, return to the mantra. Don’t worry about your breathing. Or your posture. Or your chakras. Return to the mantra. When thoughts bubble up, that’s cool. Actually, it’s better than cool. Thoughts are like little pockets of stress that your consciousness encounters as it descends into calm. ... thoughts are all part of this process. I’m not fighting myself. (67)

... it’s really the repeated gentle returning to a quietness that counts. It’s this sturdy vigilance, this steering toward stillness, that builds the relaxation response—or calm muscle—in your being. (68)

“It’s not really about what happens during the twenty minutes of meditation. It’s what happens after, out there in real life.” “Right. This changes things. So meditation is like a little forum for airing our grievances, purging the crap. So we can move on.” ... “You’re watering the root so you can enjoy the fruit ... keep watering, get the three stable. And then things will grow from there.” (68)

... the thing about meditation is that you always have it with you. You don’t have to rely on anyone or anything. You site. With yourself. And just meditate. (69)

Working from a low base reduces the expectation. All that matters is that I’m sitting with myself. (70)

STOP AND DROP (71)

... stop your head and drop into your heart. As I say, the thing about anxiety, it’s all head. So anything that gets us out of our heads is good. It works a different muscle. (71)

You only have to hold the feeling for a few seconds to “get it.” Try pausing your thinking for a minute and drawing your focus down into the space just behind your sternum. (72)

ROLL A SPONGE AROUND YOUR SKULL (73)

... absorbing, mopping up the little anxious pockets. (73)

DEEP BELLY BREATHING ALSO WORKS (73)

... deep, controlled breathing communicates to the body that everything is okay, which down regulates the stress response, slowing the heart rate, diverting blood back to the brain and the digestive system and promoting feelings of calm. (73)

Sitting upright or lying down, place your hands on your belly. Slowly breathe in, expanding your belly, to the count of five. Pause. Slowly breathe out to the count of six. Repeat for 10-20 minutes a day. (74)

HAVE A GRATITUDE RITUAL (AS LAME AS IT SOUNDS) (75)

The simple act of reflecting for a few minutes ... (4-15 minutes) on the good stuff in our lives creates a congruency between our goals and their fulfillment. This moment of recognition that things are gelling cooperatively makes you feel synchronicity and oneness with the flow of life. (76)

“Gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. Your brain only has so much power to focus its attention. It cannot easily focus on both positive and negative stimuli.” (76-77)

... the brain loves to fall for the confirmation bias—it looks for things that prove what it already believes to be true. “So once you start seeing things to be grateful for, your brain starts looking for more things to be grateful for.” And thusly we build all kinds of right muscles. (77)

JUST WALK (87)

To do this you have to walk reeeaaallllyy slowly. Which is the point. Because all focus is shifted to the “breathing-and-staying-upright” part of your brain, the anxiety takes a backseat. (88)

... when you activate one network you dampen or disrupt the other ... when you focus on the breath and the earth and the steps as a simple bodily sensation, you dampen the nosy, wandering storyline mechanism. ... walking eases anxiety because it provides the surging stress hormones with an outlet. We were programmed to offload the build-up of stress hormones after the initial stressor was activated. (89)

Studies show any movement, but particularly walking, will ease anxiety when we’re in the middle of a stress hormone surge. Indeed, the studies show that a mere 20–30 minute walk, five times a week, will make people less anxious, as effectively as antidepressants. Even better, the effect is immediate—serotonin, dopamine and endorphins all increase as soon as you start moving. (89)

...I’ll also advise against hardcore exercise if you’re anxious. Gentle and slow stuff is the best. (89)

Hiking gets us into nature...and multiple studies show that folks who live in green spaces have lower rates of mental health issues. It’s been suggested that getting away from city freneticness allows the prefrontal cortex to take a break. Accordingly, stress hormones, heart rate, and other markers back off. (91)

Hiking connects us to ourselves. A University of Michigan study found that because our senses evolved in nature, by getting back to it we connect more honestly with our sensory reactions. Which connects us with our true selves, and enhances a feeling of “oneness.” (91)

... awe-inspiring natural experiences release oxytocins—the hormones that make us feel warm and fuzzy and connected with others. (91)

... even getting out into nature for five minutes at a stretch is enough to give your self-esteem a substantial upgrade. And I know this: walking near water seemed to have the biggest effect. (92)

... a big part of contemporary unease comes from having so much of our life occurring at a speed that our bodies are not aligned with. (93)

HANDWRITE ON A NAPKIN SITTING AT A BAR (95)

It lowers the expectations. The point isn’t what you produce, it’s the writing out. And connecting with what you’re thinking or feeling. (95)

cruel irony #4: We yearn for something even if we don’t know what it looks like or if it actually exists. (98)

“If we crave to touch this Something Else, to know it, to be connected, why do we also flee from it, from out selves, into busy-ness and distraction and, well, all the things that make us anxious?” ... “Because there’s a silence and aloneness that accompanies a strong relationship with yourself. In that silence we see the truth of our existence and the shortness of life. And this is painful. Also, when we come in close, we become larger...and this requires change. We become more visible, and thus more open to being touched by life, and thus more likely to be hurt.” (100-101)

“A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul that has not discovered its meaning.” (103)

“I suppose that people who live with passion start out with an especially intense desire to complete themselves. We are the only animals who are naturally unfinished. We have to bring ourselves to fulfillment, to integration and to coherence.” (103)

I wished I wasn’t sane, I really did. When you’re sane you have to witness the whole bloody unraveling with your eyes wide open. (112)

Its because we’re going in the wrong direction. We;re grasping outward for satisfaction, sense of purpose, and for a solution to our unease. When we really need to be going inward, where the comfort lies. Wrong way! Go back! (118)

Every man rushes elsewhere into the future because no man has arrived at himself. -Michel de Montaigne (118)

When you have anxiety, you do learn to give up on all the perfectly Instagrammable notions of how life should be done. You just have to attend to survival sometimes. (120)

cruel irony #5: We rush to escape what makes us anxious, which makes us anxious, and so we rush some more. (121)

Fear is a primal physical response; anxiety is both this fear and the awareness of what it means. (122)

If anxiety surges forward, depression is a clinging to the past. (123)

If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. (123)

Depressed or anxious, it’s the unknown that we are more petrified of, so we grasp and cling to the certainty of what’s already happened or to the false security of micromanaging in our heads to what comes next. Or both. To this extent I think anxiety and depression are different expressions of the same thing—a severe discomfort with what we can’t grasp, what we can’t know. ... [S]ome researchers in this field, increasingly aware of the fundamental similarities between anxiety and depression, argue that both may be facet of a broader disorder. Other research has indicated that the same neurotransmitters play a role in causing both anxiety and depression. Some of us have depressed anxiety. Others have anxious depression. (123)

Some literature suggested depression is a natural coping mechanism deployed in such cases to stop us from self-combusting from anxiety that’s out of control. (124)

Depression and anxiety at the same time is being sucked into a hole, in the dark, but with all your nightmares chasing you, so you run around and around the bottom of the hole but never get away from anything. I have experienced both...sometimes anxiety can kick me out of depression. But then it’s like a yo-yo experience and I have trouble finding peace in the middle. They’re frenemies with me stuck in the middle. It’s sort of like one side of your brain begging you not to get out of bed with chains, meanwhile the other part of you barks like a military sergeant for not getting out of bed. Anxiety and depression make me feel as though I’m stuck in tar and can’t get out, even though my hear has so many dreams and aspirations. (125)

ASK YOURSELF, “WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?” (126)

“Ask yourself what ‘problem’ you have right now. Worries about the future or the past don’t exist either—they’re just narratives we create in the present. Practice asking yourself “what’s the problem?” often. See if you don’t start to feel the anxious cycle back away. See if those startled birds at sunset don’t begin to settle, softly, gently, at dusk. See if this gentleness is where you want to be. (126)

Real disasters are a cinch to the shit we make up in our heads. Actually, they’re a relief. When the future does arrive, we’re always okay. And I think my tendency to seek out risky experiences is about wanting to be reminded of this. (127)

“I noticed the industry is another system that tells you something is wrong with you and is about someone else giving you a ‘fix’ e.g. healing/happiness/peace/enlightenment as an end goal.” (128)

TRY A FLANERIE (133)

flanerie—a wandering walk (133)

I set my aims super low. My aim is simply to look at a few things, see what happens. You know, to enjoy staying close. (122)

HOW TO CHICK IN WITH YOUR INSIDE PEOPLE (134)

Just create the space with your Inside People and the rest will unfurl as it needs to. ... Try saying to yourself, as he does, “Are we good? Are we comfortable? Is this where we should be? Is it making sense?” “Don’t think or plan in this space, just check in” ... let stuff happen. ... it’s also important to listen to what your peeps have to tell you when you ask them how they are. It will probably be heard with a feeling, perhaps an expansiveness, a release. (135)

... anxiety tends to play out on the body (somatically) when we haven’t yet come to understand how and why our anxiety happens. This kind of panic attack happens when our thought trigger the ancient fight-or-flight mechanisms and we succumb to the response, believing something truly fearful is happening. In intellectual anxiety attacks ... we do the fight-or-flight response while simultaneously being able to understand what it’s about. Not that this helps, because our overawareness of how and why anxiety happens and thorough and genuine absorption in this feeds the spiral. (137)

cruel irony #6: The more banal the supposed trigger, the guiltier and more self-indulgent and pathetic we feel, this adding to the anxious spiral. (139)

She works to green versus red flags. A red flag tells her that she’s heading in the wrong direction, that she’s in the wrong mindset and needs to stop and get a grip. I work to black and white versus color. If something appears in my mind’s eye in black and white, it signals I’m being too rigid. (140)

I’m Wile E. Coyote who’s chased Roadrunner over the cliff edge, and I’m frantically treading thin air, trying to grasp at something to hang on to. But there’s nothing there. Just the abyss. And the more I gasp outward, the more frantic I get. And down I go. (142)

“They could not care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel the absence of pain. To escape a mind on fire, where thoughts blaze...to be empty.” The only way he could escape his burning thoughts was to stop living. (144)

cruel irony #7: The anxious tend to seek solitude, yet we simultaneously crave connection. (145)

The very gist of why I jitter is the need to know I belong, I fit. (145)

cruel irony #8: We need easy-going people, but they can be our undoing. ... They can ride with our stuff. ... But they can also tend to flake, and not realize what a big deal their flakiness is for someone whom uncertainty can be their undoing. (145)

cruel irony #9: We cope with strangers better than our own mates when we’re anxious. I think this is because around loved ones we feel so bloody responsible and guilty and hyperaware of our inconsistencies and neurotic needs. It’s exhausting being that apologetic. (145)

cruel irony #10: We may come across as extroverted, but we have society anxiety. (146)

cruel irony #11: We can talk coherently and rationally about our anxiety, even joke about it, yet we freak out on a regular basis. (146)

Anxious thoughts, apparently, have more pull in the brain than knowledge thoughts, so sensible facts and data go out the window when we’re panicking. (146-147)

cruel irony #12: We seem doggedly set in our ways, but we have no idea what we want. ... We’re flimsily coping, albeit with a white-knuckled grip. (147)

cruel irony #13: We look strong and controlling. But we actually need others’ help more than most. (147)

cruel irony #14: We’re always thinking about everyone (and everything), but were so damn selfish. (148)

Rumination, then, feels like we’re doing something, at least. Anything is better than the nothingness of not knowing...and, I guess, ultimately, of having to sit quietly with ourselves. The doing, doing distracts us from the dread. (149)

... take charge when we’re not good. (150)

...leave open for a loved one to read...but only once you fully acknowledge that your anxiety is not their problem. (150)

Your patience and calmness will exist in such stark contrast to our funk that well start to feel silly and return to Earth. Our anxiety does pass. ... stay and be stable for us. (151)

My anxiety spiral lifted because a whole heap of firmness happened. A decision was made. There were sturdy details. (153)

... don’t confuse our need to control our environment with a need to control you. (154)

mediation ... it doesn’t work in an anxiety spiral or panic. ... Really, the only aim is to just come in a bit closer. In such frantic, spiraling moments, I find it’s best to come in closer via the body. The body is solid enough, but not too “out there.” It’s close enough. I find my cells take over from there. (155)

GET TOUCHED BY A SHOE ATTENDANT ... the off-beatness of doing something like this helps. No pressure, but don’t hesitate either if you find yourself needing to step very slightly to the left to break a spiral. A little bit of crazy might freshen things up. (155-156)

GET A THAI MASSAGE (156)

[coming closer into the body] a big fluffy makeup brush and stroke my hand or my face act of taking my hair down and then braiding it ... someone else braiding or brushing my hair Wiggling! ... I pretend that I’m physically pulling the anxiety out of my chest, pull it up and shake it out of my fingertips and slam it on the ground. I rock back and forth Counting steps helps me I read things forward and backward. I just imagine that other people don’t even care I wear earplugs to cocoon myself (157-158)

For us anxious folk the [fight-or-flight] switch is particularly sensitive, of course. (158)

[P]anic attacks are a misinterpretation of symptoms. We mistake anxious-like symptoms for actual anxiety, which sees us get anxious about being anxious. Which can blow out into a separate syndrome called anxiety sensitivity, or AS... (159)

ASK YOURSELF, “WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?” (AGAIN) (160)

I absolutely believe it helps to see anxiety as having a metapurpose beyond the arbitrary torture of our little souls. Pain is lessened when there is a point to it. ... “That’s all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.” (164-165)

“He who has a why can endure any how.” (165)

STUDY SOME FRETTERS TO KNOW THYSELF (166)

... the correlation between creative contributions (artistic, political, entrepreneurial) and anxiety is well documented. (166)

“Something is always born of axcess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” (167)

A LITTLE LIST OF KNOW-THYSELF-BETTER READS, BU NO MEANS COMPLETE The Road to Character — David Brooks Your Voice in My Head — Emma Forrest The Noonday Demon — Andrew Solomon The Fry Chronicles — Stephen Fry Monkey Mind — Daniel Smith Reasons to Stay Alive — Matt Haig My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind — Scott Stossel The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath An Unquiet Mind — Kay Redfield Jamison M Train — Patti Smith Book of Longing — Leonard Cohen (168)

Those who experience intense moods are predisposed to building possible worlds, as well as to taking risks and testing boundaries. He explains that in the past, manic depressives pushed humans forward with their deep insight and creative urges; they strengthened the gene pool by who bravely venturing out of the insular communities into uncharted territory. When they returned, they brought new skills that enhanced progress and survival. (169)

I believe with all my heart that just understanding the metapurpose of the anxious struggle helps to make it beautiful. Purposeful, creative, bold, rich, deep things are always beautiful. (170)

... acceptance, rather than transformation, is her endpoint ... (170)

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until...the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships. ... By accepting the storms and complications of her “individual moment” she’s able to find a personal purpose to her life. Her beast becomes beautiful. (170)

It can be a choice to view your individual moments with bemused compassion and intrigue. To find them cute and beautiful. I try to do this. While trying to not lose connection with my humility. (171)

I’d learned that at a biological level, anxiety is a lot like excitement. ... I often choose to interpret anxiety as excitement whenever I can. ... it’s easier to convince yourself to be excited than to bloody well just relax when you’re anxious (177, 179-180)

“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear...while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.” (179)

I’ve found that it’s only when you put the brakes on its forceful charge through your system that it leads to things like freak-outs or brain freezes. Let anxiety be and it will be less so. And quite possibly beautiful and exciting, too. (179)

“Why do we all expect to be happy? We all came out of our mothers crying. Pain is what we do. ... Happiness is generally impossible for longer than fifteen minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried. ... Worry is our default position.” (184)

We humans are the only creatures on the planet who can’t sleep even when we need or want to. ... We are the only creatures with the capacity, nay, propensity—to ponder our inevitable deaths. (184-185)

“Choose discomfort over resentment. ... Anxiety is a sign we need to move and change our lives. ... You’ve got to just sit in it, sit in it, sit in it.” ... We can sit with it by talking to it. ... We can feel into the physical discomfort and find it interesting to observe. ... We can acknowledge what we’re doing. ... We can let ourselves be wrong. ... We can waste a bit of time. ... Let the time pass with seemingly nothing productive happening. ... And it might mean coming off medication. ... when we take drugs we don’t just medicate away anxiety, we medicate away our souls. (186-188)

We’d always rather be right than happy (except maybe Jesus). (187)

To sit in anxiety is to stay a little long. A little longer. A little longer. And to see what happens. We experiment with it, curiously. (188)

By nature they [Holocaust survivors] tended to not resist the pain and instead went inward to draw in this “inner life” when things got really bad. And this is precisely what saved them. (189)

Frankl also concluded that the purpose of life is to suffer. Actually, he went further. The purpose of life is to suffer well. By which he meant go down into pain, own it, and not run from it. To sit in it. And in the process find meaning. To be specific, Frankl maintained that finding the meaning of life is our ultimate purpose and suffering brings us to this purpose. (189)

He [David Brooks] proposed that delving produced the deeper happiness because human beings are driven to find and create meaning in their lives, and because we are social animals who want and need to connect with other people. (192)

The pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is a fear of sadness...I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace is with the word “wholeness.” Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is. (192-192)

“Anyone who thinks they can heal without doing the work is missing the point.” (195)

When we’re in anxiety, particularly an anxiety spiral or panic attack, we must focus on coping. Once it’s abated, though, that’s when we have to do the work. We have to ask the questions. Plus, we have to build the resilience and courage and muscle with a whole lot of little right moves to ward off other further fires. ... “You’ve got to get in front of the fire, be prepared.” ... it’s only hard; not impossible. (197)

I’ve found that all I need to do is take the first step—commit, show up. And my path unfurls from there. ... Showing up provides me with enough forward flow to keep things moving. ... The low aim helped me to just show up. ... Simply show up. Start. Things will flow. (198-199)

“Nothing any good isn’t hard.” And yes, going out on your own and doing this kind of work takes time. But nothing any good happens overnight, either. (199)

Its gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. (201)

Being vulnerable is saying “I love you” first, it’s doing something where there are no guarantees. It’s being willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. And it’s staying to tell your truth. When you do, it provides a glorious space for a love one—or a potential loved one—to step in and be their best person. (203)

GET YOUR GUTS GOOD Quit sugar. Just Eat Real Food (#JERF) . Eat 5-9 servings of vegetables and fruit in a day. Eat yogurt and fermented stuff. Take some supplements. (203-204)

So I phoned him immediately to find out why such banal decisions stall the anxious. He tells me it’s because we allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking they’re important decisions. ... “We automatically think if there are lots of options presented that a choice must really matter even if it doesn’t.” (207)

Of course modern life is one big cluttered drugstore shelf. Choice is sold to us as providing freedom. It empowers us, says the consumerist model. to define who we are. Which we know if just the most absurd thing ever. (208)

There’s a reason decisions bring us undone. First: biology. When faced with options, our two decision-making centers—the prehistoric limbic system (which makes impulsive choices) and the neocortex (which can look ahead to the future consequences of such choices)—are having a go-nowhere tug-of-war. If you’re anxious, your neocortex tends to be particularly fired up, so the tug-of-war is much more aggressive. ... the anxious tend to have decreased “neural inhibition,” a process that sees one nerve cell suppress activity in another, which is critical in our ability to sift through choices and make decisions. The worse the anxiety, the less neural inhibition we have. (209)

Anxiety is the awareness of the “impossibility of our possibilities.” (210)

Zerrissenheit: (noun) disunity, separateness, inner conflict; an internal fragmenting or “torn-to-pieces-hood” from toggling so many choices. (210)

Actually, I soon grasped what he meant by rendered choiceless and why this is such a glorious thing when it happens. I only had one choice available. To stay put. To give up fixing and meddling and grasping outward. (212)

“I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” (213)

“Happy successful entrepreneurs ritualize everything in their lives but their creative work.” (214)

... “dropping certainty anchors.” Drop as many as you can to hold you firmly so that you can flap about as creatively—or anxiously—as required ... and creatively productive—if we know we’re not going to fly away. (215)

...decision fatigue. They liken our decision-making abilities to flexing a muscle. With each decision we make, regardless of whether it’s big or small, we fatigue the muscle. (215)

HAVE A MORNING ROUTINE (216)

Having a morning routine is a certainty anchor with really sturdy stakes. (216)

Start off by letting go of the idea that you don’t have time. (217)

FLIP A COIN. GO ON. (221)

I flip a coin. But before I uncover it, I monitor my emotions to see what I’m hoping the result will be. There it is, my gut decision, peeking through my head clutter. This technique tricks you into thinking some divine intervention is going to make the decision and you switch to responding to the possible outcome. This switches off the decision-making muscle. (221)

Just. Decide. ... “If we’re actually debating the two covers, going back and forth, then it means both are good options. Right? IF one was really bad, you’d know about it.” (221)

There is never a perfect decision. They become perfect when we make them. (222)

If a decision—about a thing or a person—feels 70 percent right, he just goes with it; 70 percent is enough. (222)

The studies show that when we decide to do something and it turns out badly, it mostly doesn’t haunt us down the track. We humans are master justifiers. Failing to act on a decision, however, will haunt us. The infinite possibilities of what might have been get us into all kinds of anxious messes. ... we might as well just decide. I share all of this mostly, to lessen the potency of one choice over another. If we’re investigated the options enough, it doesn’t matter. Moving up, up and away from the chaos of indecision does. (223)

cruel irony #15: I convince myself that controlling my life and aiming for perfection will cocoon me from anxiety. But it only causes more of the dreaded thing. (225)

“There a river that flows.” Some of us try to dam the river with piles of logs and other obstacles because we think the river should flow differently, by micromanaging our partners or blocking pain or by forcing a dinner that no one wants (they repeatedly cancel but we ignore the signs and keep rescheduling). When we do this, the pressure builds. And builds. The water (flow of life) banks up behind the obstruction, determined to continue its flow because, you know what? It kind of knows where it’s going. It’s ingrained in the groove of the valley, the gaps in the boulders, and it’s bigger than us. Way bigger and way more knowing. Eventually the flow wins out and Boof! our micromanaged pile of logs explodes from the force of the flow. Our stuff goes flying in all directions. It’s devastating. And then,...the river goes back to flowing as it was always going to. Before we came along and got in the way. I round my metaphor assignment off (cringefully) by advising the reader (poor Mrs. Cochrane) to perhaps try using the logs to build a comfortable little raft instead and to sit atop it and let the river carry them languidly down the river. (226)

FOLD FORWARD AND SURRENDER (227)

“The best way to beat a monster is to find a scarier one.” (230)

... recent science ... postulates that psychedelics may be good for sufferers of OCD. The drugs were shown the shut down the default mode of the brain and distrupt the repetitive and control-focused patterns of thought and behavior. “It may be that some brains could benefit from a little less order.” (231)

... these chilled, happy women “tilted” toward activities and commitments that they liked and found meaningful. Amid the chaos. They didn’t wait for the chaos and commitments to get under control. I love this idea. Tilting. It’s when you have so much to do and you could list it all out and try to prioritize. Or you could just in in the everythingness and lean toward stuff as it arises that just feels right. Tilting doesn’t involved holding up the hand and plonking a lump of logs in the flow. Nope. When you tilt, you grab a log that looks about right and jump on. (232-233)

Indian philosopher Guru Dev says the same: “Do the opposite of what you’d normally do.” Why? It injects freshness. The jolt of going against the grain gets you to look at things differently. ... treating it as an experiment. ... When you shake things up there is no such expectation [Perfect Moment Syndrome]. It’s so wrong it’s right. (233)

DO IT T THE WRONG TIME (234)

SLEEP AT THE OTHER END OF THE BED (234)

Picture a bunch of people loudly talking to you about everything you don’t want to hear—that’s how it feels in my head. Thoughts flood and for me paranoia sets in and I try to grasp on to at least one thought I can be rational about. [It’s] like there are a hundred things needing my immediate attention and knowing that I can’t attend to it al at once, including racing thoughts. Anxiety is like having new tabs opening very quickly [on your computer] one after another and not being able to close them or stop new ones from opening—but in your head. ... Anxiety feels like being the passenger of a race car driver while pleading to be let out. I close my eyes and take deep breaths at every endless turn. For me it’s like a boa constrictor around my body, getting tighter and tighter as more thoughts come into my head. Everything, all of life, is crammed into a tube of toothpaste while has a caked-over nozzle. “Like wanting to vomit but not having a mouth.” A very tangled-up spiderweb and all the web is mixed up with lots of emotions and tangled all together. The more I try to untangle these webs I get caught up in another web. (235-236)

... anxiety was “the feeling of having in the middle of my body a ball of wool that quickly winds itself up, its innumerable threads pulling from the surface of my body to itself.“ It’s impossible to know where all the knots start. Yet, we still try to find the original thread, somehow believing that once we find it, this one unifying explanation for everything, we can tug at it and have the ball unravel cleanly. We think the fix is linear like that. That one motivational philosophy or one successful relationship or one perfect job will straighten out the mess. But I put it to you that messy balls of wool don’t work like this. Nope Our filthy-mitted meddling and tugging only tighten the knots more. Instead, the only salve is to gently take the messy ball in both hands and tenderly loosen it, a bit at a time. The ball starts to unfurl and expand. It is still knotted, but not as tightly now. After a while a whole section unfurls. And then another. Then, after much careful tending, one end of the string floats loose. Maybe the rest of the ball fully unfurls. Maybe it doesn’t. But the point is, the whole bloody knotted mess is looser now. There’s more space. If you’re anxious, part of the healing journey is to create space.” ... Space implies gently unfurling. Time speaks to pressure. Most of cry out for more time, thinking that’s what we need (much like balance). But tell me when more time has helped anyone in a hot anxious mess? Time doesn’t release the pressure. Time doesn’t take the cap off the toothpaste. Time doesn’t loosen the knots. If we get time, we tend to just fill it with more thoughts. What we need is more space. (237-238)

... book out fifteen minutes either side of every one of her appointments. “I use it to reflect on what just happened,” she says. “It gives me the space to view what I need to do next.” (239)

I didn’t “use” the time. I just sat into the space. And fresh thoughts bubbled up from nothingness. (239)

FIND THE SPACE BETWEEN BREATHS (239)

SMILE WITH YOUR EYES (240)

Gently and softly. Perhaps notice the way it releases the muscles in your jaw and at your brow. ...this simple, brief action [smiling forcefully] stimulated the brain activity associated with positive emotions. (240-241)

If the smile is from a friend, it is equal to the feel-good brain stimulation of 200 chocolate bars; if it comes from a baby it equates to 2,000 bars! (241)

Modern Life does. Mostly, it’s frenetic and at a pace that’s not conducive to reflective thoughts. ... We don’t have time to adjust, to work out our priorities, and to reflect on whether what we’re doing when we’re running around madly is actually meaningful to us. ... We are “on” 24/7. Every gap is filled. ... Technology freed us up...to imprison us further. It’s created the imperative to go faster, to take on more ideas, and to juggle more. ... To stay on top of all the ideas and opportunities that Modern Life now affords us we have to keep multiple tabs open in our brains, which sees us toggle back and forth between tasks and commitments and thoughts. And all of it competes. And it clusters. (243-244)

When we had tantrums as kids, Mom would say we were overexcited. “Come on, a little less excitement,” she’d say. (245)

But self-mastery triumphs in this Modern Life of ours. So if we haven’t found happiness or calm or balance amidst it all—if we don’t cope—it’s because we’ve not tried hard enough. Because Modern Life dictates that there’s an answer out there...you just have to try harder to find it and master it. Of course it doesn’t exist. So we are set up to fail. (245)

“We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” (245)

All of it drives us outward, away from our true selves and from our yearning to know ourselves better. Plus, it drives us away from each other. Lack of community and belongingness is cited ... as the primary driver of anxiety today. (245)

... anxiety is not a disease. It’s not an unhealable disorder. It’s merely a symptom of having got a bit off balance. We don’t fix anxiety. It doesn’t need a fix. It just requires a little bit of rebalancing. (246)

HOW TO TAME YOUR VATA [flighty] I avoid con-con and fans. I back off from coffee when I’m fretty. If you’re asking if it’s bad, it might mean you feel that it quite possibly is. The routine bit is key. I eat heavier foods... I eat oil. I sit still for 5-10 minutes several times a day. O s tell friends I have to leave by 9pm when I’m out at night. I turn off social media on the weekend and after 8pm at night. ... keep my kidneys warm. I walk everywhere I can. I do yoga. I don’t go to The Shops. (249-251)

cruel irony #16: Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries and yet it itself the greatest of our miseries. (251)

... al of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. And to let nothing happen. (251)

I don’t think it’s bad to lean forward ... We’re human. We’re curious and we reach out. It no longer serves us, however, when we do it to run from something. (253)

... it’s a common mistake amongst hose wanting to get mindful with their angst to expect to achieve states of calm through mediation. “This is a form of grasping—s seeking to indulge in pleasant states and to avoid the unpleasant. ... “A wiser orientation would be to appreciate (and investigate) calm states when they do arise and to treat anxious ones with great kindness and respect. The radical encouragement of the practice is to sit with most disagreeable states for as long as they last. Sooner or later, they exhaust themselves of energy.” (253-254)

These [institutional and technological] boundaries created certainty anchors and reduced the number of decisions we had to make. They helped us keep on an even keel. But today there are few such boundaries. (255)

What we’re yet to work out is that we have to create the boundaries ourselves. This is the new barometer of success, wellness and happiness: How well an you create your own ways to shut down the distractions, reduce the toggling, stem the tide of frazzling data, carve out space in your week for reflection and stillness? (255)

BUILD YOUR OWN BOUNDARIES (256)

Check your emails twice a day only. Try the 10am Rule. ... [do] not “react to anything until 10am.” That is, first do the stuff that matters to you, rather than the knee-jerking out of the gates to the demands of others. Live somewhere slow. ..."Nothing makes me feel better—calmer. clearer, happier—than being in one place.” Have a Family Investment Bucket. Leave your phone at home. Get a room of your own. Try a Think Week. ... Focus on personal development. Create your own Sabbath. ... day of rest. Create a mercenary Out-of-Office notification. Don’t be Google. Just write less emails. Own less. (256-259)

Do the journey. Do the work. Do the little right moves. The crop comes. (260)

... anxiety widens personal space—we need more than the standard 8-16 inches that the average person requires to feel comfortable. (261)

Monachopsis: (noun) The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home. (264)

I’d run out of places to run to. “You keep moving. But it hasn’t worked for you. The irritation has just followed you. The problem has to be healed and can only be done when it’s in front of you.” (265)

... sitting in discomfort isn’t just about lessening it’s impact through exposure. It can also bring about a very particular joy. (268)

With lower expectations there’s less imperative to make things perfect. We can release our grip. We are in life, in its flow. We’re sitting with ourselves. We let our a sigh. (269)

... “distress tolerance” ... entails working ... to remain in anxiety-provoking situations until your fear capacity becomes exhausted. Which it does. The problem is that if you’re anxious, you tend to flee (or fight or freeze) before you give the distress tolerance mechanism time to play out. (271)

You keep it casual, with few expectations, so you don’t have to extend yourself too far. But the point is to actively seek out the discomfort so that you can choose to sit in it and do the experiment. Because you’ve chosen to do it, you’re that but more empowered. Also remember, it’s just an experiment, to see what happens. Nothing more. You’re just going to see what happens. (271)

Sitting in grim is also a defiant two-fingered up your to your anxiety. I think this is great. For an added bonus, the practice simultaneously forces you to stop the grasping and come in close and to connect with where life is. The simplicity, the inevitability, the flow, the truth of life. (272-273)

What we resist persists. What we sit in eventually fades to a manageable and livable volume. (273)

GET WABI-SABI WITH IT (275)

We can practice finding beauty in imperfection. ... ruts are best broken with small moments in whimsy, not seismic changes in behavior. ... Counting men with mustaches ... “Leave the kids’ fingerprints on the wall.” ... Pick some weeds and play with them until you find a nicely discordant arrangement. Stick them in a jam jar. ... cook a “fridge surprise” ... Have a floor picnic in the middle of it all. And then just see what happens. (275)

I can be a good thing, too, to learn to sit in your own weirdness. (276)

I generally find that anxious people spend a lot of the lives trying to have fun doing stuff that other people find enjoyable. ... The point is to recognize that we do this—defer to others’ notions of fun. And that this is probably because we struggle with choice (how do you decide what your preference is amid all the things to do in the world?) And to then try to play around with finding stuff that floats your boat. And, no doubt, to then realize that your stuff could be a little weird or unique. (276)

... focused on acknowledging that I simply don’t like doing a lot f what other people like doing. And over time, I got more and more okay with, and less and less anxious about, this. (277)

MEDITATE IN GRIMNESS (277)

DON’T CHANGE HOTEL ROOMS (278)

What helps me? I tell myself to try one night in the first room, as an experiment, to see what happens. Again, the metapurpose of the “experiment” gives me focus. So, too, does the fact that I have an out-clause (I can always swap tomorrow night). When I wake up the next day having slept, I have the courage to do another night in the same room. (279)

SLEEP WITH YOUR PARTNER (279)

ACTIVELY PRACTICE MISSING OUT (280)

... once we see dying as an option, our minds will focus on finding proof that this is right, ignoring all the evidence that it’s a shockingly bad idea. ... if nothing matter, if I have no attachments, no commitments and nothing left in my life, I could just quietly disappear. I could self-annihilate. Why not? There was nothing to stop me, nothing I was responsible for. This felt light and liberating. Or—and now the feeling gets even lighter—I could choose to exist, anyway. From ground zero, I could opt back in. And I could do it freely, working form a blank slate without all my old stuff—no expectations as to how life “should” be lived, no false and unhealthy ideas about my worth (that I have to achieve to be loved), no attachment to possessions or money. I could be an interloper with no fixed address and just the clothes on my back. I could do life completely differently. (283-284)

Grace goes a little something like this... You descend. ... You go into pain. ... Then you open. ... “it is what it is” ... Next, you release your grip. ... Then something shifts. (287)

Grace doesn’t bring a party to town. It’s not happiness. It’s not a fleeting high. It’s a delicate, yet whole, gift that whispers in our ear, “Life has this one covered.” It tells us that things fit. That you fit. You can’t try to get it, you can’t earn it or deserve it. It just is. Jut as a flower doesn’t try to bloom. It just does. (288)

“Most people don’t come out healed; they come out different.” (288)

... post-traumatic growth ... up to 70 percent of people who went through the anxious ringer report positive psychological growth at the other end. We’re talking about a greater appreciation for life, a richer spiritual life and a connection to something greater than oneself, and a sense of personal strength. You could call it character. ... a certain trauma can shatter our worldviews, beliefs, and identities completely. ... The more we are shaken, the more our former selves and assumptions are blown apart and the fresher the growth. ... this kind of seismic implosion often leads to creativity. The space created by stepping into the “is-ness” of life invites innovation thought and exploration. (288-289)

“The thing about life, sweetheart, is this, when we leap into the unknown, we always land safely. We just do. We freefall for a bit.” She does a zooming thing with her hands. “But then, as we’re falling, we grow angel wings that carry us to our destination.” I can’t quite believe she’s introduced angels without apology, but I nod. “Life supports us; it always does. The problem is, we all want to go out and buy ourselves a set of angel wings first. Before we jump.” She nods at me to check I’m getting her drift. I am. “But, sweetheart, there’s no such thing as an angels wing shop.” There most certainly isn’t. You have to jump first. And, you see, that’s the other thing about grace. You have to let go first. In our culture, we want guarantees. When we can learn to make leaps without them, then, well, things really do start to look different. (292)

GET OLD (293)

I’ve arrived at an age where accepting this is “just my life” brings peace and, going through the motions of anxiety when it arises, strangely it helps. This too will pass. You fight it still, but it lessens over time. I followed the “rather path.” doing all the “right things” to keep anxiety at bay. But it didn’t work. After 20 years you let go. Having toddlers are good [sic]—they do the opposite. You have to let go and give in or you will be one of those people whose bodies collapse. (294)

... life and its hardships only make sense when you get old enough and you’re able to look back and join the dots. You have to have dots in your experience for the picture to take form. ... But only once you have enough dots. (294)

Jump first. ... If we’re serious about joining life—like really joining it and not sitting at odds with its flow and existing constantly in a state of dis-ease—we gotta have faith. (294-295)

Life is mysterious. Life is uncertain. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Along with taxes, and death, the only certainty in life is that we just don’t know. So we might as well join this inevitability. ... this is ultimate way to live a wholehearted life—to get cool with uncertainty. ... a necessary experience that allows us to “become free in relation to our nothingness.” (295)

“negative capability” ... having an ability to be okay with the uncertainty of life. (295)

What an aim. To sit comfortably in mystery without grasping outward. To sit. To stay. And see what happens. It’s freedom, right? ... it takes patience and sheer years on the planet. ... I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. (296)

GO STRAIGHT TO COOL ... I go straight to being the person who is open and cool with not knowing. ... I found strength that is quite defining and satisfying. It meant my vulnerability was about being raw and exposed, but ultimately was something I steered and owned. (296)

... defines anxiety as resisting joining the unknown. (296)

... the journey we all need to do is the experiment with sitting in uncertainty. ... the ultimate endpoint, she writes, is growing up. The journey “offers no promise of happy endings.” Rather, the part of ourselves that keeps seeking security (when there isn’t any) and something to hold on to (when such a thing doesn’t exist) finally grows up. (297)

To see yourself—to see that you are part of a big, magnificent whole—you have to go to the depths. (298)

We get anxious if we feel we’re not connected with our true selves and what matters. Something is not right, something is missing, we don’t understand what life is all about, and this gnaws at us. (299)

We’re unsettled, we grasp and we grasp. (299)

... being in anxiety, by going down to the dark depths, we finally find the connection. (299)

That’s what anxiety does for us. It guides us home. And when we veer or we deviate from the truth, anxiety steps in and forcibly tell us “Wrong Way Go Back.” (299)

We can view anxiety as something to accept and live with. Sure, this is important. But I reckon we can make the beast more beautiful than that. I prefer to say (to quote Shai from one of the forums again) “anxiety is my superpower.” (300)

The journey has to be done on your own. ... if I want to let go, to truly let go and trust life, I first have to let go of the idea that someone else must hold me while I do it. No one else can tell me that life has this one. I have to do this for myself. (304)

... [he] identified ten factors that create resilience, among them having a moral compass or set of beliefs, faith and spirituality, an ability to leave your comfort zone and face your fear, having a sense of meaning in life and having a practice for overcoming challenges. ... it’s anxiety that leads us to these factors. Indeed, I’d say anxiety creates the resilience to thrive in this life. Anxiety is a beautiful thing. (305)

I don’t sit here healed. I sit here simply knowing I’m on a better journey. And this is not enough. This is everything. (305)

I am anxious often.But it’s kept in check if I don’t get anxious about being anxious. And while I’m learning more, understanding more, this is entirely possible. Yep, the journey is what matters most. It’s everything. (307)

#first we make the beast beautiful #sarah wilson #22 #5

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messers-moony · 3 years

Text

Wish | F.H

Paring: Five Hargreeves X Wife!Reader

Summary: Five storms out to time travel after an argument with his wife and comes back to an unexpected surprise.

A/N: Five time travels at the age of 26 instead of 13

He was angry, that wasn’t mistaken, “ You aren’t listening to me! “

“ Are you hearing yourself?! What you’re about to do is dangerous! “ She yelled in response, and he scoffed.

They stood in the main room of their apartment. Y/n was placed in the kitchen leaning on the island while Five was dangerously close to the door. Both of them at the age of twenty-five. They had gotten married only a year before finding each other during one of his trips to Griddy’s with his siblings. He thought she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen.

Five stalked closer to her, “ You are so stubborn. “

“ I am the strongest one. “ His voice was dangerously low as they stood only a foot apart, “ I will do this. I don’t care what you say. Nothing will change that. “

“ Five, please. “ Y/n begged, “ I’m- I’m just worried about you. “

“ You don’t need to be. “ Five snapped, and he fast-walked to the door.

The male swung open the door, “ Five wait, please- “ But before she could finish, the door slammed, “ I’m pregnant. “

It was new news. She didn’t find out until a week earlier. She didn’t know when to tell him; there never was a suitable time. Now he had just threatened to fulfill a lifetime goal of his– time travel. Since he was a boy, he’s wanted to prove his worth. The only way Five could think to do that is by time-traveling into the future. He didn’t know what the future would entail. He definitely didn’t plan to get stuck in an apocalypse.

So for nine torturous months, Y/n endured a pregnancy. She was carrying a child of her presumed to be dead husband, which she didn’t believe in the slightest. Five Hargreeves was alive, and she knew that regardless of what anyone told her. She had a baby boy who she named Malachi. The same bright, alluring green as his fathers.

Despite his birth father not being around, Diego was a significant help. Diego stepped in where Five couldn’t. He was there for all of Malachi’s firsts and everything in between. But he was always Uncle Diego. A constant reminder that this man wasn’t his father. As far as the little boy knew, he didn’t have a father.

Things got more tricky as he got older. Malachi realized that a father figure was more common than not, which brought raising questions. She answered to the best of her abilities, but nothing was ever valid. None of her answers could be a hundred percent true because she didn’t know either. It was killing her to see her son this way.

He longed for a father. Wanted nothing more for a father-son relationship. Every birthday, every Christmas, he wished for his father to come home. It was killing Y/n because she understood his pain. The amount of dread, guilt, and sadness.

Maybe if she had told Five sooner, he would’ve never left. The guilt ate away at her. It was like an insect slowly crawling its way under her skin into her bones and nibbling them until they were gone. It didn’t help Malachi was an exact replica of his father. The dark, almost raven hair parted to the side, the glittering green eyes and a defined face.

No matter how long Five was gone, Y/n never took off her rings. She was a married woman until proven otherwise. Malachi had never even seen photos of his father. That was normal to him. All he knew was that his Uncles and Aunts told him he looked the exact same. Despite the same appearances, they had clashing personalities.

Malachi was the sweetest guy you could ever meet. Kind no matter who the person was. Wise beyond his years and intelligent like no other. His strong suit was English while he struggled in math. The irony was amusing. His father excelled in math, but he couldn��t do a two-step equation if he tried.

In the grand scheme of things, this didn’t matter. He got all the way up to high school. He was seventeen, to be exact, in his junior year of school. It was the summer before his senior year, and he couldn’t be more excited. As the years went on, the hope of meeting his father diminished to the point where he didn’t even think about it anymore.

He had his mom, and that’s all that mattered. His mom was his rock, his number one supporter, and his best friend. Malachi loved his mom more than anything and would give anything to keep her safe. Diego had grown to be like a father to him, but it was never the same. Malachi was sitting at the island doing homework while Y/n was cooking.

“ Hey, mom? “ He called, “ Yeah? “ Y/n turned to look at her son.

Malachi fidgeted with the pencil in his hand, “ Can I- Can I see your rings? “

“ My rings? Why? “ She asked, “ Well, dad gave them to you, didn’t he? “ Malachi replied.

Y/n nodded, “ Of course he did. We were married, technically we still are married. “

“ I just wanted to see what dad gave you. “ He murmured.

Hesitantly Y/n twisted both her engagement ring and her wedding ring off her left ring finger. She set them down on the granite island before her son so he could look at them. Gently he picked the engagement ring up and looked at it. It was the only time he’s ever seen the ring this close. She never took them off.

“ We got engaged in the snow. “ Y/n informed quietly, “ I really wasn’t expecting it. He never seemed like one to settle down. “

Malachi listened intently, “ Regardless. It was almost Christmas, and he took me to go Christmas shopping at one of the malls which was outside. “ She chuckled, “ Why he did that, I don’t know, but it was amusing. We got hot chocolate despite his love for coffee, and I made him wear a Santa hat. “

“ He was never into festivities before meeting me. Neither were your Aunts and Uncles. I started making holidays become more festive when you were born. Eventually, they got the hang of it. “ Y/n continued, “ Why was dad's name a number? “ He interjected.

“ He never got a name like the rest of his siblings. “ She answered plainly, “ Why? “

Y/n sighed, “ His father, more specifically your grandfather was a cruel man. Still is a very cruel man, which is why you’ve never met him. Reginald made the Umbrella Academy, where he adopted your dad along with his other siblings. “ She explained, “ They endured long days of training without breaks and horrid living environments. They were treated as experiments rather than children. “

“ They all got names, but Five didn’t want one. He rejected it because it didn’t matter. Name or anything. Their numbers would always define them, and Five was the only one who understood that. “ She finished.

“ What really happened to him? I know you’ve given me vague explanations, but I think I’m ready for the real thing. “ Malachi stated, “ I’m seventeen now. “

“ I know. Your father had powers. His others siblings do as well. They all do certain things. Five could travel through space and time. “ Y/n began, “ Growing up, he always felt the need to prove himself, to be better than everyone else. “

“ So, one day, he told me he was going to time travel. It was a big argument that definitely didn’t need to happen. At the time, I was a week pregnant with you, and I didn’t know how to tell him. “ She swallowed the emotions arising after remembering Five’s glare,

“ When I told him, it was too late. He was already out the door and gone. “

Y/n walked forward and took the rings back. She placed them back on her ring finger carefully as her son watched every movement. He knew she was upset. Malachi couldn’t help but be a bit resentful towards his father. All this to make a point? It seemed far-fetched.

“ That solution seems a bit absurd. “ Malachi commented, “ That's what I was trying to tell him, but he was very prideful and stubborn. “ Y/n replied.

A knock echoed through the apartment. The room felt tense. It wasn’t right; something felt off. Malachi felt it immediately cause he stood up and began walking to the door, wanting to protect his mother if a threat was there. Secretly Diego may have given him some defense classes, but that didn’t matter.

The boy opened the door to see almost the exact same face staring back at him, “ Who are you? “ Malachi snapped.

“ More importantly, who are you? “ The man retorted.

Every hair on Y/n’s body stood up. She knew that voice, and she knew that tone. It was him. He was back. It took everything inside her not to scream or cry but seeing Malachi hold his defensive stance against his own father was worrying her.

“ Malachi. “ She called, and he turned to her as she began to walk to the door, “ I need you to go to your room and promise not to eavesdrop. “

He wanted to protest, “ Please, sweet. I’ll be okay. I promise. “

Reluctantly Malachi backed away from the door giving the man a harsh glare that made the man evidently tense. Y/n waited for Malachi to be fully retreated in his bedroom before looking at the man in front of her.

“ Well. It looks like you’ve moved on. “ Five murmured, “ No- please. It isn’t what it looked like. “ She pleaded.

Her hand took his, and he recognized the rings on her finger. The same rings Malachi had just been examining. The same rings he took months to search for to find the perfect fit for his perfect girl. Everything seemed so colorful in his greyscale world now. His wife was still his.

“ Who- Who is he? “ His voice trembled as his lingering suspicion felt more accurate than ever, “ Come in and sit. We need to talk. “ Her voice was gentle and held no malice.

Five entered the now unrecognizable apartment. It wasn’t the same as when he left. In fact, everything seemed moved out of place. Y/n walked to the stove and turned off the burner that she was using. Five had peered at the papers on the island that were math worksheets and took a seat beside them.

“ Where did you go? “ She asked, “ The future. “

“ No shit. What did it look like? “ Y/n retorted playfully, “ It’s not as I hoped. It’s an apocalypse, love. “ His voice held so much pent emotion it was almost radiating off him.

She sighed, “ Okay. We need to talk about that- “

“ I- I want to know who that kid is. “ Five interrupted, and she gave him a knowing look, “ Malachi, can you come out here. “ Y/n called, and instantly he was out of his room.

The boy stood beside his mom, still not comfortable with the unfamiliar man. This time Five got a chance to really look at the teenage boy in front of him. The defined face, the almost raven hair, the same sage green eyes. His posture was protective and territorial, obviously for his mom.

“ Y/n… “ Five began as he swallowed the tears in his throat, “ Is- Is he mine? “

She nodded, “ Five Hargreeves, I’d like you to meet your son, Malachi Hargreeves. Malachi, I’d like you to meet your father, Five. “

968 notes · View notes

archies-litterbox · 2 years

Text

Stitches

Summary: Douxie says something he shouldn't have to his captors. He's made to regret it. Merlin is made powerless to stop it.

(Or, to my server buddies... :# )

Words: 4.8k

A/N: Heyo! This was originally going to be my day 12 piece for whumptober, but... it's been over a month and I've worked more on it outside of october than during it, so this is just a run o' the mill whump. Also, I did NOT realize this would end up complete on douxie's birthday... a cruel irony! but not as cruel as this lol. enjoy! <3

(also on ao3)

[CW: Captivity, Torture, Mouth Horror/Mouth Sewn Shut, Blood, Swearing]

Merlin didn’t have a clue who these magic hunters were.

This in itself was something of a surprise. Being a wizard of his caliber, it wasn’t simply a habit, but a means of survival - not just his own, but that of his apprentices - to be aware of any anti-magic factions. But somehow, he’d missed one; he hadn’t known of these ones until they ambushed himself and Hisirdoux.

And maybe he’d spare a bit more surprise at that, had he not been so angry that he couldn’t protect his apprentice. It didn’t take long for them to be surrounded and subdued.

When they’d ended up in some cell underground, Merlin figured it wouldn’t take a search party very long to find them, especially not one led by the Knights of the Round Table. He’d figured it would be a few days at the most, but that didn’t make this any more pleasant. It didn’t make this cell any warmer. It didn’t make the cuffs on his wrists any more comfortable, nor did it make the magic nullifier infused in them any weaker. Indeed, they’d used not only one he hadn’t built up an immunity against, but a particularly strong one that left even him, the most powerful wizard in Camelot, exhausted and aching.

Not taking any chances, they’d used the same kind of suppressant in the cuffs on his apprentice’s wrists, throwing the moppet into a state of fatigued discomfort. Not only that, but they’d struck the back of the moppet’s head to properly knock him out, and Merlin figured that certainly didn’t do him any favors.

Perhaps that was why Hisirdoux acted so out of character.

Perhaps that was why he cast aside being meek and timid in favor of contempt and bitterness.

Perhaps that was why, when the hunters had said some offhand insult about Merlin that the old man himself couldn’t be bothered about, Hisirdoux mumbled something under his breath.

“Cowards…”

The leader of the hunters, whose name was lost on the old man, glanced down at the moppet-y apprentice, as if he hadn’t believed he’d actually heard that. Sharing the same confusion, Merlin looked at his apprentice with a raised brow.

“The fuck did you say?”

“Hisirdoux...”

Snapping his head up, Hisirdoux himself snapped as well.

“YOU’RE ALL COWARDS!” he screamed, “YOU WOULD NEVER SAY THOSE THINGS IF HE COULD USE HIS MAGIC! YOU ACT LIKE YOU’RE BRAVE, BUT YOU’RE TOO SCARED TO SAY ANYTHING WITHOUT USING POISON TO DEFEND YOURSELF. YOU HAVE TO USE A NULLIFIER JUST TO KEEP YOUR NERVE - PATHETIC! ALL OF YOU-”

His words cut off with a pained cry as the leader grabbed the bun of hair bundled at the back of Hisirdoux’s head and slammed his forehead into the wall. Merlin lunged forward, but another one of the hunters forced him back.

When the lead hunter let go of his head, the poor moppet fell straight to the ground. He was still conscious, for Merlin could tell as such by the pained groan he let out as he put his cuffed hands to his head.

“Owwww… fuzzbuckets, that hu-”

“Shut up!” the leader ordered with a kick to his side.

“He still kept talkin’ even after that.” One of the lackeys next to that bastard said, “Someone’s got to learn how to shut up. A gag migh’ be ‘n order.”

Merlin’s anger spiked at the thought. Little did he know how much worse reality would get; how much he’d prefer if they’d gagged him instead of… instead of…

The leader of the hunters seemed to get an idea.

“I can do ya better.”

With that, he left the cell, leaving a handful of hunters in the cell with the wizards. Merlin knew neither of them were lucky enough that he’d be out for good. No, he was coming back, and the old wizard didn’t want to even think about what he’d do, no matter how soon it would be.

Instead, Merlin looked down at his apprentice that curled up on the ground. Groggily, his apprentice lifted his now-bruising head and looked at Merlin with an apology in his eyes.

...Why did he do that?

It was only a minute or two until that damned hunter came back, And Merlin could’ve sworn he saw something glint in his hand. Something small, but long. And thin. Very thin. A nee-

No.

NO!

Merlin’s eyes widened as reality gut-punched him; as he realized his worst nightmare in all of this, the worst possible way they could silence his apprentice, wasn’t just a nightmare. It was right in front of him.

Hisirdoux, despite the blow to his head, was absolutely cognizant enough to recognize the threat before him. With wide eyes like his master’s, he clamped his hands over his mouth and shook his head.

“Heh,” the leader leered down at Hisirdoux, “too fucking late for that, you little brat.”

“You can’t do this!” Merlin begged. What an odd sight, it must have been - Merlin Ambrosius, the greatest wizard in the world, pleading for his apprentice to be shown mercy.

But this man wasn’t so kind.

“I can, and I will. Unless you’ve got a spell you can use to stop me.” he said, as if - because he knew exactly how powerless Merlin was.

“It’s the cuffs! The nullifier’s clouding his thoughts!” Merlin thought up excuse after excuse to account for his foolish apprentice’s outburst. “You… you hit him so hard on the head when you knocked him out, he’s not thinking clearly!”

“Come on,” the hunter laughed, “is it the nullifier, or did I whack him too hard? Pick one, old man. Not that it matters - the kid needs a lesson.”

“You already taught him enough of a lesson when you smashed his head against the wall! He won’t speak out of turn anymore!”

“I won’t, I won’t.” the boy mumbled, his slurred speech, muffled by his own hands, still carrying the weight of fear, “I promise, I won’t.”

But the leader only grinned.

“I know…”

He turned his attention fully to the moppet.

“...I’ll make sure of it.”

Hisirdoux scrambled away, but two of the four hunters in the cell other than the leader ran the short distance and grabbed him, keeping a firm, brutal hold on the poor boy. The last straggler of the four, likewise, joined the one already forcing Merlin back to prevent him from running to his apprentice, who was now being forced down to the ground. With one guard on either side of him, holding one cuffed arm each in a cruel grip, he kicked wildly in front of him as he thrashed relentlessly.

“NO! DON’T! I’M SORRY!” he screamed, as his cuffed hands ended up getting pulled off his mouth, “I’M SORRY! IT WAS STUPID. I’LL BE QUIET! I DON’T WANT THIS!”

“Hisirdoux!”

“MASTER!”

Tears already streamed down the boy’s face as he looked at Merlin, gasping between sobs.

“M-master,” he hiccuped, “Master, help.”

What in the world did he think Merlin was trying to do?

“YOU BARBARIANS,” Merlin screamed, “HE’S A CHILD.”

“A child that’s gonna learn when it’s time to shut the fuck up.”

“I CAN! I DID!” Hisirdoux screamed, “JUST LET ME G-”

The leader grabbed his bun again and yanked his head back, cutting his words off. Hisirdoux kept fighting the hold on his head, just like the rest of his body.

“Keep fucking still,” the man ordered through gritted teeth, “Or I kill the old wizard.”

And that made Hisirdoux’s struggling end in a godforsaken instant. In desperation, Merlin thrashed against the hold keeping him still as well. With one good thrash, he nearly got the lackeys off of him, and another probably would have done it, if it weren’t for being presented with the same “choice” as his apprentice.

“And if you keep fighting,” the bastard glanced at Merlin, “I kill the boy.”

...Damn it all.

Merlin kept still, even when Hisirdoux sobbed desperately again.

“Better keep your nose clear, kid.” The leader took his hand off the back of Hisirdoux’s head and grabbed the underside of his jaw. “‘cause ‘s gonna get real fuckin’ hard to breathe through that mouth o’ yours.”

“Mh-” he looked straight at Merlin, basically ignoring the hunter’s terrifying statement, “M-master…”

Gods, he hoped the boy wouldn’t plead anymore. There was nothing he could do. It was obvious what was going to happen, and there was nothing Merlin Ambrosius could do to stop it. So why was he pleading? What could he ask - beg for, that Merlin could provide him?

But that’s when he looked at the boy’s eyes; that’s when he saw how the boy shook his head as much as the hand grabbing his chin would allow; that’s when he saw how he kept glancing in another direction, shooting his gaze back to Merlin with that same pleading look in his eyes.

And that’s when it hit the Master Wizard like a brick to the head.

Hisirdoux wasn’t begging Merlin to help him. He was begging Merlin not to look.

...And how could he deny him that? How could he deprive his apprentice of that one decency in this hellhole? He already couldn’t stop the boy from getting captured in the first place. He couldn’t stop the boy from lashing out so foolishly to the point where these bastards got this godforsaken idea. And he couldn’t… he couldn’t save him from this. All Merlin could give him was this one sliver of dignity.

Merlin looked to the ground, locking his gaze onto a speck of dirt on the ground, a foot or two away from Hisirdoux’s leg that lay sprawled out while the other was bent underneath him. No matter the agonized sounds he heard from his apprentice, he would not look at what was being done to him.

No matter what happened, he would not be made to watch.

But when Merlin saw the boy’s leg twitch and bend from the pain… when he heard him whimper…

He knew it had started.

And he never wanted to lay waste to anyone more in all his centuries of life.

Merlin Ambrosius had mastered nearly every spell a wizard of his caliber could, and some of those spells were so exhausting that they’d leave him drained of energy for hours, even days…

But he’d never faced a harder task than keeping his gaze on the ground as he heard the boy’s sobs and whines and sounds of pure pain get worse as they… as they got quieter. Weaker. More muffled.

Until it was done.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bastard wipe off the bloodied needle and pocket it. Merlin hoped he’d prick his finger on it later, trying to retrieve it - at least, it was the least brutal, least vengeful thought running through his head right now.

The leader brought his hand up again. Merlin still wasn’t looking directly at the sight, but he could tell that he’d grabbed Hisirdoux’s chin.

“You’re going to shut the fuck up now, yeah?” he snarled, “Know how to keep your fucking mouth shut now?”

Merlin watched as the hunter’s arm moved up and down, most likely moving Hisirdoux’s head up and down in a mocking nod. He’d never wanted to burn another human being alive more than right now. He couldn’t even be sure he was a human - what kind of human being could be so sadistic to a child? - but he was sure he didn’t care about that fact.

Merlin watched his hand come away and he thought - hoped, begged, prayed - that would be the end of it, but Hisirdoux’s head didn’t even get to lull forward for a second before the leader pinched his nose shut.

Hisirdoux didn’t even struggle at first - Gods, he must have been so tired - and it wasn’t until some fifteen seconds later that he started struggling, and it wasn’t until another five seconds later that he started bucking and writhing against the holds - both the hand on his nose and the hunters still holding him “still”.

And it wasn’t -

Gods, Merlin Ambrosius had never known such anger.

- It wasn’t until five more seconds later that he’d finally fucking let go.

Not only that, but as the leader took his hand off Hisirdoux’s nose, the others released their hold on him. As he’d been in the middle of struggling, the sudden lack of restraint came too with a lack of steadiness, and he fell forward so he had to put out his cuffed hands to stop his face from hitting the ground. Even then, it was a short lived protection; Hisirdoux fell onto his side and stayed still, save for his trembling.

And judging by the laughter from those bastards, it was probably intentional.

As the leader headed to the cell door, the ones holding Merlin still finally let up. Perhaps it was the shock that kept Merlin from garroting one of the bastards now that he had the chance, or maybe it was the fear that his apprentice would suffer even more. Either way, it didn’t matter much. He kept staring at the ground until the last of the monsters left, and the cell door shut with a slam that Merlin could tell made the poor boy flinch.

Finally, he laid eyes directly on the boy.

Still keeping his head down and his face out of Merlin’s sight, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, just barely keeping himself that way with shaking arms.

Merlin brought himself closer to Hisirdoux, but with a long chain connecting his cuffs to the wall - a restraint that the boy had been spared - there was only so far the old man could go.

There still lay a few damning feet between him and his boy.

It seemed like for Hisirdoux, the need to be close to Merlin overruled his exhaustion, because, shakily - so, so shakily - he crawled the remaining distance before more or less falling on his knees. Merlin could hear him whimper as bone met stone. With one arm - one trembling, trembling arm, he held himself up while his other hand hovered over his mouth, hiding what Merlin already knew he’d see - that he’d have to see.

“Put your hand down.” Merlin said, “Let me see.”

Hisirdoux shook his head, drawing a sigh from the master wizard.

“Hisirdoux.” he said as if he was ordering the boy around, as if this was his workshop in the castle and not some cell in who-knew-where, “Making sure not to look during the… process was doable, but I must see what they’ve done.”

The moppet shook his head again, a motion so little it could’ve been mistaken for a tremble.

“Please,” Merlin asked, so tired, so drained, “Don’t make me pull your hand away.”

Reluctantly, Hisirdoux put his hand down.

That’s when he finally saw them.

If it weren’t for the little composure Merlin still had… the old wizard didn’t know how he would’ve reacted.

Seven sutures wove up and down Hisirdoux’s lips, sewing them together.

Seven sutures… two punctures for each…

Fourteen punctures.

Fourteen times.

That bastard stabbed a needle through his son’s mouth and pulled a fucking thread through those godforsaken gashes fourteen times.

Through the blood that smeared around his lips and dripped down his chin and beaded in the gashes, he could see that the sutures were crooked as they went up and down Hisirdoux’s lips like the bars of a cage. No doubt, their crookedness was a result of the moppet’s struggling, no matter how much he kept still under duress. But how could he have been to blame for that?

Merlin drew his gaze up to Hisirdoux’s wide, wide eyes, which looked at Merlin like a thousand wordless pleas lay in them. They were like a child’s - a terrified child’s, for that’s exactly what he was. A terrified child that didn’t know when to be quiet and focus on keeping his well being intact because he wanted to mouth off to-

“Why would you do that, Hisirdoux!?” Merlin snapped, “You have no access to your magic or any way to defend yourself! How could you possibly think that was a good-”

“MMMMMNNNHH!”

Hisirdoux screamed through the stitches as his torso curled forward, and Merlin had never regretted his words more.

The boy was hurt, he was terrified, and, all the gods be damned, his bloody mouth was sewn shut. And when he looked up at him with those wide, wide eyes, he obviously wanted reassurance, wanted grounding, wanted something to feel alright. And all Merlin had done was shout at him and only render him even more shaken. That wasn’t right. None of this was right.

“Hisirdoux…”

Merlin brought his cuffed hands down to his apprentice’s face and slowly, gingerly lifted his chin up, guiding him so he wasn’t curled up so tightly anymore. When Hisirdoux’s face was at Merlin’s eye level, the moppet’s own eyes weren’t wide anymore; they were squinted as if it took a great deal of effort to keep them from squeezing shut and letting more tears out.

Merlin moved his hands to either side of Hisirdoux’s face, cupping his silenced apprentice’s face as gently as he possibly could. He was only more gentle when he stroked his calloused thumbs along the boys’ cheeks, wiping the tears that made his apprentice’s eyebags their home.

...And Hisirdoux fell apart.

Sobbing again, he pulled away from Merlin’s touch and, while the old man’s arms were still outstretched, dove underneath the chain between the Master Wizard’s wrist shackles and practically fell against his chest.

The force knocked Merlin back against the cell wall, but that being said, it wasn’t much force at all. Hisirdoux was light - so gangly - and it wasn’t so much an actual push so much as the boy just collapsed against the only source of stability he had.

And as he felt the poor moppet tremble in his arms, wracked by stifled sobs that bubbled up from his throat, only to be stifled by sewn-shut lips, Merlin didn’t have it in him to be surprised or taken aback by this. Only devastated - only sickened - only furious at what led to all of this.

But he put it aside so he could be the beacon of comfort that Hisirdoux needed.

“You poor, poor child…”

Hisirdoux couldn’t hug him because of his own shackles that, while not connected to the wall like Merlin’s, kept his hands shackled in front of him just like the old man’s, but Merlin could hear the quiet shriek of fingernails against metal as Hisirdoux nonetheless clawed against the his armor for some sort of stability. Merlin cradled the back of the moppet’s head in hopes that it would soothe him at least a little.

...This was not his fault.

There were many things that the boy was to blame for - spilled Slorr juice, haywire brooms, the occasional setting-on-fire of one of Merlin’s books - but, blast it all, this was not Hisirdoux’s damned fault.

Was it stupid to taunt these bastards like that? Was it foolish to scream at them like they didn’t hold his well-being in their hands, like they couldn’t crush it on a whim? Yes. Merlin didn’t deny that. His apprentice must have checked his sense of self-preservation at the cell door, but this wasn’t his fault, there was no way in hell he would allow anyone to convince this child that he’d brought this upon himself.

...Least of all Hisirdoux himself.

“This wasn’t your doing.” he told Hisirdoux, hoping it would be of some reassurance, “You brought none of this upon yourself. Know that.”

But it only made the poor teenager wail against the stitches as much as he could without tearing the piercings. Maybe it hurt even more, knowing there was nothing he did that warranted this, just as there was nothing he could do to stop it.

In any case, Merlin wished he could cast a sleep spell to take the pain of consciousness and awareness away from the poor, poor boy.

“You must calm down, Hisirdoux…” he said, though he knew that choice was hardly up to the boy in this state, “If you cry too hard, it will get harder to breathe.”

Hisirdoux sobbed harder at that, but still, Merlin could tell when he’d started trying to level his breathing. Good. That was good.

“Yes, right, like that…” he mumbled. Merlin started to rock the poor moppet with a steady, slow rhythm that he hoped Hisirdoux’s breathing would match. And… and he did start to match it, with the exception of a few hiccups and sharp breaths here and there.

It felt like an impossible circumstance, like something from a nightmare; his usually bright-eyed, naive, innocent ignoramus of an apprentice having to slow his breathing and force himself to calm down so he didn’t suffocate.

How horrendous, Merlin thought, how wretched.

These bastards hadn’t taken his physical armor, but they’d done something worse; they got through his emotional armor. They found it’s only weak point, and they pierced it when they pierced that damned needle through Hisirdoux’s flesh.

And now, the only weak point in his emotional armor still trembled in his arms, his breathing thankfully leveling out. It was a little nasally, but thankfully, Hisirdoux’s nose hadn’t been congested by his crying. Merlin couldn’t imagine what would’ve had to be done if he couldn’t breathe through his nose.

No, Hisirdoux took deep, long breaths, and save for the slight tremor, both from the horror what just happened and the cell’s coldness, he’d relaxed.

No, not just relaxed.

He’d… fallen asleep.

Merlin adjusted his head so he could see his apprentice’s face.

Despite the dirt and dried tears on his cheeks, the still-not-dried tears that shined under his eyelashes and along his eye bags as they reflected one of the few rays of light in this blasted cell, and the blood still beading from the threaded punctures around his mouth, he was actually asleep. It wasn’t an utterly peaceful rest, he knew, but for now, the boy had managed to at least slip away from merciless consciousness.

Oh, thank the stars.

...But for what?

What had the stars done to help them? To save his son from this… this torture? No, the stars were apathetic. They did nothing. They were as cruel as these hunters.

No, the stars deserved no gratitude, but what else was there to thank?

...It didn’t matter. Gratitude had no place here, and neither did either of them. The only thing in its rightful place was his son asleep in his arms. And none of these bastards would take his boy from that rightful place. Not while he drew breath. Hunters or not, he would protect his greatest good even if it killed him.

He just hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Hisirdoux had gone through enough.

The boy whimpered in his arms, still asleep, and Merlin held him tighter.

Hisirdoux had gone through enough.

Douxie stirred at the sound of clanging and shouting outside the cell. His head still swimming with disorientation, the pain in his lips assaulted his senses the moment he was awake enough to recognize it. It hurt. It felt so wrong, and the smell under his nose - of metal, of blood - was almost nauseating, but not as much as the feeling of the thread against his teeth and… and his tongue when he ran it across the front of his mouth.

Confusion and disoriented terror hit him hard, but barely a moment later, recollecting what happened hit him even harder. He remembered the struggling. The fear. The begging - first with his mouth, screaming for this not to happen to him, then with his eyes, pleading for his master not to look at him.

He was so glad he was too weak, too exhausted to actually feel nauseous enough to need to throw up.

Master…

Wait.

The metal he smelled. It wasn’t all the same. Not like the metallic scent of blood on and in his mouth. There was another one too. It wasn’t just blood or chains, but of refined, polished armor. Beyond that, he picked up the scent of old books, always with a layer of dust on them no matter how long they’d gone without being read. Of the sliver of safety he had here.

Armor. Old books. Safety.

Merlin.

He heard a boisterous CLANG as the door burst open - or got busted down? - and someone came in. A moment later, he felt Merlin’s arms come off from around him, and he could hear a few words. In his disoriented state, half of them were lost on him - he couldn’t tell if they sounded more like they were far away or if they were underwater - but he could still make out…

“Get… out… here. Now.”

No, no, Master. Please. He thought. I wanna stay. With you. Safe.

But it was like whoever this was could read his mind and knew what he’d hate the most right now, because not even seconds after his master’s arms came up, he felt hands around him lifting him up - pulling him away.

No. No no no. It had to be one of those guards - maybe the one that did this to him - here to take him away. No.

If Douxie had any more tears to spare, they’d be rolling down his cheeks right now.

"Mh." He shook his head and tried to stay close, to cling to the one comfort he still had until he was scooped up with what was probably a minimal effort. "Mmh!"

The hold was rather… gentle for the captors, but Douxie didn’t care. He needed Merlin. He needed his father.

"Mmmmh!" He whined more pitifully - more desperately and thrashed as much as his weakened body allowed, moving his arms so he could grasp at the air over his holder's shoulder, desperate for the chance to hold onto Merlin, "Mh!"

"Hisirdoux, it’s me!" A familiar voice broke through the poor lad's hysterics, "It's Lancelot!"

Now… he could tell the arm hooked under his legs, which he’d finally stopped kicking when he recognized that voice, was Lancelot's prosthetic.

"...Mmh?"

He opened his eyes, too dry for more tears, and, sure enough, he saw the worried expression of the knight.

He… he was safe.

Oh, sweet Heart of Avalon, he was safe.

But…

Desperately hoping he'd be understood, Douxie stroked an invisible beard on his chin. He was very careful not to touch his mouth, or any of the threaded piercings around it.

“Merlin is fine.” Lancelot assured, “His shackles just need to be broken. He said you needed to get out of here foremost.”

Now, Douxie realized what Merlin must have said.

“Get Hisirdoux out of here! Now!”

Oh… that’s right… Douxie thought, His chains were attached to the wall… or the floor. I can’t remember. It’s fuzzy… My head hurts. And my mouth hurts. It all hurts. I want my dad.

Douxie leaned his head against Lancelot’s armored shoulder.

“Your captors have all been dealt with, but we still must get out of here posthaste.” Lancelot said.

Douxie lifted his hands, still shackled as they rested on his tummy. He hated the cuffs. Not as much as the stitches, but he hated them. He hated how tired and empty and drained they made him feel. He wanted them off.

“Once we’re out of here.” Lancelot said. “Your cat’s-”

Douxie felt four paws land on his torso. He could make out Archie’s form, but his eyes were so dry that his face was blurred. Maybe that was a good thing - it meant he wouldn’t have to see the horror on his familiar’s face.

“We’re not far from Camelot. Morgana’s waiting at the castle. She’s been worried sick. I’m sure she can fix…”

He looked at Douxie’s lips.

“...What’s been done to you.”

Yes… Morgana. Good. He liked that. Morgana was nice. Sometimes she was angry, but only when people didn’t listen to her, like Arthur. Mean Arthur. No… she was nice to him. She even called him cute things, like Little Douxie. She was gentle, and her hands were always steady. Maybe if he couldn’t go to sleep while she took out the stitches, she’d put a spell on to make it not hurt so much, or hum or sing to distract him. Her voice was so pretty… like a lullaby…

“You don’t have to stay up, Douxie.” Lancelot said, though his voice sounded so far away, “You’re stable. You can sleep.”

But his body was already well on its way to unconsciousness, and, just as what would’ve happened without the knight’s permission, his eyes fell shut.

#whump #tales of arcadia #hisirdoux casperan #douxie #moppet!douxie #merlin #Merlin Ambrosius #wizard dad #hurt/comfort #mouth horror #my writing #mine #happy birthday douxie I sewed your mouth shut lol

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delimeful · 3 years

Text

you cant go back (3)

warnings: panic, miscommunication, trafficking, non-consensual drug use, suicidal thoughts, food, mentions of torture, cliffhanger, these tags make it sound worse than it is tbh

When Virgil first opened his eyes, jerked out of sleep by sharp instinctual alarm, he’d thought for a moment that he was still dreaming.

It was the same face, after all, even with how frighteningly close it was, even with a vastly different expression painted across it. He’d been confused, almost relieved-- had they gotten away after all?-- and then he’d realized just what the Deathworlder had in their arms.

He’d lunged and come up short, forced to watch as the Human kept their arms locked around Patch even as the creature made unhappy little noises he’d never heard from it before.

It was so small compared to the Human, easily tucked under an arm and managed regardless of protests. Did they have no respect for the deadly grace of the other creatures on this planet?

They’d circled him from a distance, ignoring his warning twitches and outright hisses as thoroughly as they ignored Patch, and all he could do was watch, locked in place, hoping that Human prey drive wasn’t as high as all the rumors said.

And then the Human had left, taking Patch with them, and Virgil had been left to watch their fading heat signature and pray to Seryl that whatever the Human did would be quick. For both of them.

It wasn’t that easy, of course. The Human wanted something from him, badly.

He thought he had a fair idea of what-- or rather, who-- it was.

After all, he’d seen a near-perfect mirror of them, sitting bound and muzzled in their transfer ship’s holding cell where a Human absolutely shouldn’t be. Leond and her Second had been unnaturally gleeful for rotations before Virgil finally found out about the ‘successful pickup’, namely through stumbling across it by doing the routine security and safety checks that he didn’t trust the rest of these idiots to do themselves.

They’d cut him off before he could get to a comm to tell Janus, cornered him in the tight cell block hall, and offered him a deal: his silence for a cut of the immense earnings they would make from renting out a Human to any and all fighting rings.

He remembered the way the Human’s gaze had flickered between him and the others curiously as he argued, the way they’d struggled to bare their teeth derisively at Leond, even through the bars of their muzzle and the haze of whatever they’d been drugged with. It was one of the last things he’d seen before he’d ‘made a fuss’ big enough that his own crew had tranq’d him and ditched him on-planet to die.

“You’re right,” Leond had said, face smooth in the way that meant smug satisfaction for her species. “We haven’t fulfilled our half of the exchange, have we? We took an alien from that planet, so it’s only fair that we leave one behind.”

His limbs had been defensively raised since the beginning of the argument, but Virgil had fought side by side with these people before. They knew how to guard his blind spots, which meant that they knew his blind spots.

The Human had tried to speak through the muzzle, just before he’d heard the discharge sound of a tranq gun too close to dodge. He thought it might have been an attempted warning.

It hadn’t changed anything. He’d been the only one on that ship who’d opposed the Human’s abduction, and as a reward, he was going to be slowly interrogated to death by one of their clutchmates. The level of cruel irony was like something from one of Jan’s stupid operas.

Virgil felt another shudder of exhaustion. Stars, he hoped Janus would get out of there once he realized what they’d brought back. His best friend knew better than to fuck with Humans, and the crew clearly wasn’t going to listen to any interplanetary ethics lectures, so the best thing he could do was skip town. Better to rebuild than fall with the nest.

He hadn’t slept after the Human had left, flipping to his heat sensor vision and watching all night for their return, unable to relax after one of the most unpleasant awakenings of his life. And if it meant he didn’t dream about what could have happened to Patches, all the better.

The next day had come, and the Human returned, wielding that dull stick and asking more angry questions that Virgil couldn’t understand, let alone respond to.

The thing was, given enough time and exposure, he actually would be able to understand the specifics of what was wanted from him.

Like most long-term interstellar travelers, he had a Lator implant, and the more the Human talked at him, the more linguistic patterns and trends would be picked up and catalogued, making it much easier for him to put the pieces together.

Unfortunately, time wasn’t something he had an excess of.

Janus would have figured out at least the basics by now; in addition to being better with words, he’d gotten a more recent, effective upgrade to the implant’s software. Virgil had turned the offer down for himself, knowing that they needed to save money where they could, and figuring that he didn’t really need it. His job was to defend Janus. His First could handle the talking part of their missions on his own with ease, the chatterbox that he was.

It had seemed obvious at the time. A lot of good that logic was doing him now.

The Human said something at him, flashing his bone-white teeth as he spoke. Humans didn’t have guard plates over their mouths at all, and so every time this one turned to him, he felt as though they were either acting sickeningly overfamiliar or that they might lunge forward and try to bite him at any moment. He’d carefully kept his own plates locked, not willing to expose any teeth and have it mistaken for a challenge.

The Human was waiting expectantly. Virgil took a deep breath and replied, the same as he had every time he could, though he doubted Humans had access to translator implants.

“I am not here to harm anyone. I was abandoned here against my will. I can’t understand what you’re saying,” he recited in Guard-tongue, keeping the sentences brief and repetitive for easy translation pattern recognition.

The Human wasn’t extending him the same courtesy, his own sentences long-winded and full of unfamiliar concepts that kept tripping up the Lator programming. References, probably.

There was one Human word that he’d figured out fairly early on: Brother.

Clutchmate, family, the lookalike that was probably long gone by now.

He was almost glad that he couldn’t speak coherently. As it was, he didn’t have to be the one to break the news.

Almost, because the Human was stubbornly finding new and creative ways to freak him the hell out with each visit.

First, they’d figured out fairly quickly that he was slowly starving.

Virgil had flooded his plates right to pitch on their first meeting, and hadn’t been calm enough to stop the defensive reaction since, which had quickly drained what little hydration stores he’d had left. Between the drying out of his plates and the fact that he’d gotten too worked up and blacked out for a moment during an interrogation, his fading health wasn’t exactly subtle.

He’d panicked, because any enemy knowing his weakness was generally pretty fucking bad, let alone an enemy with personal motive and ability to twist that weakness like a knife in the spine.

The Human had verbally freaked out (a regular occurrence) and vanished for a while, before returning to the barn with an entire array of items (not a regular occurrence). They’d set the items out on flat fiber ‘plates’ and then slid them into range with that stupid stick.

Virgil had stabbed a few of them on principle before realizing that this was food, aided by the Human rolling his eyes pointedly-- a derisive gesture, he’d gathered-- and eating something from a plate of their own.

At that point, Virgil had been willing to risk poison. The way he saw it, he either died, or he ate something, and either way it meant stopping the slow, aching pain eating away at the pit of his stomach.

He’d even been willing to tolerate the Human staring at him, since apparently they didn’t have the manners to not watch a stranger eat. Or that wasn’t a thing on this planet. It didn’t really matter.

After a significant amount of time spent using his auxiliary limbs to delicately maneuver Human produce and meats into inspection range, he settled for what smelled the least concerning, avoiding any that smelled or looked too bright to be safe.

(The scrunched-up look the Human had given him after he’d crunched an egg in his throat had been hard to interpret, though.)

Anything he could safely ingest, he’d eaten. After the Human left, he’d even attempted the indignity of trying to lift the bowl of water in range with wobbly limbs, though he’d almost immediately spilled the majority of it all over himself. It didn’t matter, he could pull any and all hydration from what he’d eaten, though he didn’t dare get used to it.

This wasn’t his first time above the nest, and he hadn’t fooled himself into believing that this shocking show of generosity would last. The Human had only done it to make sure that their hostage wouldn’t keel over.

Starvation and dehydration were more-than-effective methods of hands-off torture, after all, and the Human really only needed to give him enough to keep him alive.

The impending mistreatment shouldn’t have shaken him as much as it did. He had the advantage of the Human’s ignorance on how much Chelcerae ate, and his own resilience, developed from years of scraping by on the barest of rations. He was lucky, really, to be one of the species with a water-storing organ.

Still, he spent the night wondering if it was worth it to keep fighting. There was no escape, so wouldn’t it be better to go out on his own terms, before anything truly horrendous could happen to him?

Probably. The real question was: would he have the fortitude to turn down food all the way to a slow and painful death-via-starvation?

He wasn’t sure, and he continued to be resentful of the fact that he even had to make such a choice all the way up until the next day, when the Human walked in with a plate covered in everything he’d eaten yesterday and slid it over to him, simple as anything.

“What?” the Human snapped after a moment of Virgil watching them for any indication of what to do, and he’d hurriedly flickered his heat sensor eyes in hopes of placating any offense. The Human had grumbled indistinctly, but didn’t attempt to remove the plate or even threaten to do so.

The next day was the same. Though the Human continued to try and interrogate and occasionally intimidate him, the food and drink was provided without stipulation or hesitation. It was… strange.

Virgil refused to read into it. Perhaps Humans just had meals so frequently that skipping a single day would be as barbaric as weeks of starvation for Chelcerae. Maybe once the Human had enough of his noncompliance, they were going to feast on his flesh and didn’t want a stringy meal. It was impossible to know.

The generous feeding schedule was nothing, though, compared to some of the other questionable tendencies the Human had.

They traversed the grounds in and around the barn with little wariness, apparently quite confident in their ability to defend themself on the Deathworld they’d grown up on. They brushed insects and plant matter alike off their person with little care for poisons or bites.

Their body language seemed to consist of every threat display in the wayfarer guidebook, and worse, only a quarter of these threat displays seemed intentional. Virgil was constantly tense, attempting to figure out which were intended to cow him, and how to keep his own body language from worsening the damage. Any signal of terrified compliance, even the obvious tremor of his auxiliary limbs, only seemed to prompt wariness and confusion from the Human.

They’d found his helmet and immediately put it on, which had made his fuzz prickle with hope for a moment, before remembering that the reserve battery of the headset was well and truly dead. No emergency translators for the Human, and no upturns in luck for Virgil.

Maybe it was better. Even if the Human could talk to him, he would seem just as guilty for their brother’s disappearance in their eyes. It wasn’t even an accusation he could reasonably defend against; if things had gone differently, if he’d made smarter choices, maybe he could have gotten the captured Human free.

Janus would have managed it. He’d always been a quicker mind than Virgil.

It’d been three days since the Human had found him, and Virgil had barely managed to parse a handful of imperatives and nouns from someone who was basically just yelling the same things at him over and over.

“You can’t ---- the ---- ---------, you ----- --------! I ---- what I ---- and --- ----- to it!” the Human yelled, essentially proving his point. Virgil resisted the urge to let his chin drop down to his collar in exhausted resignation.

It was difficult to focus past the old pains from the fight with Leond, and the new pains from being strapped upright for days on end. Even if he could bring himself to pay closer attention, it wouldn’t make it easier to parse words he had no context for. Lator technology worked best when both parties were exchanging words, or at the very least, when there was more than one native speaker prattling on at you!

The Human inhaled to continue and then froze, prompting Virgil to slink his shoulders up slightly, something that had worked to show his non-aggression once or twice before. The Human wasn’t focused on him, though, whirling around to face the barn doors with their body rigid.

Because he’d never been good at uncertainty, Virgil flicked his heat-sensor eyes open just as another Human-sized mass reached the doors, moving in a predator’s stalk.

Well, he thought as the door creaked open, I’m screwed.

#sanders sides #sanders sides fic #alien au #humans are space orcs #ts virgil #ts roman #ycgb #you cant go back #my writing #writing #space au #sorry for the late posting my nap ran long #food tw

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animefreak1145 · 3 years

Text

The Irony of Adler and Bell

Call of Duty: Black Ops Analysis of Adler’s Brainwashing

It’s me again. And I’m here with another analysis! This time based solely around Adler. It’s always about Adler. But also Bell.

And this is about the brainwashing of not Bell, but Adler.

We have all had our theories since we first saw Adler getting tortured in the Cinematic Warzone Trailers, shown in Season 3 of COD:BOCW. Our suspicions growing when we see Sus Adler™️ doing what he does best in Season 4 by stealing an important looking chip within the crashed satellite that was taken down. (Also, Hudson, what is wrong with you letting Adler be cleared for a mission when he was just rescued like two weeks ago?!)

And although we did not see him in Season 5, we can all gather that anyone could be potentially brainwashed if you have a certain brand of earpiece. (Woods and Stryker appeared unaffected despite having their own earpieces). So the naive hope and calming words to others that Adler being different and strong is out the window. All it takes is hearing the numbers. What do the numbers mean, Mason?

Besides Bell wasn’t your average run of the mill agent either. An amazing decoder and created codes(I am with the theory that Bell did create the codes for Perseus that we have to decrypt in the game for Operation Chaos and Red Circus) with a brutal close combat skill as well as charming based on how one could talk to everyone and be a social butterfly. Also, able to handle and withstand torture after one hour of leaving Cuba despite previous injuries AND be able to go to Solovetsky/Duga and able to aim and shoot despite having a needle shoved in their eye a few hours earlier.

Bell had crazy skills. Just like Adler does. Bell was brainwashed. So is Adler.

Confirmed with this bundle that will be released. Thank you to @reclaimedbythesea who first found it and pointed it out.

We have the confirmation—the amazing, horrible, war criminal man we all love has become an agent of the man who he swore to chase down and capture/kill for longer than a decade. (Adler said thirteen years in COD:BOCW universe, so 1984 it would be sixteen years. Sheesh. Correct me if I’m wrong. I may be mistaken.) Is it wrong I kinda find it funny? Especially since he did the same thing to Bell—believing it to be necessary. Just as Stitch I’m sure finds it necessary.

It’s just a big brainwash back and forth between these two countries, a race to see who has the most mindless agents on their side in the end. But we’re not focusing on that.

We’re focusing on how Adler’s karma finally caught up to him with all his war crimes. We can infer that he hasn’t just done a cruel action like that to Bell, but to others. “Whatever it takes.” That’s his motto. He’s messed up other’s lives—hundreds, maybe even thousands. The Vietnam War has a deep dirty history, such as the real operation of Fracture Jaw, Operation Ranch Hand with the use of Agent Orange, the Mai(My) Lai Massacre and who knows how many other operations that would/did affect civilians. Not that I would see Adler doing anything like the massacre, but you can’t expect me to not believe that he may have been involved with Agent Orange somewhat? And who knows what other operations and missions he’s done as a CIA agent after the war?

My point is, the man has been gathering karma for awhile. Not just with Bell(I am aware he had his orders in the war, I’m just saying I’m not sure if he feels much guilt about some said orders. Guilt I believe he may has, but I’m not sure it’s a high degree.) Of course, Bell isn’t a saint either. They were willing to kill millions with Perseus after all. A wayyyy higher body count than Adler. And who knows what Bell did with Perseus even before the Greenlight plan? Didn’t seem to mind millions blinking in an eye, so must be pretty cold or delusional about the whole free world killing their country thing. Thank you @yunatheintrovert for this post pointing out and showing a hint of just how not good a person Bell was.

I’m not going to say they deserved what happened to them due to Adler. I feel for Bell. I really do. Just like I can’t say if Adler deserves it for everything—just can’t say that because I’m not at liberty to judge other’s actions and claim what is deserved and undeserved. Leave that to judges.

But now I’m going to point out certain things—other things. Such as what I think to be Adler’s “new” name. At least to those in the Perseus Collective/Stitch.

Do I realize that “Cipher” may just be what this awesome skin is called? Yes. Will I rather ignore it and rant about the name for two ten minutes? Also yes.

On to the analysis!

ci·pher/ˈsīfər/: a secret or disguised way of writing; a code.

This first definition is what we can all gather of what the numbers represent—the code and simultaneously the key of brainwashing others in earpieces with just a certain order of number together.

Stitch and co. used said numbers on Adler, so why not call him Cipher? The Code? Funny, cause he killed Bell—the Decoder. Maybe Bell would’ve helped him out if he didn’t kill them.

Another hammer to the irony of between these two.

But no. The name gets better. Second definition!

ci·pher /ˈsīfər/: a person or thing of no importance, especially a person who does the bidding of others and seems to have no will of their own.

PAHAHAHAHAHA! *clears throat* Now, this, this is what I think Stitch calls some true vengeance. Not only did he get to torture the man who did the same to him before, but made Adler a shadow of who he was before. A husk. Nothing really there. “Whatever it takes” indeed but for the opposite side now—a puppet with numbers for strings. Stitch did a good job in naming Cipher—I mean Adler. We don’t even know how far Adler shall go now, will the CIA have to kill him or will they be able to recondition him when/if they capture him? Will he even be the same? Nope.

Why do I find that definition funny? Well, I think Adler had a multitude of reasons for naming Bell, Bell. Just like Stitch did with Adler. And not just the obvious reasons of him ringing the bell at them to condition them as he was torturing/brainwashing them(we love Pavlov!). Let’s get the first definition out the way.

bell /bel/: a hollow object, typically made of metal and having the shape of a deep inverted cup widening at the lip, that sounds a clear musical note when struck, typically by means of a clapper inside.

I wonder if anyone knows where I’m going with this or I’m starting to seem like a madwoman.

I’m going to ask you guys to focus on the word, “hollow” for me. Hollow, as in not filled. There’s something in the bell alright, but it doesn’t do enough to fill out the hole does it? Like Cipher is now made a husk. Bell was made hollow—only a little bit filled with the little memory they got back before they were killed(maybe they weren’t, let’s just go with it for now). Or perhaps just a bit filled with false memories of Vietnam, of camaraderie. I doubt Stitch did anything like that.

Also, Bell is just an instrument for someone else to play. Play the right tune, and the Russian agent will do anything for you. Right, Adler?

Cipher is the puppet, just doing what he’s told when they give the orders. No will or thought. Just how Stitch likes it.

I’m not done yet! Second definition!

bell /bel/: a. A stroke on a hollow metal instrument to mark the hour.

b. The time indicated by the striking of this instrument, divided into half hours.

Another play on words of Bell being struck(jabbed with needles) to do what needs to be done. But it also represents the limited time that Bell has. Bell needs to help to stop Perseus and quick, Adler will make them go faster if needed by putting the highest dosage as possible without killing them to accomplish it. Or maybe it’s also a representation that Bell does actually have limited time left—Park did say MK—Ultra will be hard on the body physically and mentally. Perhaps MK-Ultra was slowly killing us and Adler just decided to give us a mercy kill while he was at it as he “tied up our strings.”( @cryinginthebackseat does point this out in their Adler/Bell story, go check it out!)

Let’s focus on the instrument thing again though, but back to Cipher. The third definition!

ci·pher /ˈsīfər/ : a continuous sounding of an organ pipe, caused by a mechanical defect.

Oh man. Sounds like Adler is being played like an instrument too, continuously due to all the numbers and how the numbers can be everywhere if one is in the armed forces since they all use earpieces. Interesting shape too, a pipe. Long and thin and has two holes, a beginning and an end but which one is the top or the bottom? The beginning and the end? We don’t know how far Adler will go like this—as Cipher. It will eventually come to a point, where something squeezes within the pipe and manages to get out. Maybe. Or maybe Adler is just forever defected, like the definition suggests.

Not quite Adler anymore and just Cipher.

Just like Bell will always just be Bell. The other self practically gone.

It seems these two will always somehow reflect and affect one another, whether one is dead or not.

I swear I love Adler, so don’t mind some of my dark humor about him and this situation he’s in. It is pretty funny. At least to me. Stitch is funny. And petty.

Hope you guys enjoyed!

@salvija @smokeywhalee @quizzyisdone @efingart @samatedeansbroccoli @weirdoartist21 @tr1ppylady

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in-tua-deep · 3 years

Note

au where five found out about vanya's powers in the apocalypse? Like maybe he found Reggie's book or he saw the eyes of vanya's corpse?

oh man like. that would be interesting to be sure, if Five managed to find Reginald’s book in the apocalypse

(He doesn’t read it at first, not for a few months after he finds it. He opened to the page that detailed Reginald’s experiments with how long Deigo could hold his breath in clinical unfeeling words and has to put it away while he breathed - not too deeply though, he didn’t want to breathe in more ash than necessary)

But he eventually does. He sits Dolores up and rages and vents to her, cursing Reginald’s name with every new sordid detail, every new terrible sin he now knows to hurl at Reginald’s feet. He reads no great loss under his section and he’s too dehydrated to weep but something breaks inside his chest nevertheless

(He’d never thought that dad loved them, not really. He might have hoped, back when he was little but he knew better now. He was thirteen, old enough to know better. But he’d at least thought that dad found them useful.

Five had tried to hard, trained so much, been so adaptable. Even then he was no great loss.)

Five finds out from Reginald’s book about Ben’s death. Cold words that describe the way his brother died. Reginald seemed to care more about Ben’s death than Five’s presumed death, but that could be becuase Ben’s power was always bigger than Five’s. More violent. More efficient. Of course Ben was a greater loss, Five’s power wasn’t even inherently useful for fighting.

(Klaus’s power wasn’t useful for fighting either. Reading Dad’s dismissive words calling Klaus a failure makes him bristle. Reading about Reginald locking Klaus away in the mausoleum for days make Five want to hurl the book against the wall.)

Finding out about Vanya is - it’s weird. Vanya was always so ordinary. He loved her of course, for fucks sake he was the only one who cared to interact with her half the time. He loves all of his siblings but he has no illusions about how casually cruel they could be to one another.

But he reads about her powers and clenches his fists and wonders what Reginald would have done if Five had stayed, if Five had kept on his path of rebellion. Would Reginald have drugged him, too?

(Reginald had the power to take their powers away. Five wonders what Klaus thought when he found out, if he had cursed and sworn and raged at the man who watched his son suffer and turn to drugs to deal with seeing things no child should ever see. Reginald had the power to help, and he tortured Klaus instead.)

Because - of course Five assumes that they know. He reads Vanya’s books as well when he comes across it, tucking it into his wagon. He wonders when the truth came out, because the rage that drips from those pages is very real. Vanya doesn’t mention her powers in the book of course, but she would have been what, in her 20s when she wrote it?

Vanya said in her book that she left home at 18, which means she’s had years to get the drugs out of her system and discover what their father had taken from her. Did she think that they knew? That they had kept it from her? Is that why the pages of her book drip with bone deep hurt, making Five’s fingers shake with the ache of them

(Or it could be the hunger, a now constant companion)

Five keeps both books close, even though he wants to vandilize Reginald’s book half the time. It’s strange to see the insight on them and their powers from the perspective of a scientist, odd to see the written results of the torture they went though

(He almost rips the page on the effects of electricity on his warping powers out on principle, but he just ends up curled around Dolores as he trembles involuntarily at the memories)

Five has so few belongings when he is recruited to the Commission, or at least has very few personal ones. He leaves Dolores behind in the apocalypse with a heavy heart but she’s too big to take with him. Too big to hide.

(Five always learned to only take what you can hide, because what you can’t hide will always be used against you.)

He tucks Reginald’s notebook in the waistband on his pants, the hard edges against his back a constant almost reassuring pressure. Vanya’s book gets pushed into one of his deep pockets. The glass eye gets shoved into his sock the same way he used to hide scavenged bills and quarters he would then place beneath the floorboards of his room

(He wonders absently if his money stash was ever found, but it doesn’t really matter now does it?)

He goes through the Commission with the knowledge that he has a bomb hidden away. As much as he keeps the notebook around out of a sense of sentiment he knows he doesn’t want it to fall into the hands of the commission, doesn’t want them to have this dissection of his powers on hand

(he has so little of his siblings left, just the bitter words of Reginald and Vanya both - the irony is that no matter how much Vanya extolled being excluded she had constantly been by Reginald’s side to write down observations, listening to his words, by his side more than any of them. sometimes he reads Vanya’s vicious words and hears the echo of their father in them. It makes sense. He still hates it, just a little bit)

He writes his equations into Vanya’s book instead of Reginald’s. He doesn’t like to read the red book, only opens it to look at the photos included so that he won’t forget what his siblings look like, tries to ignore the words that detail exactly how much force it takes to pop Luther’s bones out of his oh-so-durable joints

He solves them one day, or at least comes close. Closer than he ever had before, and he figures why not? Time for another little experiment. Who knows? Maybe he’ll add this one to dad’s book.

He pushes, and pushes, and then he falls and he’s in a courtyard he hasn’t seen in decades staring at people he hasn’t spoken to in just as long. He looks at them all with wide eyes

(He looks at Allison and hears his father’s clipped tone stating how Allison in improving at overriding survival instincts, he looks at Luther and hears Vanya’s childish voice accusing him of caring more about being a hero than anything else in his life, including his family, he looks at Klaus and sees a face covered in ash and blood with unseeing eyes)

He looks down at himself and sees smaller hands with smoother skin, absent of the burn marks from the variety of fires he’d set in the apocalypse, absent of the crooked knuckles from when he’d crushed two fingers in some rubble trying to get to a can of food, absent of the cracked and brittle nails from malnutrition and food issues

“Shit.” He says, with feeling.

He can feels the press of the glass eye against his leg, the solid weight of Vanya’s book in his pocket, the edges of Reginald’s notebook digging into his skin as he hauls himself off the ground and into a standing position.

They have a family meeting in the kitchen.

Sort of. Five flits about, snagging bread and peanut butter and marshmallow fluff from the cupboard to make himself a sandwich, trying to avoid looking too desperately eager. He hasn’t had his favorite food in so long that the anticipation is actually insane.

“What’s the date?” Five asks, and learns that he doesn’t actually have all that long until the end of the world. But hey, it’s doable. Probably. Unless the reason the world ended was like, political nuclear war or something? But there would probably be survivors of that somewhere, so it was more likely something bigger scale.

(It has to be something he can stop, or this was all for nothing. He refuses to believe he doesn’t have a chance.)

“Cool, so like, the world is ending.” Five says, because why the fuck not? He has all his siblings in one room (except Ben, he has failed Ben, will always have failed Ben because he’s a coward who couldn’t return to a time when Reginald Hargreeves was alive) and he has Reginald and Vanya’s words pressed into his brain, “We have eight-ish days to fix that.”

“Five, what the hell are you talking about?” Luther demands.

Five waves his hand, “Dad sucked, I time-travelled, the end is nigh. I figured even you could grasp that.”

(His eyes ghost over Luther, skittering about the room. He can’t look at Luther’s body without remembering the cruel diagrams pain stakingly inked into the book as Reginald grumbled about failed experiments.)

“You went to the future?” Diego says, voice full of doubt that make his voice harsh. It’s so much deeper than when Five left, no more of the cracks of puberty.

“No shit.” Five says, and he’s so tired. “I was in that hellscape for forty-five years.”

“Forty-five years?” Diego squawks, as though he’s personally offended.

“That would make you... fifty-eight?” Luther’s voice also has doubt in it, and Five can’t really blame him looking at his squishy little barely teenage body.

“Dad was right,” Five manages to get out without gritting his teeth, “Time travel is a crapshoot and sometimes your body does fun and wacky things on you, blah blah blah trees and acorns.”

“Prove you’re from the future!” Klaus demands, eyes bright as he leans across the table, “What’re the lotto numbers, baby brother?”

“I think they’re ‘fuck you the world had already ended by the time I ended up stuck there,’ Klaus.” Five says, mock thoughtfully before tearing off a chunk of his sandwich.

It tastes like ash and peanut butter. Only Five’s genuine trauma regarding food waste and the fact that most things tasted like ash in the apocalypse have him still chewing his food and swallowing.

“Rude.” Klaus says, making a ‘blat’ noise in disappointment.

“Dad’s rich as fuck, wasn’t him kicking the bucket essentially like winning the lottery?” Five points out, and this time it is Luther squawking at him in disapproval.

“Don’t talk about Dad like that!” He demands, and Five has some more uncharitable thoughts about the way Luther’s arms flex just a little unnaturally underneath that big trenchcoat.

“I like this version of Five better.” Klaus declares, looking like Christmas has come early.

“Dad was murdered and you guys don’t even care.” Luther spits out, looking very offended.

“You were murdered and I care very much about that.” Five retaliates, and the entire kitchen goes quiet.

“Can you elaborate a little, Five?” Allison says, ever the diplomat.

(That’s a lie. Allison started more fights than Diego, probably. She just got caught way less often.)

“Well. I mean, I dunno if murdered is the right word considering everyone was dead. You might have just been collateral damage, who knows? Does murder imply intent?”

“Everyone was dead?” Vanya says, voice very quiet.

Five shrugs, then nods, then shrugs again. He doesn’t like thinking about it. “Yeah, but that’s not going to happen this time.”

“I don’t have time for this nonsense.” Luther mutters, and Five valiantly tries to ignore him.

“Five, are you - are you sure you’re alright?” Vanya’s voice wobbles and she looks like she wants to reach out and hold him or something ridiculous like that. She looks at him with big sad brown eyes, “Dad did say that time travel could... mess with you a little.”

Allison nods and oh, Five does not have time for this bullshit.

“I have proof.” He says, and he reaches back and pulls out Reginald’s red notebook and slams it onto the table.

“Is that Dad’s - ” Luther cuts himself off, looking at the notebook with wide eyes.

It is very clearly beaten up to hell and back. Ash has stained the edges of the pages grey and there may or may not be a gouge across the front from a near miss with a bullet while working at the commission. It is a book that has clearly been through hell.

Five also dig’s Vanya’s equally beaten up book from his pocket to dump on the table as well, equally stained with ash and barely held together after being read over and over again for decades, including being used as a notebook in the final years.

(Vanya lets out a little gasp, hand flying up to her mouth with the knowledge that at least one of her siblings read her book. Certainly not the one she thought it would be.)

Five reaches into his sock to pull out the glass eye triumphantly, setting it down on his small stack of treasures.

“What the fuck?” Diego is the one to ask.

“If I time travelled from that day in 2002 to right now, how the fuck would I have Vanya’s book?” Five says triumphantly, “It came out in 2015.”

“Why do you have an eye?” Allison sounds slightly horrified.

“It’s the key to figuring out who caused the apocalypse.” Five says, turning it over in his hands, “It’s gotta have something to do with it at least.”

“Why does he have Dad’s notebook?” Luther demands, sounding equally outraged.

“Found it.” Five shrugs, like the little scavenger he is.

(Emphasis on little. His suit still almost fits, and reading the numbers in Reginald’s notebook versus seeing how fucking tall all his siblings got in person is frankly unfair.)

“Oh my god, okay.” Allison says, throwing her hands up in the air like they’re all nuisances. It’s a familiar Allison look, and Five actually feels a little soothed by the memory. “So the world is ending, Five is back from the dead, and our only clue is a goddamn eye?”

“I was never dead.” Five points out, “But basically, yeah.”

“I don’t have time for this, I have to get back to my daughter.” Allison says, shaking her head.

“I mean if you want Claire to live I would think stopping the apocalypse would kind of be a priority.”

This draw Allison to a halt from where she’d been gathering herself to leave, “You... know her name?”

Five makes the executive decision to not mention the torn out magazine cover featuring his sister and niece that is pressed between some of the pages in Reginald’s journal. “I’d like to meet her one day.”

Just like that, Allison has been won over.

“Do you think it has something to do with whoever murdered Dad?” Luther asks seriously, even if the question makes Diego groan like this is an argument they have had before.

“Who knows?” Five shrugs, “But if we’re splitting into investigation teams, I call Vanya.”

Vanya startles from where she has been sitting quietly, “Me?” She asks, eyes wide.

“Yeah.” Five nods, “I mean, with Ben gone you’re probably the team’s heaviest hitter.”

“What?” Several voices ring out in confusion.

Five blinks, a little confused himself. Unless - “Wait, did you never train your powers?”

“Five,” Vanya says slowly, like she’s explaining a simple concept to a particularly dim child, “I don’t have powers.”

This was - this was unexpected. Why did he not think of this explanation? It’s just - he has now known about Vanya’s powers for like way longer than he hasn’t. It’s almost second nature to think of Vanya as having powers by now. And she doesn’t know.

“Oh boy.” He says, picking up Reginald’s notebook, “This debriefing may take a bit longer than I first thought. Oh, and at some point we should probably cut the tracker out of my arm as well.”

“The what out of your what?”

Yeah the day doesn’t really get much better from there.

#the red book au #five finds reggie's journal in the apocalypse #and so he is very familiar with his sister's powers!! isn't that fun #he's also like 50% more spiteful because actually Fuck Reginald Hargreeves #he is the president of the Dad Sucks Club #because he has the notebook he's been essentially planning his apocalypse game plan for years #with the power of strategy and knowing his siblings powers inside out #or at least to the extent reggie understood them #so he's much more MISSION REPORT when he gets to 2019 #time to debrief the squad on what the fuck is up #five lets the cat out of the bag so early lmao #fuck u leonard #five: haha yeah i want vanya on my team so i can see her sick ass powers in action #the family: her WHAT #five: *surprised pikachu face*#five has spent so long in the apocalypse with dolores who knows what he is thinking #that he struggles with the concept that people don't know what he knows sometimes #me pointing at vanya's book and reginald's notebook: there are both traumatizing to read #Anonymous #long post #far tua long

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a-sour-nectarine · 3 years

Link

Summary:

The memories froze him. He didn't realize that Obi-Wan was calling his name, increasingly urgent, or that the water had reached his hips. It was cold, not as cold as it had been back on Kamino, but still just above freezing. He could almost imagine the crimson light of the clock, the sneering face of the trainer. The trainer hadn't been inherently cruel, but years of torturing little boys did something to the psyche.

So Cody suspected, at least.

Finally, a cry of "Cody!" woke him from his reverie. Obi-Wan was sobbing on the other side of the chamber, in a way Cody have never seen him cry, hand gripping his hair tightly enough to stretch the skin above his ear.

The water was up to his chest now, and rising fast, and the panic was still tight in his chest, but he made himself look Obi-Wan in the eyes. Before he did though, he caught his own gaze. His face was smooth in the crystal, no scar marring his temple. He absently wondered how anyone would be able to tell who he was, stuck in a child's body with no scar.

Notes:

Everyone shut up, I was supposed to post this last night, but I fell asleep. I am aware that it's Monday. Don't want to hear it.

This is my fourth and final submission for Codywan Week 2021! I really tried to do all seven days, but for my first ever event like this, I don't think I did too bad.

Prompt is an alt, Sith/Jedi Artifact Shenanigans.

"Um, commander?"

"What, Waxer?" Cody said irritably, blinking sleep out of his eyes. Day three in the remains of this stupid temple, and Cody, General Kenobi, Waxer, Boil, and six shinies, all yet to be named, had been grating on each other's nerves nonstop.

"You might want to... um... check in a mirror."

"Lieutenant, unless you have a mirror with you, that's not gonna happen."

"I just, um. Hold on. I'll take a picture, send it to your HUD."

Seconds later, said picture showed up in front of Cody's eyes. "Oh, Force."

A sleepy voice from the back of the room piped up. "Force what?"

Cody removed his helmet and shared a look with Waxer. That was not a brother, but it didn't quite sound like the General either, meaning....

"Hey, General, you might wanna come over here." Waxer shrugged at Cody as he called out. Sure enough, the figure making it's way over to them was not the General, or, at least, not the General they were used to. He looked like a cadet.

Well, so did Cody, so who was he to judge?

"Oh, Cody!" Obi-Wan exclaimed once he noticed the commander's state. He didn't seem to be able to stop the smile pulling at his mouth.

"Ah-ah, speak for yourself, General."

Obi-wan squinted down at his robes, which were the same as the ones he went to sleep in. He was drowning in them, looking only slightly less ridiculous than Cody did in his oversized armor. "Well, this is unfortunate."

Boil snorted. "Maybe one of you is small enough to fit through that hole now.

The General lit up. "Brilliant, Boil. Someone boost me up."

Boil snorted again, but followed him to the far wall. It had been pretty destroyed in the explosion, though still pretty effective in keeping the ten of them trapped. But maybe, now that Cody and Obi-Wan were smaller...

"Wait, wait, we aren't going to address the fact that we are– small? What caused it?"

Obi-Wan's lips quirked up in a smile, and Cody noticed how much more expressive he was when clean-shaven. "Well, I suspect it was caused by the artifact that also triggered the explosion that trapped us here. So, personally, I'd rather worry about it later." He held up the small slate of rock, carved with languages none of them could read.

Cody gaped for a second. That was pretty good thing to say if Obi-Wan wanted all the men to immediately lose faith in either himself or Cody. They had never disagreed in front of the troops, no matter how minor the issue. Equally unusual, he felt the urge to snap back. It was like he was four all over again— Oh. He was, wasn't he?

"Alright, but if you make it through, expect me to follow."

"I was hoping you'd say that." Obi-Wan chirped, grinning like he had just won some huge award.

Turned out that they both did fit, though Cody had to get shoved through and his shoulders got a little scraped up. But it was worth it for the first breath of fresh air outside.

Obi-Wan turned to him, eyes wide, and laughed. "I was honestly not positive that would work."

Cody couldn't help but join him in his laughter, breathless and a little manic, before a voice called out from inside the rubble.

"Will you two grow up and go find a damn signal?"

That was definitely Boil, no one else would speak like that to their COs, even if their COs were children. Cody couldn't help but smile.

"Yeah, yeah, old man. We're going." Cody really was just content with losing all respect, wasn't he. Eh, he was four, he was allowed to be petulant. Besides, he doubted that the eight people still trapped under the debris would be telling anyone else. Not because he trusts them, hells no, but because the situation was almost as embarrassing for them as it was for him and Obi-Wan. After all, they were the ones whose shebs would be saved by children.

Obi-Wan held out his hand, and Cody took it without a second thought, not that he had time to. The Jedi took off the second he had a hold on Cody's fingers. They ran up to the closest hill they could find and surveyed the landscape. Nothing but red grass and blue flowers and crumbling old ruins as far as the eye could see. It was almost beautiful.

Until it started raining.

A couple of light drops of water was all the warning they got before the sky opened, absolutely soaking them immediately. Cody groaned and took off again–-still attached to Obi-Wan–-towards the nearest gray, stone building that looked like it still had a ceiling. As soon as they made it inside, they heaved out twin sighs of relief. The building wasn't completely waterproof, but it was good enough. They made their way into the middle of the floor, where there was the least amount of leakage, and Cody shook himself savagely. The rain outside was not slowing, in fact, it seemed to only get heavier as time went on. Lightning flashed every few seconds. The thunder was constant, but could barely be heard over the sound of the rain.

And then the walls came down.

Not "came down," as in they fell. "Came down," as in a separate set of walls dropped in from the soggy ceiling, completely (and separately) entombing Cody and the General. The walls were some kind of clear glass or crystal, faceted and almost completely transparent. The wall between them had gaps in it, sort of decoratively symmetrical.

"Uhh, Commander?"

"Yeah, sir, I noticed." Cody pounded on the wall, and it didn't even crack. Not glass, then. His enhanced strength would have taken care of glass that thick, child body or no.

In spite of the situation, Obi-Wan giggled, his voice echoing oddly from the other side of the crystal. "Cody, please don't call me "sir," it feels strange. I'm eleven."

"How can you possibly know how old you are?"

"No scar on my thumb. I rub it when I'm nervous, but right now there's nothing to rub."

"How do you know you aren't– I dunno, nine?"

"Just a guess, I suppose. I feel too tall to be nine. You, on the other hand, look younger than that."

Cody quickly crunched the numbers in his head. "S'pose that would make sense, if it's relative. I'm developmentally about 10 years younger than you. Twenty-four to thirty-five, eight to eleven."

"You're ignoring the fact that we are trapped."

"Yes, I am."

"That doesn't change the situation."

"I'm aware. But, as previously stated, I am eight years old. Four, actually. I'm trying not to panic. How are you calm?"

"Oh, I'm not. I'm actually fighting off a panic attack, if I am to be frank. This is almost exactly how Qui-Gon died, with me trapped on the other side of a ray shield. I just keep talking because it seems to distract me."

Cody cursed himself. He knew that, and it should have occurred to him that this was probably Obi-Wan's worst nightmare. He kicked his feet along the bottom of the wall, and noticed a particularly concerning fact. The crystal was growing. Not just randomly growing, it seemed to be specifically growing to cover the holes in the wall, creeping up and up. And, as if that wasn't worrisome enough, Cody's feet were wet. Not from the rain, but from the water seeping up from the floor. It was rapidly climbing higher, just a little below the level of growing crystal. The sound was rather pleasant, Cody noted, but he also noted that Obi-Wan's side of the little prison was completely dry.

The irony was not lost on him. And the irony was pretty kriffed up.

And it got worse once Obi-Wan noticed. The Jedi just let out a hysterical little laugh, and started pacing. "Wow, how wonderful."

"Hey, Ge–Obi-Wan, it's okay. It's okay. It's really slow."

Obi-Wan stopped pacing and stretched his hand through a hole at shoulder height, yet to be covered. Cody didn't even think before he grabbed the boy's (man's?) hand.

"It'll be okay," He repeated. "I'm fine."

The water was about knee high now, and the row of crystals at shoulder height were starting to close off. Cody pushed Obi-Wan's hand back just before the crystal could trap it there, and Obi-Wan let out a pained sound, pressing up against the wall. It hurt Cody. Hurt him more that being trapped, than the memories he had at this age, the memories that this water chamber was starting to dredge up.

Watching his brothers take their turns in the tank, none coming out conscious. "It's for your training," the longnecks had said. It felt like torture to Cody. Though, he supposed, maybe that was the point. It's hard for torture to frighten you if you have already experienced worse.

His turn now, he pulled on the breathing mask and stepped into the tank. It started filling up from the tubes in the sides, and the cold water shocked him a little. He watched the blinking, red light outside on the wall, until it counted up to three minutes. As soon as it hit three, he took a deep breath and shoved the mask off his face, and the clock started counting down again. Could he make it?

No. He woke up later in the medbay.

Like he always did.

So Cody suspected, at least.

"It's alright," he said as the water carried him up, up, toward the top of the chamber. It wasn't nearly far enough away.

"I'll be fine," he called as he felt his head press against the ceiling. Too soon.

"I'm okay," he lied, then took a deep breath, right before the water covered his mouth and nose.

The clock ticked down, 2.59, 2.58, 2.57...

He sank back down, keeping his eyes open and on the crying boy leaning on the wall. Cody smiled and pressed his hand against the crystal.

1.46, 1.45, 1.44, 1.43...

Obi-Wan frantically pushed his own hand against Cody's through the wall. His other fist pounded at the crystal, to no avail. Cody's lungs were starting to burn.

1.03, 1.02, 1.01...

Cody's vision got darker, but he kept his gaze on Obi-Wan. Through the water, he looked distorted, but his eyes were unmistakable. Blue, bright with tears, creased with grief. Cody thought that it had been a while since he had seen those eyes smile. He hoped they would again, maybe after the Wars. Long after Cody was gone. He hoped this wouldn't break Obi-Wan beyond repair. His gaze really did go black now, and the clock in his memory blinked just twice more.

0.01, 0.00.

He felt a satisfied smile pull on his lips. He made it.

~~~~~~~~

Obi-Wan saw Cody's eyes close, and he cried out. "Cody! Stay with me!"

He couldn't ask that of him. It was selfish and impossible. But Obi-Wan felt so small, so helpless. It was just like when Qui-Gon had died, and he could do nothing. Nothing.

"Not nothing," a voice chided. "You can change it, this time."

A different voice swirled around him. "He must learn."

The first voice pressed in. "This will only break him. You are strong, child. Use it."

The soft voice was right. If he lost Cody right now, he would shatter. There would be no Obi-Wan Kenobi to put together, not like there had been last time. He would never come back. Maybe that was what the Code aimed to prevent when it forbade attachments. He had never been good at staying away from those he loved.

But there was no way to get to Cody.

"The power. It is yours to use, young one. Focus it."

"What power?!" He yelled, sounding like a child, even to his own ears. He was a child, actually. No response. Obi-Wan took a deep breath and placed his hands on the crystal wall, tears slipping down his cheeks as he closed his eyes. And he focused. It was like meditating, but more. He felt it. Power. Flowing through his very being. That was what the voice meant. It felt like an ocean, pushing and pulling at him, flowing through him. He waited, waited....

And pushed.

The crystal around him shattered. Shattered like Obi-Wan, because he surged forward and Cody was in his arms and he was him again, filling out his armor, scar across his temple but he was still and cold. Obi-Wan lowered Cody to the ground, brushing the shards of crystal away with his mind, and cried again. "Cody, Cody please. Wake up." He gulped in a breath of air. "Commander, wake up! That's and order!" And he used the power and he pushed the water out of Cody's lungs, but he still didn't stir. He heart had all but stopped, and he wasn't breathing. Obi-Wan used the power again and gathered the Force around Cody's lungs, breathing for him, in--out--in--out--in--

That's when Obi-Wan noticed the crystal in his hand. He would have dismissed it, thrown it with the rest of the shards of crystal littering the floor around him, if not for the glow.

"It is for him. This was as much his trial as it was yours."

The sense of desperation flooded him again, and he fought back tears. What use would Cody have for the crystal if he was dead? But he pressed it to the commander's chest anyway.

"Cody, don't leave. Please wake up. You have to wake up."

And then it was like Cody had heard him, because he coughed and shivered. Obi-Wan released his grip on the Force, because he didn't need it anymore, because Cody was breathing on his own. He squeezed his eyes shut and the scar on his temple stretched. Obi-Wan sobbed in relief and pressed a kiss to Cody's forehead, because he was alive, and they had passed whatever test they had been given, and they were alive.

And that would do for now. That would be enough until they had to go find help, until they had to get the squad out, until they found someone who could help.

Because Obi-Wan was not going to lose anyone today.

#codywanweek2021 #commander cody #obi wan kenobi #there were many external factors that influenced this fic #its far from my best work #but kinda interesting at least

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