#even if it's to the same effect as the empty notion page

[outer-edges]

there's that tiktok of that stupid man going around like 'oh, what if everyone is fake and i'm the only real person', and i know that everyone is dunking on him for being fucking stupid by posing that question, and that whole thing really is a completely different philosophical can of worms that needs to be unpacked. but like.

idk. sometimes, i legitimately think the opposite. like, no, i am the fake person. everyone else here is real. everyone else has rich inner lives and they're vibrant and they have friends and family and empathy and passion and interests and all that shit i yearn for (and have gotten really good at feigning) but don't actually have.

i just have like...like this stark anhedonia.

i'm the fake person. i'm completely empty. everyone else is real. i'm kind of just here.

and i truly do mean this in like the most neutral way possible. this is something i've more or less made my peace with. but sometimes i wish it wasn't something i had to make peace with, ya know? sometimes i wish i wasn't fundamentally separated from people and could just like connect. sometimes i wish i wasn't so empty. ya know?

[imagine-darksiders]

Old Habits.

Nick Valentine X Sole Survivor. Set during Get a Clue.

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

There are a lot of things Nick Valentine can’t help about himself.

He can’t help the way he looks, all peeled apart at the seams, and full of holes like a cadaver stuck in a state of perpetual decomposition.

He can’t help the way people react to him when they get their first glimpse of his big, ugly mug, be it with contempt, aggression, or simple curiosity.

And perhaps above all else, he can’t help but worry.

Ellie says it’ll be the death of him, that he’ll worry about the wrong person one day and wind up six feet under. And Hell, she was half right, wasn’t she? Went and worried himself straight into an ambush, and an Overseer’s office with a shoddy lock that he couldn’t pick from the inside.

And now, here he is, doing it all over again as if he’s never been burned a day in his life.

But the woman sitting across from him on the other side of his desk - all beleaguered and owly-eyed – is currently stoking whatever mechanisms cause his brow to furl and his empty chest to give a slow, hollow squeeze.

Belatedly, he realises he’s lifted his metal hand to prod a few, curious fingertips against the front of his shirt, as if he might find something there that’s amiss.

Echoes, he supposes, from a bygone life he never technically lived.

Ah well.

Maybe he’s softer than he realises, softer than Ellie accuses him of being all the damn time. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t be so worried if his fresh-faced new friend wasn’t giving him every reason to be.  

---------

The warm inner wall of your cheek tastes like iron between clenched teeth, and you realise distractedly that there’s going to be a nasty ulcer there in a few days if you don’t stop chewing on it. But worrying at the spongey flesh is currently the subtlest way you can think of to distract yourself from that old, familiar sting building behind your eyelids.

You have to be subtle. Because there’s a luminous, golden gaze scrutinising you from beneath the brim of a tattered fedora, and you’d really rather not let on that you’re teetering on the World’s thinnest tight-rope – composure if you fall one way, hysteria the other.

With rigid fingertips, you’ve been clinging to that pre-war poise you used to pride yourself on, actively benumbing yourself to the tragedy of losing far more than your family. You very much abhor the notion of letting your guard down now, all too aware that even the smallest slip might cause a crack in the dam that’s been keeping you upright and placing one foot in front of the other for the last few days.

And so, here you sit, perched politely in the hard, plastic chair on one side of an untidy desk, whilst on the other, leaning forwards attentively in his own seat, is Diamond City’s resident Detective. Nick Valentine.

He had been…. a surprise.

A synth. Strange and uncanny and human and alien all at the same time.

You’d damn near let out an undignified shriek when he stepped from the shadows of his makeshift cell in Vault 114, and it was only thanks to years of practicing how to most effectively bite your own tongue in the court room that you managed to wrestle the sound back down your throat.

Awkwardly, you even thrust a hand out at him in greeting to try and cover your almost faux-pax, and he’d blinked those inhuman eyes at you, uttered the gentlest chuckle you’ve ever heard from a man, and taken your hand in his.

For a synth who seemed only too pleased to trade quips during your escape from the vault, he’s been awfully quiet since he brought you to the agency, evidently content to sit back and allow you some time to gather your thoughts.

Save for the near-undetectable ‘clicks’ and ‘whirs’ of his internal mechanisms, and the ceiling fan whooshing overhead, the office is deafeningly silent.

The girl – Ellie, you seem to recall – has opted to stand at his side, a clipboard tucked against her stomach and a pen balanced delicately at the top of the page. She’s very pointedly trying to keep her eyes on the paper, a direct contrast to Mr Valentine, whose stare is as dogged as a bloodhound’s nose, searching your face for… something.

You’re making a concerted effort to level your expression so that it mirrors his.

Neutral. Safe.

You’re concentrating so hard on controlling the rise and fall of your chest that you flinch when he finally shifts in the chair. Privately, you reprimand yourself for jumping. He’d only raised an arm, moving it from his lap to drape it on top of the desk, but he pauses at your response, holding the limb perfectly still in the air as he studies you, the strange, malleable ‘skin’ on his forrid creasing little by little.

Finally, for the first time since you entered his agency, you clear your bone-dry throat and speak.

“Sorry,” you croak, offering him the sheepish tilt of cracked lips, “Suppose I’m still a bit jumpy.”

An easy hum rumbles up from somewhere deep inside his chest, and you wonder if whoever made him took the time to fashion synthetic lungs in there, or if they just stuck a couple of speakers in his gullet and called it a day. You don’t miss the way those eerie, amber eyes wander down to the collar of your blue jumpsuit either, as if he knows only too well how jumpy you’re bound to be.

Ellie is the first to come to your defence.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she soothes, her voice light and friendly, breaking through the room’s stagnant atmosphere, “Heck, anyone would be in your situation.”

Situation…

That’s one word for it.

The smile pulling at your lips is starting to strain the muscles.

“Speaking of….”

At the sound of his voice, your gaze drifts back over to the mechanical man.

Beneath the rim of his tatty fedora, he meets your eye and ducks to give you a searching look. “You sure you’re feeling up to this?” he asks, reading between the lines of your reticence. Before you can reply, he raises his metal hand and pinches the brim of his hat, tugging it down to half cover his eyes.

It only occurs to you later that he might have done so to try and offer you some reprieve from his unnatural stare.

“Look, if you need another few minutes to collect yourself-“

“-No!”

Now it’s his turn to recoil, and Ellie’s.

The pair of them tilt backwards at your outburst, the latter’s eyes wide and uncertain while Nick simply cocks a brow, and you’re immediately mortified to find that you’ve risen halfway from the chair, not angry, but desperate.

“Sorry!” you blurt, blinking in surprise at yourself, “Sorry – I… I’m just-“

Sucking in a deep breath, you let yourself sink down to the seat beneath you once more, making a show of folding your hands neatly over one another on the desk. “I just… can’t afford to waste any more time coming to terms with what’s happened,” you explain diplomatically, avoiding the piercing stare of the Detective as it bears down on you all over again.

Instead, you try to focus on the faded, black tie dangling from his neck. It’s obviously been tugged loose by his idle hands, sloppily folded to hang below the open collar of his shirt. Your fingers twitch at the memory of helping Nate with his own tie, sliding it up to fit snugly against his throat so as to avoid a reprimand from old Mrs Parker at the neighbourhood parties.

A mist starts to descend over your eyes, so you give them a harsh blink and force your head up again, aiming another smile at Mr Valentine whose downturned mouth is halfway open, on the cusp of saying something before you bulldoze over his response.

“Please,” you gesture loosely towards him, “Ask away. I’m all right.”

You’re not the most convincing liar, and if the Detective’s ever-deepening frown is any indication, you’re not fooling anyone.

But if he has sniffed out what might be the biggest exaggeration of the century, he’s at least decent enough to keep it to himself.

“Well… If you say so,” he concedes, giving you a final once over before he sighs, leaning his elbows on the desk and subjecting you to a businesslike stare, “Now then, why don’t you start from the beginning. Back at the Vault, you said you’re looking for a missing kid?”

“My kid,” you nod solemnly, fighting to keep your voice even, “My baby boy, Shaun. He was… kidnapped right in front of me. I… couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.”

“Oh, Hon,” Ellie utters, her tone soft even as she scribbles something down on the clipboard.

Nick’s gaze wanders to the side, and he lets out a gentle sigh, or what constitutes for a sigh from someone without lungs. Then, roving his eyes back to yours, he murmurs something that causes your breath to hitch.

“I’m sorry, Doll.”

A chip in the dam… Your lip starts to quiver, so you stuff the flesh of your cheek back between your teeth and clamp down. Hard.

“I just… don’t understand,” you breathe after a moment, slowly releasing the tender sore, “He’s barely a year old. Why would someone steal him?”

“Good question,” Mr Valentine appraises, “They’d be taking on all of his care. And a baby needs a lot of it… Were they after anything else?”

With a shake of your head, you reply, “No, I… I’m pretty sure they were only there for him… We were, um, in a vault when it happened.” Letting out a humourless laugh, you gesture at yourself, more specifically at the suit you’re wearing – have been wearing for centuries. “Obviously.”

Ellie purses her lips, another note scribbled on the clipboard.

“Yeah, figured as much,” the Detective says, “Even without the suit, you got that fish-out-of-water look about you.” Catching himself, he shoots you an apologetic grimace. “Ah, hope you don’t mind me saying. Kept staring at the world around you like it was your first time seeing it.”

“First time seeing it like this,” you admit, waving his apology aside with a flap of your hand.

At that, both he and Ellie perk up, undoubtedly curious.

Seeing the shift, you rub your temple and blow a noisy breath through puckered lips. “Wanna know what year it was when we went into the Vault?” you ask flatly

The Detective’s eyes narrow as he starts to survey your face, calculating your age through looks alone. Deciding to spare him the effort, you heave a worn sigh and say, “Twenty-seventy-seven.”

“……”

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that ensues.

“Excuse me?” Ellie blurts out at last, forgetting about the notes on her clipboard in favour of gawking openly at you instead.

“The year the bombs fell…” Nick realises as his expression opens up in awe. The glow of his eyes seems brighter when he darts them all over what he can see of you, giving his head a slow shake. “But how is that possible?”

It’s remarkably touching that he doesn’t call your claim into doubt straight away.

“Vault Tec,” you try not to spit the name from your lips, “They were running some kind of experiment down there… They had these… cryo pods ready for us all, told us we had to go in them to get ‘decontaminated.”

Huffing out a breath, you give a hard sniff and snatch your eyes from the Detective’s, hoping he hadn’t seen the tell-tale gleam of tears behind your lashes. “I was so stupid… I didn’t even....Huh. Guess they were banking that we’d be too shocked about the bombs to ask questions.”

“Bombs?” Ellie pipes up, swallowing roughly, “You mean they’d only just…?”

Neither she nor Nick miss the haunted shadow that passes across your face.

“Skin of our teeth doesn’t even begin to describe how close it was,” you whisper.

“That’s…” Unable to come up with a suitable word, her mouth opens and closes like a goldfish for a moment before her expression turns grim and she finally settles on, “That’s awful.”

“It is,” Nick agrees distastefully, “Everyone knows Vault Tec's hands ain't exactly squeaky clean but that's.... Well. It explains a few things. Twenty-seventy-seven, huh?”

A gear in his neck spins audibly as he leans more weight against the desk, propping his chin on sharp knuckles and giving a thoughtful hum. “So, you’ve been on ice for over two centuries-"

A pill that never gets easier to swallow, no matter how often you hear it.

"But more importantly," he continues, "You were underground. Most vaults’re sealed up tight. It’s hard enough breaking out of one.” He nods at you indicatively. “Let alone breaking in. That’s a lot of obstacles to go through just to take one person. What else can you tell us about the kidnappers?”

“They weren’t just kidnappers,” you croak, “They were murderers.”

There’s a catch in your voice on the last word, and while you try to swallow, Ellie once again steps in to fill the silence.

“Take your time,” she says, prompting an agreeable nod from the Detective.

It’s hard not to scoff at that. You’ve been taking your time. Every second spent ‘taking your time’ is another second that Shaun isn’t safe at home in your arms. Once you’ve found him, then you can worry about taking your time to breathe, to start building a life here in the Commonwealth. But trying to build that life without your son, without Nate…?

“My husband…” you utter, idly picking at a loose bit of skin on the side of your thumb, “Nate. He was holding Shaun when we were put in the pods. He was the one still holding him when that… that man came in and opened it. Nate tried to stop them from taking our baby, and they… they just…”

A gunshot echoes somewhere at the back of your mind, so clearly that you dart a glance between Nick and Ellie, wondering if they’d heard it too. You know it’s in your head when the latter only pinches her eyebrows together and cuts in, “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything else…”

Catching her lip between her teeth, she worries at it for a second, looking you up and down before she adds, “You’ve really been through the ringer, huh?”

Your gaze lingers on her, then moves over to Nick, then up at the room around you, taking in the cracks in the walls and the general rundown state of things that seems to be so par for the course in this wild new Commonwealth you've woken up in.

“No more than anyone else has in this place, I’m sure,” you reply quietly.

The Detective’s amber stare hardens, though you’re too busy looking at the empty mug on his desk to notice.

‘Downplayer, huh?’ he muses, ‘Oh, kid.’

“So,” he says out loud, “We’re talking about a group of cold-blooded killers, but they waited until something went wrong to resort to violence.”

Placing the tip of her pen back on the clipboard, Ellie asks, “What’re you thinking, Nick?”

For a few moments, he just sits in contemplative silence, mulling over the information you’ve been all too forthcoming with. Until at last, he gives his head a tiny nod and glances up, meeting your gaze across the desk and holding it tightly, unwilling to let it go.

“I’m thinking…” he starts, “That this wasn’t just a random kidnapping. Whoever took your baby had an agenda. And I don’t want to jump to any conclusions yet, but my caps are on the Institute.”

The tiniest flicker of recognition sparks in your eyes, a far more subdued reaction than he’s used to when people are brave or blasé enough to bring up the Institute.

“I’ve heard them mentioned,” you say, “Uh, the news lady… Piper? She said if people go missing, it’s because of the Institute.”

“Well, they are the Boogeyman of the Commonwealth,” Nick responds darkly, “Something goes wrong, everyone blames them.”

Suddenly, your stomach flips, and for a split second, you dare to let yourself hope.

A name. You have a name, and a new lead. It isn’t much, but it’s a Hell of a lot more than you had to go on five minutes ago.

“Do you know where I can find them?” you bleat, eagerly lifting yourself halfway out of your seat again. A little too eagerly, judging by Valentine’s grunt of disapproval and the very pointed way he flicks his chin down at the chair, wordlessly asking you to sit.

“Now, just hold your horses, Doll,” he tells you sternly, eyeing you until you’re seated once more, “I’m afraid it’s not that easy.”

“Nobody knows where they are,” Ellie chimes in, “I don’t think anyone has ever found their headquarters. We don’t know who’s running things, why they’re doing it, or what they do with the people they… take.”

“Well, somebody must know something,” you stress, trying so hard to ignore the uninvited burn in your chest where the flutter of hope had just gone to die, “The trail can’t go cold here! I need to find Shaun.”

That’s all there is. That’s all you have. Anything beyond that is so hard to think about, you’ll probably have an aneurism if you let your mind stray from the Goal.

Mr Valentine is staring at you again with those ever-probing eyes, yet his tone maintains its low and easing lilt as he nods and says, “You’re right. Someone knows where they are, and I’m betting that if we can identify the perps you saw, we’ll be one step closer to finding your kid.”

You don’t pick up on the emphasis he packs behind the word ‘we,’ but he sure as shit took note that you’ve been using ‘I’ far too much for his liking.

It’s a tough job to toe the line between being patronising and being rational, and Nick has learned to walk that line with the grace of a seasoned acrobat. He learned fairly quickly after catching hell from Ellie when she realised he'd been doing background checks on the men she’d taken an interest in.

But he’s not about to outright tell you that he doesn’t want you doing this alone, so he simply won’t present it as an option. He’d have to be some kind of cad to turn a wet-behind-the-ears, prewar woman out into the Wasteland all alone to hunt down the shadiest, most unscrupulous organisation the Commonwealth has ever churned out.

He already figured you weren’t a fighter, even before you managed to sweet-talk Darla into going home. By your own admission, you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with any type of firearm, so you have no choice but to be an up-close-and-personal kind of gal.

The old, mahogany baseball bat normally slung over your shoulder now rests on its end at your side, leaning against Nick’s desk within easy grabbing distance. There’s dried blood seeped into much of the wood, harder to see against the darker grain.

And yet despite the amount of crimson liquid you knocked from the skulls of Malone's goons, Nick had instantly noticed something quite peculiar as he watched you fight.

You’d pulled every single one of your punches, even when the thugs tried to swing their submachine guns around in time to riddle you with bullets.

It seemed only by sheer, dumb luck that you beat them to the kill every time with one hard crack across the cranium, sending them all down like sacks of bricks.

And yet, he also noted that you never did it, not once, without a frantic grimace tugging the muscles of your face back, like you hated doing it. Hated having to hurt someone who wouldn’t think twice about killing you.

He remembers the heaving sigh you let out when Skinny gave the pair of you ten seconds to walk, remembers the way you’d all but shoved Nick in front of yourself to get him moving, not harshly, but urgently, your warm palm trembling against his back for those brief seconds before you withdrew it, and he lead you from the vault’s entrance and back through the station.

He knew then that you weren’t built for the Commonwealth Wasteland, even had the suit not been a dead giveaway, he’d have known. So, why then, he’d asked himself, was this frazzled young dame cavorting through a subterranean vault to rescue him?

Seems the answer just became obvious.

You’re a woman quite literally out of time, fixated on one noble yet do-or-die goal.

To save your boy, you’ll dive into ominous vaults to follow a lead, you’ll take on raiders, super mutants and feral ghouls, you’ll face the wasteland and all of its horrors. And the tragedy, he realises, is that you’ll do it because right now, you think it’s all you have left to live for. He doesn’t need to be a detective to work that out.

Guilty recognises guilty, and all that.

But he’s beginning to wonder if you’re not going to dig yourself into an early grave before you even get to see Shaun again.

You’ve been so focused on finding the kid that you haven’t done much of anything else. Don’t even have a cap to your name.

Nick only discovered that sad fact when you both got back to Diamond City and he asked if you wanted to grab some noodles from Takahashi before going to the agency. He didn’t say anything at the time, but he’d noticed the quaver of your hands, your unsteady footfalls and, more pressingly, the numerous gurgles from your stomach that had been complaining at you all the way back from the vault.

‘When was the last time you ate, kid?’ he’d fretted privately, uncertain whether voicing the question aloud would be received well by a near total stranger.

He watched as you stood there and turned out the shallow pockets of your jumpsuit in search of something of value. He saw your carefully placid expression quiver for just a second before you clenched your jaw and looked up at him, offering him a shrug and a half-cocked smile. Then he saw that smile vanish from your face when he marched over to Takahashi and tried to buy the noodles for you.

‘Tried’ being the optimum word.

Short of slapping the caps out of his hand, you did everything you could to deter him, nearly screamed in his face when he waved Takahashi over. And it was that crack in your frightened voice that gave him pause. Were you afraid of owing someone? An understandable concern in this world. Owing a favour to the wrong sort can get a person killed out here.

Nick knows he isn’t the wrong sort, but you don’t. Not yet anyway.

He can’t be sure why you’d rather stay hungry than take his caps, but he’s damned determined to find out. So, against his better judgement, he pocketed the measly change and elected to try again at a later date, perhaps after you’ve had a moment to collect yourself in his office and get your head clear enough to remember that you need to eat.

And sleep, now that he thinks about it. Those eyelids of yours have been drooping more and more with each passing minute, lashes fluttering against your cheeks only to spring open again as if you've been startled.

Right, back to business then, before you conk out on him and he has to find a way to get you horizontal without Ellie waggling her eyebrows at him.

“Really, Nick?” he can already hear her sly teasing, “Always been a sucker for a damsel, haven’t’chya?”

With a grunt, he scrubs the image of her smirking face from the forefront of his processor and zeroes in on the face right in front of him instead.

“Okay,” he begins, “Let’s talk about those kidnappers. Is there anything you can tell us about ‘em? Distinguishing features? Even if you don’t think it’s important, the smallest detail can crack a case wide open.”

It’s like watching a radstorm sweep in and smother lovely, clear skies, the way your eyes darken underneath testily-furrowed eyebrows.

If he had flesh, he might have shuddered at the out-of-place glower aimed at him by a woman like you, but he doesn’t and he knows the expression isn’t meant for him anyway.

If he had to guess, you’ve got the faces of those villains seared like a brand in your mind’s eye.

And sure enough…

“One of them came right up to me,” you bristle, mouth twisting at the edges, “A man. Middle-aged, I guess. Had some stubble but was otherwise bald, and there was this scar - big and nasty – went right down through one of his eyes.”

Recognition sparks like a bolt of lightening through Nick’s wires. He sits up straight, hands moving to brace against the edge of his desk like he means to push himself away from it.

From the corner of an eye, he sees Ellie twist quickly to face him.

“Couldn’t be…” he murmurs softly, raising his voice to ask, “You didn’t happen to hear the name ‘Kellogg’ at all, did you?”

In the blink of an eye, that overcast storm swirling around your face suddenly lifts, and you’re back to looking lost.

“I… don’t think so?” you say, screwing up your face in a way that reminds him of little Natalie when he nags her to wear a coat, “Everything was so muffled after the gunshot…”

Nick pretends he doesn’t see those soft, uncalloused hands of yours curl into fists on top of his desk.

Once again, he mumbles under his breath before addressing his assistant directly. “Say, we still have those notes on Kellogg?”

Ellie has already spun around and marched for the old filing cabinet sitting flush against the far wall, her clipboard abandoned on top of it. With practiced ease, she rifles through the middle drawer, muttering, “Kellogg… Kellogg… Ah! Here.”

Almost of its own accord, Nick’s gaze drifts back towards you, and he finds you suddenly looking far more awake. Alert even, staring hard at the back of Ellie’s head with sharp, unblinking eyes, not unlike a shark that’s just smelled blood in the water.

‘Easy, kid,’ he tries to convey through a slight furl of his brows, tapping a fingertip on the desk, but there’s no pulling those eyes of yours off his assistant’s hands when she finally extracts a worn, manilla folder from the drawers and turns back, leafing through the flimsy papers with her index finger.

“Well, the description certainly fits,” she hums, pulling one from the bunch, “Bald... Scar... Reputation for dangerous mercenary work. But nobody knows who his employer is.”

“He bought a house here in town, right?” Nick ponders aloud, “And he had a kid with him? Quiet, never let ‘im outside to play with the others.”

The last word is barely out of his mouth when there’s the screeching scrape of chair legs against the floor, and before he can even turn towards you, you’re already out of your seat again and slinging your bat over a shoulder.

“Where?” is all you ask in a surprisingly even voice despite how you teeter sideways as the blood rushes to your head.

Nick hardly registers that he’s vacated his own seat and is halfway around the desk with his arms held aloft to steady you by the time his words catch up to him.

“Now, just hang on a second,” he reprimands gently, pulling up short of grabbing your elbow, “I can tell you right now, he hasn’t lived in that house for about months now, and the kid wasn’t an infant. Gotta’ve been at least ten years old.”

“So he kidnapped someone else’s kid!” you exclaim, letting your carefully curated composure slip a few inches, “All the more reason for me to get out there and find this place!”

Snapping your gaze to Ellie, you only manage to keep yourself from barking sharply at her when you see the conflict in her expression. You have to make yourself take a breath that doesn’t feel like it’s enough to fill even half of your lungs.

“Please, Miss Perkins,” you implore, sad eyes drooping with exhaustion as you tip one palm up towards the ceiling, “… Where do I go from here…?”

Valentine tries not to read too much into that, how such a simple question can make a person sound so lost, adrift, unwittingly sending an SOS and wondering if there’s anyone out there who will receive the signal.

Christ. Maybe he is a sucker.

Conflicted, Ellie presses her lips into a thin line and shoots him a look.

And ‘okay,’ he nods to her. He’ll take the helm, try and steer this wayward ship safely back into port.

Because from the looks of things, you’re going out there whether he’s with you or not, and you’re going now. And Nick would much rather be with you when you do.

“Alright,” he appeases, garnering your attention again as he jerks his head towards the door, “Alright. Why don’t you and I take a walk over to Kellogg’s last known address? See if we can't snoop out where he went.”

There’s the tiniest huff from his assistant, who regards him knowingly as he leans past you and pushes the agency’s door open, gesturing for you to go ahead with a sweep of his arm.

“Security doesn’t really go to that part of town,” Ellie calls after him, biting back a comment about ‘old men’ and ‘chivalry,’ “But still… you should be careful.”

And Nick, ever concerned with everyone’s safety except his own, turns to flash her that signature smile over his shoulder, the same one he gave her two weeks ago before he up and vanished on her and made her sick with worry.

“I always am,” he tells her gently.

And then he’s gone, chasing after the footfalls of the unlucky lady with a kind face but eyes that are plagued by seeing too much, too quickly.

Shit, at least the pre-war ghouls had two hundred years to adapt to the world as it shifted around them.

Thankfully for Ellie, the door has already swung shut, deafening the grizzled synth to her muttered, “My ass you are.”

She doesn’t think he’d really wash her mouth out with soap, precious as that resource is, but… well….

She wouldn’t put it past him.

[alicent-vi-britannia]

Why was Lelouch's manipulation effective on Rolo?

One of this year's "resolutions" I set for my Code Geass page was that I was going to give more space to Rolo. Rolo is my favorite secondary character in Code Geass, even above Shirley and Euphemia, but I haven't talked about him much and I wanted to rectify that. This Monday I published a survey to my followers in which I invited them to vote for the analysis of Rolo that they were most interested in me doing. There were three options:

⭐Why was Lelouch's manipulation effective on Rolo? ⭐Why did Rolo kill Shirley? ⭐The parallels between V.V. and Rolo

There was a close competition between the second and the winner, which is what you can read in the title of the publication. Don't worry if you didn't win the analysis you wanted because those analyzes will come gradually. Furthermore, there is an important point in common that we must take into consideration in the two most requested analyzes: Rolo's background.

So who the fuck is Rolo? He is a trained assassin who works for the O.S.I. which, in turn, is in connection with the Geass Order and both organizations answer to the Emperor and V.V. (the devilish brothers). Episode 3 of R2 gives us an overview of him and how he normally acts if Lelouch is not with him (yes, being Lelouch's shy and devoted brother is Rolo's mask, but, as a professor told me in a class a while ago, masks are not necessarily fake and this mask is actually a side of him that not even Rolo himself knew). At the same time, episode 3 drops some seeds (problems) that will bloom over the course of the season:

His extreme loneliness: Rivalz casually comments that Rolo does not talk to anyone at school and, additionally, we see that it is difficult for him to work as a team (there is a scene with Villetta in which the members of the O.S.I. complain to her because Rolo has killed some of them for stupid reasons). All of this results in his poor social skills and him distrusting everyone (and himself). I won't use the enneagram right now, but Rolo is undoubtedly a 6w5 one-to-one subtype and with that information, a connoisseur of this tool can get a general idea of the motivations behind Rolo's strange behaviors.

His budding interest and need to understand the meanings of "having a family" and "birthdays," which tie into the heart-shaped locket that Lelouch gave him (and for which he killed a member of the O.S.I. just for touching it). It isn't until we reach episode 4 of R2 that we are introduced to Rolo's past that we understand this curiosity he has.

Rolo and Mao are similar in several ways. They are both orphans, given a Geass that was too powerful for them at a very young age, and are amoral as a result of their particular lives. Specifically, Rolo wasn't raised as a human, but rather he was trained from birth to be a killing machine. Therefore, he has no social skills or moral codes, he has no notion of what is right and wrong, he has never had a family, he doesn't know how to make friends and, of course, he has no idea what love is nor does he know how to love (this last part is important because that's what his narrative arc is about, by the way).

Rolo was taught to follow orders, solve problems and repress his social, emotional and affective needs. Rolo has convinced himself that it was okay for him to live as he has been because he has focused on the present by completing the missions assigned to him. It's Lelouch who motivates him to think about the future and find meaning in life: "Rolo, what is the future? The future is hope. Without hope, your life is empty. And you have no hope beyond your mission. Rolo, if you capture C.C., what kind of future will it open up for you? Things will remain as they are and nothing will change." It's more or less the same situation that Kallen goes through in the first season since she also has to define her objectives and motivations and, in fact, the mental breakdown that Rolo suffers is similar to the one that Kallen had on Kaminejima Island because both they see how the lie that they believed to be true crumbles before their eyes. In Rolo's case, after all, Lelouch does care more than the mission (or, in other words, that his emotional ties are real).

The difference between the two is that Rolo isn't mentally healthy and here we find other parallels with Mao. Both are, first and foremost, victims of child abuse by people who should have protected them, but decided to use them for their benefit (C.C. in the case of Mao and V.V. in the case of Rolo) and both are hungry for love for their loved ones (C.C. and Lelouch respectively). I would add that they are also children who didn't grow up well. That's why Rolo's locket is shaped like a heart: it symbolizes the love (of Lelouch) that Rolo desperately wants.

Even if Rolo sees himself as a weapon because he has been dehumanized by the Geass Order, he is human and, like every person, wants to be loved (C.C. literally wants to die because she believes there is no love in her life). This need combined with Lelouch's search for meaning based on his agenda (being his little brother) leads Rolo to turn such meaning into his reason for living. "I made you a promise. I promised you a new future. Your future is with me" (or, what is the same, "your future is me").

Of course, there is a difference between Mao and Rolo (which is the same difference between V.V. and him) that I won't reveal now. I will say that, although the relationship between Rolo and Lelouch will evolve into a dependency on the boy's part that will aggravate his mental state, it constitutes a turning point in his narrative arc since, in addition to giving him a goal and motivation, this is the first time that Rolo thinks about himself and what he wants for himself, which is good for Rolo since he begins to value his life and Lelouch won't face consequences for manipulating, lying and using an amoral young murderer with strong emotional deficiencies who has been indoctrinated by a malevolent organization, right? RIGHT?!

No, forget it. Shirley dies.

But I'll reserve that for the next analysis. Honestly, I'm glad this analysis came out first because when I release Shirley's I'll be more direct in touching on Rolo's background and focus on Rolo's fears and feelings and explaining something nonsense called "anxious attachment." React and share, if you want to see it soon, as well as other analyzes of Rolo (I need to analyze his death scene because it is heartbreakingly beautiful and meaningful, even more so with the music).

Thanks for reading me.

[tamelee]

Hi I'm the person who asked for education advice.

I would like advice on almost everything you mentioned, the learning aspect itself and breaking down goals mostly. Also just the fear of failure haunts me a lot. Also, you're in your 20s right? Do you live alone, on campus, with parents? Is that hard to adjust to, if you know about that? I really appreciate you answering asks and giving advice on things not related to Naruto specifically haha. Love your art! Can't wait for the chaptered manga you're making 💜

Hi! This took me a while as I was stressing over some things, sorry about that, and yes! Well, I live alone currently and am renting an apartment. It is not hard to adjust to for me personally because I used to live in a house that was empty since I was… well let's just say I’m used to it, but when I traveled and studied/worked abroad I did live with other people which I thought was more difficult to adjust to. All of a sudden there’s so much noise and drama aaahhh >< hehe. 

I hope my tips are helpful for you— long post, read when you have time and grab your notes! 」(￣▽￣」)

.📙⤵

Small note: this system may seem like a lot of work or tedious for majority of people, but setting it up like this is the only thing that works for me and aids my struggle to focus. This post focuses on studying, but I apply this to a lot of other areas as well. I’m still readjusting parts where I feel like it can improve— of course, you can change anything in any way you like! I tried to make it as clear as possible ^^! 

My documentation style: I personally use Notion (almost a year now) to track everything while documenting and organizing my notes. I love how you can create the most aesthetic pages and build your space anyway you like. It helps me structure my life so much better than the note-taking systems I used to have. I'm not kidding when I say it really changed everything for me. For studying, but also other area's, which is why I affiliated with them. There are paid subscriptions, but everything you need you can use for free!

I also have template recommendations if someone does happen to use Notion! (Let me know if you're looking for anything specific!) However, of course you can use whatever program you want to document things/your study. Whatever you use, even if you just write it down on paper, I do recommend keeping it all in the same place by creating a singular overview so you can track your progress more easily, but we’ll get to that later!

My roadmap to achieve (academic) goals:

Goal Setting 

I think the most important thing is to set effective goals that are clear. Proper planning is essential to reaching goals and achieving good grades imo, as well as breaking down your tasks into manageable chunks to avoid feeling overwhelmed. It’s learning how you work, what fits your productivity-style and finding ways to make it easier for yourself.

So take a moment to think what exactly you want to achieve!

You can use the SMART-method (setting Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals), to give yourself clear targets to work towards and there are many articles on it if you want to know more about it (you can also look for helpful templates, there are many free ones you can find!), but I combined this with "The 12 Week Year”-method by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington. 

(Although I would recommend this book, there’s quite a bit of fluff which will probably make it difficult to get through for people that are neurodivergent. If you’re interested you can also find summaries on Youtube in order to only gain the information you need if you want to use it to achieve goals, but I’ll break it down here as well. Summaries are incredibly helpful, but I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure how to feel about them yet.) 

The 12 week year describes lag and leading indicators in the context of goal achievement. I use these indicators specifically in order to make sure I can Measure my goals. 

I’ll explain with examples:

Regarding your previous ask, let’s take a goal like “getting high grades”. This doesn’t say much yet. 

There are probably several subjects you want a high grade for, so let’s break that down first. There are many smaller goals that exist in that. It’ll look something like this:

Overarching goal: Getting high grades

Individual goals:

Getting a high grade for subject A

Getting a high grade for subject B

Getting a high grade for subject C

Etc,—

Great start in getting clear what you need to achieve, but it’s still too vague, right? Let’s see these subjects as separate goals and break it down further with indicators:

Indicators: 

Lag indicators are the ultimate measures of success or results necessary to achieve your goals. They represent the outcomes. 

Leading indicators are the actions or behaviors that directly influence the achievement of lag indicators. They are individual tasks and the steps that you take to achieve the lag indicator.  

Note: Indicators must start with a verb (like: write, get, draw, finish, etc—) because it indicates directly what the action is you have to take.  Example: “Assignment” doesn’t tell you what to do. Transform it into “Finish assignment on [x] before 16th of May” or something like that. It depends on the goal. 

Now we get something like this:

(Overarching goal: Getting high grades) Individual goal: Getting a high grade for subject A

Lag indicators examples (what’s necessary to achieve the goal): 

Write Essay on [x] 

Finish assignment A

Setup project A

Start project A

Etc,— 

It’ll look different per subject and it may look different for you. Maybe you know exactly what you need to achieve per period or maybe they only let you know what needs to be done one assignment at a time, in which case you can focus on that alone and take it step by step.

It’s already nice to just write everything down and gain a clearer view of the things you need to complete. You’re not pressured to remember anything, because it's all here (I get stressed forgetting stuff). 

Now you have your overarching goal of wanting to get high grades and made a list of individual goals. We’ll consider these individual goals and focus on them because achieving those means your overarching goal will be achieved automatically. 

If you gathered the lag indicators for these individual goals, you’ll now know what (currently) is necessary to get a high grade for subject A and we can start breaking those down into leading indicators.  

It’ll look like this: 

(Overarching goal: Getting high grades) (Individual goal: Getting a high grade for subject A) Lag indicator: Write Essay on [x] 

Leading indicator examples (steps you take to achieve the lag indicator):

Understand exactly what the topic or thesis statement is 

Research topic

Organize, etc—

Write everything you are going to do in order to ‘write the essay on [x]’ as leading indicators. 

Reminder: as the SMART-method suggests: make everything as specific as possible so you can measure exactly what it is you need to do.  Example: “Research topic” can still be too vague but you can clarify what you need to research for what topic, once you understand what it is exactly you need to do. 

Putting in a little bit of effort and time now by breaking down goals like this helps me save a lot of time later, because I have to make less decisions and I’ll exactly know what to do and how much. Tracking your progress makes it a lot easier if you know what you’re tracking and as I said before: decision fatigue is a real thing and emotionally taxing! Making all the decisions before you start working really can help! 

Tip: before starting on the leading indicators, check whether your goals and its lag indicators are SMART. Make sure all of them start with a verb!  Tip 2: if you have trouble deciding where to start, you can refer to the ‘Swiss Cheese’ method which is a productivity “hack” that can help you identify which of your tasks takes the priority. This doesn’t help me personally, because if I planned out what I need to do that day it doesn’t really matter for me which has the priority because I have to rely on many other things, therefore I can’t plan what I do first. I feel like mentioning it anyway, because it can be helpful when making mindmaps. 

So in short:

Determine your overarching goal. 

Write down individual goals necessary in order to achieve the overarching goal.

Write down the lag indicators you need to complete in order to achieve your individual goal.

Break down the lag indicators into manageable tasks (leading indicators) and be specific on the action you need to take. (Example: don’t just put ‘writing the essay’, but ‘write [x]-essay for 20 minutes’.)

Now we can start planning!

Planning

Let’s say you have a week to finish this essay, once you have every leading indicator, you can start planning out what you will do on which day.

Efficient planning helps reduce stress, because you don’t have to wonder if what you’ll do today is enough. We’ll get to ‘tracking’ goals later, but stay open to readjust when necessary though! It is okay to re-plan because there’s always the possibility of something coming in between or you not feeling well! 

As I said before, I use Notion to document everything and I have a separate page for the overarching goals which include my lag indicators, but in my overview I created a table that shows all the tasks (leading indicators) that I need to finish per (current) week. It sort of looks like this: 

I automated it, so when I check off something the amount of times I need to do it (under frequency) that week, it disappears from my overview and I can quickly see my weekly (and overall) progress in percentages, but of course you can do this any way you like or just write it down somewhere. I think this way is great because I need less focus to see whether something's already done or not.

I know that sounds funny for people who don't have trouble with this, but genuinely anything I can do to make it easier for myself is helpful ><

We still need to keep deadlines in mind. I personally like to know what I need to do on which day within the week as well or I’ll end up having to do everything during the weekend. So, I divide these weekly tasks and assign a day to them on a simple weekly notepad I keep on my desk. It looks something like this: 

These days aren’t set, as I mentioned: it’s also important to allow life to happen and still stay on track somewhat :’)

When I finish something I color it!

So in short:

Once you gained insight on your leading indicators, you can start planning. This will look different for every subject, but the method stays the same. 

Create a weekly planning/overview somewhere depending on your deadline. And if necessary, divide the weekly tasks for specific days if you want on a separate planner.

Review your week on Sundays (or whichever day you like!) to see whether you’re still on track and readjust your planning for the upcoming week(s) when necessary.  

Combine Studying with your personal life

The reason why I use a written, separate, weekly overview is because I combine areas of my life on here.

Aside from dividing tasks for my study (the leading indicators) for specific dates, I add appointments that I may have (which I keep in my calendar app), projects, administration/financial-tasks or random things I need to do at home or for myself/others.

I know a lot of people that create to-do lists have trouble with it. If that’s you (me too), then we’ll take it a step further and plan our tomorrow every day.

I use simple note-paper and sort of write things down in order for that day, because it’s easy and quick to grab and scribble on. This really helps to focus on what matters right now. It looks like this:

This is sort of like compounding habits, but with tasks. Some things are much easier to do after one thing than another. A regular to-do list may not work because it doesn’t take into account the rest of your day like appointments or a personal routine you want to work on. It’s hard to gain clarity when all you see is a bunch of intertwined, random tasks— so here you’d organize them bit and add whatever is relevant. Like a little mini-planning for the day. 

On here I also write small silly stuff I have to do that day or keep notes I have to put somewhere else so I won’t forget. (Like appointments I suddenly get, or e-mails I have to reply to, something I want to check later, etc—) 

Tip: Let’s say after a while you still have trouble with this daily mini-planner, you can also just write down (3 or so) your most important tasks for the day and “eat the frog”. You focus on that first while ‘hiding’ all the ones that may not be as relevant immediately. (I’d still keep the other mini-planner though or transform your other tasks into “bonus-tasks”.) 

So in short:

Keep appointments in mind or days when you’ll be busy/outside when planning study tasks on specific days. Add the most important or time-consuming tasks first so you gain a clearer view how much time you have for the weekly study tasks.

Use this weekly planner to divide tasks throughout the week and then make a mini-planner for your specific day on a separate paper/document to organize the day.  

Keeping track

As I said during the planning-step, you can use Sundays (or other days) to quickly review your week and adjust the next if necessary.

A lot within my system is automated, but even if you’ve written it all down, it shouldn’t take too much time (maybe 10 mins, probably less), because you’ve done most of the planning already. You can easily see what and where it needs adjusting.

Be prepared to adjust a lot in the beginning though if you’ve never done this! Eventually it gets easier and you gain better insight how long you work on something or what is realistic for you to do in a day, which is totally fine!!

Tip: If you are more interested in self-development, you can also apply a review-session monthly, quarterly or per project to gain insight on yourself and where you’d like to improve. I personally do this quarterly, but let’s keep focussing on the study~! Tip 2: If you aren’t sure how to create an overview, there are also many, free SMART-method templates you can use. If you’re usually more a visual person, I’d recommend creating visual boards or just add images to make it more appealing. It may seem like it doesn’t do anything, but especially in this current world of distraction, images do help you connect information much easier and can influence how you feel even subconsciously. I do highly recommend doing so. (I personally use a theme per quarter/season >< it’s so extra lmao it’s a good thing I live alone let’s be honest because I'm embarrassing.) 

Studying & taking notes

Well this is a broad subject but I’d recommend sort of observing yourself for a while to really understand more specifically what it is you struggle with. (If you are.) 

Here are some examples for ways you can use notes. I used the ‘Second Brain’ method for a while as well, but I’m most comfortable with the Cornell method. I set it up like this: 

But the most important part here, is this: 

I can clearly see the subjects and the necessary information. (I usually hide them under some toggle text to keep things organized and not muddy up my overview.)

Study cards don’t really work for me, because I need to connect information together, but it’s worth looking into! It might be helpful for you. 

Tip: If you have trouble focussing because you get bored easily which makes you tired so you seek a quick dopamine rush even if that means you start cleaning your entire environment and you procrastinate, etc—… trust me you’re not alone. I do recommend researching whether a ‘dopamine detox’ will be helpful for you (which is not easy, I’ll tell you that). However, this may not work for everyone because sometimes there’s even more at play. That’s why a combination of strategies to make the actual act of studying as easy and clear as possible, is so important.  Tip 2: Always allow yourself to experiment with your routines and keep your health in mind, but if you continue to struggle, please do seek support. Tip 3: If you’re like me and you had to watch/listen to a lot of material, find transcripts or use subtitles! If you have to write an essay on a movie, it’s much easier to get back to information when it’s written down. (And it saves you so much time...) For many movies you can find subtitle files and you can convert them online to remove timestamps if necessary.  Tip 4: Ah, and for my fellow neurodivergent people… if noise annoys you and music doesn’t really help anymore, not even when it’s just instrumentals… see if ambient video’s that have slight random background noises (like a library for example) are helpful for you. For me personally, it’s such a game-changer holy sh- 

Fear of Failure 

Not sure if I can give you some advice on this, because I struggle with this as well. It gets a bit better though when I use this system because it lays down the groundwork for you and with that clarity it gets easier to focus on the task itself. Unless you plan it all out and then end up not doing what you set out to do, and you don’t readjust your planning weekly— it’s sort of hard to fail the action-taking-part. 

If it gets really bad and you end up avoiding your tasks entirely, because you get reluctant to take the risk of failing at something, sit down with yourself for a moment and think whether you may’ve set extremely high standards for yourself. See if you can allow a bit more room in your schedule. Refer back to the Goal Setting methods.

Tip: If you’re interested in making it a habit to study, I’d recommend you read ‘atomic habits’ by James Clear, or find a video that breaks the method down for you if that’s easier.

Know that whatever it is you want to improve in, there are ways to do it. If you feel like you get stuck on an area of your life, most of the time focussing on it with frustration will make it worse. Keep your ears and mind open for solutions while taking a break. 

I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere, any school or anything where they teach you how to actually study in the first place. They should tbh. I think it’s ridiculous they don’t, especially because we get more and more distracted and everything is literally designed to grab your attention and hold it for as long as possible until the next thing comes by. And I’m not sure if that’s helpful to know, but I do believe that realizing that studying in general isn’t easy and schools making it seem like it is by treating it like it’s nothing “you just have to do it” while not teaching you how to do it effectively... is bullshit.

Lastly, it’s all trial and error so please don’t beat yourself up over any of this. If you’re a perfectionist, please don’t feel like you need to set up a system perfectly before starting, because it’s an ongoing thing and not set in stone. It’ll only make you end up procrastinating for the sake of perfecting a system, which may make you feel like you're being productive but you don't actually get anything done and it's not what we want. That’s why it’s so important to be okay with readjusting when necessary! 

Hope there is something in all of this that can help you! Good luck 🌷^^~!

_______

Oh and thank you!! I also can’t wait to release the Manga. I practiced fic writing first and created a Cyberpunk-story, but I’m still a bit hesitant to share it >< (Perfectionism does make me slow as well, but I’m working on improving it 😌)

[sweetbitterimpossiblecreature]

A Brief And Concise Summary Of Is Wrong With The ACOTAR Series

I think we can agree that a lot of ACOTAR is pretty iffy. Consider this a very brief refresher.

What's Wrong With Feyre/Rhysand (juxtaposed against Feyre/Tamlin)

Rhysand drugs and sexually assaults her in Book 1

This is "for her own good". Because he "has no choice". Despite the fact that, from what we know of the plot, Amarantha thinks that Clare Beddor was the one Rhysand was diddling, and is only interested in Feyre because Rhysand, "her" man male, has taken an interest in her.

If we extrapolate from this we can figure that Rhysand is the one directly putting her into danger.

Now, let's be clear: drugging someone is bad. Sexually assaulting someone is bad. One could argue there were extenuating circumstances. But if, in such a situation, what your mind goes to is "I know, I should assault this person... for their safety" I have questions about your moral qualities. There were a million things he could have done. He could have done whatever he did to Clare - that is, remove her ability to feel any pain - easily. He could have helped her escape. Under The Mountain, he - while still there unwillingly - has a lot of power, as Amarantha's side piece. Maybe this would have resulted in him being punished- however, he is hundreds of years old and a badass motherfucker, and she is a nineteen year old human girl.

Now, onto Tamlin. Obviously not a lot of people really ship F/T anymore after ACOMAF, because compared to F/R, it's boring. I read another person's post about it, which was very enlightening: they said that Feyre's personality is essentially a mirror. When she is with Rhysand, she's snarky and malicious- because she is "bouncing off" his energy. When she's with Mor she's super feminist and "in awe of her strength". On the other hand, Tamlin is kind of an empty character. He's a pretty boy with anger issues, which should be more interesting than it is. SJM manages to make him bland. Because Feyre has nothing to bounce off of, (a lot of this is from the person's post), she and Tamlin together is mainly just him introducing her to his world.

What Tamlin Does: prevents a skinny twenty year old from going on dangerous missions with him and combat-trained soldiers, accidentally blows up a room with her in it, and, at the end, prevents her from leaving the house.

This is not a Tamlin apologist post. Obviously it was really fucking gross of him to do that, and their relationship was toxic. However, a lot of his abuse stems from their inability to communicate, as well as own negligence. He does not knowingly and purposefully sexually assault her or rape her mind. And tbh, leaving a girl without combat training at home while he goes on missions with a bunch of muscled sentries is... kind of reasonable?

Again: not a Tamlin apologist post. It was abuse. However, if Rhysand is "allowed" to sexually assault, mind-rape, and drug Feyre "for her own safety", why is Tamlin demonized for preventing her from leaving his mansion "for her own safety"?

Another pertinent point: Rhys is never punished for sexually assaulting her. It is brushed off as part of his "mask" or that his hand was forced. Jesus Christ my dudes, his hand was not forced under her skirt. If he has to maintain his gross rapist abuser tyrant oppressor mask... why? Who did that benefit beside him? None of his actions remotely helped Prythian. They were done solely for his buddies - five people safe in a rich hidden city - and no one else, which is explicitly stated.

Finally, the power dynamic is fucked up. Feyre is less than twenty five years old. Rhysand is 500. There is a tendency in fantasy romance to romanticize a centuries year old man with a young girl, because the man does not show symptoms of age, and so it is easily ignorable. However, can we just briefly acknowledge how fucked up it is? Rhys is over five times older than Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and other known predators/abusers. She is twenty. That is really fucking gross. She is in a vulnerable position and he takes rampant advantage of that.

If he had wrinkles, liver problems, and erectile dysfunction, more people would acknowledge it.

Let's be clear: I'm not saying writing a book with an uneven power dynamic is automatically bad. For example, in The Locked Tomb series, which is in my opinion THE BEST FANTASY SERIES THAT HAS GRACED THIS EARTH (lol i'm starting fires), one main character Harrowhark Nonagesimus is in a position of power over Gideon Nav, the other main character. However, this is not glossed over or romanticized. Gideon resents Harrow for this- there is a relationship of mutual antagonism, fraught with unwilling familiarity and intimacy from growing up together. They are roughly the same age. While there is a certain power dynamic (in that world, there is a dynamic of necromancer and cavalier, i.e. sorcerer and sword) the "empowered" character (Harrow) emphatically respects her and does not abuse this power, although both would of course deny this, and she does make a show of threatening and being aloof. In short, while Gideon obeys her, Gideon also has power over Harrow, and the idea of what is essentially slavery is not romanticized.

Feyre Doesn't Face Any Consequences For Her Own Actions

Let me present a radical notion: a guy preventing you from leaving his house does not justify completely fucking ruining his country and harming the people inside it.

In other words: Tamlin does not deserve what she did to him.

I know that sounds iffy. We're conditioned to think that if someone is an abuser, then they are the scum of the earth, they deserve to die, torturing/murdering/doing anything to them is completely A-OK. However, here's another radical notion: someone harming you does not justify you doing worse.

Obviously, the effects of psychological abuse can cause you to hurt other people (see: Nesta), but Feyre deliberately and maliciously (oh, God, that insufferable POV of her in Spring Court; she reads like a cartoonish Disney villain) dismantles his country. She uses sexual manipulation (Lucien), torture (causing the sentry to be whipped), and mind-rape (who didn't she do this to? lol).

A summary of the entire first half of ACOWAR: "It smelled like roses. I hated roses. For this capital offense against my olfactory system, Tamlin and the entire Spring Court deserved to burn in hell. I knew exactly what I was doing. I smiled at him sweetly: no longer a doe, but a wolf. He didn't see my fangs.............." *aesthetic noises*

Man. I'm starting to think SJM had a horrible experience at a Bath & Body Works and took it out on the rest of us. Don't do it, Sarah!! I know Pink Chiffon and Triple Berry Martini are way too strong, but don't take it out on an innocent population!!

She steals from Summer Court (there are, yk, other solutions to theft. Like maybe asking politely) and ruins Spring Court. Her boyfriend - yeesh sorry, MATE - does nothing while a dozen Winter Court children are murdered.

Now: moral ambiguity is not automatically bad. Again using The Locked Tomb as an example, in the second book (spoiler alert), Harrowhark has a sort of moral ambiguity. She was raised from the beginning to worship the King Undying as God, and so she obeys him without question. Because of this, she commits a lot of crimes in His name: she "flips" - i.e. kills - the life force of planets, and she plots murder (albeit the murder of someone who tried to kill her first). There is no attempt to justify this. There is also no attempt to paint her as a virtuous and yet also badass Madonna figure. She is desperate, plagued with the "wreck of herself", and the book clearly displays her moral pitfalls. While her POV is of course colored by her mindset, it also is limited by her lack of information, and we as readers can acknowledge that.

BACK TO ACOTAR: Feyre is seen by everyone as gorgeous, formidable, and essentially perfect. Rhys sees her as flawless, "made for him", wonderful, beautiful, blah blah blah. (THEY ARE SO BAD FOR EACH OTHER; THEY EXCUSE AND GLORIFY EACH OTHER'S CRIMES, IT'S SO BAD, GUYYYS). Tamlin is insanely batshit in love with her, or whatever. To the Night Court she's the High Lady. In this way she personifies the Mary Sue character. (Excerpt from the TV Tropes page on Mary Sues: "She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their True Companions, even characters who are usually antisocial and untrusting; if any character doesn't love her, that character gets an extremely unsympathetic portrayal." Sound familiar?)

There is the Ourobous scene. And yet, paradoxically, while presented as an acknowledgment of her flaws, it is in fact a rejection of them. She sees her own brutality... and instead of recognizing that she has these deep, deep moral flaws and realizing that she needs to grow and be better, she in fact "accepts" them.

Guys: Self love means: "I'm important to me, so I'm going to get a massage today after work", or "heck, why not splurge on some expensive lotion, you only live once" or "you know what? I had a tough day today. I'm going to get that strawberry cupcake". SELF LOVE DOES NOT MEAN "oh, I accept all the war crimes I have done, I love myself". LOVING YOURSELF DOES NOT MEAN ABSOLVING YOURSELF OF ALL WRONGDOING.

It's this refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing that is so grating about ACOTAR. It's so goddamn one-sided. And you can tell that after Book 1, SJM decided to completely change the trajectory simply because of how jarring Book 2 reads compared to the first one.

Also: Feyre is a very, very young girl (compared to the other ruling fey) who did not know how to read for the majority of her life. She has no experience whatsoever in politics. Her being High Lady is not a win for feminism.

Rhysand: He Sucks

First, he is 500 years old. He should be written as such, not as some 20 year old virile frat boy feminist. Fantasy is all the more compelling for its elements of realism, which is a concept that SJM does not appear to grasp.

Second of all, his morals are absurd. He is written as the Second Coming of Christ, as someone who can do no wrong, ever, and his flaws only serve to make Feyre love him more. Anything shitty he does is written as part of his "mask" and she can See Beneath It and knows that it "hurts" him to maintain this "mask".

Fellas, WHY DOES HE HAVE TO MAINTAIN THIS MASK???? There is no reason for it. If A) he does not give a shit about Court of Nightmares (we'll get back to that), only about Velaris, and B) Velaris is hidden/protected from the world, what is he pretending for?

It would not hurt him politically to be seen as someone who cares about his country.

"Pretending" to be "Amarantha's whore" does not in any way shape or form benefit the macro-world that is Prythian. In Amarantha's name, he commits atrocities. He commits war crimes; he systemically oppresses entire societies. It doesn't even really benefit Velaris, because Velaris is already hidden.

Let me put this in a real-world perspective. This would be like if Donald Trump was suddenly like: "I know I was a shitty president but IT WAS ALL PART OF MY MASK, WHICH WAS TO PROTECT THIS MICROCOSM OF PRIVILEGED PEOPLE THAT I CARE ABOUT". Like: okay? Sorry, or whatever, but I don't actually give a shit. What about the parents of the children who died? What about Clare Beddor? What about the people who were held in slavery, murdered, tortured?

Rhysand: omg it sucks that my cousin Mor was oppressed by this toxic misogynistic culture from the Court of Nightmares.

Also Rhysand: lol whatever, who gives a shit about Court of Nightmares. They all suck. They meanie. Lol what did you say? That there might be other girls just like Mor who are oppressed by this system? Lol whatever. I can't do anything, I gotta maintain my Mask. I gotta sit on this throne and show the entire Court that not respecting women is completely okay.

In summary: by parading Feyre around as his "whore" (!!) he demonstrates by example that it is completely okay for the Court of Nightmares to abuse their women.

A good ruler cares about all his people. Rhysand cares about a tiny tiny fraction of his people: those who were fortunate enough to be born into Velaris.

God, I'm exhausted. Onto Nesta:

The only character who successfully breaks the Mary Sue effect Feyre exerts on her people is Nesta. Her POV for the first half is a joy to read.

Obviously it sucks that Nesta was a huge bitch to Feyre for the beginning of her childhood. However, it was wrong for Rhysand to threaten her- he is a man male with a huge insane amount of power, and it is not okay for him to threaten to bring the brunt of it down on a young girl because she was a bitch to his girlfriend.

I've seen a lot of discourse on the morality of F/R sending her out of Velaris. Here is my two cents:

It was okay for them to cut her off of their money. If they don't want to enable her self-harm, that is their choice. Again, it's their money, even if it wasn't fairly earned (Rhysand born into an enormous fortune).

It was not okay for them to banish her from Velaris with the implication that she was an embarrassment. Let me explain.

If Rhysand and Feyre are talking to her as sister/brother-in-law, then that is that. They have the complete right to express disapproval and try to help. However, they should not be using their royal privilege against her.

If they are talking to her as ruler to subject, then they have the power to banish her from the city. However, a ruler would not give a shit about a random subject getting drunk and having sex. So, they should not be talking her about her problems as a ruler to subject.

I've heard it compared to her being sent to rehab. However, rehab is a system designed to help people with certain problems. It has specialized medical centers and involves therapy. Nesta gets her life threatened multiple times. It is not rehab.

In summary: why did SJM inflict this upon us. Throne of Glass was actually good! GAHHH! After the first few books she completely whipped around and introduced the idea of males and mates and fey and that C is actually A and the quality took a huge nosedive. Sigh.

Final horrible but unmistakable truth: The entire ACOTAR series reads like a bad A/B/O fic. I hate to say it but it's true. We're lucky there were no heat cycles. OH WAIT

[cakesunflower]

Fateful Commute [C.H.] One Shot

A/N: This was meant to be split up into 3 parts but it’s like 5.3k words long which, if you know me, is kinda short for me lmao dkjgndfjk so i just decided to put it all together. This idea kind of came to me at like 3 in the morning which is when i started writing it so like.....yeah enjoy hehe

#1: Silent Strangers

          There was a man who always took the F train, same as her since she started her new job, without fail, and every time she saw him she wondered if it was possible to fall for someone from a distance. To never have said a word to them, to never have officially met them, but to just see them and deem it normal to feel a thrill run down your spine. She kept these thoughts to herself, feeling as though if she told her friends about the drop dead gorgeous man she saw on the same train every day when she was coming from and going to work and sometimes nearly missing her stop because she was too distracted by him, they would judge her. 

          So she kept her silent admiration as just that—silent.

          She’d see him in the morning when she’d get on the train from Penn Station, always sitting with headphones in and with either a book to read or some kind of leather journal she’d see him write in, ring clad fingers always twirling a pen in between. He’d still be on the train when she got off at her stop on Rockefeller Center, and he’d be on it later in the evening, hopping off on a stop that came after Penn Station, since he’d still be on when she got off.

          He was handsome which, admittedly, was the first thing that caught her attention. Dark brown hair comprised of short curls that brushed his ears and forehead, darker eyes that never left the book or journal he held, and full lips that were often victims of his thoughtfully chewing teeth. If he wasn’t chewing his lip, he was absently biting on the end of his pen, and there had been occasions where she’d caught him realize what he was doing, scrunching his face in exasperation as he eyed the end of the pen before going back to writing. It was those moments where she’d seen him be the most expressive. Otherwise, his features were delicately balanced in a neutral absentness, sharp eyes too busy tracking the words he was either reading or writing to focus on anything else.

          Sometimes she’d sit with some distance between them on the opposite side of the train car, maybe towards the other end. Sometimes she’d end up sitting opposite of him, the music playing loudly through her earbuds to silence the echoing clanking of the subway car. Despite her attempts to look at the advertisements above his head or watch walls whiz by in the underground tunnels, her gaze would often travel back over to him, a magnet demanding her attention. That should be worrying, shouldn’t it? How every time they were on the subway together, he’s all she could look at, think of? She knew nothing about him and yet he occupied her thoughts more than her work to-do list.

          On a Tuesday morning, there were significant delays in the subways, underground construction obstructing people’s commute to work. So the F train was packed to the brim, no places to sit and even fewer spaces to stand, but she couldn’t risk waiting for another train, so she pushed herself on.

          Despite the air conditioning in the car, the packed bodies heightened the heat, and she mumbled soft excuse me’s to grasp a pole in the middle so her body didn’t jerk with the movement of the car. She found one nearby the door she would exit from, keeping her bag close to her body as she placed her hand right under a tattooed one. When the train started moving, she looked up, and the air rushed out of her lungs almost instantly.

          Her handsome subway man shared the pole with her, his tall figure looming over hers, backpack on, headphones in and dark eyes staring blankly towards the window, paying no mind to the dozens of bodies packed around them. It was unlucky that they were crammed in such a tight space; she felt like she couldn’t quite breathe at their proximity, the closest they’d been, and she willed herself not to be such a pathetic mess. How could she let a total stranger have such an effect on her?

          She did her best to keep her gaze away from, to look at the faces around her, except none were as gorgeous as the tall brunette standing right by her. They were so close—she could smell him. Faintly of cigarettes and old spice combined with a fresh musk that was a welcome change from the stale scent of the subway. God—he even smelled as good as he looked.

          Despite herself, she chanced a glance up at him, catching the movement of his sharp jaw. He was chewing gum. One hand gripping the pole while the other remained buried in the front pocket of his hoodie. How was he not boiling in the heat of the train? She took notice of his relaxed expression, unbothered—almost bored. It was strange seeing him standing, no book or journal in sight, though she understood due to the packed circumstances of the train. She hadn’t realized how tall he was until she was standing next to him. Her heart was still drumming wildly in her chest.

          Every time the train stopped at a station, she had to adjust where she stood, allowing for people to move off and on the train. She hated that she felt heat flood into her cheeks when she had to move in such a way that she was standing in front of him, hand still gripping the pole, to let people pass. Especially when he glanced down at her, taking a step to provide her with as much space as he could so she stood comfortably.

          In doing so, however, he adjusted his grip on the pole, hand lowering slightly, enough for his skin to come in contact with hers. Her throat tightened at the sudden shock that coursed through her body at the touch, fighting to keep her eyes from widening as her gaze flashed to their hands. Had she imagined that feeling, conjured up by her damn near obsession with this guy? Was the universe playing tricks on her?

          She glanced at him just as he moved his hand further up on the pole, his dark eyes locking with hers as one corner of his lips quirked into an apologetic smile as he mouthed, “Sorry.”

          It was the smallest of smiles, barely even such, but it was so pretty.

          She offered a shake of her head, forcing herself to push past her shock and mouth back, “It’s okay.”

          Her stop came too quickly after that, and she clenched her teeth when the rough movement of the commuters all but jerked her body around, inhaling sharply as she pushed her way towards the exit to step onto the platform. She was a bit sad about not getting one last look at the subway stranger, but it was alright. She’d see him again later, hopefully.

          She hadn’t noticed, though, that in the sharp movements of everyone around her, something valuable had slipped out of her bag in the train. It wasn’t until she was sitting at her desk at work, bag on her lap, did she realize with her heart sinking to the pit of her stomach that her planner was missing. She had left home with it, she knew. It was the one thing that kept her as organized as she was, kept track of every aspect of her life, even had pages where she’d write so many of her thoughts down. It made her feel like Katherine Heigl from 27 Dresses, but all jokes aside, that planner was her life. And it was gone.

#2: The 5:13.

          It would be comical how frazzled she felt if it wasn’t leaving her on the verge of falling apart. She’d somehow, by some miracle, made it through the first half of the day getting whatever she could done. There had been many moments where she’d reach for her planner to try and see what else she had to do, only to sink in her chair when all she grabbed was empty air and her hand would touch the hard slab of her desk.

          Her jaw had begun to ache from how tightly she’d clench it every now and then out of frustration, chastising herself for being so careless in losing something so important to her. The mere lack of her planner’s presence alone made her feel completely disorganized, which really spoke for her dependence on it, and now she’d need to buy another one and hope she wouldn’t be as irresponsible with it.

          She tried to distract herself with paperwork—though, it was actually work that she had to get done—when her desk phone began ringing. It was the receptionist at the front desk in the lobby. “There’s someone here to see you,” Sylvie spoke into the phone. “Says he’s got something of yours.”

          Her eyebrows knitted together, sitting up in her chair at that. She couldn’t imagine anyone who would come to visit her, but her curiosity piqued at the notion of this visitor having something of hers. Her heart jumped. Her planner? She’d written the address of her work on the front page, finding it safer to write down the building where there was security rather than her family home where she still lived in New Jersey.

          Quickly, she got up and made her way out of the office floor and towards the lobby, reaching the receptionist’s desk and shooting Sylvie a quizzical look when she didn’t see anyone nearby. Sylvia met her gaze before nodding to somewhere behind her, and she turned around only to have her breath stolen from her for the second time that day.

          Her—the, not her—subway stranger stood up from the cushioned bench he sat on as soon as his gaze met hers, and she stood, damn near frozen, as he made his way over to her. He wore his backpack with just one strap, allowing for it to swing forward to his chest as he unzipped it. His brown eyes met hers briefly before he dug his hand into the bag, and her eyes widened in both surprise and relief as he pulled out the familiar, beloved yellow and white planner.

          “This is yours, I believe,” he said. And suddenly her excitement for the return of her planner was second to her momentary shock of hearing his voice. The tone of his voice was as low as it was quiet, a subtle drawl hinting towards an accent that wasn’t American. He held out the planner, a slight quirk in his lips. “I found the address on the front page, figured I’d return it.”

          Her lips parted, mind running a mile a minute. The drumming in her heart returned as she looked up at him, his looming height not at all intimidating, and he patiently and expectantly returned her gaze. He didn’t quite look like the uninterested man she saw every day on the subway whose focus was only on the books he was reading, or the journal he was writing in. There was a pleasantness in his brown eyes, warm and inviting. The light pouring through the windows of the building seemed to reflect in his gaze as opposed to the dim lights of the subway they normally occupied.

          “I—Thank you,” she finally kicked herself into saying, her voice breathy. She was vaguely aware of the few people milling around them, minding their own business. All she could look at was the man in front of her. Taking the planner from him, she briefly caught sight of the few silver and black rings he wore, noticed letters tattooed on his hands, wondering what they meant, wondered if he had any others. Hugging the book to her chest, she added with a grateful smile, “You honestly saved my life.”

          He may have no idea how much she meant that. She could already feel some of her sanity come back—though, his presence in her building was already teasing that.

          He was kind. She could tell by his act of actually showing up to her place of work to hand back what she had lost. He didn’t have to, he could’ve easily left her planner on the floor of the train where he probably found it. The fact that he didn’t warmed her heart. It made it pathetically easier to fall for this subway stranger.

          He chuckled lowly, zipping his bag and wearing it properly, shoulders straightening as he peered down at her. “Yeah; I was gonna wait until I saw you on the train later but didn’t want to risk potentially missing you. Plus a book that thick, I figured it was important.”

          She couldn’t help the way her eyes widened at his words, breath catching in her throat. Had he noticed her on the train, too, like she noticed him? Maybe not in the same manner as she did—it wasn’t a surprise she’d look for him every time she stepped into the car, always finding childish yet joyous relief when she realized they once again were in the same car every time. Still, if he knew there was a chance he would see her later on in their evening commute, then that meant he’d noticed her before, at least once, right?

          Gathering her wits as quickly as she could, she smiled and said, “I really appreciate it. Thank you. . .”

           She trailed off, an almost hopeful quirk of her eyebrows, and she watched as what she deemed as recognition flash across his face as he offered, “Calum.”

          Calum. Subway stranger finally had a name and she had to stop herself from testing it on her own tongue just to see how it sounded. Still, she repeated, “Thank you, Calum.”

          He nodded, lips pursing momentarily. “No problem,” he said, gripping the strap of his bag and taking a step back. Calum glanced towards the windows, squinting slightly against the bright beam of sunlight washing through, before looking back at her with a small smile. Much different than his usual uninterested expression she stole glances at. “I’ll see you on the 5:13,” he said before he departed towards the elevators.

          She rolled her lips into her mouth, heart erratic. She wouldn’t assume that he was going to look for her, but his departing words still had her smile growing before she could fight it.

          Later on that evening, when she stepped into a car of the F train, she immediately found a spot to sit against the wall and claimed it for herself with a huff. The train wasn’t as busy as it had been in the morning and so the air conditioning worked well to cool down her skin after waiting in the otherwise smoldering station. She let out a sigh of relief, eyes closing as she tilted her head back and enjoyed, for a moment, the coolness of the car.

          As the train began moving, the clanking silenced by the music playing through her earbuds, she opened her eyes and looked straight ahead, only to find the handsome subway stranger—Calum, she now knew—looking right at her. He sat on the other side, backpack between his feet, and she straightened when he offered her a smile, like they were familiar.

          And then, to her surprise, he stood up and crossed the short distance. She watched him, gaze never leaving his brown eyes, taking out one earbud as he gestured to the empty seat next to her and asked, “May I?”

          Her lips parted before she nodded, bag in her lap as Calum took the seat to her right. In his hands is the familiar black journal she always saw him holding, a pen tucked into the spine. Even as he sat, he was taller than her, and her skin grew flustered as she wondered why he moved next to her, turning off her music.

          “Do you think it’s odd we’ve been on the same subway car almost every day for the past two months?”

          She looked at him once more, expression falling into one of surprise, her grip on her bag in her lap tightening at his question. Every day for the past two months. . . Did that mean he noticed, too? Noticed her? Her heart clenched in both excitement and nervousness; had he noticed the way she would stare at him? Was he creeped out? Shit, she never thought he caught her, always assumed he was too into what he was listening to or reading or writing to pick up on her stares.

          Though, she figured, if someone was staring as heavily and intently at her the way she did him, she’d probably notice too. God, how embarrassing!

          Desperately trying to ignore the heat creeping up her neck and pooling into her cheeks, she let out a short, albeit nervous, laugh before responding, “A little bit, yeah.”

          Odd, lucky—the sentiments were interchangeable.

          Calum chuckled, chin lifting, and she caught a glimpse of a silver chain around his neck. It matched the bracelet peeking out from under the sleeve of his hoodie. “What about fate?” he asked, smooth voice musing as he tilted his head. “Do you believe in that?”

          She looked at him, doing her best to keep her gaze on his eyes and not dare travel any lower. It wasn’t difficult. His intense brown eyes kept her trapped in place, though she would never try to escape, she realized. His question about fate stirred something in the pit of her stomach, fighting the tightness in her throat as she found herself returning, “Why do you ask?”

          A small, boyish smile played on the corner of his lips, charming beyond belief. It really did take a moment for her to adjust to such a pretty sight, so used to seeing nothing but neutral, sometimes thoughtful, expressions on his face. “I’m thinkin’ you forgettin’ your planner was some kind of act of fate. Maybe the universe got tired of putting us on the same subway every day and us never doin’ anything about it.”

          She gaped, lips parting yet no words coming out. He thought they were supposed to do something about it? She wanted to laugh out of incredulity. Was Calum telling her all those days spent admiring him from afar could’ve been spent maybe actually talking to him a lot sooner than today? Her head was spinning and there was only one stop left until she had to get off. Damn it.

          Finding her voice, she cleared her throat lightly before asking, “If we were meant to do something about it, why didn’t you?”

          “I was waiting on you,” Calum replied easily and her grip on her bag tightened. He let out a small laugh, deliciously raspy in sound. “Didn’t want you to think I was some kind of creep.”

          At that, she let out a gentle laugh of her own, raising her eyebrows in amusement. “So it was okay if I looked like the creep?”

          He grinned in response, a full on smile that was blinding and breathtaking all at once, softening sharp features and glimmering in his dark eyes. And despite her heart beating excitedly, she couldn’t help but note the otherwise calmness she felt. Talking to Calum seemed so easy, so effortless. Like she knew him enough to feel so comfortable. Maybe it was him, maybe it was her days admiring him silently from afar, or a combination of both. But she welcomed it.

          His smile remained, genuine and sweet, voice hinting at an accent she craved hearing more of. “You could never.”

#3: Finding Home

           The subway car lurched and she bumped backwards into Calum’s chest, left hand shooting out to grab the pole next to the seat to balance herself on her feet. But Calum was quick to react and used his right arm to drape around her collarbones, right hand gently grasping her shoulder to keep her in place. Her lips quirked up at his hard yet warm chest against her back, leaning into him and his touch as the car kept going at a speed that prompted inexperienced subway goers to lose their balance every now and again.

           It was past midnight and the subway was filled with people, all of whom were leaving the Halsey concert she and Calum had just attended at the Barclays Center. For a moment, she closed her eyes, her heart finally calming down after attending one of the best shows of her life, skin still warm from all the jumping, throat dry with a satisfying burn due to screaming lyrics alongside the performer and thousands of people in the crowd.

           The two of them had been looking forward to this concert for weeks after Calum managed to end up getting tickets, and she felt a content blanket fall over her as she stood in the train with him in the aftermath.

           Over the buzz of the bustling passengers, she heard Calum murmur in her ear, “Tired?”

           She hummed in response, offering a single nod, focus going to the thrill that shot down her spine at his warm breath fanning against her skin. This friendship was not one she had seen coming, but it had been nearly three months since Calum had returned her planner and they were still in each other’s lives. Three months of being friends, of getting to know one another, of going from strangers to anything but. Three months of her distant attraction to him growing into something so much more real and intense.

           No longer was Calum the cute boy from the subway she saw every morning and every evening. The stranger who sat with a book or journal, lost in the world of words or the music he was listening to instead of showing an ounce of interest in the world around him. Now he was her friend, a close one at that. He was someone she had been as attracted to as a stranger could appropriately be to another. Months later, Calum had shown her parts of himself, his heart and mind, that deepened whatever physical attraction she had felt and allowed her to genuinely, truly, fall for the man she had come to know.

           The more she knew him, the more she liked him.

           She knew his coffee order and liked when he surprised her with her own on their morning commute. She knew he enjoyed watching documentaries of all kinds and liked when he told her about them to stimulate her own interest. She knew his love for dogs and liked when he invited her over just so she could play with Duke. She knew he never left his home without his beloved leather journal and she liked him for divulging in her the poems he wrote, taking her breath away with how passionately and beautifully he articulated himself.

           Every day she was given a new reason to like him, to feel comfortable in his presence and safe next to him. Not knowing how he felt was all that was preventing her from letting him know how she felt, afraid of ruining something so good if he didn’t return her feelings. This friendship was a surprise, but it was one of her favorites. Still, she found herself wondering, hoping, if he was falling for her the way she had for him.

           “My throat hurts,” she found herself saying, her voice a bit hoarse to emphasize her statement, head leaned back against Calum’s collarbones.

           She felt him chuckle as much as she heard him, the sound tantalizing. “I know. I don’t think I’ve heard you scream so much.”

           She couldn’t help but snort as she responded, “That’s what she said.”

           “For fuck’s sake,” Calum muttered, the amused exasperation making her grin, biting her lower lip when she felt his mouth press to the top of her head. His familiar cologne enveloped her, and she reached her right hand up to grip his arm around her, not wanting him to let go.

           Glancing at the watch he was wearing, she noticed that there were still a few minutes until they reached the 14thstreet station, which is where she and Calum would go their separate ways. He would get off to head home, and she would remain until she reached Herald Square before transferring trains to head to Lexington Avenue to her brother’s apartment, who’s offered for her to spend the night instead of being at Penn Station by herself to go back home.

           “Y’know how before Halsey performed Bad At Love, she told everyone who was there with someone to kiss them?” Calum asked and her throat worked, hoping he hadn’t felt her still against him. She kept her gaze on the shoes of the people standing around them, all too busy with their own lives to notice them.

           She tried to keep her tone light, remembering that particular moment too well. “Yeah, when you very sloppily kissed my cheek,” she returned, a teasing tint creeping into her voice as her lips curled into a smile. His kiss had taken her by surprise, his stubble tickling her skin as he gave her a playful and wet kiss. She had laughed, but her heart was threatening to burst out of her chest.

           Had she just heard him swallow behind her? Was he nervous? With a slight breath, Calum quietly admitted, “I was overcompensating, I guess.”

           She didn’t turn to look at him, despite feeling the desperate urge to do so. His arm was still around his, embrace still warm and welcoming. What did he mean? What was he talking about? Licking her lips briefly, she dared to ask, “For what?”

           His hand was still on her shoulder and his thumb brushed against her skin, exposed by the tube top she chose to wore that night. An electric shiver coursed down the length of her spine when she felt Calum’s lips brush against her ear. “Not being able to actually kiss you.”

           His confession shook her more than the rattling of the subway car, her eyes widening and heart stopping so her brain could efficiently process Calum’s words. He was quiet, giving her the time she needed to reject what he said if she wanted to—when in actuality, that was the absolute last thing she wanted to do.

           Goosebumps raising on her skin, she turned in his embrace until she was facing him, their fronts pressed together as she peered up at the tall man. He was blonde now, curls short and soft, having dyed it some time back. She missed the dark hair, but she would be lying if she said the blonde didn’t work well on him. Too well. Exceptionally well.

           But it was his eyes she was focused on right now. Dark brown eyes holding every bit of their intensity as he gazed down at her, trying to gauge her reaction, her skin heating up as he took in every inch of her face, gaze lingering on her lips. He was fine with her knowing he was staring. She was fine with him staring.

           This—this is what she had been waiting for; some kind of sign that his interest in her was at the same level as hers was in him. And this was as big, loud, and bright of a sign as any, and it made it all the more difficult to fight the smile threatening to quirk at her lips. Wide and giddy and true.

           She tilted her chin ever so slightly, eyes locking with his, fighting the excitement as she steadied her tone and said quietly, “Unless you have a problem with PDA, there’s nothing stopping you from kissing me now.”

           Calum’s eyes flashed at her words, a dangerously exciting glint in them, and her words were all the incentive he needed before lowering his face to close the gap between them. Her eyes fell shut as she instantly returned the kiss, the feel of his soft lips and tickle of his stubble drumming her heart and shooting electricity through every nerve in her body as her hands gripped the lapels of his leather jacket. Calum kept her just as close, free hand cupping her cheek, the cool metal of his ring wonderfully startling against her heated skin.

           Not even the other passengers nor the consistent rattling of the subway car pulled their attention from one another as she pressed into Calum as he remained leaning against the door. He kissed her like he’d wanted to do so for longer than she anticipated, and she wasn’t any less eager. Her heart was erratic, her stomach a new home for the fluttering butterflies, and her lips constantly craving to taste his now that she knew what they felt like. She would never get enough, she knew.

           God. How long had she waited for this? How fucking funny that their first kiss was in a train similar to the one she’d first seen him on?

           What had Calum said, all those months ago, about fate? This felt like it.

           They pulled away just as the subway car began slowing down, signaling their approach to the 14th street station, yet her eyes remained closed and nose brushing against Calum as they caught their breaths. The night was ending too soon for her liking, knowing Calum would have to step off soon. She wasn’t quite ready to let go of him. Not after that kiss. Not after what just happened.

           The car stopped but they hadn’t pulled away. The doors opposite of them—not the ones they were leaning against—slid open and she was aware of people shuffling on and off the train. Calum didn’t make a move to pull away and leave, and so she reluctantly did, opening her eyes to look up at him. Breathlessly, she said, “This is your stop.”

           His brown eyes were on her, always on her. Calum’s gaze flickered past her towards the open door leading to the platform and he swiped his tongue across his lower lip. It only made her want to kiss him again. Looking back at her, he said, “I’ll drop you home. Take a train after.”

           Her heart jumped to her throat as his hand went from her cheek to her hip. There were less people on the train than before, and the doors would close any second now. She wanted to spend more time with him before the night ended, of course, but she still found herself saying, “You’re gonna waste money, Cal.”

           He scoffed, rolling his eyes as he shot her a look. His other arm reached up to hook around her neck, keeping her close once again. “Never a waste when it comes to you.”

           This time, she didn’t fight the grin from spreading across her face, vaguely aware of the doors shutting behind them before the familiar ding sounded and the train started moving again. Calum easily mirrored her grin, tugging her close to press his lips to her forehead, and she closed her eyes and sank into his embrace, his heart a steady beat under her ear as he gave her a loving, comforting squeeze as the train rattled on.

           She hadn’t really given the concept of fate much thought, but it wasn’t lost on her that the man who held her so close was one she’d see every day on the same train, who found something of hers on the floor of a train, and who had kissed her for the first time on a train. She smiled against his chest, arms tight around his waist, letting out a slow breath when Calum kissed the top of her head. The subway had only been a means of getting to work and getting home. Maybe fate played a part because it had so quickly become a way of finding home, too.

--

tags: @irwinkitten @softforcal @sweetcherrymike @loveroflrh @astroashtonio @meetashthere @loverofhood @captain-what-is-going-on @angelbbycal @singt0mecalum @hopelessxcynic @lfwallscouldtalk @bodhi-black @findingliam-o @softlrh @highfivecalum @calumsmermaid @erikamarie41 @quintodosuniversos @longlastingdaydream @babylon-corgis @lukehemmingsunflower @miss-saltwatercowgirl @pastelpapermoons @conquerwhatliesahead92 @rotten-kandy @metangi @neigcthood​ @ohhmuke​ @mindkaleidoscope​ @5sos-and-hessa​ @trustmeimawhalebiologist​ @vxlentinecal​ @pettybassists​ @vaporshawn​ @lu-my-golden-boi​ @visualm3nte​ @isabella-mae13​ @dontjinx-it​ @lifeakaharry​ @neonweeknds​ @antisocialbandmate​ @ixcantxdecidexwhosxmyxfave​ @calpalbby​ @grreatgooglymoogly​ @sunnysidesblog​ @miahelizaaabeth​ @dramallamawithsparkles​ @kaytiebug14​ @hoodskillerqueen​ @bitchinbabylon​ @empathycth​ @xhaileyreneex​ @inlovehoodx​ @bloodlinecal​ @sublimehood​ @madbomb​ @raabiac​ @britnicole11​ @outofmylimitcal​ @wildflower-cth​ @bloodmoonashton​ @vxidhood​ @gosh-im-short​ @thesubtweeter​ @mycollectionofnuts​ @cthwldflwr​ @everyscarisahealingplace​ @socorroann​ @talkfastromance4​ @calumftduke​ 

[gentlemancrow]

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

OK so I saw @hey-there-hunter ‘s JMart Wedding Challenge and I pretty much fan ficced immediately??  Like it was an instantaneous plot bunny that stabbed me in the brain and would not let me free until I made it exist.  SO HERE YOU GO!  Read it here or head on over to AO3 below!  And enjoy some unapologetically aggressive fluff with weddings!  Also subtitled someday Crow will stop abusing excessive astral imagery and symbolism for extended metaphors, but today is not that day.

Read on AO3 instead!

Written in the Stars Will Have to Do

Jonathan Sims always thought of himself as a man with a deep appreciation for the great literature of the world.  A passionate turn of phrase, crystalline motes of clear imagery like snowflakes reflecting light in his mental scape, a devastating contemplation on the nature of good and evil in the hearts of all mankind, everything that could express the beauty and tragedy of the world in ways he never could.  Prose was a bright paintbrush on a ragged canvas of the universe he had known from an early age was swathed in shadow and pain and evil, and those words on those pages, for at least a moment, were another world he could hold in his hands, could cradle and protect, could mourn.  He liked the power of them as well, of the tinkling brightness of alliteration, the oaky sophistication of a well-aged metaphor, the evocativeness of the idiosyncrasy in a simple simile, laying bare truths in ways he never could have articulated for himself.

There was one thing he could not abide by in language, however, one cardinal sin liable to besmirch any piece of lush and sparkling verse or prose and taint it forever.  And that was idioms.

Jon loathed idioms and their dismally quirky cliches dressed in familiarity’s tacky clothing almost as much as he hated spiders.  Perhaps it was something about their reliance on common knowledge and repetition.  He couldn’t bear reading the same book twice, or even a book that felt too familiar, it only made sense that hearing a hackneyed phrase repeated in that awful singsong sardonic tone of someone who knows full well they’re saying something asinine that has been repeated ad nauseum for millennia would scrape at the back of his skull and down his spine.  They were too whimsical and blasé, crutch words for when one’s limited lexicon came up empty, or worse, for ill comedic effect.  They reinforced that staunchly English notion of skirting about the true depth and breadth of emotion for clipped niceties and unfeeling banalities.  Idioms to him were mere verbal window boxes, colorful and meaningless, dressings for untold disasters behind the shining windows they peacocked before.  

He hated them all with vaguely equal rancor, but there was one he could definitely single out as the one he hated the most, and that was the one about hanging the moon.  Such and such thinks you hung the moon, to me you hung the moon, and so on.  This particular rhetorical felony attracted his wrath only marginally because any moon symbolism never failed to feel outlandish and infantile, a mawkish image of love and care rampant in nursery rhymes and cheap commercialized slogans for t-shirts and wall art.  That was the least of it.  He hated the idea of hanging the moon mostly because once, another lifetime ago now it seemed, Tim Stoker had lobbed it in his face in a fit of smoldering rage and he had been completely, complacently, ignorant of its magnitude.  

Funny thing was, he couldn’t even remember what the actual fight had been about any longer.  Though he could remember exactly where he was standing, cornered next to the file cabinet for the year 1985, January through February, and the label had been peeling up on the upper left-hand corner.  He remembered he’d discovered a hole in the elbow of his jumper that morning and he had been obsessing over it all day, fussing with the dangling green thread and tugging at the knit as if it might magically close the wound.  He’d put his finger clean through it with his arms crossed haughtily over his chest without even realizing he’d been fiddling with it when something flippant about Martin came out of his mouth.  It hadn’t even been cruel, he couldn’t even remember how Martin had come up in the argument in the first place, he could only remember Tim’s mouth moving like he wanted to say something else, then him forcibly stopping himself before he snarled.

“Yeah well, god knows why, but he thinks you hung the moon, so you might try treating him at the very least like a human being once in a while.”

It was such a small thing.  Small words for a small feeling cloaked in a chintzy veneer of idiomatic dismissal.  A trembling little bird cupped in his scarred and battered hands and smothered.  Or so he thought.  Sometimes trembling little birds turn out to be phoenixes, and those who looked to someone else to hang the comfort of a wise, silvery moon in the sky already have the hammer and the picture wire at the ready.

As far as Jon was concerned, the moon only rose on their Somewhere Else because Martin deigned to pull the strings every night, not him.

It was Martin who brought him tea every morning, set it down on the breakfast table with that little flip of the tag and the deft, one-fingered turn of the handle toward him.  It was Martin who scolded him because whites are a separate load, Jon, were you raised in a barn?  Martin who talked him through every episode of the Doctor Who reruns that were the only thing their ancient aerial could pick up.  Martin who planted flowers in the garden and brought muffins from the sweet old lady at the grocers because they traded baking recipes.  Martin who still looked at him with diaphanous pools of ethereal moonlight in his eyes and his smile like he alone hung it in the sky over his head to wash him in its radiance.

Even after everything.

Even after it had been Martin who had to hold the knife buried in his chest as he lay gasping wetly for breath in an alleyway in Another Chelsea to keep the hemorrhaging at bay.  Martin who had cupped his face in his bloody hands with tears streaming down his and forced him to focus, furious love blazing in his sea mist eyes as they locked with his, screaming at him and him only, heedless of anything else.

“Look at me.  LOOK at me, Jon!  Stay with me!  Stay with me, DAMN YOU!”

Stay with me had not been a plea, it had been a command.  He had never once said please because it was never an option.  Shivering, breathing blood through his teeth, the streetlights a fading, star studded halo in Martin’s strawberry blond curls be damned, he was right.  Against every tangled thread of fate twisted deep into his flesh, or perhaps because they had been the only thing that held his torn innards together, he made it to the part where he awoke a few fractured times to nothingness, and then to fingers he knew every inch of inextricably bound up in his and a fierce whisper in his ear.

“I’m here, Jon.  I’m still here.  I’ve got you.  I’m going to fix this.  I’m going to get us out of here.  We’re going to be okay.”

It had been Martin who orchestrated their clandestine escape from the hospital the moment they both agreed he was well enough to survive under his rudimentary medical care and before the authorities got too invested in an urban ghost story of two men who didn’t exist.  Not to mention one of which should, by all medical and logical law, be dead.  It had been Martin who had stolen the necessary antibiotics, drugs, and wound care supplies, Martin who had picked enough pockets to buy passage on a midnight train to the only place they could think to go, and expressly told Jon not to ask where he learned how, even though he knew full well he would later.  Martin who had fought for everything and kept him hidden and safe while he lay in a dingy hotel room somewhere in Scotland, drifting in and out of consciousness between kisses, cold compresses, spoonfuls of whatever he could get him to swallow and keep down, and desperate ‘I love you’s.

Martin had been the one who hung the moon even on the nights Jon couldn’t see it, just so he knew it was there, that the light might finally guide him home.  Not him.  He could have never done something so selfless and simple and beautiful.  No not him.  Not The Archivist.  How could he have ever known that?  Stupid, myopic, pedantic, all-seeing and blind.  A blustering, sanctimonious Tiresias in a sweater vest and half-moon glasses.  And how important was the moon, anyway that he was expected to hang it too?  Would not night still come and the stars still shine?  The stupid, vapid saying should have been about the sun anyway.  Something that nourished and guided and warmed.  Not the moon.  Not the thing of night and hungry wolves and quiet loneliness.  Not a thing of the darkness they fought and still not won, not exactly, not in a way that mattered.  How could he have known the weight of such a thoughtless, frivolous, meaningless phrase and how far and how long Martin had borne it for him to protect he who hung his moon?  

He could see the weight of it so clearly now.  He could see it especially on the darkest days, which came, in grotesque mockery, the moment they found something like their safehouse and rest at last.  Jon had conned his way into a job at the village library with an ancient head librarian who didn’t care much for too many questions, or background or credit checks, and was more than happy to pay in cash.  With Martin’s help of course.  Martin himself had taken up stocking at the village grocers, and their life had teetered onto something so close to quaint and normal it suddenly laid bare the gravity of the depths of darkness they had escaped.

No longer did they have to run, no longer did they have to fight, they could finally lay down the chase and curl in upon each other to lick their wounds in quiet.  But without the driving, primal instinct to live, to survive, that ushered in the days where all the hurt came back to roost and brood and fester.  The days where he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed, or the days Martin couldn’t bear the sound of his voice, or the days they shouted themselves hoarse, stormed apart for hours then came back, silent and broken, red-eyed and exhausted to hold each other and weep into the spaces between neck and shoulder where it still smelled like love and home.

He could see so painfully clearly the toll following him to the ends of the cosmos and back had etched its marks into his goodness, his body and soul, see how often he would walk down the road from their cabin, just a little ways, to stand on the heather spotted hills and gaze out into the frigid infinity of the gray sea.  Cold terror would grip him then, incite a desperate want to run after him, to throw his arms around him and bring him home, but also the fear it would only be to have him turn to mist and slip through his fingers forever.  He always had a cup of steaming tea waiting for him when he came back, just in case.

But again, and always.  It was Martin who would pick up Jon’s hands, kiss every slender, scarred finger through his tears and be the first one to utter ‘I’m sorry.’  Martin who told him with just a single scathing flash of stern blue eyes and not a single word uttered that he was certainly coming to bed and not banishing himself to the couch like an idiot.  Martin who wrapped him in his arms and warmth and boundless love and reminded him, “One way or another.  Together.  That was the deal, right?  You don’t get to back out now.  No returns, refunds, or exchanges, I’m afraid.”

And even through the deepest sobs he would find the laugh Jon didn’t think was in him.  Martin sifted through the mire and the muck and held fast to the tiny, shining things so easy to lose in the darkness.  Things Jon was certain were lost forever, only to be reignited and hung in the brightening sky of their story.  Even if they weren’t quite the moon yet.

It had also been Martin who, on a perfectly ordinary day, on a simple walk through the local farmers market, stopped to peruse one of the usual unremarkable stalls filled with crystals and oils and trinkets.  Jon had wandered off to procure the parsnips and the strawberries, unrelated recipes Martin swore, he had been tasked with finding.  When he returned he found him, a radiant monument tall among the faceless locals, rusty curls caressing his face in the salty breeze, carved of marble and rose quartz and gazing down at a pair of hematite rings on a velvet display box.  His eyes were distant, but not in the enthralled, disembodied way they were when he looked at the sea, or the broken way when they weren’t speaking, but in the contemplative, regarding of puzzle pieces way when he would look into the fire during their talks and turn his words in his mind over and over again like a rock tumbler until they were polished just right.

“Getting into crystals now, are we?” Jon had joked, “Surely I’m not so dull to be around that that’s becoming an attractive hobby.”

Martin snorted and shook his head.

“Supposed to mean healing, or grounding, or something.  Aligning your meridians, I think the lady said?  Whatever that means,” he elaborated, reaching out to touch.

They clinked weightily together, thick and glossy and the dark astral gray of a moonless night.  Martin turned over the card that went with them and read.

“’A grounding stone that belongs to the planet Mars.  It strengthens our connections to the earth and aids the warrior on their journey.  It is a stone of invincibility, but also fragility.  It balances yin and yang energies with its magnetic properties for the perfect reflection upon one’s own soul, astral, physical, and spiritual.’”

“Hematite, is it?” Jon asked, “Also more commonly called bloodstone.  You know if you scratch it, it leaves a red mark.  Like it’s bleeding.  Watch.”

He picked up one of the rings and firmly ran it down the corner of the card Martin had been reading from.  Sure enough, the black stone had left a faint, but starkly crimson mark on the yellowed paper.

“It BLEEDS?” Martin exclaimed in horror.

“It’s just a kind of iron oxide, so, rust, basically,” Jon explained with a chuckle, “Kind of weirdly romantic if you think about it?  This intimidating shiny black stone like armor, made of iron to boot, but with a bleeding heart at its core.”

“I just thought it was pretty, I didn’t know it bleeds,” Martin had laughed in that incredulous way he always did when Jon was telling him something he didn’t actually want to know, but appreciated anyway.

“I find that the strongest, prettiest things often do,” Jon had said in reply.  He remembered saying that particularly clearly, waxing poetic, feeling a swell of affection for the hugely beautiful man he leaned against and was adorably aghast at bleeding rocks.

“Yeah, I reckon they do,” Martin murmured back.

And then his cheeks had flushed bright red under his freckles and the stone steps of his shoulders crumbled a bit under the crushing ancientness and vastness of what he had originally been pondering.

“So, I mean, before you spoiled it with the blood thing.  I was thinking… Well, I was just having a browse and I saw these and I thought they were quite fetching, and then the lady told me they meant grounding and healing and a journey, like on the card.  A-And there were two of them, all by themselves, and everything else was so colorful and flashy these were just so… Um.  Maybe the blood and rusty iron thing makes it more poetic now, actually?  I don’t know.  Sorry I-  This sounded so much better in my head.”

It wasn’t his fault, Jon remembered thinking.  Martin couldn’t find the words because there weren’t any.  Not in this universe or any other.  Not for what they’d gone through, and especially not for what they meant to each other.

“I guess I was just thinking.  If… I bought one.  And wore it.  Sort of like.  Um.  You know.  Would… Would you-?” he had asked, his voice trembling.

Jon had never said yes, yes of course he would, faster or with more conviction in his life.  And there was that look again, rising from the ashes, that flooding of golden, unbound love and light, of eyes turned sky blue, of looking at the man who hung his moon in the sky come back to him.  He could still hang Martin’s moon all over again after so many nights of black clouds and darkness, even if it was only paper.  They’d paid for the rings in rumpled bills, exchanged them right then and there, and kissed each other as the crowd of oblivious people in a world they did not belong in flowed like a river around them.  Jon forgot the bag with the parsnips and strawberries.

But it didn’t matter.  It didn’t even matter that Martin’s fit nicely on his ring finger, but Jon had to wear his on his thumb, and even then sometimes on a chain around his neck for fear of losing it.  It didn’t matter that it was the closest thing they were ever going to get to a proposal and a wedding, consigned now forever to the shadows in a borrowed reality with only each other.  Because it was theirs, and they could begin to figure out how their broken pieces fit back together again.

But like most things that don’t matter, it didn’t until it did.

It began as simple things.  Seeing a wedding on some program they weren’t actually paying much attention to and Martin making a flippant, innocuous comment as he combed his fingers lovingly through Jon’s long and silvered chestnut hair in his lap about how he would have loved to have a cake that had a different flavor on every tier at their wedding.  Just so everyone could have something they liked.  And Jon woke up from his half catlike stupor and looked up at him with such aching regret as those words settled into the pit of his heart alongside ‘he thinks you hung the moon.’  

And soon they began to gather a collection of completely innocent remarks that ran the gamut from ‘would they have worn black or white?  Or one of each?  I don’t know… does it really matter?  And were these engagement rings or wedding rings?  I don’t know.  Neither?  both?  And do we say husband instead of boyfriend now?  Fiancé?  Whatever you want, Martin…’ To the heavier, cancerous weights that sank to the bottom of his gut, even below hanging the moon, like ‘I know Tim would have thrown the most amazing bachelor party for both of us, and his mum had always talked about him getting married someday like it was a farfetched pipe dream, but she would be happy for them, he thinks.’

He could never answer those questions.  There was too much at stake, too much finality and familiarity in them, a strange weightlessness in a world that weighed far too much.  The sun and moon continued their eternal dance of time, ignorant, unbothered, but Jon kept collecting those silent debts of normal life, secreting them away in a hidden singularity in his heart that only grew heavier and metastasized farther the more times Martin walked out at night, not him, beaming starlight from his eyes and his fingertips, to hang the moon again.  So soft, so full of wooly cows and pink heather and the smell of tea and sea salt and Martin’s shampoo on the pillow next to him did it become, that it was almost inevitable that one morning Jon awoke absolutely convinced none of it could be real.  

The moment he decided that, everything made so much more sense.  He could breathe again.  There was a reason he could never sit still, never just feel at ease or talk about the future like it was a real thing that could still happen.  He knew why the silence made his brain itch and why he still glanced around corners and glowered at anyone who dared let their gaze linger on his Martin too long.  Why Martin’s ring fit and his didn’t.  There was too much debt to the universe to be paid, too many broken promises, too many corpses in his wake, he had done nothing to deserve this idyllic life of love and peace and smallness and Martin.  It had to be Her doing, It’s doing, some carefully woven torture chamber that would lure them to the apex of their joy, the center of the web, where they would just be devoured over and over to empty husks and set up like chess pieces to fill with love and light just to knock down again.  He wasn’t free after all.

Jon had been halfway into his coat and halfway out the door to do, he didn’t know, something, anything, to go to the library to use their computer and research something he didn’t know he was looking for when Martin had seized his hand and whirled him around.

“Jon.  STOP.  It’s over.”

And he’d stopped.  He’d looked into those baleful blue eyes, fallen into their depths, landed on the precipice of madness, and broken.  It wasn’t over.  Not for him.  He finally understood.  It was still there.  The Eye.  It always had been.  Though not really, he understood slowly as he wept on his knees in their doorway into Martin’s chest, it had indeed closed forever on him, but it lingered as distant static, like a phantom limb, a metaphysical itch that could never be scratched.  Martin had cradled him close and listened, listened so patiently as he ripped the jagged black fear from the deepest, ugliest part of his heart, hauled it up bloody and messy from his throat and finally laid it bare for both of them to see.  And when it was done and he couldn’t cry anymore Martin had locked eyes with him in a way that made him forget any others could have ever existed outside of crystalline blue and filled with moonlight.

“Listen to me.  I know you think you have some cosmic burden to bear.  That you’re still wearing some… some fucked up crown and sitting on a throne of skulls and death and eyeballs or whatever image you want to put there, and that you have to sit and hurt and watch over everything so it doesn’t happen again, but...  Sorry, Jon, but that’s bullshit.  It’s just a scar now.  That’s all.  Just like the rest of them.  Ugly and beautiful and proof that you —Jonathan Sims— are still alive.  And you are not The Archivist anymore.  You’re just mine.  My Jon.”

He’d held his Jon’s stunned face in his hands and peppered kisses over the pock marks in his skin, over the slash on his throat, the burnt fingers that still couldn’t bend quite right, even the one on his chest, the one almost always hidden by fabric but the one he didn’t need to see to find.  His heart and fingers would always remember exactly where it was.  And he’d kept his lips there a moment, then turned his ear to his chest and wrapped his arms around his waist to listen to his heartbeat like a trembling little bird.

“If I can hear it and feel it.  So can you,” he whispered.

Unsteady fingers curled desperately into Martin’s silky locks, hematite loop cool against his scalp, “Thank you…”

Martin stayed for the kiss on top of his head he knew was coming and smiled.

“Okay, so it’s simple to fix if you think about it,” he murmured into Jon’s chest, “We just need that thing, you know?  The thing that makes you feel like you’re still doing the thing, but you’re not.  What was the word for it again?  A placeholder?  Like when you quit smoking and you hold a pencil or a straw or something that’s not actually a cigarette so you can wean yourself off the ritual?”

Jon blinked owlishly down at him as he dried his eyes.

“A… placebo?  Are you talking about a placebo?”

“Yeah!  That’s it!  We just need to find you a placebo for Knowing things!  That’s all.  Like… reality shows, or-or zoo cams or something!  We’ll figure it out together.  Alright, love?  I promise you.  It’ll be okay.”

Jon was skeptical, so very skeptical, but if Martin was determined to find a balm to soothe his jagged, ontological scars he would happily play the part of lab rat for him.  They’d tried a myriad things to replicate the feeling of Knowing and looking something deep within him still craved.  The zoo and animal livestreams were a bust, cute and entertaining as they were, but animals weren’t ever the purview of The Eye and the camera itself was barely a scrap.  Reality shows came closer, the more salacious the better, but even that temporary fix wore off when Jon’s disgust with the overall content and participants outweighed any benefit.  Martin was just happy to have finally converted him to Bake Off, at least.  They tried people watching in the square in the village, but it made Jon far too self-conscious and guilty.  He used the binoculars exactly once, and that was to look at the cows in the fields, and the choose-your-own-adventure books Martin had been certain would strike a sagacious chord wound up in the donation bin at the library.  But that was when he was struck with a bolt of genius.

Unbeknownst to Jon, which brought him no small measure of glee, Martin ordered, received, and then set up with a literal bow in their back garden the finest telescope he could afford on his meager savings.  He’d researched for days, asked on every amateur astronomer forum he could find, and had it delivered to the grocers so he could make it a proper surprise.  He’d even gone so far as to attack and blindfold a hapless Jon the moment he made it home from work on the day it was ready, and stood behind him giddily bouncing as he tore the tea towel away from his eyes.

“A… Telescope?” he’d blurted dumbly.

“Yes!  It’s perfect, right?  I asked around to find the one that had all the best features, and this one has the best overall magnification and the most lenses, but it doesn’t have the little satellite positioning thing?  I figured you wouldn’t want that anyway, you always like figuring things out and finding things on your own better.”

Martin had been positively radiant.  Jon had just stared at the gawping black tube and chewed the inside of his cheek as he processed what to say.

“I mean… thank you, Martin, really.  It was a sweet thought, but if the binoculars didn’t-“

“Screw the binoculars!  This is different!” Martin happily insisted, “You can look at so much more!  Stars and planets and galaxies and what have you, and it can maybe be sort of like you’re looking for other worlds?  Wormholes or whatever?  Or signs of The Fears and where they’ve gone?  Or even if the stars are the same here as they were back before?  Space literally has so many things to LOOK at we can’t even count them!  This has got to be it!”

Jon tried to smile and laugh and agree to try it out, at the very least, if only because Martin was beaming so sweetly with pride and hope.  Though that first night he didn’t, ushering them back in with promises of tomorrow, Martin, I promise tomorrow.  Tomorrow had been a lie.  As had been the next night.  In fact, it took Jon a full week to even remember they even had a telescope, and that was only after getting the smuggest, Cheshire grin out of Martin after casually mentioning there would be a visible, if partial, lunar eclipse that night.  He’d relented, only because he’d entrapped himself, and they’d both bundled up, looked in the manual for the best size lens to view the moon with, poured a few glasses of wine, and turned their eyes to the stars.

Martin had gone first, gripping the eyepiece and adjusting the focus all the while gasping in awe.  It was so beautiful he’d burst into poetry with a crooked grin.

“Art thou pale for weariness?  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, wandering companionless among the stars that have a different birth, and ever changing, like a joyless eye that finds no object worth its constancy?  Sounds a little familiar, eh?” he joked, casting a wry look over his shoulder.

Jon rolled his eyes fondly.

“Gross.  Keats again?”

“Nope, Shelley this time, and even he thinks you ought to have a look at the moon.  I think you’ll find you have a lot in common.”

Jon had sighed obligingly and shuffled to the telescope, fully expecting to look at something bright and round with a bit of a shadow on it that was distinctly unremarkable, have another glass of wine, and then go back inside to snuggle by the fire.  What he saw in that tiny pinhole of light pierced straight through the hazel brown of his eye and plunged him into another world entirely.

The sands of the moon glowed the purest white in the refracted light of the distant sun with which it waltzed.  He could see in crisp, shadowy relief the innumerable scars she bore, the depth and breadth of Ptolemaeus, the boundless lonely flatness of the maria, named for the oceans they were once thought to be, an insult to the rock plains forged a millennia ago in birth by cataclysmic fire.  Every crater remained wrought in perfect, frozen detail with no erosion or foliage to slowly heal them over, and she beamed them proudly, ostentatiously in her heavenly light.  A hulking, ancient protectorate, hung by the hands of creation at the dawn of time for a fledgling planet, hundreds of thousands of miles away, and yet so crystal clear and unafraid as he perused her millions of years of cosmic sentinel through a lens.  It was dwarfing, humbling, viscerally awe inspiring in a way he dared not voice for fear of snuffing out the fragile glow of wonder and excitement welling in his chest he had been so certain was gone forever.

Astronomy had never been something that had particularly interested Jon, back when his entire reality from the moment his childish hands had touched a single book was spent peering into shadows and watching his own back.  There was no point in wondering what lay among the stars when danger and death lurked so close behind with slavering jaws ever poised at his throat on terra firma, but now.  Now, he had been living in an alternate world, dimension, reality, somewhere, he couldn’t even say for sure.  He’d been hurled potentially through the very stars that twinkled coquettishly above, flashed through their nebulous veils and curtains under their indifferent gaseous gazes, but seen nothing.  Here was a vast expanse of complete chaotic indefiniteness inviting him in to see what few had ever seen, to guess and hypothesize and gesture wildly at secrets only the stars could keep.  To Know.

Jon had jerked back so suddenly from the telescope to survey the entirety of the astral dome above them that Martin had choked on his wine.

“Jon?  Are you quite alright?”

“Yes, I…” he’d murmured, only even half hearing that Martin had said anything at all, stars reflected in his wondering dark eyes, “I’m fine, I just… How… How much more can this see?  How deep does it go?”

Jon hadn’t seen the victorious smirk on Martin’s face as he set down his wine glass and picked up the instruction manual and lens guide.  They’d watched the rest of the eclipse, of course, marveling through the lens at the inky trickle of shadow over craggy white, but then they’d changed the lens to the strongest one, according to the guide, and spent the rest of the evening triangulating their position beneath their slice of the universe and plotting out the various stars, planets, and constellations above.  Jon had even dashed inside to grab a mostly blank notebook and had filled several pages with notes and observations and things to research later, all while Martin held back tears watching him come so alive over a project he didn’t even know he needed.  Eventually though, sleepiness and cold claimed him, and he kissed his beloved goodnight and left him, more than gladly, to ride out the intellectual flare up until it burnt both him and itself out.  

Martin had no clue what time it was when he finally returned, and it didn’t even matter.  All that mattered was at some point, a practically frozen Jon had climbed into bed, snuggled up close behind and wrapped his arms around him to kiss the back of his neck so softly like the wings of a butterfly and whisper.

“Thank you.”

Another victorious smirk and a loving murmur.

“Told you so.”

Where there had been nothing but an Eye shaped hole in him, scarred around the edges and aching in its vacuum, Jon had filled it with the names of nebulas and quasars, of the myth of Andromeda, and Orion, and Castor and Pollux, or Hercules, and why they had all been hung in the stars for eternity.  The stories were much the same as he remembered, but he’d found slight eccentricities, tiny irregularities in the sky which fascinated him even more so.  Night after night he would look at a different astral body, chart it down in his notebook, then come bounding in with starlight beaming from his eyes and his fingertips with some cry of eureka.

“Martin!  Did you know here Polaris is in the south and Sirius is in the north?”

“Martin!  Did you know the Andromeda Galaxy is actually a little closer to the Milky Way here?”

“Martin, you have to come see this!  Oh, no it’s not weird this time, it’s just I finally got Saturn in the telescope and you can actually see the rings!”

His nightly herald would always be different, but Martin would always rise from the comfort of the couch, put his slippers on, and let Jon talk as long as he needed to about his latest discovery, watching him smile again while he, too, watched the matching smile it never failed to ignite illuminate Martin’s face and they lit each other up in the fused brilliance of a binary star.

Martin no longer hung the moon for Jon, he’d finally just up and quite literally given it to him, and there was no mortal way to repay him for that.  Or so he’d thought.  It came to him, as most flashes of brilliance do, on a night he hadn’t even been thinking about it at all.  All he had been doing was sitting in a lawn chair with his telescope long after Martin had gone to bed, chewing his pencil idly, vaguely missing a cigarette and pondering notes on Vega and Lyra between watching it through his lens.  He’d been stuck for days on Vega and its potentiality for another solar system and what that could imply for their new Earth and their new sun, as well as Lyra and the tragic tale of Orpheus and his doomed love.  Even in their new reality he still turned back at the end of the story, still could not contain the roiling, effusive adoration to his own downfall.

Bitterness had risen like bile in the back of Jon’s throat as he replayed the myth again in his head, unsure why it was vexing him and rewinding in his brain so torturously.  “Stupid, stupid man, if he’d only just…” he’d thought again and again, each time giving the star-crossed musician a different decision, a different choice, urging him down another path somewhere, anywhere along his journey, but in the end, he’d always looped back around to the original.  It was the point of the story, after all.  Not so much the love itself or even the loss of it, but the power of it over one man and the creation born from his mourning and eventual destruction.  Patently Greek.  But the chorus would always begin again in Jon’s head.  If he’d kept his Eurydice, if his songs had been happy, if he hadn’t spent the rest of his life mourning so intensely he was eventually destroyed for it, would he have become the paragon of healing he was, the oracle, the lynchpin of the fate of the world he had eventually become?  Which of them was the stupider man?

Jon was only mortal now, he was no longer all-seeing oracle and dark savior, he had no authority to say, but it was a trifle easier to ponder the hubris of Orpheus instead of his own.  He couldn’t help but think, achingly, sometimes the heroes just deserved to pull their beloved from the pit of Tartarus, promise to love them for eternity, and then simply get married, ride off into the sunset, and live happily ever after.  A story wasn’t a story if it didn’t write itself upon the very bones and sinews of its heroes, that was the law of the universe, but when the story was done and the cracks and fissures in their tissues had faded to myth and legend, what became of the heroes who did not die a tragic or heroic death and were not hung in the stars?  What happened to heroes left behind?  Twisting his bloodstone ring on his thumb idly as it caught the shivering fire of those stars in its dark mirrored surface, the musical arrow of the muses pierced his heart, wide-eyed in wonder.  He’d asked the universe, but he already knew the answer.  He’d always known.  He knew, and he knew it with such clarion joy as he had never known anything before.

He could no longer be the man who hung Martin’s moon, he hadn’t been for a long time.  That much was clear to him, but he could certainly do something else.  Perhaps they had grown past the need for moon hangings in the first place.  He knew how their story ended.

It took months of saving, secreting, preparation, and then finally just simply waiting for the perfect, clear night.  The moment it came, the moment he knew it was the night, Jon struck without hesitation.  Poor Martin wanted nothing more than to collapse onto the couch, into Jon, when he returned from a late shift at the grocers, but found himself instead stuffed right back into his coat with a picnic basket in hand and hauled out into the frigid night in a flurry of Jon with little time to protest.  He bounded up the hill behind their little cottage beneath a perfect blanket of stars flaming coldly overhead, trailing Martin’s hand in his behind with his breath coming in silvery puffs of clouds, and paying no heed to the whining.

“Jon, whatever it is, does it have to be NOW?” Martin panted, “I am absolutely knackered and it’s beyond freezing and wouldn’t it be nicer just to curl up with a cuppa and fall asleep in front of Star Wars or something?  Doesn’t that have enough stars and space in it?”

Dauntless, Jon only tugged harder.

“There’s tea in the basket, and I’ve seen Star Wars.  And yes, it has to be tonight, it’s really important, I promise.”

“Look.  I love you.  So much.  You know this, and please know it is with the utmost love and deepest affection in my heart that I point out that you say that every time, and you’ve still shown me Pluto like, a hundred separate times.  While I quite like it, and I still feel sorry for it being bumped out of the solar system and all, it’s just a dot?  How many times can you look at a dot?” Martin sighed.

His words finally threw a caltrop into Jon’s warpath, and he paused, turning over his shoulder woundedly.

“What?  No, it’s not Pluto, I swear just- Please, Martin?  I’ll never ask again if you don’t want to, but just for tonight, please?” he pleaded.

Martin winced, and immediately folded under the onslaught of doleful honeyed brown eyes under a nimbus of stars.

“Oh, lord there you go with the puppy dog eyes.  Okay, okay fine, but there better be a nip of whiskey in this,” he chided lovingly with a gesture at the thermos in the basket.

The smile flared back to life brightly on Jon’s face as he turned back up the craggy little footpath to the top of the hill.

“Of course, hot toddy with tea.”

“Ooh, lovely, you do know me.”

The rest of the way was trivially short to the small, flat hilltop surrounded by heather where Jon had already set up a blanket and the telescope over a pristine vista of the dark line where the stars sank into the sea.  He ushered Martin to sit down first, then perched on his hip beside him and poured him a generous helping of tea and whiskey from the thermos before pouring his own.

“Thanks, much.  Right then, what exactly are we up here to look at that we couldn’t see from our garden?” Martin asked, accepting his cup of potent hot toddy and sipping it gratefully around the lemony steam that billowed up.

Taken aback by the sudden logic lobbed into the center of his romantic posturing, Jon looked momentarily stunned, as if someone had slapped him upside the head.

“Oh!  Oh, um, well-!  Ahah, that is to say- Uh.  There is a reason for all this.  It’s not that we couldn’t see it from our garden, we very much could have.  B-But it’s so beautiful up here, and you can kind of hear the sea? ��And it’s nice and peaceful, and the heather is still blooming a bit and um…” he trailed off, cheeks burning.

“Okay…?” Martin probed, frowning a little.

“Er, actually...  It’s less about the stars than it is- W-Well it is about the stars.  Let’s get that clear.  But to be completely honest I mostly just… I-I well.  There’s something I need to tell you?”

Jon was ill-prepared for the look of abject horror on Martin’s face as he went paler than the moon overhead.

“Shit, what is it?  Did you find something?  You saw something?  There’s been a sign of The Fears?  Oh god it’s not HER is it?” he asked frantically, nearly slopping hot toddy all over his lap.

“What?  No!  No, none of that!” Jon spluttered, aghast.

Martin regained a modicum of color in his face and breathed in measuredly.

“Okay, so then what is it?  Oh god, you’re not… Jon you’re not ill, or something, are you?  Please, you can just tell me if-“

“No, I am not ill either, damn it, Martin!  If you would just listen to me!  I-!” Jon moaned exasperatedly, “I just wanted to do something… nice.  Something nice for you.  And nicer than I normally would because I am apparently much worse at crafting romantic moments than I thought and-“

“Wait…” Martin cut in, eyes gleaming with realization, “Jonathan Sims… Are you grand gesturing?”

“Well I am certainly trying but you are making it exceedingly difficult!” he retorted, red in the face and breathless.

“Oh my god, you are!  I’m so sorry!” Martin laughed brightly, “Oh god Jon you poor thing I’m so sorry, I’m awful, I’m the absolute worst!  No please!  Don’t let me spoil it.  Please go on.”

Grinding the heel of his palm into his forehead, Jon tried to summon the words again, only for Martin’s strong, warm hands to take it from him and tip his chin up to gaze into his eyes.

“Hey.  Hey, Jon.  Look at me,” he breathed, looking into his eyes idolatrously, “I’m sorry.  I love you.  You can tell me.”

Taking the steadiness from those clear blue depths he needed, Jon focused on them, on the strawberry blond curls tossing in the icy breeze, of the kiss of chilled pink under his freckles, and that eternal, sunshine smile.

“Okay,” he finally answered, smiling softly.

With a deep, shuddering breath, and a long swig of whiskey laced tea for good measure, Jon drew himself up and fished deep in his soul for the words he had waited a millennium to say.

“Okay… So here it is.  Um… I’ve um, I’ve had a lot of time alone lately with my new hobby, as it were.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  A lot of it is overly complicated and ridiculous and doesn’t deserve to live outside of my head but… a lot of it has been about you, about us.  And I know we don’t need to-to put a label on us or put us into a… a box or anything like that.  But every time I look at this ring on my finger, I can’t help but remember we never actually talked about what they meant,” he began, holding out his left hand and fidgeting with the loose band around his thumb.

“Oh Jon, don’t worry about that.  It was just me being a big sappy, sentimental dork.  And if I recall correctly, we’d had a pretty awful row a night or two before, and I just wanted to feel close to you again, I guess?  We both know what they mean to us.  It doesn’t matter,” Martin assured him sweetly.

“Except that it does!” Jon insisted passionately, “That’s the point!  You are a big sappy, sentimental dork, Martin.  I bet you were the kid that had a dream wedding all planned in a notebook with pictures cut out of magazines and everything.  I adore that about you, but big sappy sentimental dorks should have big sappy, sentimental moments like huge, expensive seaside weddings with three-flavor cakes and all your friends and family and rose petals and dove releases and whatever else your heart could dream up.”

Martin snickered and shook his head, charmed at least by the mental image of kissing Jon on a seaside cliff at sunset while doves flew in glorious formation around them and everyone they had ever known and loved cheered.

“Pfft, I don’t need a grand wedding and all that, I just need-”

“Me.  I know,” Jon finished for him with a smirk, “I knew you’d say that.  Maybe not.  But you deserve one.  And I know I don’t use that word lightly, but it’s necessary in this case.  You deserve it.  All of it.  Me on one knee with a ring in a box, you deserve us picking out flowers and tuxedos and arguing over the font on the invitations.  You deserve Tim’s awful bachelor party and laughing at me at the altar because I had to read my vows off a card and they’re still so stiff and awkward and they pale in comparison to the beautiful poem you wrote about me.  You deserve smiling so hard your cheeks hurt and crying as we exchange rings.  All of it.”

Martin weighed his words carefully on his tongue with a sip of his boozy tea to chase away ghosts of things that never even were.

“I mean, sure, not going to say I never wanted that.  And I did have that stupid wedding notebook, by the way.  But all that became a pipe dream the minute we wound up here, right?  No use being upset about something that can never be.”

“That may be so, but the crux of it is… you also contented yourself with the idea of it never coming true not because we’re here, but because you didn’t think I wanted it,” Jon answered, his unspoken truth hanging heavy in the chill night air between them, “Every time you tried to tell me you wanted to be with me forever, I brushed it off and painted it gray and tucked it away and carried on the way we always were like nothing happened and it didn’t matter.  Because it was alright, really, you were just so happy to have what we have, that I didn’t die in your arms that night, that we were still together after everything.  That I at least kept that promise after I’d broken so many.  You were so grateful just for what you were gifted after we thought we would end with nothing you didn’t dare think to ask the universe for more and I am so, so sorry it took me so long to see that, Martin.  I’m so sorry.”

His voice broke.  The breath caught in Martin’s chest as he reached out to touch his wrist comfortingly.

“Jon, I-“

“No, please.  Please let me finish I… I can’t give you any of those things.  I can’t give you our friends back, I can’t give you cake and doves and the sunset and crying through vows in front of the vicar.  I can’t even give you an elopement at the register office because we still don’t legally exist.  And I guess for a long time I resented myself for that.  For all of it.  For stealing that from you, for dragging you through literal hell only to give you a shadow of a life stuck here with me because I betrayed you.  But- no stop, don’t say anything yet I’m not done.  B-But now I finally realize.  You’re right, Martin.  You were always right.  It doesn’t matter.  Those things are all just… things.  I said to you once, a long time ago, and I’m still not even sure if you really heard me, that I didn’t want to just survive.  It was true then, and maybe it wasn’t true for a while, but it’s certainly true again.  We did not fight tooth and nail to just survive.  We fought to live, and live together.  So what I’m saying is… I know now I don’t have to give you tuxedos and white roses as long as I give you something… Something to prove to you that you are my everything, my entire world, something to show you that I love you more than I have loved anything in my entire life.  That I want forever with you.  S-So I…” he trailed off, sucking in his breath to give his gesture of undying love the ardor and grandeur it deserved, “I bought us a star.”

The proclamation rang out like the toll of a bell, its gravity sonorous and quaking.  Martin blinked.

“You… I’m sorry?” he squeaked.

Jon set his empty thermos cup aside, flailed his hands in the air and shook his head frantically

“I-I know, I know it sounds mental just hear me out!” he protested, “Technically I didn’t buy the star, if we want to get picky about it.  I mean obviously no one can own a star.  Just the rights to name it?  It’s a thing you can do online.  I was a bit gobsmacked it was real to be honest.  I just had this silly idea when I was out looking at the stars.  I was looking at Lyra and thinking about you and Orpheus, and I… W-Well I just typed it in, ‘can you name a star?’ and it came right up.  Right then and there.  It um… comes with… hold on.”

Remembrance placed a gentle bookmark down on Jon’s fluttering thoughts, and he rummaged in the picnic basket for a moment before pulling out a navy-blue manila folder covered in stars and full of the paperwork and certificates that had come with registering theirs.  He handed it to Martin, who took it in place of his own empty cup, numb, muscles quivering under his jaw, and opened it to the glittering gold typeface that proclaimed ‘Congratulations!’.

“It comes with paperwork, too!  See?  So, it’s official, at least?  The Jon-Martin star.  Not a marriage license I know, but at least our names are together on something legal?  Our real names?  I figured even if we manage the fake identity thing we’d have to get married as not us.  Not really.  So…  I-It could be like our marriage certificate?” Jon explained, chewing his lower lip.

Martin said nothing as his hand turned the pages of the documentation, his eyes distant in a way Jon had never seen before.  Not disembodied and enthralled, not broken, not even regarding puzzle pieces.

“Oh!  Um, also I-I got us a binary star.  I forgot to mention that bit,” he went on, filling the sudden void, “It’s, ah- What a binary star is- It’s technically two?  But they’re caught up in each other’s gravity and they orbit each other so tightly they look like one star together, one that just shines a little brighter.  They’re bound together forever by the most powerful cosmic force in the universe.  Just like us.”

Only silence answered, punctuated by one last crisp whisper of paper, and then the folder closing with Martin’s spread fingers atop it, bloodstone gleaming in the vivid pale light of the night.  Jon’s heart pitched frantically in his chest, and desperate, stranded tears pricked at his eyes.

“I uh… I would have rather gotten us a whole constellation.  Heh, you know?  But they don’t do that, obviously,” he tried softly, his fingers barely brushing Martin’s knuckles, “They record heroes in constellations, after all.  Great deeds, doomed romances, lovers who can be together no other way… That would have been a better way to honor us, I think.  Our story.  A-And who knows?  Maybe back on our world there are a few new stars to remember what we did, to mark the place we left it, so that everyone we left behind can look up and remember us.  They don’t know how the story really ended, and they probably never will, but we do.  We do, and I want to end it right here, right now.  With our star shining above us ‘and they lived happily ever after.’”

Martin still said nothing, but his head bowed, casting a slice of shadow over his eyes, and his shoulders quivered as a thin, bright line of wet silver trickled down his cheek.  Jon felt the very sky shatter above and begin to crumble around him.

“Please… M-Make no mistake, Martin.  P-Perhaps the gesture is silly and meaningless, but it was all I could think to do to go with everything I’ve said tonight.  Martin… Martin, don’t you see?  These are my wedding vows to you.  This is me saying ‘I do’ and also ‘Martin K. Blackwood would you do me the honor of making me the happiest man in the universe?’  All at once.  This is me saying I swear to you I will be yours, through everything, until the end of time.  M-Maybe I wasn’t before.  Maybe I was still punishing myself, but I’m telling you, I’m ready now to have my happily ever after.  With you, Martin.  If you’ll have me.  If I haven’t-“

He would never finish.  In a dizzying blur of blue folder, flashing hematite, and a wreath of golden curls, Martin kissed the words off his lips.  He kissed him so hard and so fierce, through wracking sobs with his hands woven so raptly into his long, wavy locks he thought his lips would bruise and his fragile soul would finally shatter to pieces in Martin’s arms.  Undone, all Jon could do was surrender and kiss him back with equal passion, thumbing away the hot tears as they spilled freely down his cheeks and anointed them both with their cleansing, hoary heat.  Their lips parted and they panted softly against each other in the space between, each afraid to break the sacred, pulsing silence.

“You’re crying,” Jon whispered at length, “I’ve said something wrong. Martin, darling I’m so sorry.  I never meant to-”

Martin laughed, raspy with tears, but ethereal, sparkling, like stardust floating on the breeze.

“People are allowed to cry when they’re happy you stupid, silly man,” he murmured in between kissing him again, and again.

“Oh.  Oh.”

He kissed him one last time, that idiot man who always burnt the toast and always knew the facts but never knew what to say, who finally figured it out and bought him a star, and threw his arms around him, enveloping his slight, fragile form protectively in his embrace.

“I love you.  I love you so much.”

Jon sank into that warm, familiar comfort and buried his face in his shoulder.

“I love you, too, Martin.  I want to be yours for the rest of my life.  I want to be me, I want to be us.”

“I know.  I’ve always known.  Oh god, you do know that right?  I know that you love me, it’s written in everything you do and say.  I have never, ever once doubted you love me with everything you are.  Even in the moments I was afraid that… that maybe we just weren’t meant to be together, I still knew it wouldn’t be because you didn’t love me.  Never because you didn’t love me.  Just maybe that we didn’t fit together anymore,” Martin replied in a small voice through his tears as they spilled down his cheeks.

As much as he wanted to vehemently deny there was ever a chance they might have not fit back together again after they had both been so shattered, to kiss him and tell him not in a million years would there ever have been a future where they weren’t Jon and Martin against the world, Jon knew it to be inescapably true.

“I’m so sorry you ever had to be afraid of that,” he swore, digging his fingers into Martin’s back pointedly, “After everything.  After we fought so hard to escape fear itself.  That I almost let it truly win in the end.  That I couldn’t just let go… Because… Because this was never about The Eye, was it?”

A heave of breath and its shuddering exhale shook Martin’s body free of lifetimes of grief, and fear, of ugliness carried far beyond the borders of their souls.  His fingers curled tighter in unspoken reply.

“No Jon, no it wasn’t, but I’m so very glad you finally figured that out.”

“Me, too…” he whispered.

They held each other in the quiet wake of being a moment and let the astral plane wheel calmly overhead.  An impatient star twinkled.

“Wait… you never answered me,” Jon finally said as he pulled back, sliding his elegant fingers down Martin’s strong arms.

“Huh?” Martin blurted, scrubbing under his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

“About marrying me tonight.  You never actually said yes, so…”

A twinkle in his eye and a slight mischief to his grin, Jon dove back into the picnic basket and emerged with a velvet ring box.  Martin’s hands flew to his mouth.

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I did!  Nothing fancy, but I thought it was high time to retire the blood rings,” he explained rising from his former perch on his hip to kneel properly.

The box cracked neatly open, and inside lay a simple, white gold band with a tiny circle of milky moonstone embedded in it on a midnight-blue satin cushion, blindingly bright against the dark.  Martin sobbed joyfully all over again.

“So, uh… I suppose if it had just been us, if we’d just been together, without everything, and we’d arrived at this moment.  I would have done much the same.  I would have brought you somewhere beautiful, somewhere I could teach you some inane fact you didn’t actually care about, but liked because it came from me.  Emulsifiers in ice cream and rum raisin…” they both snickered, “And I would have tried my best to make it into some sort of romantic metaphor but completely bunged it up and you would be laughing as I got down on one knee, just like this.  And it would have just been simple.  To the point.  Just… Will you marry me?  So…”

Jon assumed the traditional position, on one knee, arms outstretched, his every slender point a star in a perfect constellation of love.

“Will you marry me?”

Their eyes met, across a thousand different realities, across a thousand different worlds, carried on celestial winds to fall hopelessly, inexorably, into each other’s orbit.

“Yes, yes I do believe I will.”

With one last farewell kiss upon it for what it had meant for them both, Jon slipped the bloodstone ring from Martin’s finger and replaced it with the delicate band made of starlight.  It took its place radiantly, and shone as Martin drew his hand back to admire it with an equally radiant grin before it dimmed with concern.

“But what about you?” he asked worriedly as he watched the old ring entombed lovingly in the box.

Jon only smirked and produced a second box from the basket, which he offered on his open palm out to Martin.

“Naturally, I got one for myself.  Couldn’t pass up a chance to get a wedding ring that actually fits, could I?  It’s just… Don’t you think you deserve to give it to me the way you would want?” he urged.

Martin took the box eagerly, biting his lower lip in thought.

“Not sure you want to give me that freedom.  I had about five different ways of asking you in my head and all of them you would have hated so, so much.  But I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t kind of the point,” he answered wryly.

Jon chortled.

“Sorry I, the unromantic one, sprung this on you, the romantic one.  But I did want to surprise you.  I-I mean you can still write me a vows poem later?  If you want to, of course.  I’d love to have it, even if I don’t actually get to hear it at our wedding.”

Martin’s face flushed immediate crimson and his eyes darted coyly away as he toyed with the wedding band box in his lap.

“Oh that?  A-Actually I… I have it memorized, i-if you really wanted to hear it.”

“You- WHAT?” gasped Jon, his cheeks flushing in tandem.

“Oh yeah, I wrote my vows poem for you ages ago and I’ve gone over it so many times I know it by heart.  It was comforting, okay?  I-I’d read it again when times were good and I thought maybe you’d actually- um… a-and when times were not so good, when you were gone, in your own head, when I was afraid we were broken for good, whenever I needed it.  I’ve read it over a thousand times and never changed a thing from the first time I penned it.  Never needed to.  I’m surprised I haven’t recited it in my sleep at this point,” Martin admitted sheepishly.

Jon’s entire body flushed with a solar heat that melted his joints and his heart into a swirling flare of adulation.

“I can think of no better way, then, to receive my ring,” he breathed, reaching out to cup Martin’s cheek in his hand, “I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

In mirror ballets of love exchanges, Martin cradled Jon’s hand against his cheek as he spoke the first lines of the vows etched ever on his being softly into his palm.

“Let he who, shadow dwelling, must In paper, pen, and book be bound Shake off the chains of dark and rust And chart his own bright fate unfound.

Let he with lifelong burdens borne Cut paper wings with thread of gold And hand in hand, the sky forsworn Flit clouds and sun in laughter bold.

Let he whose blood and soldier’s ken The world did shield from dark and fear Heal fast those wounds, be whole again And sleep at last, held close and dear.

Bring him to me with spirit free With stars in eyes and music sung From lips a joyful promise be One soul conjoined, one fate’s thread strung.

Two hearts rejoice in love renowned. We lift our heads, alive, uncrowned.”

He waited until the last couplet to pull the ring from the box and slide it onto Jon’s finger where it too, fit perfectly, like it had always been there, and shone defiantly bright in the moonlight.  Jon wept.  He had been weeping since the first words of verse left his beloved’s lips, but seeing that ring like a piece of his missing soul returned to him undammed the tears effusively.

“God that was… Martin, I don’t have words.  I-It was… so beautiful.  You’re so beautiful.  Thank you,” he cried fervently, “I wish I could tell you properly how much that meant, but I just-“

“Hey… That’s alright.  I’m the words guy.  You’re the emulsifiers guy.  Making you cry is all I need to see to know how you feel,” Martin assured him warmly, reaching out to brush his tears away as he chuckled.

“Yeah… add this one to the running tally.”

“Oh, I have,” Martin snickered, “Speaking of!  Now we’ve done the crying through vows bit.  Shouldn’t we say the ‘I do’ bit, as well?”

Jon pursed his lips with a shrug as he reached out with his left hand to take Martin’s left as well, twining their fingers together

“Yes, I suppose we should.  I don’t see why not.  Well then, Martin, do you?”

“I do.  And Jon, do you?”

“I do.”

“You may now soundly snog the groom.”

“Martin…”

The emphatic drawl of his name the way Jon only called it when he was frustratingly enamored of him perished gently against Martin’s velvet lips as they caressed his.  They kissed slowly and reverently, sealing a pact ordained by the heavens long before either of them had seen the stars in the other’s eyes, lighting with white flame the torch to guide them for the first time, forward.  They broke it only to punctuate it with two more featherlight kisses and a breathless laugh, bowing their foreheads together in deference to the forces of fate and the universe.

“I know this isn’t the wedding either of us ever dreamed of, but as far as I’m concerned, it was perfect,” Jon murmured, nuzzling closer into his husband, swaddling the new, fledgling and beautiful word in his heart.

“Well, hey, what is a wedding really other than just a formal declaration that this is it?  This is us, we’re forever, no matter what.  We did it.  And you did it for me, in the STARS, Jon… Can we just remember that again?  You put us in the actual stars.  I am so writing a ballad for our constellation later, you do know this.”

“Oh lord.  Of course you are.  But really, it was the least I could do, after you’ve done so much for me, sacrificed everything for me.  Waited for me for so long.”

“And you came back to me,” Martin reminded him passionately, “And I don’t just mean back to life, here, in this world.  I mean you came back, Jon, MY Jon, the Jon I was in love with the moment I laid eyes on him.  The fidgety and obstinate Jon who can’t make a decent cup of tea to save his life, who puts on two different socks in the morning because his nose is already in the paper or a book, who teaches me about bleeding rocks and binary stars and still reacts to the simplest acts of kindness like a warm cranberry orange scone without asking for one like they’re divine miracles he is undeserving of, who looks at me like I hung the moon or something every time.  Even when I thought I was a complete and total waste of a human being, you, Jonathan Sims, the most beautiful, amazing, brilliant man to ever walk the Earth, looked at me like I hung the moon.  And that was… Still is… everything to me.”

The heavens shifted, the stars wheeled, the last piece clicked smartly, smugly into place.

“W-What did you say…?” Jon asked with such urgency, grabbing his hands so fiercely, Martin startled.

“Wh-I-I don’t-?  Which part?  The moon hanging part?” he stuttered, rolling his eyes fondly as he realized mid-sentence, “Oh, right.  Ugh, Jon are you seriously going to get after me about your weird vendetta against idioms at our wedding?  Because if you are that would be annoyingly adorable and so intensely you and kind of perfect, but also can you not on THIS particular occasion?”

The laugh that tore from Jon’s throat was half mad, half euphoric as the weight of the moon lifted from his shoulders and became naught but an indifferent sentinel disc in the sky once more.

“No no no, it’s just… It’s funny, I had more than a few things very, very wrong for a very, very long time.  That’s all.  Don’t worry about it,” he explained, leaning in and pressing a delicate kiss to Martin’s forehead, “If you’re the one who hung the moon after all, then I suppose ‘written in the stars’ will have to do for me.”

Martin lit up with literary glee.

“Oh ho!  Two space related idioms in one go?  What a rare treat!  Maybe this is your gateway drug into puns…” he teased impishly.

“Absolutely no chance in hell.”

They both laughed, laughed with the billowing icy breath that reached with victorious fingers up to the heavens.  They laughed, messily sniffing back the pesky drip of tears and cold.  They laughed with lightness of the encumbrance of hematite armor shed, its bloody protections no longer needed to cage wounded hearts and keep them safe and close.  They laughed in breath and also in the dancing points of light in their eyes as they fell into one another free from gravity.

“So uh… Do I get to see my star tonight, or don’t I?” Martin finally remembered, relishing the utterly horrified yelp from Jon.

“Oh god I completely-!  Y-Yes!  Yes of course, it’s already set up at the proper coordinates!” he had already sprung to his feet, “Oh, though, hang on, it took longer to get to the star viewing part than I anticipated, so I might need to adjust it a bit.  Oh!  And I have a little strawberries and champagne, if you like?”

“I do like, please and thank you!”

Jon set to readjusting the telescope to the proper ascension and declination while Martin poured them two glasses of crisply bubbling champagne.  They twined their arms to drink a toast from each other’s glass, ‘to us’ or ‘to happily ever afters’, or to several other messily rambled toast worthy sentiments.  They couldn’t decide and toasted to all of it.  They ate plump red strawberries and licked the juice from each other’s fingers as they looked at their star, which was, after everything, just a dot, just like Pluto, but Martin had to admit that he rather liked looking at dots after all.  And that one was their dot.  The warm intoxication of love and champagne begged for music, and someone fumbled in the cold for a wedding playlist on some app, somewhere, it didn’t matter, just as long as they could join hands, gaze into each other’s eyes and dance inelegantly, stepping on each other’s toes, under the umbrella of stars in a gentle rain of moonlight.

“I don’t see your problem with cliches, idioms and all that, really…” Martin mused at length, laying his head on Jon’s shoulder as they slowly spun to the rhythm of a longing ballad and the song of the sea, “Like this stupid, great song.  They’re familiar and cozy and everyone knows them.  They’re like… like old friends.  Always there to rely on when we can’t come up with the words ourselves, because sometimes we can’t.  And if something trite and silly sums up the way you feel, why not just let it be?  Sometimes things are said over and over again because some truths are universal, you know?  They’re just… human.”

Jon pressed a kiss into the mop of curls that tickled his nose and smelled faintly of toasted sugar and lavender and mused on all of the romantic cliches that had just passed through his mind unbidden.  Who was he to deny he was but one star in the sky, a single gear in the grand mortal mechanism of the universe.  If he had handed himself over to the humanity of it all instead of rusting, stopping, looking outside where there was never anything to see, perhaps he could have had this dance much sooner.  It didn’t matter though, until it did, because that night Martin took his breath away, made his world go round, he was head over heels for his match made in heaven, and better than heaven, they were written in the stars.

“You know what, Martin?” Jon laughed in reply, “Tonight, being what it is, I am willing to concede.  You are absolutely right.”

“I’m glad…” came the tender acceptance, followed by a distinctly puckish beat of silence, “Then does this mean I can I start saying love you to the moon and back?”

“Don’t push your luck...”

[eintsein]

After a few years of trial and error, I think I've finally found the perfect organization method.

In the early years of high school, I had a bullet journal. I was an artsy kid who found a way to combine art with organization in a way that benefited other parts of my life.

However, as I approached the end of high school, my schedule got busier, and I was involved in a lot more things, so owning a bullet journal was less practical. Because of that, I switched to an app called Edo Agenda.

I continued with digital planning in college since I knew I wasn't going to have as much time. But all the apps I tried out—Taskade, Actions by Moleskine, Any.do, Todoist, Wunderlist—weren't suited to my planning and organizational needs. They didn't have the specific functions I required and didn't incorporate an organization system I liked to use. The predefined apps were too restraining, but the more customizable apps weren't customizable enough.

So then I switched to a bare bones, uber minimalist bullet journal method. That worked pretty well my second semester. It was simple, portable, and most importantly, flexible—all the things one could wish for in a planning system. However, it wasn't always the most convenient to use since I couldn't effectively integrate all the different aspects of my life, which, to no surprise, is mostly recorded digitally.

There was just one huge problem with my digital organization system that made me hesitant to switch back in the first place: everything was fragmented. Notes were in Google Docs. Financial records were in Google Sheets. To-Do Lists were in my bullet journal. Team projects were in Trello. My poetry was on Bear. Things I wanted to try are carelessly pinned to random pinterest boards or added to my YouTube "watch later" playlist. It was a mess.

Over the summer, I found out about Notion from a friend, and I thought, this has so much potential, it could even be exactly what I need. It's essentially like an empty notebook on your computer with functions that make it 10x more powerful. Notion allows you to integrate all aspects of your life and work into one app. Some of the advantages that have made me partial to Notion are:

Even greater customization level. Notion is a blank canvas with tons of predefined blocks and different file types. You can make databases, spreadsheets, Kanban boards, to do lists, etc. Also, you can remain connected to other digital services. You can link websites, collaborate with other users, use different structures (e.g. documents, databases, tasks), embed images and videos, etc. There are also tons of formatting options, e.g. text color, highlight, heading v. body text.

Better organization. Notion allows you to have pages within pages within pages within pages—an infinite hierarchy that you can organize with tables of contents. These pages are made of blocks, e.g. tables, checklists, boards, databases.  Both pages and blocks can be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping them to where you want them to be. In other words, I guess it's kind of like building a website to organize your life. Plus, their database feature is especially powerful as it allows you to connect all your data and get into as much detail as you wish (each entry in a database is its own page).

Templates. There are tons of templates created by both Notion and the community that you can use. These are especially helpful in the beginning since Notion does have a rather steep learning curve. There are template for almost every category: personal, planning, finance, job applications, design roadmap, etc. Check out their template gallery, this medium article called "10 Notion templates to inspire your use", or read on for my own examples!

Shortcuts. This makes typing and documenting so much faster. Notion uses Markdown, which is a text-to-HTML conversion tool, e.g. # = Heading 1, *, - = bullet point, etc.

Notion has some pretty awesome features, but how does one actually use it? Personally, I have four top-level pages: my planner, my personal journal, songwriting, and blogging.

Planner

I've been using my planner to, well, plan and track my day to day activities as well as my week and month. The way I've structured it is a calendar or monthly overview with links to pages of weekly overviews, and if needed, daily overviews within the weekly overview. This links things up so nicely, i.e. I don't have to be constantly flipping pages in my physical bullet journal or planner to find what I need.

I also have entertainment lists, which is mainly a table with all the shows I want to watch, the books I want to read, etc. I keep track of whether or not I've watched them, as well as my personal ratings. What I love most about this is that each entry is its own page, so I can type my notes for each book, show, or film and easily find them in the future. (Also the reason why I have plural “lists” instead of just one entertainment list is because you can filter entries by type of entertainment, e.g. movies, tv shows, books, articles.)

Personal

For personal notes, goals, journal entries, etc. This is kind of like an extension of my daily journal and just where I dump all my thoughts and keep track of the different aspects of my life: mental, emotional, spiritual, social, physical, and travel.

Another page I have is called "Stray Thoughts" and, well, it's pretty self explanatory. It's a lot easier to dump all my thoughts as they come and reorganize them later. Of course, this requires sacrificing the rawness of journaling, i.e. when the thoughts come and how you process them, which is why I still keep a regular journal that I write in daily.

Songwriting

I've been writing a lot of music over the summer and it's often hard to keep track of all of my songs and how far I've gotten in the songwriting process. So I created a table of songs - each entry of a song is a page with its lyrics. These are then tagged with the status of the lyrics (i.e. completed, in progress) and the status of the music itself (i.e. melody only, instrumental, mixing, mastering, revised). Eventually, I'll include demos in the database by embedding audio files in the document.

I have a separate section for inspiration and ideas, which is a kind of brain dump, e.g. words I think would make a good song, a certain theme for a song, a melody that's been stuck in my head, a vibe I'd like to try out, etc.

I've also been watching a lot of tutorials for music production and there's a section where I write my notes for that.

Eintsein

The last section of my Notion app is for this blog. Which has pages for

New posts. These are ideas for future posts, asks that I think would need longer answers, as well as posts that are currently in the draft stage (like this one was before I posted it)

Design assets. This is where I put all the visual branding material for Eintsein.com to be used in posts and any visual material on the blog.

FAQ. Having an FAQ document just makes it so much easier to make changes to your existing FAQ. Plus, if you ever change your FAQ theme, you just have to copy and paste what you already have.

Post directory. I keep track of all my previous masterposts, infographics, and generally longer and more comprehensive posts. It's the exact same as what you see on my Navigation page. And yes, the document contains direct links to the post.

New theme. A project I've been working on the past couple days is trying to create my own theme for my blog. This is where I put all my outlines, brainstorming notes, design inspiration, code snippets, etc.There are some pretty awesome features I’ve made use of in this page:

As you can probably tell, I'm absolutely obsessed with Notion since it has such awesome features and endless possibilities for customization. So far I've been using Notion for personal projects, which, since they are quite big in scale and have no set deadline, are important to organize well. My summer courses were only 6 weeks and weren't difficult to organize.

The formats above are just how I personally use notion. You could make some of your own, or if you don't think you want to build your pages from scratch, there are tons of templates to choose from. Here are some I think I'll be using in the near future and may be helpful for others as well, especially students like myself:

One drawback, however, is that Notion has a rather steep learning curve, but there are tons of tutorials online (especially YouTube) and I guarantee you it's all worth it.

Notion is not just a productivity app. It's a way to concretize your entire life.

Notion is free to use, but there are higher tiers that allow for more blocks, greater file size, etc. I use a personal account, which is $4 per month with unlimited block storage and no file upload limit (although I got it for $33/year). Personally I think the free plan would suit most people's needs, especially if you're not uploading large files.

[beca-mitchell]

Summary: Chloe is accepted into college and Beca is there for all the excitement. 

Set in the daylight universe. Rated T/slight M. Fic title from "Always" by Isak Danielson.

Word count: 3,127

Read below or on AO3.

AGE: 17 LOCATION: Brookline, MA MONTH: March

* * * * * 

Beca doesn’t realize how nervous she is until Chloe pulls her across the threshold of her house. She hadn’t even applied to any schools during this round of college applications, but she had watched all her peers scramble over themselves to get applications out.

And she had to watch Chloe have at least one breakdown a day while attempting to finish her college application essays.

It had felt like she had been in the process from the start.

“Hi,” Chloe says breathlessly, pulling Beca in for a quick kiss. “My parents are being so freaking impatient.”

Beca laughs, tucking her hand into Chloe’s. “Sorry I’m late, I was—”

Chloe kisses her again. “It’s okay, Bec. I wasn’t going to open any emails without you. It wouldn’t be right without the whole family here.”

The nonchalance with which Chloe says that only makes a smile spread across Beca’s lips as she follows her girlfriend into the living room. She has always felt so welcome and so happy in Chloe’s home—a reminder that she has this home to come back to no matter what. That reminder is only cemented when Chloe’s mother, Alice, gasps upon seeing her and stands from the couch to quickly pull her into a hug. Beca catches Chloe’s father smiling at her from the bar stool by the counter and she returns the smile quickly.

“Mom, come on—” Chloe complains. She pulls Beca to sit with her on the couch, but with how hard she pulls, Beca ends up nearly sitting on Chloe’s lap.

“Chloe,” Beca mumbles, smiling apologetically at Chloe’s parents. “Watch it.”

Chloe pouts at her. “What if I wanted you to sit on my lap?” Before Beca can find it in herself to be embarrassed further, Chloe is opening her laptop and exhaling noisily as she opens the various browser tabs with login pages for the various schools she had applied to. Beca’s nerves creep back and she shuffles closer to Chloe on the couch instinctively, pressing her chin against Chloe’s shoulder as she does so. Chloe hums a little sigh of contentment, reaching up to gently brush her hand against Beca’s cheek absentmindedly before drawing away to begin typing in her credentials.

Beca’s words are stuck in her throat as she waits with bated breath. She wants to say so much—she wants to tell Chloe how proud she is of her, how far she’s come. If she closes her eyes, she can just sink right into the soft scent of Chloe’s perfume for the day. If she tilts her head just enough, she can press her lips against Chloe’s cheek in a comforting gesture.

But she feels frozen. She’s just as afraid as Chloe is because this finally feels like the one thing that will pop their little high school bubble. As selfish as that makes her. Beca is so incredibly proud of her girlfriend, but the reality of what is going to happen once they’re done with high school looms over her like fate. Or destiny.

“Are you nervous?” Chloe asks quietly.

“No,” Beca lies. She slides her hand around Chloe’s back as best as she can even if her arm is pressed tightly between Chloe’s body and the couch. The touch brings her comfort, however, and with the way Chloe relaxes against her, she knows it comforts Chloe too.

“Liar,” Chloe mumbles.

Beca grins, twisting her face slightly to press her teeth lightly against the soft fabric of Chloe’s sweater. “Hurry up, dude. Your parents are waiting.” A quick glance up at Chloe’s parents indicates that they are in fact waiting, though Alice is smiling with her phone pointed at both of them. Beca tries to smother her own smile, but it’s hard to suppress the genuine comfort and happiness she feels, sinking back into the comfort of Chloe’s side.

“I’m nervous,” Chloe admits as she enters her login information to the college acceptance site.

“I know,” Beca whispers. “It’ll be okay.”

“It’s going…” Chloe announces, eyes flicking up to her parents.

“Regardless of what happens, we’re proud of you, Chloe,” her father states.

“Greg! That’s not encouraging!”

“How was that not encouraging? I am literally being supportive!”

“Guys! Okay, I—” Chloe gasps, nearly tossing her laptop away completely. “I got in!”

Beca can’t help the gasp of her own before she’s already grinning into the kiss that Chloe presses to her lips. She clutches for a moment at Chloe’s arm, keeping her in place. But only for a moment because she is so conscious of the fact that Chloe’s parents are still there, hovering nearby.

“I’m so proud of you,” Beca whispers, a little breathless but entirely sincere as she pulls back.

Chloe’s eyes seem to shine excessively with excitement and love as she stares at Beca happily. It is only for a moment before Chloe’s parents are pulling them both into a hug, crushing them against each other.

It is so much love, all around Beca.

 * * * * *

 With the excitement of the first acceptance out of the way, Chloe eventually makes it through the rest of her decisions with the same amount of excitement, Beca tucked into her side as she watches with wide eyes. Even with the occasional ding and rejection, Chloe is still in high spirits by the end, happy to keep her good mood going.

It is the notion of securing a future.

Beca has to quickly school the surprise on her face when Chloe stands, laptop tucked underneath her arm. “We have to go to Beca’s house,” she announces.

Alice raises an eyebrow. “Why? Don’t you want to stay for dinner, Beca?”

“We have to—” Beca begins, with a questioning lilt in her voice. Chloe’s fingers squeeze her hand, effectively silencing her when she realizes exactly what her girlfriend is up to.

“We’re going to tell Beca’s mom the good news!”

Beca clamps her mouth shut, focusing all her energy on not turning her face completely red.

“You’re going to tell Beca’s mother that you got into college.”

“Yeah,” Chloe says easily. “Totes.” She pulls Beca past her parents, smiling at both of them as she does so. “We’ll be back for dinner.”

Beca wonders if her face is flaming red. “Chloe, don’t—” She barely manages to get her shoes on her feet properly before Chloe’s front door is clicking shut behind her. With a giggle, Chloe all but leaps off the front porch, pulling Beca along as she does so. “Oh my God, you’re awful,” Beca breathes out once she catches her breath. She fumbles quickly to find her keys in her sweater pocket, grateful that Chloe limits her teasing to quick, sharp nips along her jawline. “Your parents totally knew.”

Once inside, Chloe puts her laptop quickly on the side table before whirling and pressing Beca quickly against the front door. “Knew what?” she asks, kissing at Beca’s neck while her hands push greedily up under her sweater.

“That—” Beca groans, hips rising to meet Chloe’s body. “That you wanted to—” She grunts in frustration, weaving her hands through Chloe’s hair so they can kiss properly. With a happy sigh, Chloe indulges her for a few moments before her hands slip under Beca’s thighs to lift her quickly and bodily. Beca squeaks, breaking from their kiss so she can stare at Chloe reproachfully.

“What?” Chloe asks, looking all too innocent for somebody with incredibly flushed cheeks and kiss-swollen lips. “That I wanted to have my girlfriend all to myself for a few hours in her blissfully empty home?”

Beca groans again, tilting her head forward so it bumps against Chloe’s. “Stop, they totally knew. My mom's car isn't even here.”

“Might as well prove them right,” Chloe mumbles, leaning up to press a deep, wanting kiss against Beca’s lips. Beca, powerless to resist whenever Chloe kisses her like that, sinks into the embrace and silences the rest of her weak protests as Chloe carries her up to her bedroom.

 * * * * *

 Somewhere in between their third round and fourth round, both of them breathless and bodies slicked with sweat, Beca’s eyes crack open as Chloe’s lips round the curve of her shoulder. “Do you—” her voice is weak from crying out Chloe’s name over and over for the past hour or so. “Do you know—oh God, Chloe, stop—” Chloe pauses. Beca takes half a second to collect herself so she can ask the question that continues to nag at her. “Do you know where you want to go?”

“Go?” Chloe asks, her hand gliding over the bump of Beca’s hipbone, slipping down her thigh, dangerously close to where Beca still aches for her. Even though her body is exhausted. “Go where?” she mumbles, leaning up to tug Beca’s earlobe between her teeth.

“College,” Beca responds, eyes slipping shut again as Chloe’s fingers work between her legs. “School. Next year.”

Chloe hums, a noncommittal little sound, before she sighs and shifts so Beca is on her back once more. Chloe slips between her legs, sitting up. Slowly she pulls at Beca’s hands, then her forearms, urging her to sit up as well. Beca groans, soft and needy when Chloe pulls her entirely onto her lap, their bodies pressed together in the open air of Beca’s room. With just how nicely the sun slips through the open blinds of Beca’s window, there is a golden hue all throughout Beca’s room. A golden tint to Chloe’s already sun kissed skin. A glow to her incredibly messy, wavy red hair.

“You’re so pretty,” Beca whispers before she can help herself. Her legs close around Chloe’s waist as Chloe pulls her up further into her lap, the intimacy of the position making something rattle deep within Beca’s chest.

She loves Chloe Beale.

She knows that will never change.

Chloe smiles in response to Beca’s whispered admission, leaning in to press a soft, sure kiss to Beca’s lips, snatching the last of her breath away. Beca’s body relaxes in Chloe’s hold, content to feel the soft brush of Chloe’s tongue against her own, the even, gentle strokes of Chloe’s hand up and down her spine, and the sure, firm grip that Chloe has on her thigh, her hip, her waist—wherever Chloe is content to hold her.

Beca decides that she doesn’t need to know Chloe’s response to her question—not now at least. Not for the next few days even. Or even the next week. She’s content to let it stretch out for as long as possible, without having to think about the future. So long as Chloe keeps kissing her like this, like she’s the only thing that matters in Chloe’s life.

It’s so easy to believe it, hidden away in the quiet warmth of Beca’s bedroom where the only future—at least the only foreseeable future—is one where Chloe slowly lays her back across her rumpled sheets and murmurs declarations of love into her skin.

 * * * * *

 Beca is dozing comfortably, nestled right against Chloe’s side when she hears the unmistakable pull of her mother’s car up the driveway. The sound of the engine being killed is enough to jolt her fully awake so she can shove at Chloe’s shoulder in an attempt to rouse her lazy girlfriend. Chloe grumbles and twists in Beca’s comforter, turning away from Beca.

“Chloe,” she hisses. “Chlo, get up. My mom’s home.”

“Already?” Chloe groans, stretching her arms before peering at the clock on Beca’s beside. “Oh, crap, it’s almost six-thirty.”

Beca flings Chloe’s shirt at her. “Get dressed.”

“Okay, okay…”

 * * * * *

 By the time Beca and Chloe make their way downstairs after adjusting their clothes appropriately, Beca’s mother is already sitting in the living room area with a glass of wine in her hand.

“Oh, you’re home. Hi.”

“Um, Chloe’s here,” Beca provides unnecessarily.

Chloe waves from behind Beca. “Good evening. Hi.”

Diane smiles a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Hi Chloe, always nice to see you.”

An awkward silence falls between them all. Beca can practically feel Chloe vibrating behind her with nervous tension and energy.

“Going to your friend’s for dinner?” Diane asks, finally breaking the silence.

Beca groans internally at the word choice. She can practically feel Chloe gearing up for an argument, though she knows that Chloe would never pick a fight with her mom by virtue of simply being too polite. She knows she’s going to hear about it in just a few minutes though. “Yeah. Is that okay? We’re celebrating Chloe getting into college.”

“Sure.” Beca’s mother shrugs. “I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on tonight. Don’t be too late though. Congratulations by the way, Chloe dear.” With that last statement, Beca's mother at least manages some sincerity and enthusiasm, she'll give her like an ounce of credit for that.

Beca mock salutes her mother and hurries out the door to meet Chloe. She pauses just before she meets Chloe at the door, gesturing for Chloe to go ahead without her for a moment. She gently shuts the door before turning back to her mother, wondering what exactly has her mother in such a mood this evening. Perhaps it’s nothing, she muses.

“Is everything okay?” she calls, turning back to the living room.

“Yes, is everything okay with you?”

“I...does it still bother you that I’m dating Chloe?” she asks quickly. It comes out a bit jumbled and her words kind of stick together, but she’s tired of this and the words are doing her no good all bottled up inside her. “It’s...we’ve been together for almost two years now.”

Her mother puts her glass down, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry, Beca. Of course I’m happy for you.”

“But does it bother you.” Beca feels all kinds of tension flood through her—some of the lingering nervous energy from earlier coming to the fore again. With Chloe’s college acceptance and the knowledge that they really are going to be apart for the first time in years is affecting her more than she initially expected.

“It doesn’t bother me that you are dating Chloe, no.”

Beca hums, not really believing those words for one minute. “But…”

“Beca, can we not do this right now? Go enjoy dinner with your friend.”

“My girlfriend,” Beca whispers in a deadly calm voice. “She is my girlfriend.”

“Beca, honestly." She pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration and likely exhaustion. "Honestly, do you want my opinion?”

“That would be nice.” Beca crosses her arms, ignoring the nagging sensation that tells her to simply drop the topic and meet Chloe for dinner. Chloe is waiting for her.

“Beca, you are so young. Chloe just got into college. You’re moving to Los Angeles against my advice and wishes. I support you. But I also am older than you and I know that these things don’t last. Young relationships don’t last the way you seem to think they do. Young relationships like yours and Chloe’s are fine for high school, but I’m worried that you’re putting so much stock into somebody who has so much potential to hurt you. These things ruin your future.”

Beca feels the wind leave her lungs.

“I’m sorry,” her mother says, not sounding entirely apologetic at all. “You wanted to know.”

“You’re wrong,” Beca murmurs. I’m not like you and dad. I’m not like you. We’ll never be like you. “You’re wrong,” she says more clearly, finally turning on her heel to go meet Chloe on her front porch.

The silence resonates behind her, louder than words could ever manage to be.

Chloe glances up immediately when Beca opens the door, concern written all over her face. “Beca,” she whispers. “What’s wrong? You look upset. Did your mom say something again?”

Beca says nothing for a few seconds, focusing on the pull of Chloe’s hand in her own. She is grateful that Chloe lives so close—that Chloe is there for her.

That Chloe is it for her.

It makes all kinds of defensiveness and protectiveness rise up in Beca, obviously. But also, the inklings of fear and lingering insecurity...those scare Beca the most.

“Doesn’t it bother you that she barely acknowledges you as my girlfriend?” Beca asks once they are out of earshot of her front door.

Chloe shrugs nonchalantly, but tightens her grip on Beca’s hand. “I mean...a little...but as long as she’s not stopping me from seeing you, that’s okay.”

Beca worries her lower lip between her teeth. “But we’ve been together for a while now…”

“And we’re going to continue to stay together,” Chloe says firmly. Her conviction warms Beca’s heart. “I...I’ve tried,” she whispers, stopping Beca before they go inside Chloe’s home. “I’ve tried to play nice with your mom, but she just refuses to see how amazing you are. It’s hard for me, sometimes, to see you so upset all the time and it’s hard for me to feel so helpless.”

“I know,” Beca interjects.

“I do understand that this affects you more than me...it’s just…I love you,” Chloe says softly. Like the first time they had said that to each other, Beca’s heart thrums happily and she cannot stop the smile from spreading across her face. “I hate that she upsets you and I hate that it seems like we won’t be able to do anything about that.”

“I love you too,” Beca murmurs, allowing Chloe to lean into a gentle kiss.

Chloe blows out a breath when they part, goofy smile on her face. “I can’t wait for the rest of our lives, you know?”

“Together?” Beca questions, offering Chloe a gentle smile.

“We’ll make it work,” Chloe promises before she opens the door to her house, pulling Beca into the warmth.

 * * * * *

 “What did Beca’s mother say?” Chloe’s mother asks lightly.

“She was very happy for us.”

“Us?” Alice questions.

“Um,” Beca stills from where she is pushing salad onto her plate, eyes flitting up nervously. “Us,” she echoes dumbly. "Yes. Right Chloe?" 

“Yes...you know how it is,” Chloe says with all the confidence in the world like she isn't about to lie directly to her parents. “Behind every great woman…”

Beca groans, ignoring the way Max snickers at her from his place at the table.

“What did you guys get up to for…” Greg glances at the clock. “Almost three hours?”

“We watched a movie. Are you done? What is this, an interrogation?”

As Chloe and her family begin to dissolve in mock-outrage and arguments around the table, Beca simply smiles, spooning food into her mouth as she takes in the comfort of this incredibly vibrant and happy family.

Beca is so very grateful for Chloe and her family in more ways than she can articulate.

fin.

[davidmann95]

So... Morrison’s 10 part interview on All-Star Superman, along with all other older Newsarama articles, just seem to have ceased to exist. One does not simply live without having those interviews available to reread... Can I find them anywhere else?

Rejoice! I finally borrowed a computer I could put my flash drive into, and emailed myself my copy of the Morrison interview. Here it is below the cut, copied and pasted direct from the source way back when, available again at last:

Three years, 12 issues, Eisners and countless accolades later, All Star Superman is finally finished. The out-of-continuity look at Superman’s struggle with his inevitable death was widely embraced by fans and pros as one of the best stories to feature the Man of Steel, and was a showcase for the talents of the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant.

Now, Newsarama is proud to present an exclusive look back with Morrison at the series that took Superman to, pun intended, new heights. We had a lot of questions about the series...and Morrison delivered with an in-depth look into the themes, characters and ideas throughout the 12 issues. In fact, there was so much that we’re running this as an unprecedented 10-part series over the next two weeks – sort of an unofficial All Star Superman companion. It’s everything about All Star Superman you ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

And of course there’s plenty of SPOILERS, so back away if you haven’t read the entire series.

Newsarama: Grant, tell us a little about the origin of the project.

Grant Morrison: Some of it has its roots in the DC One Million project from 1999. So much so, that some readers have come to consider this a prequel to DC One Million, which is fine if it shifts a few more copies! I’ve tried to give my own DC books an overarching continuity intended to make them all read as a more coherent body of work when I’m done.

Luthor’s “enlightenment” – when he peaks on super–senses and sees the world as it appears through Superman’s eyes – was an element I’d included in the Superman Now pitch I prepared along with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid back in 1999. There were one or two of ideas of mine that I wanted to preserve from Superman Now and Luthor’s heart–stopping moment of understanding was a favorite part of the original ending for that story, so I decided to use it again here.

My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the “shamanic” meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.

I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to “reboot” Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short...

Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did...in the persona and voice of Superman!

We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.

My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.

I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman, whose name I didn’t save but who has entered into my own personal mythology (a picture has from that time has survived showing me and Mark Waid posing alongside this guy and a couple of young readers dressed as Superboy and Supergirl – it’s in the “Gallery” section at my website for anybody who can be bothered looking. This is the guy who lit the fuse that led to All Star Superman).

After the 1999 pitch was rejected, I didn’t expect to be doing any further work on Superman but sometime in 2002, while I was going into my last year on New X–Men, Dan DiDio called and asked if I wanted to come back to DC to work on a Superman book with Jim Lee.

Jim was flexing his artistic muscles again to great effect, and he wanted to do 12 issues on Superman to complement the work he was doing with Jeph Loeb on “Batman: Hush.” At the time, I wasn’t able to make my own commitments dovetail with Jim’s availability, but by then I’d become obsessed with the idea of doing a big Superman story and I’d already started working out the details.

Jim, of course, went on to do his 12 Superman issues as “For Tomorrow” with Brian Azzarello, so I found myself looking for an artist for what was rapidly turning into my own Man of Steel magnum opus, and I already knew the book had to be drawn by my friend and collaborator, Frank Quitely.

We were already talking about We3 and Superman seemed like a good meaty project to get our teeth into when that was done. I completely scaled up my expectations of what might be possible once Frank was on board and decided to make this thing as ambitious as possible.

Usually, I prefer to write poppy, throwaway “live performance” type superhero books, but this time, I felt compelled to make something for the ages – a big definitive statement about superheroes and life and all that, not only drawn by my favorite artist but starring the first and greatest superhero of them all.

The fact that it could be a non–continuity recreation made the idea even more attractive and more achievable. I also felt ready for it, in a way I don’t think I would have been in 1999; I finally felt “grown–up” enough to do Superman justice.

I plotted the whole story in 2002 and drew tiny colored sketches for all 12 covers. The entire book was very tightly constructed before we started – except that I’d left the ending open for the inevitable better and more focused ideas I knew would arise as the project grew into its own shape...and I left an empty space for issue 10. That one was intended from the start to be the single issue of the 12–issue run that would condense and amplify the themes of all the others. #10 was set aside to be the one–off story that would sum up anything anyone needed to know about Superman in 22 pages.

Not quite as concise an origin as Superman’s, but that’s how we got started.

NRAMA: When you were devising the series, what challenges did you have in building up this version of the Superman universe?

GM: I couldn’t say there were any particular challenges. It was fun. Nobody was telling me what I could or couldn’t do with the characters. I didn’t have to worry about upsetting continuity or annoying people who care about stuff like that.

I don’t have a lot of old comics, so my knowledge of Superman was based on memory, some tattered “70s books from the remains of my teenage collection, a bunch of DC “Best Of...” reprint editions and two brilliant little handbooks – “Superman in Action Comics” Volumes 1 and 2 – which reprint every single Action Comics cover from 1938 to 1988.

I read various accounts of Superman’s creation and development as a brand. I read every Superman story and watched every Superman movie I could lay my hands on, from the Golden Age to the present day. From the Socialist scrapper Superman of the Depression years, through the Super–Cop of the 40s, the mythic Hyper–Dad of the 50s and 60s, the questioning, liberal Superman of the early 70s, the bland “superhero” of the late 70s, the confident yuppie of the 80s, the over–compensating Chippendale Superman of the 90s etc. I read takes on Superman by Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Alan Moore, Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko and many others.

I looked at the Fleischer cartoons, the Chris Reeve movies and the animated series, and read Alvin Schwartz’s (he wrote the first ever Bizarro story among many others) fascinating book – “An Unlikely Prophet” – where he talks about his notion of Superman as a tulpa, (a Tibetan word for a living thought form which has an independent existence beyond its creator) and claims he actually met the Man of Steel in the back of a taxi.

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential “Superman–ness” that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star’s tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He’s Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles.

Newsarama: Grant, what are some of your favorite moments from the 12 issues?

Grant Morrison: The first shot of Superman flying over the sun. The Cosmic Anvil. Samson and Atlas. The kiss on the moon. The first three pages of the Olsen story which, I think, add up to the best character intro I’ve ever written.

Everything Lex Luthor says in issue #5. Everything Clark does. The whole says/does Luthor/Superman dynamic as played out through Frank Quitely’s absolute mastery and understanding of how space, movement and expression combine to tell a story.

Superboy and his dog on the moon – that perfect teenage moment of infinite possibility, introspection and hope for the future. He’s every young man on the verge of adulthood, Krypto is every dog with his boy (it seemed a shame to us that Krypto’s most memorable moment prior to this was his death scene in “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow.” Quitely’s scampering, leaping, eager and alive little creature is how I’d prefer to imagine Krypto the Superdog and conjures finer and more subtle emotions).

Bizarro–Home, with all of Earth’s continental and ocean shapes but reversed. The page with the first appearance of Zibarro that Frank has designed so the eye is pulled down in a swirling motion into the drain at the heart of the image, to make us feel that we’re being flushed in a cloacal spiral down into a nihilistic, existential sink. Frank gave me that page as a gift, and it became weirdly emblematic of a strange, dark time in both our lives.

The story with Bar–El and Lilo has a genuine chill off ammonia and antiseptic off it, which makes it my least favorite issue of the series, although I know a lot of people who love it. It’s about dying relatives, obligations, the overlit overheated corridors between terminal wards, the thin metallic odors of chemicals, bad food and fear. Preparation for the Phantom Zone.

Superman hugging the poor, hopeless girl on the roof and telling us all we’re stronger than we think we are.

Joe Shuster drawing us all into the story forever and never–ending.

Nasthalthia Luthor. Frank and Jamie’s final tour of the Fortress, referencing every previous issue on the way, in two pages.

All of issue #10 (there’s a single typo in there where the time on the last page was screwed up – but when we fix that detail for the trade I’ll be able to regard this as the most perfectly composed superhero story I’ve ever written).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother, more seamless collaborative process.

NRAMA: The story is very complete unto itself, but are there any new or classic characters you’d like to explore further? If so, which ones and why?

GM: I’d happily write more Atlas and Samson. I really like Krull, the Dino–Czar’s wayward son, and his Stalinist underground empire of “Subterranosauri.” I could write a Superman Squad comic forever. I’d love to write the “Son of Superman” sequel about Lois and Clark’s super test tube baby.

But...I think All Star is already complete, without sequels. You read that last issue and it works because you know you’re never going to see All Star Superman again. You’ll be able to pick up Superman books, but they won’t be about this guy and they won’t feel the same. He really is going away. Our Superman is actually “dying” in that sense, and that adds the whole series a deeper poignancy.

NRAMA: Aside from the Bizarro League, you never really introduce other DC superheroes into the story. Why did you make this choice?

GM: I wanted the story to be about the mythic Superman at the end of his time. It’s clear from the references that he has or more likely has had a few super–powered allies, but that they’re no longer around or relevant any more.

For the context of this story I wanted the super–friends to be peripheral, like they were in the old comics. The Flash? Green Lantern? They represent Superman’s “old army buddies,” or your dad’s school friends. Guys you’ve sort of heard of, who used to be more important in the old man’s life than they are now.

NRAMA: Some readers were confused as to how the “Twelve Labors” broke down, though others have pointed out that Superman’s actions are more reflective of the Stations of the Cross (I note there’s a “Station Café” in the background of issue #12). Could you break down the Twelve Labors, or, if the cross theory is true, how the storyline reflects the Stations?

GM: The 12 Labors of Superman were never intended as an isomorphic mapping onto the 12 Labors of Hercules, or for that matter, the specific Stations of the Cross, of which there are 14, I believe. I didn’t even want to do one Labor per issue, so it deliberately breaks down quite erratically through the series for reasons I’ll go into (later).

Yes, there are correspondences, but that’s mostly because we tried to create for our Superman the contemporary “superhero” version of an archetypal solar hero journey, which naturally echoes numerous myths, legends and religious parables.

At the same time, we didn’t want to do an update or a direct copy of any myth you’d seen before, so it won’t work if you try to find one specific mythological or religious “plan” to hang the series on; James Joyce’s honorable and heroic refutation of the rule aside, there’s nothing more dead and dull than an attempt to retell the Odyssey or the Norse sagas scene by scene, but in a modern and/or superhero setting.

For future historians and mythologizers, however, the 12 Labors of Superman may be enumerated as follows:

1. Superman saves the first manned mission to the sun.
2. Superman brews the Super–Elixir.
3. Superman answers the Unanswerable Question.
4. Superman chains the Chronovore. 
5. Superman saves Earth from Bizarro–Home.
6. Superman returns from the Underverse.
7. Superman creates Life.
8. Superman liberates Kandor/cures cancer.
9. Superman defeats Solaris.
10. Superman conquers Death.
11. Superman builds an artificial Heart for the Sun.
12.Superman leaves the recipe/formula to make Superman 2.

And one final feat, which typically no–one really notices, is that Lex Luthor delivers his own version of the unified field haiku – explaining the underlying principles of the universe in fourteen syllables – which the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. G–Type philosopher from issue 4 had dedicated his entire life to composing!

You may notice also that the Labors take place over a year – with the solar hero’s descent into the darkness and cold of the Underverse occurring at midwinter/Christmas time (that’s also the only point in the story where we ever see Metropolis at night).

It can also be seen as the sun’s journey over the course of a day – we open in blazing sunshine but halfway through the book, at the end of issue #5, in fact, the solar hero dips below the horizon and begins the night–journey through the hours of darkness and death, before his triumphant resurrection at dawn. That’s why issue 5 ends with the boat to the Underworld and 6 begins with the moon. Clark Kent is crossing the threshold into the subconscious world of memory, shadows, death and deep emotions.

Although they can often have bizarre resonances, specific elements, like the Station Café, are usually put there by Frank Quitely, and are not necessarily secret Dan Brown–style keys to unlocking the mysteries. I think there might be a Station Café opposite the studio where Frank Quitely works and the “SAPIEN” sign on another storefront is a reference to Frank’s studio mate, Dave Sapien. At least he’s not filling the background with dirty words like he used to, given any opportunity

NRAMA: For that matter, do the Twelve Labors matter at all? They seem so purposely ill–defined. They seem more like misdirection or a MacGuffin than anything that needs to be clearly delineated.

GM: They matter, of course, but the 12 Labors idea is there to show that, as with all myth, the systematic ordering of current events into stories, tales, or legends occurs after the fact.

I’m trying to suggest that only in the future will these particular 12 feats, out of all the others ever, be mythologized as 12 Labors. I suppose I was trying to say something about how people impose meaning upon events in retrospect, and that’s how myth is born. It’s hindsight that provides narrative, structure, meaning and significance to the simple unfolding of events. It’s the backward glance that adds all the capital letters to the list above.

Even Superman isn”t sure how many Labors he’s performed when we see him mulling it over in issue 10. 
When you watched it happening, it seemed to be Superman just doing his thing. In the future it’s become THE 12 LABORS OF SUPERMAN!

NRAMA: And on a completely ridiculous note: All–Star Superman is perhaps the most difficult–to–abbreviate comic title since Preacher: Tall in the Saddle. Did you realize this going in?

GM: Going into what? Going into ASS itself? In the sense of how did I feel as I slowly entered ASS for the first time?

It never crossed my mind...

Newsarama: I’d like to know a little more about Leo Quintum and his role in the story. He seems like a bit of an outgrowth of the likes of Project Cadmus and Emil Hamilton, but in a more fantastical, Willy Wonka sense.

Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.

I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.

Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.

Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.

What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.

And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.

In one way, Quintum could be seen to represent the creative team, simultaneously re–empowering a pure myth with the honest fire of Art...while at the same time shooting a jolt of juice through a concept that sells more “S” logo underpants and towels than it does comic books. All tastes catered!

I have to say that the Willy Wonka thing never crossed my mind until I saw people online make the comparison, which seems quite obvious now. Quintum dresses how I would dress if I was the world’s coolest super–scientist. What’s up with that?

NRAMA: Was Zibarro inspired by the Bizarro World story where the Bizarro–Neanderthal becomes this unappreciated Casanova–type?

GM: Don’t know that one, but it sounds like a scenario I could definitely endorse!

Zibarro started out as a daft name sicked–up by my subconscious mind, which flowered within moments into the must–write idea of an Imperfect Bizarro. What would an imperfect version of an already imperfect being be like?

Zibarro.

NRAMA: I’d like to know more about Zibarro – what’s the significance of his chronicling Bizarro World through poetry?

GM: It’s up to you. I see Zibarro partly as the sensitive teenager inside us all. He’s moody, horribly self–aware and uncomfortable, yet filled with thoughts of omnipotence and agency. He’s the absolute center of his tiny, disorganized universe. He’s playing the role of sensitive, empathic poet but at the same time, he’s completely self–absorbed.

When he says to Superman “Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so different. So unique. So unlike everyone else?” he doesn’t even wait for Superman’s reply. He doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but his own, ultimately.

NRAMA: The character is very close to Superman, so what does it say that a nonpowered version on a savage world would focus his energy through that medium? Also, does Zibarro’s existence show how Superman is able to elevate even the backwards Bizarros through his very nature?

GM: All of the above. And maybe he writes his totally subjective poetry as a reflection of Clark Kent’s objective reporter role. The suppressed, lyrical, wounded side of Superman perhaps? The Super–Morrissey? Bizarro With The Thorn In His Side?

But he’s also Bizarro–Home’s “mistake” (or so it seems to him, even though he’s as natural an expression of the place as any of the other Bizarro creatures who grow like mold across the surface of their living planet). He feels excluded, a despised outsider, and yet that position is what defines his cherished self–image. He expresses himself through poetry because to him the regular Bizarro language is barbaric, barely articulate and guttural. And they all think he’s talking crap anyway.

It seemed to make sense that an interesting opposite of Bizarro speech might be flowery “woe is me” school Poetry Society odes to the sunset in a misunderstood heart. He’s still a Bizarro though, which makes him ineffectual. His tragedy is that he knows he’s fated to be useless and pointless but craves so much more.

NRAMA: Zibarro also represents a recurrent theme in the story, of Superman constantly facing alternate versions of himself – Bar–El, Samson and Atlas, the Superman Squad, even Luthor by the end. Notably, Hercules is absent, though Superman’s doing his Twelve Labors. With the mythological adventurers in particular, was this designed to equate Superman with their legend, to show how his character is greater than theirs, or both?

GM: In a way, I suppose. He did arm–wrestle them both, proving once and for all Superman’s stronger than anybody! And remember, these characters, along with Hercules, used to appear regularly in Superman books as his rivals. I thought they made better rivals than, say, Majestic or Ultraman because people who don’t read comics have heard of Hercules, Samson and Atlas and understand what they represent.

For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground.

Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon (the original panel description was of something more like the famous shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf from “From Here To Eternity.” Frank’s final choice of composition is much more classically pulp–romantic and iconic than my down and dirty rumble in the moondirt would have been, I’m glad to say).

Newsarama: Tell us about some of the thinking behind the new antagonists you created for this series (at least the ones you want to talk about...): First up: Krull and the Subterranosaurs...

Grant Morrison: We wanted to create some throwaway new characters which would be designed to look as if they were convincing long–term elements of the Superman legend.

We were trying to create a few foes who had a classic feel and a solid backstory that could be explored again or in depth. Even if we never went back to these characters, we wanted them to seem rich enough to carry their own stories.

With Krull, we figured a superhuman character like Superman can always use a powerful “sub–human” opponent: a beast, a monster, a savage with the power to destroy civilization. For years I’ve had the idea that the familiar “gray aliens” might “actually” be evolved biped dinosaur descendants, the offspring of smart–thinking lizards which made their way to the warm regions at the Earth’s core.

I imagined these brutes developing their own technology, their own civilization, and then finally coming to the surface to declare bloody war on the mammalian usurpers! It seemed like we could develop this idea into the Krull backstory and suggest a whole epic conflict in a few panels.

Dom Regan, the Glasgow artist and DC colorist, saw the original green skin Jamie Grant had done for Krull, and suggested we make him red instead. Jamie reset his color filters and that was the moment Krull suddenly looked like a real Superman foe.

The red skin marked him out as unique, different and dangerous, even among his own species. It had echoes of Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur that played right into the heart of the concept. A good design became a great design and the whole story of who Krull was – his twisted relationship with his father the Dino–Czar, his monstrous ambitions – came together in that first picture.

The society was fleshed out in the script even though we see only one panel of it – a gloomy, heavy, “Soviet” underworld of walled iron cities, cold blood and deadly intrigue. War–Barges that could sail on the oceans of heated steam at the center of the Earth. A Stalinist authoritarian lizard world where missing person cases were being taken to work and die as slaves in hellish underworld conditions.

NRAMA: Mechano–Man?

GM: An attempt to pre–imagine a classic, archetypal Superman foe, which started with another simple premise – how about a giant robot villain? But not just any giant robot – this is a rampaging machine with a raging little man inside.

Giving him a bitter, angry, scrawny loser as a pilot turned Mechano–Man into a much more extreme and pathological expression of the Man of Steel/Mild–Mannered Reporter dynamic, and added a few interesting layers onto an 8–panel appearance.

NRAMA: The Chronovore – a very disturbing creation, that one.

GM: The Chronovore was mentioned in passing in DC 1,000,000 and would have been the monster in my aborted Hypercrisis series idea. It took a long time to get the right design for the beast because it’s meant to be a 5–D being that we only ever see in 4–D sections. It had to work as a convincing representation of something much bigger that we’re seeing only where it interpenetrates our 4–D space-time continuum.

Imagine you’re walking along with a song in your teenage heart, then suddenly the Chronovore appears, takes bite out of your life, and you arrive at your girlfriend’s house aged 76, clutching a cell phone and a wilted bouquet.

NRAMA: One more obscure run that I was happy to see referenced in this was the use of Nasty from the old Mike Sekowsky Supergirl stories. What made you want to use this character?

GM: I remembered her from the old comics, and felt her fashion–y look could be updated very easily into the kind of fetish club thing I’ve always been partial to.

She seemed a cool and sexy addition to the Luthor plot. The set–up, where Lex has a fairly normal sister who hates how her wayward brother is such a bad influence on her brilliant daughter, is explosive with character potential.

They need to bring Nasty back to mainstream continuity. Geoff! They all want it and you know you never let them down!

NRAMA: Speaking of Mike Sekowsky, I’m curious about his influence on your work. I have an odd fascination with all the ideas and stories he was tossing around in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Jason’s Quest, Manhunter 2070, the I–Ching tales – and many of the characters he worked on, from the B”Wana Beast to the Inferior Five to Yankee Doodle (in Doom Patrol), have shown up in your work. The Bizarro Zoo in issue #10 is even slightly reminiscent of the Beast’s merged animals.

GM: Those were all comics that were around when I was a normal kid, prior to the obsessive collecting fan phase of my isolated teenage years. They clearly inspired me in some way, as you say, but certainly not consciously. I’d never have considered myself a particular fan of Mike Sekowsky’s work, but as you say, I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into the DC Universe work I’ve done. Hmm. Interesting.

While I’m at it, I should also say something about Samson and Atlas, halfway between old characters and new.

Samson, Atlas and Hercules were classical mainstays of old Superman covers, tangling with Superman in all those Silver Age stories that happened before he learned from his friends at Marvel that it was possible to fight other superheroes for fun and profit, so I decided to completely “re–vamp” the characters in the manner of superhero franchises. Marvel has the definitive Hercules for me, so I left him out of the mix and concentrated on Atlas and Samson.

Atlas was re–imagined as a mighty but restless and reckless young prince of the New Mythos – a society of mega–beings playing out their archetypal dramas between New Elysium and Hadia, with ordinary people caught in the middle – and Superman.

Essentially good–hearted, Atlas would have been the newbie in a “team” with Skyfather Xaoz!, Heroina, Marzak and the others. He has a bullish, adolescent approach to life. He drinks and plunges himself into ill–advised adventures to ease his naturally gloomy “weighed down by the world” temperament.

You can see it all now. The backstory suggested an unseen, Empyrean New Gods–type series from a parallel universe. What if, when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in 1971, he’d followed up his sci–fi Viking Gods saga at Marvel, with a dimension–spanning epic rooted in Greek mythology? New Gods meets Eternals drawn by Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson? That was Atlas.

Samson, I decided would be a callback to the British newspaper strip “Garth.” Although you may already be imagining a daily strip about the exploits of time–tossed The Boys writer, Garth Ennis, it was actually about a blonde Adonis type who bounced around the ages having mildly horny, racy adventures.

(Go look him up then return the wiser before reading on, so I don’t have to explain anymore about this bastard – he’s often described as “the British Superman,” but oh...my arse! I hated meathead, personality–singularity Garth...but we all grew up with his meandering, inexplicable yet incredibly–drawn adventures and some of it was quite good when you were a little lad because he was always shagging ON PANEL with the likes of a bare–breasted cave girl or gauze–draped Helen of Troy.

(Unlike Superman, you see, the top British strongman liked to get naked. Lots naked. Naked in every time period he could get naked in, which was all of them thanks to the miracle of his bullshit powers.

(Imagine Doctor Who buff, dumb and naked all the time – Russell, I’ve had an idea!!!! – and that’s Garth in a nutshell.

(Sorry, I know I’m going on and the average attention span of anyone reading stuff on the Internet amounts to no more than a few paragraphs, but basically, Garth was always getting naked. In public, in family newspapers. Bollock naked. Let’s face it, patriotic Americans, have you ever seen Superman’s arse?

Newsarama Note: Well, there was Baby Kal-El in the 1978 film...

(Brits, hands up who still remember the man, and have you ever not seen Garth’s arse? Do you not, in fact, have a very clear image of it in your head, as drawn by Martin Asbury perhaps? In mine, Garth’s pulling aside a flimsy curtain to gaze at the pyramids with Cleopatra buck naked in foreground ogling his rock hard glutes...).

Anyway, Samson, I decided, was the Hebrew version of Garth and he would have his own mad comic that was like an American version of Garth. I saw the Bible hero plucked from the desert sands by time–travelling buffoons in search of a savior. Introduced to all the worst aspects of future culture and, using his stolen, erratic Chrono–Mobile, Samson became a time–(and space) traveling Soldier of Fortune, writing wrongs, humping princesses, accumulating and losing treasure etc. Like a science fiction Conan. Meets Garth.

Fortunately, you’ll never see any of these men ever again.

Newsarama: How have your perceptions of Superman and his supporting characters evolved since the Superman 2000 pitch you did with Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer? The Superman notions seem almost identical, but Luthor is very different here than in that pitch, and so is Clark Kent. Did you use some aspects of your original pitch, or have you just changed his mind on how to portray these characters since?

Grant Morrison: A little of both. I wanted to approach All Star Superman as something new, but there were a couple of specific aspects from the Superman 2000 pitch (as I mentioned earlier, it was actually called Superman Now, at least in my notebooks, which is where the bulk of the material came from) that I felt were definitely worth keeping and exploring.

I can’t remember much about Luthor from Superman Now, except for the ending. By the time I got to All Star Superman, I’d developed a few new insights into Luthor’s character that seemed to flesh him out more. Luthor’s really human and charismatic and hateful all the same time. He’s the brilliant, deluded egotist in all of us. The key for me was the idea that he draws his eyebrows on. The weird vanity of that told me everything I needed to know about Luthor.

I thought the real key to him was the fact that, brilliant as he is, Luthor is nowhere near as brilliant as he wants to be or thinks he is. For Luthor, no praise, no success, no achievement is ever enough, because there’s a big hungry hole in his soul. His need for acknowledgement and validation is superhuman in scale. Superman needs no thanks; he does what he does because he’s made that way. Luthor constantly rails against his own sense of failure and inadequacy...and Superman’s to blame, of course.

I’ve recently been re–thinking Luthor again for a different project, and there’s always a new aspect of the character to unearth and develop.

NRAMA: This story makes Superman and Lois’ relationship seem much more romantic and epic than usual, but this one also makes Superman more of the pursuer. Lois seems like more of an equal, but also more wary of his affections, particularly in the black–and–white sequence in issue #2.

She becomes this great beacon of support for him over the course of the series, but there is a sense that she’s a bit jaded from years of trickery and uncomfortable with letting him in now that he’s being honest. How, overall, do you see the relationship between Superman and Lois?

GM: The black-and-white panels shows Lois paranoid and under the influence of an alien chemical, but yes, she’s articulating many of her very real concerns in that scene.

I wanted her to finally respond to all those years of being tricked and duped and led to believe Superman and Clark Kent were two different people. I wanted her to get her revenge by finally refusing to accept the truth.

It also exposed that brilliant central paradox in the Superman/Lois relationship. The perfect man who never tells a lie has to lie to the woman he loves to keep her safe. And he lives with that every day. It’s that little human kink that really drives their relationship.

NRAMA: Jimmy Olsen is extremely cool in this series – it’s the old “Mr. Action” idea taken to a new level. It’s often easy to write Jimmy as a victim or sycophant, but in this series, he comes off as someone worthy of being “Superman’s Pal” – he implicitly trusts Superman, and will take any risk to get his story. Do you see this version of Jimmy as sort of a natural evolution of the version often seen in the comics?

GM: It was a total rethink based on the aspects of Olsen I liked, and playing down the whole wet–behind–the–ears “cub reporter” thing. I borrowed a little from the “Mr. Action” idea of a more daredevil, pro–active Jimmy, added a little bit of Nathan Barley, some Abercrombie & Fitch style, a bit of Tintin, and a cool Quitely haircut.

Jimmy was renowned for his “disguises” and bizarre transformations (my favorite is the transvestite Olsen epic “Miss Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #95, which gets a nod on the first page of our Jimmy story we did), so I wanted to take that aspect of his appeal and make it part of his job.

I don’t like victim Jimmy or dumb Jimmy, because those takes on the character don’t make any sense in their context. It seemed more interesting see what a young man would be like who could convincingly be Superman’s “pal.” Someone whose company a Superman might actually enjoy. That meant making Jimmy a much bigger character: swaggering but ingenuous. Innocent yet worldly. Enthusiastic but not stupid.

My favorite Jimmy moment is in issue #7 when he comes up with the way to defeat the Bizarro invasion by using the seas of the Bizarro planet itself as giant mirrors to reflect toxic – to Bizarros – sunlight onto the night side of the Earth. He knows Superman can actually take crazy lateral thinking like this and put it into practice.

NRAMA: Perry White has a few small–but–key scenes, particularly his address to his staff in issue #1 and standing up to Luthor in issue #12. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this character.

GM: As with the others, my feelings are there on the page. Perry is Clark’s boss and need only be that and not much more to play his role perfectly well within the stories. He’s a good reminder that Superman has a job and a boss, unlike that good–for–nothing work-shy bastard Batman. Perry’s another of the series’ older male role models of integrity and steadfastness, like Pa Kent.

NRAMA: There’s a sense in the Daily Planet scenes and with Lois’s spotlight issues that everyone knows Clark is Superman, but they play along to humor him. The Clark disguise comes off as very obvious in this story. Do you feel that the Planet staff knows the truth, or are just in a very deep case of denial, like Lex?

GM: If I had to say for sure, I think Jimmy Olsen worked it out a long time ago, and simply presumes that if Superman has a good reason for what he’s doing, that’s good enough for Jimmy.

Lois has guessed, but refuses to acknowledge it because it exposes her darkest flaw – she could never love Clark Kent the way she loves Superman.

NRAMA: Also, the Planet staff seems awfully nonchalant at Luthor’s threats. Are they simply used to being attacked by now?

GM: Yes. They’re a tough group. They also know that Superman makes a point of looking out for them, so they naturally try to keep Luthor talking. They know he loves to talk about himself and about Superman. In that scene, he’s almost forgotten he even has powers, he’s so busy arguing and making points. He keeps doing ordinary things instead of extraordinary things.

NRAMA: The running gag of Clark subtly using his powers to protect unknowing people is well done, but I have to admit I was confused by the sequence near the end of issue #1. Was that an el–train, and if so, why was it so close to the ground?

GM: It’s a MagLev hover–train. Look again, and you’ll see it’s not supported by anything. Hover–trains help ease congestion in busy city streets! Metropolis is the City of Tomorrow, after all.

NRAMA: And there’s the death of Pa Kent. Why do you feel it’s particularly important to have Pa and not both of the Kents pass away?

GM: I imagined they had both passed away fairly early in Superman’s career, but Ma went a few years after Pa. Also, because the book was about men or man, it seemed important to stress the father/son relationships. That circle of life, the king is dead, long live the king thing that Superman is ultimately too big and too timeless to succumb to.

NRAMA: There is a real touch of Elliott S! Maggin’s novels in your depiction of Luthor – someone who is just so obsessive–compulsive about showing up Superman that he accomplishes nothing in his own life. He comes across as a showman, from his rehearsed speech in issue #1 to his garish costume in the last two issues, and it becomes painfully apparent that he wants to usurp Superman because he just can’t be happy with himself. What defeats him is actually a beautiful gift, getting to see the world as Superman does, and finally understanding his enemy.

That’s all a lead–in to: What previous stories that defined Luthor for you, and how did you define his character? What appeals to you about writing him?

GM: The Marks Waid and Millar were big fans of the Maggin books, and may have persuaded me to read at least the first one but I’m ashamed to say can’t remember anything about it, other than the vague recollection of a very humane, humanist take on Superman that seemed in general accord with the pacifist, hedonistic, between–the–wars spirit of the ‘90s when I read it. It was the ‘90s; I had other things on my mind and in my mind.

I like Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman?” from Superman #247, which ultimately poses questions traditional superhero comic books are not equipped to answer and is one of the first paving stones in the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Watchmen and beyond, to The Authority, The Ultimates etc. Everyone still awake, still reading this, should make themselves familiar with “Must There Be A Superman?” – it’s a milestone in the development of the superhero concept.

However, the story that most defines Luthor for me turns out to be, as usual, a Len Wein piece with Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson– Superman #248. This blew me away when I was a kid. Lex Luthor cares about humanity? He’s sorry we all got blown up? The villain loves us too? It’s only Superman he really hates? Genius. Big, cool adult stuff.

The divine Len makes Lex almost too human, but it was amazing to see this kind of depth in a character I’d taken for granted as a music hall villain.

I also love the brutish Satanic, Crowley–esque, Golden Age Luthor in the brilliant “Powerstone” Action Comics #47 (the opening of All Star #11 is a shameless lift from “Powerstone”, as I soon realised when I went back to look. Blame my...er...photographic memory...cough).

And I like the Silver Age Luthor who only hates Superman because he thinks it’s Superboy’s fault he went bald. That was the most genuinely human motivation for Luthor’s career of villainy of all; it was Superman’s fault he went bald! I can get behind that.

In the Silver Age, baldness, like obesity, old age and poverty, was seen quite rightly as a crippling disease and a challenge which Superman and his supporting cast would be compelled to overcome at every opportunity! Suburban “50s America versus Communist degeneracy? You tell me.

I like elements of the Marv Wolfman/John Byrne ultra–cruel and rapacious businessman, although he somewhat lacks the human dimension (ultimately there’s something brilliant about Luthor being a failed inventor, a product of Smallville/Dullsville – the genius who went unnoticed in his lifetime, and resorted to death robots in chilly basements and cellars. Luthor as geek versus world). I thought Alan Moore’s ruthlessly self–assured “consultant” Luthor in Swamp Thing was an inspired take on the character as was Mark Waid’s rage–driven prodigy from Birthright.

I tried to fold them all into one portrayal. I see him as a very human character – Superman is us at our best, Luthor is us when we’re being mean, vindictive, petty, deluded and angry. Among other things. It’s like a bipolar manic/depressive personality – with optimistic, loving Superman smiling at one end of the scale and paranoid, petty Luthor cringing on the other.

I think any writer of Superman has to love these two enemies equally. We have to recognize them both as potentials within ourselves. I think it’s important to find yourself agreeing with Luthor a bit about Superman’s “smug superiority” – we all of us, except for Superman, know what it’s like to have mean–spirited thoughts like that about someone else’s happiness. It’s essential to find yourself rooting for Lex, at least a little bit, when he goes up against a man–god armed only with his bloody–minded arrogance and cleverness.

Even if you just wish you could just give him a hug and help him channel his energies in the right direction, Luthor speaks for something in all of us, I like to think.

However he’s played, Luthor is the male power fantasy gone wrong and turned sour. You’ve got everything you want but it’s not enough because someone has more, someone is better, someone is cleverer or more handsome.

 Newsarama: Grant, a recurring theme throughout the book is the effect of small kindness – how even the likes of Steve Lombard are capable of decency. And Superman gets the key to saving himself by doing something that any human being could do, offering sympathy to a person about to end it all.

Grant Morrison: Completely...the person you help today could be the person who saves your life tomorrow.

NRAMA: The character actions that make the biggest difference, from Zibarro’s sacrifice to Pa’s influence on Superman, are really things that any normal, non-powered person could do if they embrace the best part of their humanity. The last page of issue #12 teases the idea that Superman’s powers could be given to all mankind, but it seems as though the greatest gift he has given them is his humanity. How do you view Superman’s fate in the context of where humanity could go as a species?

GM: I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. It’s really simple. We can continue to tell ourselves and our children that the species we belong to is a crawling, diseased, viral cancer smear, only fit for extinction, and let’s see where that leads us.

We can continue to project our self-loathing and narcissistic terror of personal mortality onto our culture, our civilization, our planet, until we wreck the promise of the world for future generations in a fit of sheer self-induced panic...

...or we can own up to the scientific fact that we are all physically connected as parts of a single giant organism, imagine better ways to live and grow...and then put them into practice. We can stop pissing about, start building starships, and get on with the business of being adults.

The ’Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.

The key theme of the ‘Dark Age’ of comics was loss and recovery of wonder - McGregor’s Killraven trawling through the apocalyptic wreckage of culture in his search for poetry, meaning and fellowship, Captain Mantra, amnesiac in Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be. Ha hah ha.

 Newsarama: The structure of the 12 issues involves both Superman’s 12 labors and his impending death. Do you feel the threat of his demise brings out the best in Superman’s already–high character, or did you intend it more as a window for the audience to understand how he sees the world?

Grant Morrison: In trying to do the “big,” ultimate Superman story, we wanted to hit on all the major beats that define the character – the “death of Superman” story has been told again and again and had to be incorporated into any definitive take. Superman’s death and rebirth fit the sun god myth we were establishing, and, as you say, it added a very terminal ticking clock to the story.

NRAMA: When we talked earlier this year, we discussed the neurotic quality of the Silver Age stories. Looking at the series as a whole, you consistently invert this formula. Superman is faced with all these crises that could be seen as personifying his neuroses, but for the most part he handles them with a level head and comes across as being very at peace with himself. You talked about your discussion with an in–character Superman fan at a convention years ago, but I am curious as to how you determined Superman’s mindset.

GM: I felt we had to live up to the big ideas behind Superman. I don’t take my daft job lightly. It’s all I’ve got.

As the project got going, I wasn’t thinking about Silver Ages or Dark Ages or anything about the comics I’d read, so much as the big shared idea of “Superman” and that “S” logo I see on T–shirts everywhere I go, on girls and boys. That communal Superman. I wanted us to get the precise energy of Platonic Superman down on the page.

The “S” hieroglyph, the super–sigil, stands for the very best kind of man we can imagine, so the subject dictated the methodical, perfectionist approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I keep this aspect of my job fresh for myself by changing my writing style to suit the project, the character or the artist.

With something like Batman R.I.P., I’m aiming for a frenzied Goth Pulp-Noir; punk-psych, expressionist shadows and jagged nightmare scene shifts, inspired by Batman’s roots and by the snapping, fluttering of his uncanny cape. Final Crisis was written, with the Norse Ragnarok and Biblical Revelations in mind, as a story about events more than characters. A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.

The subject matter drives the execution. And then, of course, the artists add their own vision and nuance. With All Star Superman, “Frank” and I were able to spend a lot of time together talking it through, and we agreed it had to be about grids, structure, storybook panel layouts, an elegance of form, a clarity of delivery. “Classical” in every sense of the word. The medium, the message, the story, the character, all working together as one simple equation.

Frank Quitely, a Glasgow Art School boy, completely understood without much explanation, the deep structural underpinnings of the series and how to embody them in his layouts. There’s a scene in issue # 8, set on the Bizarro world, where we see Le Roj handing Superman his rocket plans. Look at the arrangement of the figures of Zibarro, Le Roj, Superman and Bizaro–Superman and you’ll see one attempt to make us of Renaissance compositions.

The sense of sunlit Zen calm we tried to get into All Star is how I imagine it might feel to think the way Superman thinks all the time - a thought process that is direct, clean, precise, mathematical, ordered. A mind capable of fantastical imagination but grounded in the everyday of his farm upbringing with nice decent folks. Rich with humour and tears and deep human significance, yet tuned to a higher key. We tried to hum along for a little while, that’s all.

In honor of the character’s primal position in the development of the superhero narrative, I hoped we could create an “ultimate” hero story, starring the ultimate superhero.

Basically, I suppose I felt Superman deserved the utmost application of our craft and intelligence in order to truly do him justice.

Otherwise, I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t watched my big, brilliant dad decline into incoherence and death. I couldn’t have written it if I’d never had my heart broken, or mended. I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t known what it felt like to be idolized, misunderstood, hated for no clear reason, loved for all my faults, forgotten, remembered...

Writing All Star Superman was, in retrospect, also a way of keeping my mind in the clean sunshine while plumbing the murkiest depths of the imagination with that old pair of c****s Darkseid and Doctor Hurt. Good riddance.

 Newsarama: This is touched on in other questions, but how much of the Silver/Bronze Age backstory matters here? What do you see as Superman's life prior to All-Star Superman? (What was going on with this Superman while the Byrne revamp took hold?)

Grant Morrison: When I introduced the series in an interview online, I suggested that All Star Superman could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne‘s New Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?

This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended All Star Superman as a direct continuation of the Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘Age’ specific.

I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. All Star isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.

All Star Superman is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.

Which is to say, we wanted our Superman story be about life, not about comics or superheroes, current events or politics. It’s about how it feels, specifically to be a man...in our dreams! Hopefully that means our 12 issues are also capable of wide interpretation.

So as much as we may have used a few recognizable Silver Age elements like Van-Zee and Sylv(i)a and the Bottle City of Kandor, the ensemble Daily Planet cast embodies all the generations of Superman. Perry White is from 1940, Steve Lombard is from the Schwartz-era ‘70s, Ron Troupe - the only black man in Metropolis - appeared in 1991. Cat Grant is from 1987 and so on.

P.R.O.J.E.C.T. refers back to Jack Kirby’s DNA Project from his ‘70s Jimmy Olsen stories, as well as to The Cadmus Project from ’90s Superboy and Superman stories. Doomsday is ‘90s. Kal Kent, Solaris and the Infant Universe of Qwewq all come from my own work on Superman in the same decade. Pa Kent’s heart attack is from ‘Superman the Movie‘. We didn’t use Brainiac because he’d been the big bad in Earth 2 but if we had, we’d have used Brainiac’s Kryptonian origin from the animated series and so on.

I also used quite a few elements of John Byrne’s approach. Byrne made a lot of good decisions when he rebooted the whole franchise in 1986 and I wanted to incorporate as much as I could of those too.

Our Superman in All Star was never Superboy, for instance. All Star Superman landed on Earth as a normal, if slightly stronger and fitter infant, and only began to manifest powers in adolescence when he’d finally soaked up enough yellow solar radiation to trigger his metamorphosis.

The Byrne logic seemed to me a better way to explain how his powers had developed across the decades, from the skyscraper leaps of the early days to the speed-of-light space flight of the high Silver Age. And more importantly, it made the Superman myth more poignant - the story of a farm boy who turned into an alien as he reached adolescence. I felt that was something that really enriched Superman. He grew away from his home, his family, his adopted species as he became Superman. His teenage years are a record of his transformation from normal boy to super-being.

As you say, there are more than just Silver Age influences in the book. Basically we tried to create a perfect synthesis of every Superman era. So much so, that it should just be taken as representative of an ‘age’ all its own.

In the end, however, I do think that the Silver Age type stories, with their focus on human problems and foibles, have a much wider appeal than a lot of the work which followed. They’re more like fables or folk tales than the later ‘comic book superhero’ stories of Superman when he became just another colorful costume in the crowd...and perhaps that’s why All Star seemed to resemble those books more than it does a typical modern Marvel or DC comic. It was our intention to present a more universal, mainstream Superman.

NRAMA: In your depiction of Krypton and the Kryptonians, you show the complexity of Superman’s relationship between humanity and Earth even further. Krypton has that scientific paradise quality to it, but the Kryptonians are also portrayed as slightly aloof and detached, even Jor-El. But from Bar-El to the people of Kandor, they’re touched by Superman’s goodness. What do you see as the fundamental difference between Kryptonians and Earthlings, and how has Superman’s character been shaped by each?

GM: My version of Krypton was, again, synthesized from a number of different approaches over the decades. 
In mythic terms, if Superman is the story of a young king, found and raised by common people, then Krypton is the far distant kingdom he lost. It’s the secret bloodline, the aristocratic heritage that makes him special, and a hero. At the same time, Krypton is something that must be left behind for Superman to become who he is - i.e. one of us. Krypton gives him his scientific clarity of mind, Earth makes his heart blaze.

I liked the very early Jerry Siegel descriptions where Krypton is a planet of advanced supermen and women (I already played with that a little in Marvel Boy where Noh-Varr was written to be the Marvel Superboy basically). To that, I added the rich, science fiction detailing of the Silver Age Krypton stories and the slightly detached coolness that characterized John Byrne’s Krypton, which I re-interpreted through the lens of Dzogchen Buddhist thought, probably the most pragmatic, chilly and rational philosophic system on the planet and the closest, I felt, to how Kryptonians might see things.

We also took some time to redesign the crazy, multicolored Kryptonian flag (you can see our version in Kandor in issue #10). The flag, as originally imagined, seemed like the last thing Kryptonians would endorse, so we took the multicolored-rays-around-a-circle design and recreated it - the central circle is now red, representing Krypton’s star, Rao, while the rays, rather than arbitrary colors, become representations of the spectrum of visible light pouring from Rao into the inky black of space. In this way, the flag, that bizarre emblem of nationalism becomes a scientific hieroglyph.

Showing Krypton and Kryptonians was also important as a way of stressing why Superman wears that costume and why it makes absolute sense that he looks the way he does. I don’t see the red and blue suit as a flag or as rewoven baby blankets. There’s no need for Superman to dress the way he does but it made sense to think of his outfit as his ‘national costume‘.

The way I see it, the standard superhero outfit, the familiar Superman suit with the pants on the outside, is what everyone wore on Krypton, give or take a few fashion accessories like hoods and headbands, chest crests and variant colors. In fact, all other superheroes are just copying the fashions on Krypton, lost planet of the super-people.

Superman wears his ’action-suit’ the way a patriotic Scotsman would wear a kilt. It’s a sign of his pride in his alien heritage.

 Newsarama: Although All–Star Superman ties in with DC One Million, you style of writing has changed dramatically since then.  How do you feel about One Million now?

Grant Morrison: I just read it again and liked it a lot. Comics were definitely happier, breezier and more confident in their own strengths before Hollywood and the Internet turned the business of writing superhero stories into the production of low budget storyboards or, worse, into conformist, fruitless attempts to impress or entertain a small group of people who appear to hate comics and their creators.

NRAMA: Obviously, this book is the most explicit SF–Christ story since Behold the Man, only...happy.  Superman/Christ parallels have existed for decades, but this story makes it absolutely explicit, from laying his hands on the sick and dying to...well, most of issue #12.  You’ve dealt with Christ themes before, particularly in The Mystery Play, but outside of the comics, how do you see Superman as a Christ figure for the “real” world?

GM: The “Superman as Christ” thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.

When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?

The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone. This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.

It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements that have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman. I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.

NRAMA: Continuing the religious themes, in issue #10, you have Superman literally giving birth to himself, both philosophically and as a character – a nice little meta–moment showing how Superman inspires a world where he is only fiction.  How did that idea come about?

GM: It came from the challenge we’d set ourselves: as I said, issue #10 had been left as a blank space into which the single most coherent condensation of all our ideas about Superman were destined to fit.

I wanted to do a “day in the life” story. So much of All Star had been about this threat to Superman himself, so we wanted to show him going about a typical day saving people and doing good.

Then came the title “Neverending,” which comes from the opening announcement – “Faster than a speeding bullet!...” of the Superman radio show from 1940, and seemed to me to be as good a title for a Superman story as any I could think of. It seemed to distil everything about Superman’s battle and his legend into a single word. And the story structure itself was designed to loop endlessly, so it went well with that.

 On top of that went the idea of the Last Will and Testament of Superman. A dying god writing his will seemed like an interesting structure to use. Then came the idea to fit all of human history into that single 24 hours. And then to show the development of the Superman idea through human culture from the earliest Australian Aboriginal notions of super–beings ‘descended” from the sky, through the complex philosophical system of Hinduism, onto the Renaissance concept of the ideal man, via the refinements of Nietzche and finally, down to that smiling, hopeful Joe Shuster sketch; the final embodiment of humanity’s glorious, uplifting notion of the superman become reduced to a drawing, a story for kids, a worthless comic book.

And also what that could mean in a holographic fractal universe, where the smallest part contains and reflects the whole.

Of course the next panel in that sequence is happening in the real world and would show you, the reader, sitting with the latest Superman issue in your hands, deep within the Infant Universe of Qwewq in the Fortress of Solitude, today, wherever you are. In “Neverending,” the reader becomes wrapped in a self–referential loop of story and reality. If you actually, seriously think about what is happening at this point in the story, if you meditate upon the curious entanglement of the real and the fictional, you will become enlightened in this life apparently. According to some texts.

NRAMA: On a personal level, you’ve explored all types of religions and philosophies in your work.  What is your take on religion and how it influences humanity, and the Christian take on Jesus Christ in particular?

GM: I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars.  At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.

Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.

Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic ‘divinity” at work.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf: just close your eyes and say hello. “God” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).

This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists...but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of 4 cannot do but children of 6 can.

Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it. 
This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.”  However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.

Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics. Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.

Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.

As Peter Barnes wrote in “The Ruling Class”, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”

 Newsarama: When we spoke earlier this year, you talked about some of your ideas for future All Star stories. Are you moving forward on those, or have you started working on different ideas since then?

Grant Morrison: I haven’t had time to think about them for a while. I did have the stories worked out, and I’d like to do more, but right now it feels like Frank and Jamie and I have said all there is to be said. I don’t know if I’m ready to do All Star Superman with anyone else right now. I have other plans.

NRAMA: You end the book with Superman having uplifted humanity – having inspired them through his sacrifice and great deeds, and with the potential to pass his powers on to humanity still there. Do you plan to explore this concept further, or would you prefer to leave it open–ended?

GM: I may go back to the Son of Superman in some way. At the same time, it’s best left open–ended. I like the idea that Superman gets to have his cake and eat it; he becomes golden and mythical and lives forever as a dream. Yet, he also is able to sire a child who will carry his legacy into the future. He kicks ass in both the spiritual and the temporal spheres!

 NRAMA: The notion of transcendence – always a big part of your work. But the debate about All Star Superman is whether or not it "transcends its genre." Superman becomes transcendent within the series itself, and inspires the beings on Qwewq, but does the work aspire to more than that? Is it simply the greatest version of a Superman story, and that’s enough?

GM: That would certainly be enough if it were true.

It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

It’s a big old Paul Bunyan style mythologizing of human - and in particular male - experience. In that sense I’d like to think All Star Superman does transcend genre in that it’s intended to be read on its own terms and needs absolutely no understanding of genre conventions or history around it to grasp what’s going on.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent, ‘Zibarro’ crap. That’s what my Final Crisis series is about too.

NRAMA (aka Tim Callahan): Continuing with the theme of transcendence: The words "ineffectual" and "surrender" are repeated throughout the book. Discuss.

GM: Discuss yourself, Callahan! I know you have the facilities and I should think it’s all rather obvious. 


NRAMA: What was the inspiration for the image of Superman in the sun at the end? (I confess this question comes as the result of much unsuccessful Googling)

GM: I didn’t have any specific reference in mind - just that one we‘ve all sort of got in our heads. I drew the figure as a sketch, intended to be reminiscent of William Blake’s cosmic figures, Russian Constructivist Soviet Socialist Worker type posters, and Leonardo’s ‘Proportions of the Human Figure‘. The position of the legs hints at the Buddhist swastika, the clockwise sun symbol. It was to me, the essence of that working class superheroic ideal I mentioned, condensed into a final image of mythic Superman, - our eternal, internal, guiding, selfless, tireless, loving superstar. The daft All Star Superman title of the comic is literalized in this last picture. It’s the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the Enlightenment project - an image of genius, toil, and our need to make things, to fashion art and artifacts, as a form of superhuman, divine imitation.

It was Superman as this fusion of Renaissance/Enlightenment ideas about Man and Cosmos, an impossible union of Blake and Newton. A Pop Art ‘Vitruvian Man‘. The inspiration for the first letter of the new future alphabet!

As you can see, we spent a lot of time thinking about all this and purifying it down to our own version of the gold. I’m glad it’s over.

NRAMA: Finally: What, above all else, would you like people to take away from All Star Superman?

GM: That we spent a lot of time thinking about this!

No. What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that?

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colorist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.

My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honoring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.

[amydancepants-peralta]

baby, I’ve got you on my mind 

“Thank you for that update, McCla- I’m mean, McCarthur.”  

Clearing her throat, Amy ducks her head down to focus on the paperwork in front of her, quietly praying that nobody has noticed her mistake.  She knew the chances were slim, given that it was her third slip-up since her briefing had begun fifteen minutes ago, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that the concept of returning to work after three months of Pure Family Time was going to be way harder than she’d anticipated.  

There had been a part of her that was so. eager. to return to work today, taking extra care to iron her uniform into perfectly symmetrical pleats and polishing her badge so that it shone with just enough pride.  Rumours had been circulating around about somebody trying to make adjustments to her precision based filing system (and she wasn’t mad, she just wanted to talk to whomever they were), and as the weeks wore on and Jake returned to work, it became apparent that her FOMOW was no longer something that Amy could easily hide.

She has loved every single second of being a Mommy, right down to the sleepless nights and the cold mornings with her son sleeping snuggled warm against her, but there was no way that Amy could deny how much she missed the order of the NYPD.  She had craved the regular flow of paperwork (some that even needed to be notarised); the meetings and seminars and conference calls and oh, how there were so many binders waiting to be filled.  

In the past few weeks it had become habit once Jake returned home each evening, to spend the first half hour (at a minimum) telling her about his day - filling her in on any cases that had opened while she’s been away.  She lapped up all the information eagerly, throwing out ideas as they came to her, and the sheer thought of being able to play a part in regulating justice to their city made her giddy with excitement.  So Amy had been excited to return to work, if only to scratch the itch that her FOMOW had left her with.  

As it turned out, she had a much larger case of something brewing underneath her skin - something that was increasing dramatically with every passing second.  

Amy had FOMOM:  Fear Of Missing Out on Mac.

It had, for example, been exactly one hour and thirty seven minutes since she’d walked out of her and Jake’s apartment, blowing goodbye kisses to her son as he rested comfortably in his father’s arms.  One hour and thirty six minutes since she’d reconsidered the whole notion of returning to work, her fingers hovering over Holt’s number on her cell phone as she made her way down the stairs, and one hour and thirty four minutes since she’d convinced herself that she could totally do this.  

(Also, it has been sixteen minutes since she’s realised just how many officers on her team had names that began with the letter M.  And how her mind no longer seemed to be able to say any other name that began with the same combination of consonants and vowels without automatically reverting to her son’s.)

She hadn’t even passed the two hour mark yet, and already Amy felt like she’d been away from her family for eight years.  

Her phone lights up from its resting place along the edge of the podium, and she glances at it quickly, trying her best to tamper down the racing heartbeat that accompanies the notification that her husband has sent her a photo.

This was it.  This was the text Jake was going to send to her, that announced excitedly that their prodigy of a son had managed to figure out how to walk, fifteen minutes after she’d stepped out the apartment this morning.  Or that he’d pronounced his first word - a clear and proud call for Daddy - and that Jake hadn’t managed to get video of it but it was so amazing, babe, I wish you could have been there to see it!

Her hands grip the wooden edges of the platform her Return To Work speech occupied, eyes glued to the background picture of Mac sleeping on an also sleeping Jake’s chest, and from the tables before her one of the officers clears their throat politely.  The sound cuts through the spiral Amy was beginning to gravitate towards, pulling her attention back to her team, and with an apologetic smile she wraps up the rest of the briefing quickly.  There were still four and half pages left of her speech, but it’s nothing that she can’t compose in an email when her mind is a little less preoccupied, and in all honesty the only order of business she can focus on right now is Priority One: Unlocking her phone.

*

There have been many, many advancements in the name of modern technology; and 2 hours, 53 minutes and 47 seconds into Amy’s first shift she has twice already cursed the fact that nobody has created the option for a person to be able to reach into their phone and touch the subject of an image.  Never before has she had such a craving to squeeze her son’s chubby cheeks, to feel the unbelievably soft skin that she knows he has.  

Her husband, in yet another display of sweetness, has been giving her regular updates on his and Mac’s day at home together - and two minutes ago he’d sent through a photo of their son, reclined in his baby seat, with apple sauce spread out allll over his cheeks.  It was equal parts adorable and painful for Amy, for her to not be able to a) grab a cloth and wipe away the mess as her son grins up at her, and b) smother his tiny face with a million tiny kisses.  

She missed him.  Missed him more than she’d thought possible.  Her arms felt empty without their son in them, and it’s nearly impossible for her to imagine what life was like before their family had become a party of three.

In absolutely no surprise to anybody other than himself, Jake has turned out to be an excellent father.  He’s been by her side through the whole thing - even the middle of the night feeds, taking to burping their son like a pro - and the way Mac’s face lights up whenever his eyes land on Jake (and vice versa, it’s honestly just the sweetest thing to see) tells Amy all that she needs to know.  Their son is going to adore Jake, and there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that her husband is EVER going to walk away from his family.  

Distractedly, Amy shuffles the paperwork around on her desk, offering a tight smile to one of her colleagues as they pass.  Get it together, Santiago.  You are a badass police sergeant for one of the strongest teams in the entire NYPD.  You can get through one shift without seeing your son.  Her phone vibrates with an incoming heart emoji filled text from her husband, and she takes his support as fuel for her cause, standing up from her desk and taking purposeful strides towards the filing cabinets.  You’re a badass police sergeant with a highly effective, strongly sought after filing system, and you can do this.  

Her eyebrows knit in disgust as she opens the first drawer, taking in the messy array of folders that occupied the once orderly space, and she supposes she should be thankful in some way that there was someone in the office who thought that this hot mess worked better than her system (and therefore provided a worthy distraction for her entirely preoccupied mind), but in all honesty she’s just completely horrified.  

Already composing a polite but firm memorandum in her mind, Amy begins pulling the files out of their incorrect positions, glancing at her watch as she gets to work.  

Only five hours, two minutes and twenty seconds to go.  

*

It’s 4 hours and 28 minutes into Amy’s workday when she hears the elevator doors open and a tiny gasp escape Officer Alvarado’s mouth, and with a quick lift of her head she notices why.  Jake has suddenly appeared on her floor, with their son safe and sound inside the carrier strapped to his chest.  His smile lights up the room - like it always does, even at home - and even though he’s clearly trying to make his way towards Amy, it seems that the sudden appearance of Mac Peralta in the precinct has garnered every single officer’s attention.  

Amy’s not one to pull rank (honestly, who is she kidding?) but her footsteps are quick against the linoleum floor, increasing in intensity the closer she gets to her husband, and Jake’s already in the process of unclipping a strap as she nears.  “I figured you’d probably be in need of a pick-me-up right about now,” he mumbles, his voice soft enough to only land in Amy’s ears.

Nodding eagerly, Amy shoots her husband a grateful look before smiling in Mac’s direction, stretching her hands out as he lifts his own in recognition.

“There’s my little guy!”  She cries out, sliding one hand along her son’s back as his chonky little arms and legs begin to wave around in excitement.  He coos as she lifts him out of the carrier with Jake’s help, and the sound buries deep in her heart as the feeling of utter completion begins to wash over her now that Mac is leaning against her chest.  

Shifting her shoulder slightly, Amy tilts her grip slightly in an effort to show off to the crowd her greatest achievement to date.  “Squad, meet our son - Mac.”  

There’s a crowd of tiny waves, all of which are greeted with a tiny saliva-covered fist moving back and forth from Mac’s mouth; and after a few more minutes of leg squishing and attempts to reach out for various badges, Amy’s squad disperses - suddenly aware that absolutely none of them were currently doing their work, and that there was no way they could hide such a fact from their boss.  

Jake’s palm rests against Amy’s shoulder as she leads them towards the third floor break room, a quiet eating space that has yet to be tainted by the questionable eating habits of either Scully or Hitchcock.  “You have had many brilliant ideas in all the years we’ve been together, babe, but I think this one might just be your best yet.”  Amy announces to Jake as she settles into a vacant chair, grinning over at her husband as he chooses the seat opposite.  

He smiles, that gentle nod of his head that he does when he’s secretly proud of his actions kicking in, and Amy stretches her left leg out to brush against his.  His beam grows brighter as he leans forward, brushing his fingers gently along the tiny curls that have begun to form on their son’s head before replying, “Safe to say, I’ve gotten pretty good and picking up on the my wife is having a meltdown style of texting.”

Scoffing, Amy cranes her head back slightly to take in her son’s adorable face as she responds.  “I’d like to think I’ve handled today pretty well.”  It’s a lie, and they both know it.

Letting out a soft laugh, Jake shakes his head slightly.  “Tell that to the fifty-odd messages I’ve received from you today.”

She feels a soft blush wash over her cheeks, but Amy doesn’t care in the slightest.  They both know that Jake fared no better when it had been his turn to return to work, and they’ve come to the total and utter acceptance that Mac Peralta just so happens to be the most adorable and addictive baby that ever graced the earth.  Facts are facts, and there was no point hiding it.  

“Okay, so maybe I’ve - ”  Pausing mid-sentence, Amy takes a closer look at her son, fingers swirling around his soft hair carefully.  

“Ames?”

“His hair has grown.”

Nodding, Jake scoots his chair closer, and the corresponding scrape sounds oddly loud as it bounces off the surrounding walls.  “Yeah, he’s definitely going to end up with my curls.  It’s both a blessing and a curse, but he’ll figure that out eventually.”

Amy shakes her head quickly.  “No, I mean it’s grown.  Since this morning.”

“Babe, it’s been five hours.”

“It has, though!  See this curl?  It’s WAY more pronounced than it was earlier today.  It wraps around my finger twice now!”

His eyes are dubious, but if there is anything that Jake has learned by now it is not to doubt his wife, and so he responds simply with a nod.  It’s not convincing in any way, shape, or form, but Amy is way too distracted to bother with a rebuttal.  

“I knew this was going to happen!  He’s growing so quickly, babe.”  Her eyes have turned wide as saucers, and she can feel her eyebrows raising to nearly the point of her hairline, but none of that matters in the slightest.  “We’re going to miss out on so. much!  Why did we not take this into consideration?”  Her lips press against the top of Mac’s head as she holds him closer, jiggling one knee on reflex as he wriggles slightly in her arms.  Slowly, Amy begins to feel her chest tighten up as all of the niggling doubts of her returning to work rush to the surface.

“Ames”.  Jake’s hands rest gently on top of her own, squeezing slightly as she raises her head to meet his.  “We’re not going to miss out on anything.  You have put together the most thorough, well-spaced out babysitting schedule that has meant that one of our friends or family is always going to be around when we’re not.  With any luck, it’ll never be longer than eight or nine hours before we’re all home together again, and either one of us is always only a video call away.”  

Nodding, Amy drops her head back down to leave another kiss on Mac’s forehead, and she takes in a deep breath of that incredible new baby smell while she’s there.  Already, she can feel herself being to reset.

“There are going to be a thousand moments, some big and some small, and yeah, maybe we might miss a couple here and there, but the most important thing is that Mac is already so, so loved.  He knows that, and we know that, and honestly that’s all that matters.”

Amy’s pounding heart slowly lessens its assault against her chest, and as Jake’s hands tighten their grip over hers she begins to nod.  If someone had told her eight years ago that the immature cop that sat across from her would end up being the source of some of the sweetest things she’s ever heard in her life, she would have laughed in their faces.  But here he was, holding his rightful title of Greatest Husband and Father Ever, and honestly she wouldn’t have it any other way.  She smiles, leaning in slightly to bridge the gap between them with a chaste (read: work appropriate) kiss.  “I love you so much, babe.”

He mirrors her nod with his own, throwing in a wink.  “It’s easy to do, Ames.  I am very loveable.”

She knows it to be true, but still Amy rolls her eyes.  “Whatever, Peralta.  You’re just lucky that we make pretty cute babies.”

“Liquid fire, Ames.  I said it on Day One, and there’s no way I’m backing down.”

Letting out a contented sigh, Amy pulls Mac in for one last tight squeeze, taking in another hit of his perfect baby scent before standing.  “Alright.  I’ve got to get back to work now, otherwise it’s just never going to happen.”  Leaving one last parting kiss on Mac’s forehead, she passes her son to Jake, still unable to tear her eyes away from him for too long.  “Thank you so much for bringing him in today, this is exactly what I needed.”  Her son grumbles out a protest in the sudden change of plans, and it’s all she can do to not pull him immediately back into her arms.  

Jake smiles, reaching out to fiddle with Mac’s flailing right arm as he leans towards Amy for another sneaky kiss.  “I figure once he’s big enough to fit into that NYPD onesie the squad gave us, we’ll just set him up with his own desk in the corner.”

“There you go, with another brilliant idea!”

Gripping Mac’s hand in his fingers, Jake calls out “Goodbye, Mommy!”, and oh, how Amy’s heart begins to ache.  She feels it squeeze tighter as her two favourite men walk towards the elevator, and it gives one last protesting ache as the elevator doors slide shut.  Her feet feel heavy as they turn away from the exit, and she flicks her wrist upwards to check the time again. 

2 hours, 57 minute and 38 seconds to go.

*

There’s a vague memory of paperwork, interrogations, and a quick debrief as Amy’s shoes hit the pavement on the sidewalk outside the precinct, and her mind is still partially thinking of a case that landed on her desk late this afternoon when she notices what has easily turned into one of her favourite sights to see:  her husband and son, waiting patiently outside for her return.

Her hands may be a little grabby as they reach for her baby boy, but Jake only chuckles as he passes Mac over, running his hand up and down her back in greeting as she smothers her son’s face in kisses.  She mirrors the kisses with another one on Jake’s cheek as he reaches for her purse, gripping it with one hand as he takes her free hand with his other, and Amy’s smile is undeniably bright as they make their way down the familiar path home.  

Tomorrow, she will interview a suspect and put all of her efforts into finally cracking the drug ring that had begun to fester on the streets of Brooklyn.  Tomorrow, she will play her part in the takedown of a organised crime kingpin that has held reign for far too long.  

But for now, Amy’s going home to spend time with her family - this little family of three that might be smaller than others, but that her and Jake have created on their very own, and nobody can tear away from them no matter how hard they try.  Sometimes, she will be a badass sergeant that can take down New York’s worst with a swing of her fist.  And sometimes, she’s simply a mother at home with her family, singing along to nursery rhymes and wiping spit-up from her blouse.

She misses her family when they’re not together, and she misses her work when she’s not in uniform - and even though there’s still a tiny portion of lingering doubt that maybe she won’t be able to handle both, with Jake’s fingers gripped tightly against her own on their walk home a sense of calm washes over her.  

Both are equally important, and both are 100% worth it, and if one means missing out on something from the other, there is always going to be one Most Important detail to consider - that she and Jake were working hard to create a safe and loving world for their son.  

And that was worth fighting for, even if it came with a little FOMO.  

[lokispettigerr]

To Summon A Witcher: Chapter 2- Geralt x Reader NSFW Smut

Summary: Part 1 located on Masterlist. Reader lives and works in one of the most romantic cities in the US, Charleston, SC. However, because of the city’s colored past, romance isn’t the only thing that can be found there– it is said that ghosts, goblins, ghouls and the like make the city their home. When Reader meets one of these creatures she has to get the help of someone not quite so human in order to be free, but he frees her from much more than she ever expected.

Word Count: 1,641

Warnings: Violence, Witchcraft, Supernatural Spookies

Taglist: In reblog

A/N: Chapter 3 is already completed and I am practically humming with excited energy to continue this story with you all! I hope you all enjoy it. Part 3 will be posted on my Patreon a week before it is posted here. Check it out if you are thirsty and need access to this lusty soul drink sooner!

The bell above the door trilled loudly announcing my entrance.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom of the shop I could barely make out the odds and ends that took up residence in, “Dos Gatos Negros”, the local metaphysical shop that I had been a frequent patron of. The owner of the shop had been the only person to successfully help me with the shadow-beings that haunted me in my teenage years.

A muted voice called out, “It’s alright, mi amor. You are here now.”

I could finally relax. I was safe here and I let that feeling of security wash over me.

The crystal curtain on the far side of the store rattled as Maricella pushed past it.

“Marci, I need your help.”

“Estoy aqui. I knew you would be here this day.”

For being a “bruja”, a witch, Maricella looked completely normal.

Marci wore simple clothing, a floral button-up blouse, black jeggings, and ankle-high, slip-on boots.

Marci rushed towards me and grabbed my arms, her fingers gently resting at the hook of my elbow.

“Speak to me.”

“It’s started again, Marci.”

“How long?”

“A couple of months,” I said.

Marci released my arms and clicked her tongue, “Mesas?! You waited this long in your suffering, to come to me?”

I bit my lip.

“Why, mi amor?” Her voice softened.

“I’m not a child anymore, Marci. I’d hoped I could handle my own problems.”

Of course, I tried to handle the entity that had latched itself to me but without Marci’s guidance, nothing was effective. Everything I tried felt fraudulent like I was trying to be something I wasn’t and I was certain the entity knew that.

“Come,” She said as she guided me back through the beaded curtain and into her private room.

As I sat on the other side of the round, cloth-covered table laden with animal bones and teeth, dried herbs, smoking palo santo, tarot cards and the like, I relayed the story of the cemetery and the storm and all that had happened the last couple of months.

While I told Marci the story she poured me a cup of tea and urged me to drink it from time to time.

Finally, I finished the story and my tea.

“Here,” she said, indicating for me to give her my now empty teacup.

I handed it to her and she held it before her eyes to inspect the remnants of the tea leaves.

Marci quirked an eyebrow at me.

“The cup says more than you. Speak.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, Marci.”

Marci walked over to stand beside where I sat and held the cup before my eyes.

“Look there!” She impatiently pointed, “A man here and a wolf. Don’t you see?!”

I scrutinized the blob of sodden tea leaves, but no shape took form.

“Marci, I--”

“No, you see! A man, here, yes? And a wolf within his heart. And there!” She pointed to the opposite side of the teacup, “Is the sombra, the shadow that follows you.”

“...Oh, yeah, yeah I think I see what you mean.”

Marci slammed the teacup down sensing my fib.

Her lips twitched as if I was humoring her, reminding me of a parent trying not to smile as they caught their child in an imaginative lie.

“Who is he?” She pointed at the teacup.

Because of my lack of involvement with anyone I thought perhaps she had made a mistake.

Marci stood, impatient, all but crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her foot.

Just then, it dawned on me. I wanted to dance around with a lightbulb over my head shouting out “Eureka!”.

“Marci, I’ve been having a reoccurring dream. Well, more of a changing dream but reoccurring of the same person! A man with shoulder-length, white hair that carries a sword strapped to his back almost like someone would place their bow and quiver. Around the hilt is a brooch. He wears a wolf pendant around his neck!”

I then relayed a few of the dreams I had to Marci.

Marci took a deep breath, strode over to her seat across from me and plopped down.

“You dream of him because he is the only one who can help rid you of this sombra.” She said, knowingly.

“But Marci!” I exclaimed, “I’ve never seen this man in my life. From the look of the dreams, the clothes he wears, where the dreams take place, he isn’t even from this time.”

“Not in this life,” Marci corrected.

Marci believed in past lives and that whoever you connected with in a past life often found you in another, as a kind of kindred soul. Kindred souls sought each other out, never ceasing until they were united again.

It sounded cheesy and ridiculous and overly romantic on the whole notion of souls and “soulmates”.

In truth, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about past lives, but I really wasn’t ready to start believing in them now.

“You must find him.” Silence followed Marci’s words ad they settled on me, a weight that I felt I could not begin to bear.

I imagined myself acting like a child saying in a whiny voice, “Nu-uh, I don’t wanna and you can’t make me!” All while Marci dragged me along as I pouted and kicked out.

I sighed, “I have no idea how to do that, Marci. I don’t even know who he is.”

Marci scooted her chair away from the table and stood, “Well, you came to the right place.”

I groaned.

“Shh,” she snapped and she moved to stand behind me.

Her hands rested on either side of my head and her warm fingers touched softly at my temples. “Close your ojos, mi amor.”

I did as she ordered, letting my world succumb to the unknown and willing sightlessness.

“Relax your breathing.”

I did as I had done many times before with her and relaxed, breathing in 1,2,3,4, holding, and then slowly exhaling.

Marci was leading me into a trance state.

Her voice lowered an octave, resonating pleasantly.

“Now think of this man. Everything about him, his hair, his eyes, his face, his body. Let him appear before you.”

“He’s here,” I said, my voice sounding distant and hollow.

“Muy bien. Watch him very closely. Listen to all that is around him. Listen for his name; look for a year, a place. Anything. If the scene changes, let it. Move with him.”

Slowly, my physical senses fell away. My reality shifted and I was no longer with Maricella. I was no longer sitting in the back room of her shop; no longer felt the velvet cloth that covered the table under my fingertips; no longer smelled the smoke drifting from the palo santo.

Instead, the man was before me, the scenes changing as if I was flipping through the entirety of the dreams I had of him like the pages of a catalog.

I followed him through a deserted town. The ground beneath my feet was made of stone slabs that felt slick with rainfall. I watched as he stood before several men, all with intent to slay him, and I continued in the shadows as he painted his blade with their blood, until he stood alone.

The scene before me shifted, like fog removing all that was around us, and replacing it with something new. He wearily entered an inn, trying to hide his identity with a large, black cloak-- his eyes glowing through the shadow cast upon his face as he scanned the tables and patrons.

Near the bar, a man wearing an apron was nailing a yellowed parchment to the wooden wall. A calendar, indicating that the year was 1210. 1210!

My eyes found the white-haired man again. He looked so tired, so withdrawn as he moved to the far corner to sit at a table alone as he listened to all the boisterous noise of the crowded inn. I wondered why he wanted no one to recognize him. It was as if I knew that he craved for no one to notice him but for someone to see him.

Then all around me the noise and the smells and sights of the inn fell away, being eaten up by my avid and hungry mind and replaced with something new, something better.

In the bed, beside me, he lay, his scar-ridden, broad-muscled shoulders before me. I reached out my hand, fingertips tracing the scars as if mapping out a constellation of pain.

The bed creaked as he shifted to turn toward me.

His eyes opened like the petals of some breathtaking bloom.

My breath caught in my throat, painfully, as he looked at me, his golden eyes missing nothing.

“Hmm,” he hummed.

The sound made me swoon. Never had I heard such an erotic utterance.

His strong, deft fingers smoothed a stray lock of my hair behind my ear and I leaned into the palm of his hand.

“All manner of creatures have I seen,” he purred, “and not one has captivated me as much as you.” His lips curled into a heart-melting half-smile.

“If I saw nothing else,” He kissed my forehead, “No beauty upon this ground ever again. I would mourn not if only your face was the one I saw.”

I bit my lip and giggled, my hand moving to cup his chiseled jaw, “Geralt,” I sighed, “What would I do without you?”

I awoke from my trance with his name, a decadent utterance, falling from my lips like warm honey. My lips held the ghost of a kiss he had placed passionately on my lips. I looked to Maricella, my eyes wide with wonder and my revelation.

“Geralt of Rivia,” I said, “His name is Geralt.”

[bluepenguinstories]

Remoras Full Chapter XXIX: Mother of the Forest

When I received the call, an open refrigerator door hummed as its light leaked through to the dim space that was my apartment. Its light chill came as a breeze while I placed a bag of grapes within. Automatic, robotic, subconscious movements: standing in place, pivoting from one item to the next. I once heard that every seven years, the human body becomes anew, the old self having died out. There was a faint memory of a self of mine, a few deaths ago, long before the idea of having children ever came to pass, who stood and bagged groceries for minimum wage, and wondering how she would balance work and getting through high school.

In that same moment, I repeated that past life, in a more private setting. Just an hour prior, I had been the customer in line at the checkout counter. The woman behind me who I assumed to be one life older than I, arguing with the cashier over an expired coupon. Her spittle flew over the counter, and the scrawny and zoned out worker covered his face with the back of his arm as a means to protect himself.

I’m better than that. I’m not that kind of person, I often told myself, although if I had any sense of honesty, I often was. Something about the desire to be right, even when you know you don’t have a case, held such a sweet and sour taste; some of the grapes in the fridge had already spoiled from my last grocery visit.

My hand reached for the bottle of cranberry juice, but it soon became out of reach as my phone vibrated right beside it. There was a disconnect – a momentary hesitation – where I stood in place.

Just put that juice away, then answer it, my thoughts buzzed and scraped across my ears. Who was I to deny them? I had no expectations that the call would amount to anything of substance. If I had to guess, it might have been my boss, ready to beg and guilt trip me into working on one of my days off. That was a foolish decision, as I didn’t even notice the name on display on the screen. If I had, I would have picked up right away.

So it buzzed. Twice. On the third buzz, the refrigerator door swung closed and I picked up the phone. That was when I saw the name on the phone and a magnetic pull from below sent all the blood in me to sink down to the tip of my soles. When I tried to speak, I thought I would only manage a gasping breath. But instead, it was a normal, if gasping, voice:

“Demetria? Is that you?”

Not since I last heard from her, several months back, did I ever think I would hear from her again. No, maybe that was unrealistic. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I would hear from her at all: a simple hi every now and then sent through text, happy mother’s day or happy birthday messages. Those were the least (or most) I could hope for. But what it was instead was a belief that she had gone down the same path of the rest of my children and was too busy with her own life to think much of me.

So when she told me the truth, that she had dropped out of college, moved to the arctic over some crush, and worked as a waitress in a restaurant, I was elated. Any shock or sense of betrayal I may have felt didn’t register because there she was, alive, and wanting to come home. One of my children actually wanted to see me! It was enough to make me want to tap my shoes together and do a little jig!

After our conversation, however, I had no choice but to be aware of the environment I was in: empty, so empty. Every little space was covered by every day objects or some assortment of clutter. Paper towel rolls, post-it notes, bowls of fake fruit, tea and coffee cups, a box of makeup from that time I was suckered into buying from a friend’s multilevel-marketing gig. That was just a small sample of things which took up space on the kitchen counters. That didn’t even cover the hallways or the living room.

It was funny, really: when my kids lived with me, I’d get onto them about cleaning the house and made sure they did so. But when it came to me, alone and (in my own mind) free, I pretty much said, “fuck it, this is my space” and let the clutter do its thing.

Well, it sure did its thing, didn’t it? Hopefully Demetria wouldn’t mind.

When it came time to meet her, I felt the pervasive feeling that she wasn’t someone I recognized. It wasn’t the green hair, although that I didn’t expect. Nor was it her coming out, which although the notion never crossed my mind, didn’t really come as a surprise, either. Her loss of interest in her studies? Unfortunate, but not unheard of, especially when one attends university. Her new interest in knives? Concerning, but I could live with it.

No, it must have been something else. Even when she tried to revert to her old self, who I knew her as, I could tell there was something different. What it was, I just couldn’t place, but a thought crept in which brought shivers across my spine:

Maybe she’s not different and maybe I just never knew her very well to begin with.

That thought didn’t know what she was talking about. As far back as I could remember, Demetria was someone withdrawn and preferred her alone time. She valued hers and others’ hygiene and was quick to judge others, but also seemed to have a good heart deep down (at least, I’d like to think so). I always tried to give her her space, as I knew I would have wanted the same if I were her.

But there were little things which made me wonder if I was perhaps living with a different Demetria than the one I raised. One such example was when I sat at the sofa, watching one of my soap operas, Young and the Breastless, when I took a quick glance beside me to see none other than Demetria, pacing about and reading a book. Well...I assumed she was reading, but the book was upside down. She shook her head while she paced, flipping from page to page.

“Nope. I just can’t get into this,” she muttered, and it sounded less disappointed and more like she hadn’t yet given up hope that she would. I leaned forward and saw the title of the book: ‘Banana Fish.’

“What’cha up to?” I asked, and the show no longer took up my attention, instead becoming white noise.

“I’m trying to get back into marine biology, so I figured I’d read a new fish textbook, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get into it,” she explained and peered up from her book.

“Are you sure it’s about fish? I see a couple of guys on the cover,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I’m assuming it’s one of those edutainment-type deals. Y’know, like Pajama Sam. Anyway, they haven’t actually talked about fish yet, but maybe it’s a slowburn textbook.”

Call it mother’s intuition, but something told me that book had nothing to do with actual fish. Props to her for trying to get back into her old interest, but she ought not to force herself.

“You know, you don’t have to get back into marine biology,” I suggested, “maybe pick up a new interest. What about knives?” That was such a weak suggestion, but it was something.

Even with her glasses on, she squinted, although it seemed less like a vision thing and more for effect, as if to say, “are you crazy, mom?!” It was weird to admit, too, but I already missed her green hair and as much as she tried to appear and act like her old self, it only seemed to highlight how much she had changed.

“What am I gonna do? Knive-ology? I don’t think that’s a thing,” she snapped her fingers for added effect.

Her old self would have just said something like, “I don’t want to make a career of that.”

I knew she had returned home due to having such a rough time with someone, but if anything, she had been more expressive. At least, around the house. I still couldn’t get her to go outside. Through every cycle of one’s life, it seemed at the core, some things remained.

Another day, I was watching a different soap opera on my day at work, this show called ‘The Good Doctor’ (yeah, generic name, I know).

“Good doctor! Your patient is having heart complications!” The assistant rushed to the good doctor in a panic. The good doctor sat at his desk with a suede suit and a polka dot tie and looked up, a bushy eyebrow raised.

“What’s the complications?” He asked, before pushing himself out from his seat.

“It’s complicated! Hurry!” The assistant urged the good doctor, who then rushed into the patient’s room. In the room, the patient leaned up from his bed, a shriveled up old man.

“Are you a good doctor?” He asked, a gravelly voice.

“I am the good doctor,” the good doctor replied, rather humbly, too.

“My heart keeps beating,” the patient moaned. “I don’t know why.”

“That’s what hearts do,” the good doctor answered, and a smile spread across the patient’s face.

“Wow, thanks doc. I’m cured!”

My viewing experience was interrupted by a plop as I turned to my right to see Demetria’s face looking back at me while she hung off from the top of the couch upside down.

“What’cha watchin’?” She asked in a tone that indicated that she was bored and didn’t really care.

“The Good Doctor,” I told her as I tried to keep my attention fixed on the show.

“Gee, I sure hope so,” she snickered. “If I was at the hospital, I know I’d want to be seen by the good doctor, not the bad one.”

I nudged her.

“Since when are you such a smart-ass?” I asked.

“You missed a lot of character arcs,” she continued the snark. “I went through several developments and regressions, and now I’m here.”

“I can see that,” I teased right back. Yes, two of us could be sarcastic.

“No, but for real, I’ve always been like this,” her voice turned quiet, contemplative. “I’ve just usually kept it in my head.”

That. That never occurred to me.

“Well, it’s fun,” I remarked. “I’m really glad to have you around.”

Her (glasses-less) eyes widened, then turned to a near-squint.

“You are?” She sounded quite puzzled by such a statement. As if it weren’t obvious to her.

“Of course! You’re my kid!”

“What about your other kids?” She pointed out.

“I love them, too, but they never come visit me. Well, Hestia does sometimes, but that’s still rare. It gets lonely here, you know.”

“What assholes,” she scoffed. I nudged her again.

“Those are your siblings you’re talking about!” I scolded, something I didn’t think I had to do. Oh well, it was a playful scold. “They’re good people, they’re just busy much of the time. Hestia’s an architect and works with various non-profit groups on the side. Hermes has his job as a fitness instructor. Then there’s Log...he’s busy being Log.”

“Sheesh, what’s with all these Greek myth names, anyway?”

I drummed up a storm of laughter, something which wasn’t really funny, but sometimes I just laughed to reminisce.

“Funny story about that…” I caught my breath. “Back when I was your age, I won a contest to go study abroad in Greece.”

“Did it come with a time machine?” She butted in.

“Are you gonna keep snarking or you gonna let me tell you?” I shot back. In response, she slunk down the couch, then sat up in a flurry of movements.

“Fire away, cap’n!” She gave me some goofy salute.

“So while I was at some museums, I met this nice Turkish guy and we hit things off pretty well. We went to a nice cafe and I got to unload my love of myth to him. That’s when he laughed and told me he was half-Greek himself, and he was visiting some family. After I went back to the states, we kept in touch as penpals and sent letters to each other back and forth. You probably don’t need me to tell you the rest.” I stopped myself. If I were to continue, it would have been a much longer story than it needed to be.

“Uh, yeah I do. What’s that got to do with giving us weird names?”

“Well, you know how there’s that tradition in our family to name ourselves after trees. My mom named me Sequoia, and she was Cypress. So when I had my first kid, all the relatives wanted to know what tree-related name I would give them. I gave it some thought and then decided that I wanted to do something different, so chose the name of a goddess I loved, Hestia.”

“Ugh, Hestia,” Demetria groaned, “it’s always ‘Hestia is bestia’ and ‘is there nothing Hestia can’t do?’ It’s grating.”

While I admit the praises seemed rather excessive, I was proud of her, just as much as I was proud of all my children in some way or another.

“Next came Hermes, and at that point, the whole family was up in arms, begging and pleading for just one tree name. So I compromised and said that if I had a third kid, I’d name them something tree-related. That seemed to get them off my back.”

“Thus, lo and behold, Log was born,” Demetria raised her head up and put her hand to her chest, almost singing out the words. Talk about dramatic.

“But then, you were born, just a few years after Log. I really didn’t expect to have another kid, and I figured to balance things out, I’d name you Sycamore. But then I decided: fuck it. You’re Demetria. And the rest was history.”

Yes. I was sure she heard the explanation before, but I suppose it bore repeating. It was just a shame that she never got to meet her father.

“What was he like?” She once asked me.

“He was a kind man. Patient, loved to listen to others. Never had a mean bone in his body. You would have liked him, I’m sure.”

“Would I have?”

“Maybe. I suppose it’s hard to say.”

Yes. Just a few months before Demetria was to come into this world, Beet Root (he took my last name) lost his life in a car accident. It was hard, to say the least. More than hard. But what else could I do? I couldn’t just stop raising my kids. So I continued on, through the grief and confusion. So it may have gone that she was born with a little bit of grief and confusion as well.

At least with the way things were, there was more time we could spend together. More things I could learn about her. There were still things I would have liked to see from her, though: making friends, finding a job, getting outside more. All things she didn’t seem to want anything to do with. I mean, she came out to me, didn’t that mean she wanted a girlfriend? It wouldn’t happen if she didn’t try.

I know, I’ll help her out, I thought in the middle of my shift. While my main job was working front desk at the Himbo Hotel, I’d sometimes work as a part-time taxi driver on the side. It didn’t pay a lot, but it was fun to meet different people, sometimes.

One person that I picked up was a tall and twig-like girl with blue and pink pastel colored denim clothing (jacket and pants) and hot pink hair.

“Are you Macie?” I asked as I rolled down my window.

“I might be,” she replied, then got in through the backdoor.

Once she was in, I let curiosity get the better of me.

“So...I’ve got a daughter,” I mentioned.

“Yeah? You want me to babysit her?” She asked offhand.

“No, no, I was just wondering if you’d like to meet her.”

“Why?”

“Well...she’s gay…” As soon as those words left my mouth, I saw her put the back of her hand over her mouth in the rearview mirror and laugh.

“Okay then, what’s she like?”

“Hmm...well...she likes...knives?” I just realized how hard it was to describe her to someone else.

“No thanks, I’m not into the hardcore type.”

“She’s not hardcore! It’s just an aesthetic thing...I think. She also likes to work out, and she’s got a bachelor’s degree in zoology.”

There. I think I listed enough positive traits.

Macie shrugged.

“All right, I’ll bite. I’ll write down my number. But if it turns out to be one of those weird catfishy things, I’m blocking both of you and leaving a one star review.”

I gulped, but couldn’t help but whisper a triumphant “yes!”

After I dropped her off at her destination, I returned home and raced to Demetria’s room to deliver the good news. I knocked on her door and after a few successive pounds, she opened up. She stood with a small towel over her forehead, a black tank top on, and working up a sweat.

“Hey! Guess what? I got a girl’s number!” I couldn’t wait for a greeting, I just had to tell her.

“Aw, you didn’t even give me time to guess…” She turned her head and looked down, disappointed.

“Aren’t you excited?”

“Oh, yeah, grats.”

“No, not for me! For you!”

“Oh. Not interested,” she turned away.

“Come on, you might like her! At the least, you might make a friend!” I urged her. She should’ve at least tried.

“I don’t wanna make any friends, especially not with someone I know nothing about.”

“It’s not good to shut yourself off in your room!” I pleaded.

“You never had a problem with it before.”

...She had a point. I shouldn’t have minded so much, but I just really wanted to help her out and didn’t know how.

“You’re right. I hope you’ve had a good day,” I softened my voice, then closed her door.

Other than watch TV and eat together, we didn’t really interact much. That was fine, we didn’t have to, but she should’ve at least interacted with someone. What I saw in her wasn’t someone who was in her room all the time, indulging in her study. Instead, I got the notion that she was deliberately avoiding going outside. As if there was something out there that she was afraid of. If that was the case, I didn’t know what.

There was one girl I managed to get her to speak to, though. Granted, it was her sister, but it was something. Especially since I knew how much she didn’t like to spend time around her siblings.

I had a video call set up with Hestia on my laptop.

“Hey mom, how’s things been?” She asked, her bright smile ever-present on her face. She was seated at the dining room in her own apartment, a much more effervescent air surrounded her while her tucked back teal hair took up a large part of the top of the screen.

“I’m good, things have been great, actually. Demetria’s living with me now,” I told her.

“Oh? I remember how freaked out you were a while back ago. It’s good to know she’s okay.”

“I know, right? Apparently she went to the arctic for a while because of a crush.”

Hestia laughed, a sort of high-pitched “ohoho” laugh.

“She always did do her own thing, didn’t she? I regret not being closer with her, but what’s done is done and there’s no room for regrets.”

“You could come visit,” I suggested. And it wasn’t just that I was lonely. “Maybe you two could hang out or something.”

Hestia put her index finger on her chin and hummed.

“I would like to, but you know how busy I can be. I won’t rule it out, though, ‘kay?”

I sighed. That was the best I could hope for, wasn’t it?

“By the way, it turns out she’s gay.”

Again, hum.

“I’m not surprised at all,” she replied, that same kind voice as ever. “Did you hear about Hermes’ new boyfriend?”

I shook my head.

“No, what’s he like?”

“No idea! But he says he has one, and he seems happy, so that’s all that matters, right?”

“Heh, guess so. Say, how’s things with your girlfriend?”

“Good, good. Aphrodite’s been helping me volunteer at an animal rescue on my days off.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Maybe you and Demetria can bond over your love of women,” I suggested. That was met with another hum.

“That’s a decent enough idea, but everyone experiences love differently, so we may be too different to relate to one another.”

Just because it wouldn’t be exactly the same, that didn’t mean the two couldn’t relate, could it? That just didn’t make sense to me. Yet when I could have voiced as much, I didn’t.

“Would you like to talk to her right now? I could go get her,” I instead said.

“Of course, I’d love to say hello to my dear sister!”

“Demetria!” I called for her. Without a moment’s hesitation, she made sluggish motions toward the dining room. After rubbing her eyes, she looked my way.

“What?” She groaned.

“Wanna say hi to Hestia?”

“Sure,” she shrugged, then looked at the laptop screen. “’Sup?”

“Why hello, Demetria! You’re looking as cute as ever!” Hestia oozed joy from the swaying of her head.

“Uh, thanks. You’re looking tryhard as ever, yourself,” she replied in a flat, deadpan tone. I nudged her.

“Be nice,” I whispered. She looked up at me in response, a wide-eyed and pathetic expression on her face.

“No puppy dog eyes, either.”

“How have you been, Demetria?” Hestia seemed to wave off the snarky remark, “do you still shut yourself off in your room?”

My face felt like it was about to turn red, but Demetria seemed unfazed.

“I shut myself off in your mom,” she shot right back. As if she was some grade-schooler.

“Ew. We have the same mom.”

Yes. That same mom was listening to the two of them as they spoke.

“Uh...well…” Demetria stammered as she struggled to save face.

I snickered. Now both girls looked at me and in unison asked, “what’s so funny?”

“It’s nice to see you two get along so well,” I remarked.

The two laughed as well at that notion.

“Yes, I agree,” Hestia proclaimed, “it was nice to hear from you, my dear sister. You look well.”

“Yeah, later, spoiled princess,” Demetria shrugged, then walked away. Then, the unexpected happened:

“Butthead!” Hestia yelled back, and stuck her tongue out. Upon realizing what she had done, she put both hands over her mouth. I shook my head.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“I don’t know, that was rather unbecoming of me. Do forgive me,” she spoke all fancy, then gave me puppy dog eyes as well.

“You’re ten years older than her! You’re supposed to set a good example!” I cried out. To that, she raised and index finger and with her eyes closed, gave a triumphant smile.

“Actually, we’re both adults, so if anything, she should know better than to have such an attitude!” She declared.

Once again, I shook my head.

“Talk to you later. Love you.”

“Love you too, mom! Do give Demetria my sincerest of apologies!”

The video call ended. As much as that (began and) ended in bickering, it was still progress. They spoke to each other. Baby steps. Maybe after that, she would branch out a little more and –

I could only wish.

About a week after that conversation, I got off work and noticed a text on my phone. I opened up the message and I felt my heart caught in a bear trap:

Demetria: Hey, try not to worry too much when you get home, but I won’t be there. I went outside and got a smoothie like you wanted me to. It was good, but it got me thinking how I the whole time I’ve been with you, I’ve felt stuck. Not stuck because of you, but stuck because I haven’t found any interest that I’ve felt passionate about. I don’t know what I want to do and it frightens me. So I’ve decided to go off and try to figure things out. I’ll see if I can stay with Juniper for a little while, maybe a change in environment will help. Love you, and goodbye for now.

I rushed home. I tried texting her back, but it wouldn’t send. I tried calling, only to receive dead air.

Her phone must be off. But why? Is she in danger?

Frantic, unsure of what else to do, I called Juniper.

“Hey, is Demetria with you?” I asked, as Juniper answered right away.

“No? Not unless she’s hiding somewhere. Why?” She seemed genuinely puzzled by my question, meanwhile I was still hyperventilating.

“She left me a message. Said she’d be with you.”

“Huh. I haven’t heard anything like that. But maybe she’s on her way? I dunno.”

“Okay. Just. Let me know if you see her, okay?”

“Sure thing! Hope she’s doing all right!”

“Me too.”

I hung up. Next was Hestia, but not because I thought she’d know Demetria’s whereabouts, but just because I needed someone to vent to. The phone kept ringing, but there was no answer. Then it timed out.

Of course. Because she’s always doing something.

However, just a minute later, Hestia called back.

“Hey mom, what’s up?” She greeted.

“Demetria. She...she…” I had trouble getting it all out.

“Everything okay?”

“I don’t know. She ran off.”

“Oh my…”

“I don’t know what to do. She left a message saying she’d see if she could stay with Juniper.”

“So maybe she’s with Juniper.”

“I called her and she said Demetria’s not there. I’m worried.”

“Yeah, I can tell. When did you last see her?”

“This morning. Right before work.”

“That’s probably why. I’d say it takes more than an afternoon to reach Juniper’s place.”

Right. That thought never occurred to me. But then, where would she stay on her way there? Motels? What if something bad happened there?

“I’m just...I really thought she would stay. I gave her her space. I let her do whatever. But she didn’t want to make friends and she didn’t want to leave the house and –”

“...Sounds like she left the house, though,” Hestia pointed out.

“You’re right. I should be happy. She’ll be fine. She was fine before.”

“Mom.”

“What is it, dear?”

“Chill. She’s an adult. Just let her do her thing. She’s always been an independent person, so let her be. If she wants to come back, just tell her ��no, I’ve made my choice.’”

I balked.

“I couldn’t do that!”

“I’m not saying to be mean. Look, I know this family’s known for being overly nice, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a pushover. It’s bad enough you’re a worrywart.”

“I just don’t want to be too tough. I remember how Juniper’s mom was and I told myself I wouldn’t be like her.”

“You’re not…” Hestia muttered, then continued, “you’re afraid of letting her go, aren’t you?”

That struck me. Not because of how harsh it was. No, her tone of voice was sympathetic, if anything.

“I just wanted to spend more time with her,” I began to tear up, “She didn’t stay for very long and I thought I could have some company.”

“I understand. It probably gets lonely.”

“It does…”

“It’s not too late for you, either. You can try to make friends, you can go out and have fun. You should take care of yourself, too.”

“You’re right,” my voice turned weepy, but I smiled. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course. I gotta go, mom. I’m busy petting goats at a petting zoo. Did you know that statistically, one in five goats don’t get pet?”

“One of your volunteer works?” I asked.

“You know it.”

The call ended after that. So once again I was left in an empty house, full of clutter. Days went by, the same routine, and I waited for some update, some word as to where she was. So far, nothing. At a certain point, I considered adopting a ferret. I hadn’t quite decided yet, but it might help.

[flipomatic]

Internship Chapter 24: Day 19-20 - Emira

Author Note: This chapter marks the end of what would be the second arc.

First Chapter Previous Chapter

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It was Friday night, and Emira planned to sleep in tomorrow. She was currently working on her illusion magic, touching up on spells she’d been neglecting for the firework spell.

The most important of those was an invisibility spell. The layers of it had to be just right, or being invisible turned into being very easy to spot. She was practicing outside in the dark, using a light spell to cast a shadow. She could look to see if it was completely gone or not, while the spell was cast. The set of spells she had been using still left a hint of a shadow, so she wanted to work on improving it.

That was easier said than done, as the shadow was turning out to be quite persistent.

Emira had been working on it for a while when something at the house grabbed her attention. One of the upstairs windows had been opened, and a paper airplane came flying out of it.

It flew in a steady trajectory directly towards Emira. She raised a hand to catch it; it was light and empty. She unfolded it and saw that there was a note. It said, “attic, 5 min” in Ed’s scrawled handwriting. After she looked at it for a moment, it burst into a puff of magic smoke.

Edric had seemed put off when she talked to him earlier, and said it was a long day. It seemed like she would get more details now.

Emira deactivated her light spell and walked back into the house. She passed by where her parents were in the study, declining to speak with them, and headed up towards the attic.

Ed was already there when she climbed up. He had changed out of his Emperor’s Coven uniform and was wearing his casual outfit. He looked at the attic wall while he waited for her, sitting on a box that could barely hold his weight.

“You called?” Emira grabbed his attention as she shut the attic hatch.

And then Ed told her the story of what happened that day. He told her about how strangely the dispatcher was acting that morning, how he was sent with Frederick to bring a dangerous witch in for questioning, how Luz and Amity had been at the construction site, and how they had fought with the suspect. He mimed holding the sword in defense as he recounted the battle.

“It was so weird, after.” He mimed putting the fake sword back on his belt. “Frederick’s arm got burned, but he didn’t heal it until way later.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Emira didn’t know enough about Frederick to cast judgement.

Ed explained, a slight frown on his face. “He specializes in healing, it would’ve taken him like 60 seconds to take care of it.” He crossed his arms, slouching against the box once again. “But no, he was so focused on going to yell at the dispatcher that he didn’t.”

“What did he say?”

“That the job was too dangerous.” Ed shrugged. “Which, yeah I guess it was.”

He didn’t seem too committed to that notion, but Emira agreed with Frederick. “The suspect was armed; I’d say that’s pretty dangerous.” She wondered if it was more dangerous than the slitherbeast they had fought at The Knee.

“Yeah…” Ed’s voice trailed off and he looked down at his hands as he thought. Emira waited for a moment, allowing him to process. “He said the order came from the Emperor, but I really doubt that. So, here’s what I’m thinking.” He looked up at Emira and continued speaking. “There’s something weird going on, and I need to know what it is.”

A smile crept onto Emira’s face. “Time to snoop then?” She asked, already knowing where Ed was going with this.

Despite often cutting class, the Blight twins were no slouches when something needed to be done.

Ed’s smile mirrored hers. “You know it.” He straightened up, brushing off the back of his pants.

They started to make their plans, when and how to investigate. They settled on the next day, a Saturday. They would figure out what was going on in the Emperor’s Coven.

Emira had a couple things she needed to do to prepare before the event.

__________________________________________________________

Emira slept in the next morning, as she always did on Saturday. Sure, she needed to get ready, but she had plenty of time to do it.

She had one spell to practice for today, an illusion to make her look like an Emperor’s Coven member. Edric had created a photo for her to model it after, an image Frederick. Emira would try to match it perfectly, so she could enter without facing resistance.

She practiced it during the day, and was able to replicate the look with just one spell. It even made her look taller, to match Frederick’s height. The spell was intangible, so it wouldn’t hold up under contact, but it would do just fine for some sneaking.

They waited until the evening to go, when there wouldn’t be as many coven members in the building. It was easy to get out of the house; nobody cared what they did on the weekends.

The twins arrived at the jail as the sun was setting over the horizon. Ed was wearing his coven uniform, so he didn’t need a spell to blend in. They stopped out of sight of the jail to finalize their plans.

“Just follow me once we’re inside.” Ed had spent his day drawing a small map of the building. He had labeled a couple locations with stars, which were the places he wanted to investigate. “We’ll stop at the dispatcher’s office first.”

“Did you really spend all day on this?” Emira squinted at the hand drawn map.

“Isn’t it great?” Ed ran a finger over his creation, showing the route.

Emira didn’t quite agree. “It’s fine I guess.” She drew a spell circle, casting the illusion spell necessary for sneaking in.

Ed nodded at her as it took effect. “Lookin’ good.” He said approvingly. “Just don’t say anything and no one will notice.”

Emira gave a mock salute, and then they set off towards the building. Ed led the way into the lobby, then through the Emperor’s Coven door. The lobby was empty except for one clerk, who didn’t so much as glance at the two as they passed by.

Once in the wing, they passed the offices and walked to the dispatcher’s office. Emira had to admit, the map Ed drew was pretty good. He had drawn the right number of offices in the hallway.

When the reached the dispatcher’s office, Edric knocked on the door. As expected, there was no answer. He tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Locked.” He muttered, bringing his hand up to cast a spell. After a spin of one finger he tried again, successfully pushing the door open. “Bingo.”

They entered the room, both casting a light spell to help in their search. Ed went over to the desk and started ruffling through the papers on it. There were papers scattered across the surface, a very messy display.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Emira asked, figuring it was safe to talk for the moment.

Ed didn’t bother to look up as he replied. “Anything out of the ordinary.” That wasn’t terribly helpful.

Emira walked the outside of the room, trying to find anything that matched that description. There were closets full of palisman staffs, various weaponry, and what looked like car keys. None of those things struck Emira as abnormal.

She joined Ed at the table, where he had flipped through a number of the papers. Emira picked one of them up and read it over. It looked to be some kind of criminal profile, listing details and the last known location of a suspect. The next page had a schedule that was full of names. Emira handed it to Edric, to see if that helped.

“This is from last week.” He said as he looked it over. “Wherever you see Anderson on these, that’s Frederick and I.” He dropped it back on the table, leaving it behind.

They looked for a while longer, but it all looked normal to Emira. Profiles, schedules, and a few flyers littered the table. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to her.

“I’ve got nothing.” Ed admitted after flipping through nearly every page on the table.

“Same here.” Emira stepped back from the table. “Should we keep looking?”

“Yeah let’s go.” Ed ruffled the papers one last time, trying to return them to the same level of disarray as before. He led the way back to the door, and when they exited he cast a spell to relock it.

They walked back towards the offices; he had marked Kikimora’s office on his map. If they were to find anything, that was a good second place to look.

They hadn’t counted on Kikimora actually being there. When they neared her office, they could see that not only was the door shut, but light was coming out from underneath it.

“She’s never here.” Ed whispered, gesturing for Emira to come closer to him. “Can you make us invisible?”

Emira nodded, and started to cast the spells. It was harder with two people, but she could do it by casting more powerful versions of the usual layers. She even implemented the layer she was working on yesterday.

While she did so, Ed was activating a spell of his own. He cast a spell on the door, which made it so they could hear what was happening on the other side.

Much to their surprise, Kikimora’s voice wasn’t the only one present. A male voice was with her, one Emira didn’t recognize.

“Isn’t it about time to finalize my promotion?” The male voice sounded agitated.

“That’s a patrol witch, Nick, I think.” Ed whispered, quietly as not to be heard by those inside. Emira wondered what kind of promotion he wanted.

“Finalize? How presumptuous.” Kikimora’s voice was scathing. Both voices were clear and easy to understand through the spell Ed had cast.

“The role of coven leader has been left empty long enough.” Nick countered with a hard tone.

Kikimora tutted at him. “That is the Emperor’s decision to make.”

“Well it’s time for him to make one! Despite all of the secrecy, I’ve been doing a great job running things.” Nick’s composure was slipping, the volume of his voice rising.

“I’m not so sure.” Kikimora, on the other hand, maintained a level tone. “The dispatcher was complaining about your orders the other day.”

“He doesn’t have the authority to…” Nick’s voice cut off mid sentence.

“And, you have yet to recapture the Owl Lady.” Kikimora had cut him off, lobbying another criticism his way. Emira didn’t know much about the Owl Lady, besides the fact she was teaching Luz magic and had recently escaped from being turned to stone. “Let alone Lilith.”

“I have my best officers working on it.”

“With no results. The Emperor was right to put you on a probationary period. He is still considering others for the role of coven leader. If you want it, you’ll have to earn it.” Kikimora was starting to sound irritated with him.

Nick’s response came after a pause. “Yes Ma’am.” He finally said, voice much quieter than before.

The sound of footsteps moved quickly towards the door. Emira stepped quickly out of its path before it opened, barely avoiding getting smashed in the shoulder. A man dressed in the coven uniform stepped out and shut the door behind him, his face concealed by the mask. He turned down the hallway, luckily away from where Emira and Ed were hiding, and walked away. His steps were short and tense.

He disappeared into another office, leaving the twins again alone in the hallway. Emira double checked that he was gone, and then dropped the invisibility spell. Once it was down, Ed signaled for her to follow him towards the exit. They tried to maintain a casual pace as they left the wing and crossed the lobby. The same member was there as before, still not paying them any mind.

Once they were outside Emira allowed herself to walk a little faster, to work through the jitters she’d developed while trying to avoid being noticed. She dropped the final illusion spell once they were far enough away from the jail, the coven member façade melting away.

“I knew it wasn’t the Emperor.” Ed started the conversation, bringing up what he’d mentioned earlier.

“That guy, is he important?” Emira knew very little about the coven structure at the Illusion Coven, let alone the Emperor’s Coven.

Ed shook his head. “I didn’t think so, but I guess I don’t know.” He crossed his arms. “The strange orders came from him.”

“What’s next?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” Ed didn’t even stop to think about it. “And I’ll try to get some info out of Frederick. Discreetly, of course.”

Emira would keep an eye out for information as well, though she didn’t expect to find anything.

The twins walked home, continuing to discuss the topic. How strange it was that Nick was making decisions for the coven as a probationary leader, who the other candidates for coven leader could be, and why he had sent Ed on a dangerous arrest.

They had come away from the evening with more new questions than answers.

Next Chapter

[unfolded73]

Five Times Ronnie Was a Friend to David and One Time She Was a Friend to Patrick (1/1) - schitt’s creek ff

"I think it's less about Ronnie disliking Patrick, and [more about] Ronnie seeing this person come in and having a huge effect on someone she cares as much about as she does David," Robinson said. "Ronnie likes to take her time and figure things out, and err on the side of suspicion." -- Karen Robinson in The Advocate

Rated Teen, 3876 words

___________________________________

1.

When Ronnie saw Stevie get out of the car that morning with David Rose, she almost spit out her coffee.

Ronnie had been going on Roland’s annual turkey shoot since before she’d run for town council almost a decade ago, when she’d shot more turkeys than any of the men on the trip and had earned a lot of grudging respect. This morning, she’d been standing there with Bob and Roland, shooting the same kind of shit they always did. Their council meetings often devolved into this kind of idle chatter, which was one of the many reasons it was hard to get anything done in Schitt’s Creek.

The day was cool and crisp and Ronnie’s thermos of coffee was warm in her hand. She was already looking forward to swapping it for beer later, after they’d hopefully bagged a few wild turkeys. Then David and Stevie arrived, and Ronnie’s attention was thoroughly diverted.

Ronnie hadn’t really spent any time with David Rose yet. She knew Johnny because he’d made a nuisance of himself at a couple of council meetings, and she knew Alexis, thanks to her court-ordered community service. (And yes, Alexis was a princess — the type of person you’d see on one of those ridiculous reality shows on basic cable. But she showed up for her community service dates and made some kind of an effort. Plus she was pretty; not Ronnie’s type and way too young for her, but admittedly enjoyable to look at.) Ronnie had even spoken to Moira, the most baffling of the Roses, a couple of times at the café. David, she hadn’t really given much thought to yet.

Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. She’d clocked David as queer right away, and she couldn’t say she was sorry to have another queer resident in Schitt’s Creek. But she’d also assumed he was vain and probably an asshole, and she didn’t have room in her life for assholes. Seeing him at the annual turkey shoot didn’t fit at all into her preconceived notion about him.

The way he handled a gun, that fit into her preconceived notion about him. Still, he was trying, and she had to give him credit for that. Ronnie took pity on him and helped with his grip on the gun so that the recoil wouldn’t knock him flat. And when he shot his first turkey in the neck and had to watch it slowly die, she did feel sorry for him, patting his back to commiserate.

When they paused for a break in the early afternoon, Ronnie took it upon herself to bring David a beer. He accepted the bottle with a poorly-restrained grimace. “Thanks.” His voice was quiet, the edges from earlier filed off.

“How did Stevie talk you into this, anyway?” Ronnie asked. “Doesn’t seem like your scene.”

He looked down his nose at her. “How’d you guess?”

She just raised an eyebrow and waited.

David huffed. “I don’t know. Stevie asked me, and there had been this bug thing, and… I figured if I said no, it would just confirm her assumption that I have no practical skills. And… I don’t know. She’s been a… friend… to me. So.”

Ronnie nodded, impressed with his openness. Maybe it was brought on by the trauma of killing a turkey, but it was openness nonetheless.

“Plus, I had nothing better to do,” David added.

Ronnie clinked her beer bottle against his. “Fair enough.”

2.

Ronnie couldn’t help being curious when word got around that David was starting to get things set up inside the general store, that maybe he’d be opening his new store soon, although no date had been announced. There was a lot of buzz around town about it — Brenda had been telling anyone who would listen that David Rose was a fan of the moisturizer she made at home and would be selling it under his label. If Ronnie was honest, Brenda was getting a little too excited about it given that the store hadn’t even opened yet.

Still, when Ronnie came out of the café one afternoon and saw a sign painter starting to work on the windows outside, she wandered over to have a look.

She tapped on the door, waiting until David looked up and beckoned before she went in.

Already, she could see David’s mark on the space. All the metal shelving from the old general store was gone, replaced by wood furniture that gave the store a much more upscale look. David was busy sticking labels onto bottles in the middle of the room, his tongue between his teeth as he concentrated on his task.

“Hi, Ronnie,” he said, his eyes darting around nervously. “Are you here to revoke my business license?”

She laughed. “I don’t have that kind of power.” Sticking her hands in her back pockets, Ronnie rocked on her heels. “I just wanted to get a look at the place.”

David gestured around. “Here it is. There’s a lot to do still.”

She looked around at all the boxes of products, at the empty shelves left to fill. “You don’t have any help?”

“Oh, I do, actually? Not at the moment, but I have a… I guess I have a business partner now?” A furtive smile flickered on his face. “Not officially, yet. But I will have a business partner.”

Ronnie raised her eyebrows. “Who?”

“Um, Patrick Brewer? He works with Ray right now, but—”

“That guy? Isn’t he brand new in town?” Gwen just so happened to have introduced her to Patrick last week as the newest player on the Café Tropical baseball team.

David shrugged. “I guess.”

“And so you trust him to help you run your business… why exactly?” Ronnie had gotten the impression of a hypercompetitive bro type, what little of Patrick had caught her attention during the game. She hadn’t been impressed.

David’s eyes widened. “Because!” She stared at him and waited for him to elaborate. “Because he knows about taxes and grant money and food product licenses and I don’t know about any of those things.”

“So you’re going to entrust your business to him,” Ronnie said flatly, shaking her head. “Isn’t that exactly the kind of trust that led to your family losing all your money?”

“Patrick’s not going to embezzle money from me,” David said with an eye roll. “For one thing, I don’t really have any money for him to embezzle. And for another, he’s not that kind of person.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” David huffed, flailing his hands around. “Now can you please stop trying to give me more things to be anxious about? Believe me, I’m anxious enough as it is.”

“Okay.” She sighed. David was like an innocent lamb in some ways, she thought, and not just because of his fuzzy sweaters.

“Look, I know the town council would have preferred Christmas World, but—”

“Oh, that was mainly Bob and Roland,” Ronnie said. And Moira, it had to be said, but she wasn’t about to mention that to David in case he didn’t already know. “Personally, I think year-round Christmas stores are tacky.”

“Thank you.”

“Whereas this place looks like it’s gonna be…” She scanned the room again. Somehow it seemed brighter than it ever had under the previous owners. Maybe it was just that the windows were clean. “Really nice. Classy.”

David gave her a charming, lopsided smile. “That’s the plan.”

3.

“Where the hell is Bob?” Ronnie said, looking at her watch. The sooner they got this council meeting started, the sooner she could get on with her day.

“Robert does seem to have a rather dégagé relationship with the clock, doesn’t he?” Moira said, flipping the page on the book she was reading.

“How late is David’s store open?” Roland asked. “Jocelyn wanted me to pick up a couple of things on my way home.”

“I’m afraid I don’t monitor the hours of my son’s place of business, Roland,” Moira said with a bored sigh.

Roland leaned back and put his feet on the desk. “I mean, assuming they aren’t making a habit of closing early so they can get up to some hanky-panky in the back room,” he said with a snicker. And then when no one commented, he added more directly, “Twyla told me David and Patrick are an item.”

Moira finally looked up. “Are you asking me to gossip about my own son’s romantic liaisons?”

Roland was undeterred. “Just curious if the rumours are true.”

“I’m not sure which rumours you speak of, but yes, I understand that David’s relationship with his business partner has grown into an affair de coeur.”

“So you are going to gossip about it then,” Ronnie said, her chin resting on her hand.

“I shall give no further details, Veronica,” Moira said, going back to her book.

Ronnie didn’t give it any more thought until she saw David in the café a few days later. She was lingering over her breakfast at the counter when David came in and ordered a coffee and a tea to go from Twyla.

“How’s the store, David?” Ronnie asked when Twyla went to make the drinks.

“It’s… great, actually. People seem to want to buy the things we sell, which is nice.”

“Well, that is sort of the whole point of owning a store.” She hesitated, unsure if she should say anything else, but then she figured, what the hell. “The scuttlebutt around town is that you and you and your business partner are more than business partners.”

“Oh, so people are talking about us,” David said with a frown.

Ronnie shrugged. “It’s a small town and there’s not much else for people to do. You know how it is.”

He looked insulted at the idea that he would know how it is.

“It’s an awful lot to share with one person, David,” she said, because she’d been there before, when she was young. Madly in love and certain that she’d found the one, the stereotypical U-Haul lesbian, moving too fast and getting her heart broken. She’d learned the hard way.

“Are you giving me relationship advice?” His head moved a complicated dance on the end of his neck, somehow expressing his anxiety better than his words ever could.

“I’m saying that getting involved with the person who you have to run a business with can get messy when things don’t work out.”

His eyes flickered down to his shoes. “I know. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I fuck it up.”

“So sure that you’re going to be the one to fuck it up?” she asked, feeling that same protectiveness that he’d always engendered in her for some reason.

“Well Patrick isn’t going to be the one to fuck it up, he’s… perfect, basically?”

Him? she wanted to ask. Instead she said, “Nobody’s perfect.”

Twyla brought over David’s to-go cups.

“Just… be careful, that’s all I’m saying,” Ronnie said, accepting the check from Twlya and pulling out her wallet to pay.

“I will,” David said softly. “I mean, I am.” But she could tell that he was already a goner, his cheeks flushed and bottom lip pulled between his teeth. He also pulled his wallet from his pocket, handing over some cash to Twyla. “He’s… new at this. Being with a man,” David said, so quietly that she almost didn’t catch the words.

“Oh, boy,” Ronnie said, because she’d been down that road too. She’d been an experiment to a few girls who later decided they weren’t really all that bisexual after all. She’d been forced back into the closet by girlfriends who weren’t ready to be out. All of it sucked. She guessed David had been through his share of those kinds of relationships too.

Fighting every aloof instinct she had, Ronnie put a hand on David’s arm. “If you ever want to talk, I’m around. You can give me a call.”

David looked as surprised by this moment of tenderness as Ronnie herself was. “Thanks, Ronnie.”

“Any time, David.”

4.

Ronnie was on her third whiskey when David and Stevie arrived at the Wobbly Elm.

David was wincing as they joined her at the bar. “I hope my partner hasn’t driven you to drink, Ronnie.”

Ronnie glared at him. As if she cared enough about Patrick Brewer for anything he did to drive her to drink. “I finished the bathroom when I said I would, didn’t I?”

David held his hands up in surrender. “The bathroom is beautiful, Ronnie. The calligraphy workshop last night went off without a hitch.”

“Glad to hear it,” she muttered, her drink back at her lips.

“Will you shut up about the damn bathroom, David? We’re here to drown my sorrows, remember?” Stevie said, poking him in the chest. “Go get us drinks.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, moving down the bar to get the bartender’s attention.

“Drown your sorrows?” Ronnie asked.

Stevie sighed. “The guy I was seeing turned out to be an asshole: the Stevie Budd story.”

“Mm.” Ronnie took another sip of her whiskey. “I’d say the problem is men, but my love life hasn’t been much better lately,” she said just as David rejoined them.

“I thought you were with… what’s her name? The gravel lady,” David said.

“Karen,” Stevie said at the same time that Ronnie said, “We split up.”

“I’m sorry, Ronnie,” Stevie said, lifting her hand as if she was going to touch Ronnie’s back, and then wisely thinking better of it and dropping her hand back to the bar.

Ronnie shrugged. “It happens.”

“Wow, this has, like, never happened to me,” David said.

Stevie narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“I’ve never been the one with the successful relationship in a group of people at a bar like this. I’m always the one crying into my martini.”

“Shut the fuck up, David,” Stevie said.

“Does that sound like a thing you should be saying to us right now?” Ronnie asked, her voice going high with indignation.

“Just for that, you’re buying the next round too,” said Stevie.

“Okay.” David said, biting his lip. “Sorry.”

***

“And so apparently a casual fuck is all I was good for,” Stevie said before drawing more pot smoke into her lungs. She and David sat on the hood of Stevie’s car at the far end of the Wobbly Elm parking lot. Ronnie stood beside them, holding herself steady using the car’s side mirror and sharing a joint with these children because apparently that was how low she had sunk.

“That’s bullshit, Stevie,” David said, taking the joint from between Stevie’s thumb and finger.

“Well, you’d know,” Stevie said.

“That’s exactly it, though,” he replied before pausing to hold the smoke in. “It’s because you are such an excellent person in other ways that it would have been a mistake to ruin it with sex,” David said in a long exhale before passing the joint to Ronnie. “Or, with more sex, I mean.”

“Maybe I’m also bad at sex,” Stevie said.

“You are definitely not bad at sex. You’re great at sex,” David said.

“Really?” Stevie asked.

David nodded. “Yep. Yes.”

“You’re great at it too, David.”

“Uhhh, yeah. Of course I am.”

“I am getting such a fascinating window into your relationship,” Ronnie said as she passed the joint back to Stevie.

“I bet you’re great at sex too, Ronnie,” David said.

“Damn right I am.”

“Stevie and I tried the friends with benefits thing a long time ago,” David explained, the marijuana freeing his tongue. “And although we’re better off as friends and I’m very much in love with Patrick, that doesn’t stop me from seeing that you are the whole package, Stevie Budd, and if Emir didn’t see that then he can suck a bag of dicks.”

Stevie laughed wildly.

“Same goes for Gravel Karen,” David said, gesturing up and down at Ronnie.

“Uh huh,” Ronnie said impassively, although deep down she was pleased.

Stevie’s head dropped until her chin touched her chest. “I’m gonna have to leave my car here. We should call a cab.”

It occurred to Ronnie that she wasn’t anywhere near sober enough to drive either. She was out of practice at this whole going out and drinking in bars thing, and she was even more out of practice with this smoking pot thing. “I’m too old for this,” she said with a heavy sigh.

“I’ll call Patrick,” David said, fumbling for his phone. “He’ll pick us up.”

Which was how twenty minutes later, Ronnie found herself climbing into the back seat of Patrick Brewer’s Toyota next to Stevie, who immediately let her head fall onto Ronnie’s shoulder. David was planting a sloppy kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek in the front seat, making Patrick wipe the saliva off his face with the sleeve of his hoodie.

“Wow, you guys reek of pot smoke,” Patrick said, looking at Ronnie with his stupid Bambi-eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Just drive, Brewer,” Ronnie said.

“Straight men are the worst,” Stevie murmured. “Why do I bother with them?”

“You’re asking the wrong person, honey,” Ronnie said, petting Stevie’s hair.

5.

“So they tell me I have you to thank for all the extra flowers,” David said, sinking into a chair next to Ronnie as she put a forkful of wedding cake in her mouth. She caught a flash of his inner thigh before he crossed his legs, and while Ronnie had no interest in the male half of the species, she’d have to be dead not to appreciate David Rose in that skirt and those boots.

“Well, it was the least I could do,” she said after she’d swallowed her bite of cake. “You deserved a nice day.”

“And you and the Jazzagals learned our song,” David said with one of his lopsided smiles, a glass half-full of champagne dangling carelessly in one hand. “You, Ronnie Lee, stood in a room full of people and sang the song that Patrick sang to me at the first open mic.”

“That was Jocelyn’s idea,” Ronnie said with a frown. “I had to go along with the group.”

David elbowed her. “Come on. Admit it. You don’t totally hate Patrick. You like him a little bit.”

She was going to admit no such thing. “I don’t hate that he makes you happy. I don’t understand what you see in him, but I’m glad that you’re so happy.” And then she felt tears welling up again, as if it wasn’t bad enough that she had cried during the ceremony. She fervently hoped no one had seen her wiping away tears.

He grinned more widely, so she guessed she’d given him a satisfactory answer. Ronnie looked over at the dance floor, where David’s husband was currently dancing with his sister-in-law.

“I hear you’re buying the place out on O’Beirn Road,” she said.

He nodded, his face positively glowing with happiness now. “I’ve been admiring that cottage from afar for years. We’ll be moving in next month.”

“A place like that, it might need some work done. I trust you’ll come to me first if you need a contractor?” She took another bite of cake. It was delicious cake, moist and citrusy, and she savored the bite on her tongue.

“Of course we will. I have some ideas for the kitchen, although we might have to wait a year or two until there’s enough money to do justice to my vision.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want to do anything that didn’t do justice to your vision.” She ate some more cake and watched David watching Patrick until she couldn’t stand it any more. “Ugh, your heart eyes are giving me a stomachache. Go dance.”

David held his hand out to her. “Come dance with me, Ronnie.”

She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and took his hand and let herself be pulled out onto the dance floor.

+1.

Ronnie had almost dozed off at her desk in Town Hall when he came in.

“Patrick Brewer,” she said, eyeing him up and down. “Shouldn’t you be off on a honeymoon somewhere?”

He approached her nervously, his hands clutched together in front of him like a supplicant. “We decided to hold off on the honeymoon until we could afford to go somewhere really nice.”

“It’s not time to renew your permits for the store already, is it?”

“Nope. I’m here about council, actually,” he said.

“Public meetings are the second and fourth Tuesdays of every month,” she said, leaning back and putting her feet up on the desk.

“Okay, but I was more curious about the open council seat. With Mrs. Rose gone.”

“There’ll be an election to fill the seat,” she said, her feet thunking back down to the floor. “Why?”

“I, um… was thinking about running.” He chuckled nervously. “To keep it in the Rose family, I guess.”

“Assuming you’d win,” she said. “That’s presumptuous.”

“Is anyone else running?” he asked, a little of his usual, annoying self-confidence showing through.

Ronnie sighed. “Not yet.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Is that really the reason you want to run? To keep it in the family?”

Patrick cleared his throat and stood up a little straighter. “No. Since we’re settling here pretty much permanently, I’ve been thinking about other ways I might be able to contribute to Schitt’s Creek. I have ideas about bringing more business to downtown. And David and I have gotten to know several of the farmers in the area, selling their products in the store, so I hear a lot about their concerns.”

Ronnie stared at him for another few seconds, and then opened a file drawer, pulling out a form. “You’ll need to fill this nomination form out and get five signatures to support your nomination,” she said, pointing at the blank spaces on the form. “Think you can do that?”

Patrick took the nomination form from her. “Do I think I can get five people to sign my nomination form?” he said, sounding a little bit testy. “Yes, I think I can manage that.”

“You’re a real joiner, aren’t you?” she asked, hand propped up on her hand. “Baseball, community theater, town council… next you’ll be joining the curling club.”

He smirked. “I would, but it interferes with my hockey practice. Besides, Ronnie, you do all those things. Plus the Jazzagals. I’d say it takes a joiner to know one.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Tell you what,” she said, reaching for the form. When he handed it back to her, she signed on the first nomination line. “I’ll give you your first signature.”

Taking the form back, Patrick gave her a bemused look. “I figured I’d be the last person you’d want filling the empty seat on council.”

She shrugged. “Not the last person…”

“Okay, thanks,” he said with an eye roll, turning to leave.

“I’m looking forward to hearing your ideas,” she called, making him stop and turn back. “And if you win, I’m looking forward to kicking your ass on a regular basis, just like I do in baseball.” And then Ronnie laughed, loud and long.

“Good to talk to you too, Ronnie,” Patrick said, headed back toward the door.

She was still laughing. “Say hi to your husband for me!”

[acidproofnotebook]

One-Punch Man Chapter 84, Update 125

As published online

Date:

Translator: u/hdx514

Rough page by page translations for those who don't want to wait. I'm skipping most pages with only sound effects.

Title page

Not lonely, but a solitary one

Pages 2-5

Bang wrecking Garou

Page 6

Genos: perfect moves that combine attack and defense into one

Ge: even though both use the same water stream rock smashing fists, the difference in master is night and day

Ge: the battle about to reach its conclusion

Page 7-11

Garou continues to get wrecked

Page 12

Garou: w…what is this

Ga: these vicious attacks are nothing like damn geezer’s style…

Page 13

Ga: bad…this is bad

Ga: my consciousness is…

Ga: it means…death…

Ga: Ahhhh

Page 14

Bang: what is that strange movement

Ba: where did he learn it?

Ba: he’s moving like a beast

Ga: I’m not done yet!

Page 15

Ga: if I use the fallen heroes as hostages, there might still be a way out!!

Bomb: I won’t let you

Page 16

Monsters get sliced up

Page 17 Bomb: Bang, we finished the monsters from the hole in the ground

Bo: it’s just Garou now

Page 18

Genos: life signals from monsters still remain

Ge: not sure why, but I cannot accurately assess their location or numbers

Ge:if we go down that hole, will we find the Monsters Association hideout?

Pheonix man: The Monster Association members were all killed? Damn, they really are unreliable.

Page 19

Phoenix man: even though we deployed significant forces to capture Garou alive

Ph: that Demon Cyborg…the power he possesses is unbelievable

Ph: even Silver Fang is here, there’s no chance we get Garou away from here

Ph: but if I leave empty handed after this crushing defeat, I might get eaten by Orochi

Page 20

Ph: regardless, I can only hope Garou can escape on his own …

Ph: ...what a desperate situation… Ph: does this mean I have to plan an exit strategy from MA…?

Ba: (referring to Bomb) if you were this badly injured, could you still be standing?

Bo: …if I were 60 years younger, I might be able to tough it out

Bo: …maybe

Bo: we’re almost there!!! Let’s finish him before the other heroes arrive!

Ba: roger

Page 21

Ga: can’t even move my wrists…

Ga: attacking your former number 1 disciple when he’s at his weakest, how despicable of you, Bang

Page 22

Ga: this other geezer, isn’t he Bomb, master of the whirlwind iron cutting fist?

Ga: to think the two reclusive masters of the martial arts world would gang up on me, shameless

Ga: even if I pretend to beg for my life, Demon Cyborg still won’t spare me

Ga: If I want to survive this crisis, I have to kill all three

Page 23

Ga (or Bang?): it’s impossible

Ba: do you know how much pain you have caused my number one disciple Charanko

Ba: Garou!!

Page 24

Garou flashback

Kids: let’s play a hero game!

Kids: you too, Garou

Kids: c’mon let’s play

Garou: huh, sure

Page 25

Kid: drum roll~~

Kid: justice man is here!

Kid: justice kick

Kid: aah it hurts!

Page 26

Ga: hey that’s dangerous

Kid: huh?

Ga: I feel bad (for the kid playing monster)

Kid: …how about you play the monster

Kid: justice cross

Ga: waa (steps out of the way)

Kid: what’s wrong with you?

Ga: s…sorry, Tatsu

Kid: I almost had you

Kids: what’s your problem, you’re a monster, you’re not supposed to do that

Kids: let’s pin him down

Kids: okay-

Page 27

Kid: justice man kick!

Kid: monster Garou defeated~

Ga: what is this, pre-death flashbacks?

Ga: these memories disgusts me

Ga: that kid…right, I remember him…Tatsu, that popular kid

Page 28

Kids: hey, what’s going on? Why are you fighting?

Kids: shall I call the teacher?

Kids: Garou is being violent

Kids: we were only playing, but he got mad! What’s his problem

Ga: I….I can’t take it any more!

Ga: come Tatsu, me vs. you, let’s figure it out

Tatsu: ha? What are you talking about, I thought we were just playing

Page 29

Ga:  I DON’T want to play monster! It’s no fun at all!

Ga: let’s duke it out, if I win you stop bugging me, that’s the deal!

Tat: Sabu, Yotsu, hold Garou down

Ga: despicable….stop…let go! I…

Ga: aah…damn it!

Kids: he’s crazy, let’s call the teacher

Kids: run Tatsu

Kids: pin him down, pin him down!

Kids: what happened?

Kids: you guys should come and help

Kids: Tatsu was being nice and Garou took advantage of him

Kids: he’s the worst

Kids: Garou got serious with Tatsu all of a sudden while playing the game

Kids: what’s this guy even thinking

Kids: I feel so bad for Tatsu

Page 30

Tatsu is a king among the kids, Tatsu is a bully, Tatsu is nasty

I’m in the dark, always alone I have no friends

Tatsu is a good athlete, Tatsu is popular

I despise the popular ones

not sure of the order of the following dialogue

Teacher: why did you get violent?

Te: I heard you got mad while playing a hero game, is that true?

Te: can you not even tell the difference between a game and reality!

Ga: no teacher, it’s because Tatsu is so popular that everyone is badmouthing me

Te: you were the violent one, weren’t you? What if a window got broken, how are you going to pay for that!

Ga: Tatsu always…always treats me like a monster

Ga: NO!

Page 31

Ga: I don’t dislike playing the monster

Ga: am I holding a grudge against Tatsu for playing the hero?

Ga: no, that’s not it either

Ga: it’s just that playing the hero game has made me realize how absurd it is

Ga: the one who’s popular can bully the one who’s hated however he wants

Te: you are in the wrong, apologize now

Te: call your parents

Ga: this is not just bullying, this is a faithful, real life adaption of a kids’ game that is accepted by the public.

Ga: you are free to choose your role, but the ones who ends up playing hero must have the support of the people, how could that ever be me.

Ga: naturally, the script in which the one playing monster scores the victory doesn’t exist in the first place. I was destined to lose.

Page 32

Ga: what is justice! What is evil!

Ga: at the end of the day it’s just following the will of the masses, and the masses wants me dead!

Ga: unforgivable! There is no logic!

Ga: I can’t explain the reason behind it, but it makes me mad!

Ga: I will make you understand! Ga: I will deliver my punch on behalf of the disenfranchised!

Ga: and I reject your notion of good and evil!

Page 33

Genos: he fell

Bang: it’s over

Page 34

Ga: no way it ends at a place like this!

Page 35

Garou shatters earth

Page 36

Bang/Bomb: what?!

Page 37-39

Garou lifts tree and swings it

Bo: this is bad, his body��

Ba: what’s with this burst of power?!

Page 40

Bang: don’t you realize it yet Garou!

Ba: if you keep going like this, you really will die!

Ge: Bang, above you!

Page 41-42

Phoenix man lands and grabs Garou

Page 43

Bo: more monsters!?

Ba: there’re still a few left!!!

Page 44

Ba: !

Ba: Genos-kun

Ge: Bang, you saw that just now, didn’t you

Ge: that thing has become monster, it even befriended one

Ge: I trust that you won’t object if I shoot both of them down

Page 45

Phoenix man (calling to Elder Centipede): Can you hear me!!?

Ph: I have Garou

Ph: just finish these guys off!

Ph: I’m leaving the rest to you!!

Bo: ???

Page 46-47

Ge: spiral incineration cannon

Ph: Elder Centipede

Page 48-50

Elder Centipede emerges and tanks Genos’ cannon fire

Page 51

Bo/Ba/Ge: What was that!?

Page 52-53

Elder Centipede breaking ground

Page 54-55

Disaster level: dragon

Giant monster insect Elder Centipede

Page 56

Bo: w..what…

Bo: is this a living thing!!?

Ba: damn, we must protect them (the fallen heroes)

Page 57

Ba: up you go

Page 58

Bomb using whirlwind iron cutting fist to save the fallen heroes

Page 59

Ge: those life signals must have been caused by it…

Ge: it’s not that I wasn’t able to pinpoint its location, it’s simply too massive

[very long -- rest under cut]

Page 60

Ge: completely unharmed after taking the cannon fire

Ge/Bo/Ba (not sure who said it): an opponent that can easily break my wrists…

Garou (I think): that centipede…

Page 61

Ga: why did you come here?

Ph: don’t worry, Elder Centipede will handle the rest down there

Ph: that guy is a literal natural disaster that swallows everything

Ph: his indiscriminant power of destruction is truly shocking

Ph: an anti-climactic “hero hunt” as usual, wouldn’t you say?

Ph: you  can’t just knock them out, they must be eliminated permanently

Ph: heroes who are knocked out will be always come back bouncin’

Page 62

Ph: …you just rest easy

Ph: Elder Centipede will end it all

Ga: ! (starts struggling)

Ph: stop wasting your energy

Ga: those heroes are my prey

Ph: yo yo, stop moving!

Ga: damn you, let me go! Unforgivable!

Ph: hey hey, don’t get angry

Ph: it’s your fault you didn’t finish them off after all

Ph: plus, this is a golden opportunity for us to off 2 S-class heroes

Ph: the S-class heroes are the biggest threat to the Monsters Association

Page 63

Ph: you experienced it firsthand, didn’t you

Ph: there is such thing as battle compatibility

Ph: if our advisor Gyoro is right, in the entire Hero Association, there are only four who could take on Elder Centipede

Page 64

Ph: The wielder of unparalleled supernatural power, “tornado of terror”

Ph: The sole commander of a military force that’s beyond even HA’s control, “metal knight”

Page 65

Ph: The strongest human “King”

Ph: And…the one who almost killed Elder Centipede, the strongest hero, “Blast”

Page 66

Ph: Elder Centipede is working with Monsters Association in order to seek revenge against Blast

Ph: he just can’t wait to lure the hermit Blast back onto the battlefield

Ph: unfortunately…those two down there (Bang and Genos) do not possess the power to turn the tides in their favor

Ph: Silver Fang has obtained unmatched power through martial arts, but that only works on opponents of a similar size

Ph: Demon Cyborg’s capabilities are terrifying

Ph: but he carries nothing on-board that will threaten a monster of this size.

Ph: He cannot go beyond the destructive firepower of his weapons

Ph: that is the limit of Demon Cyborg

Page 67

Ph: with a lineup like that, they are surely doomed

Ge/Bo/Ba: It’s coming!!!

Page 68

Page 69-70

Elder Centipede charging against the three

Page 71-72

Ba/Bo: Whirlwind water stream air-blasting sky-splitting fist

Page 73-75

Impact, Elder Centipede cracking, Bang and Bomb posing

Page 76

Ge: what a technique (flashback of Bang and Bomb talking about their technique: it’s a killing blow, but it has openings, my understanding is they needed Genos’ attack to act as decoy in order for their combo to land, because it’s not yet perfect)

Ge: it even shattered such hardened shell…

Ge: this must be

Ge: the pinnacle of technique/skill

Page 77-78

Ba/Bo: it’s not over yet x 10

Page 79

Elder Centipede pushes Bang/Bomb back

Page 80

Ba: ouch…that was careless

Bo: but we got it

Bo: the impact will ravage its body

Bo: turn into powder, monster

Ba: for two old folks like us, using this grand technique once is our limit

Ba: great thing we landed

Ba: a little help, Genos

Page 81

Ba: it’s over

Page 82

Elder Centipede molting

Page 83

Ba: it can’t be

Page 84

Ba: this guy just molted!!!

Ba: and it’s even bigger than before!?

Ba: how could this be

Page 85

Bo: we cannot defeat that thing…!

Bo: and we need to protect the unconscious heroes…

Bo: what shall we do!? Bang!

Ba: it’ll catch up to us if we tried to run

Ba: this forest park is just outside the city limits …

Ba: if we leave we’ll get civilians involved

Page 86

Ge: Bang, I will fight it

Ge: try my best to lure the centipede over here

Ge: you guys grab the injured heroes and get out of here

Page 87

Ba: Genos kun

Ba: you want to go alone

Ba: can’t say I agree with this plan…

Bo: I know there’s little chance of success, but don’t be reckless

Bo: the future belongs to the youths

Genos’ flashback of Dr. Kuseno: whatever you do Genos, don’t be reckless

Page 88

Ge: am I really going to…

Ge: leave this monster be

Page 89-90

Ge: That is not

Ge: possible

Page 91-92

Genos fighting Elder Centipede

Page 93

Ba: this is madness

Ba: cannon fire cannot harm it

Page 94

Ge: whether it’s this thing

Ge: or the monster from yesterday (Gouketsu)

Page 95

Ge: or Garou

Ge: they’re all part of the Monsters Association

Ge: this fight

Ge: is unavoidable

Page 96-97

Genos attacking Elder Centipede from above

Page 98

Ge: Dual Blade Rush

Ge: that’s what you have to do to fight them

Page 99

Ge: I’m participating

Ge: destroy

Page 100

Ge: if this is me being reckless

Ge: !

Page 101

Ba/Bo: Genos kun!!!

Ge: at this rate, I’ll…

Page 102

OUT OF THE FIGHT

Page 103

Genos recombines

Page 104

Ge: Jets drive arrow

Page 105-106

Genos kicks Elder Centipede tooth, which cracks

Page 107

Ba/Bo: he’s inside its mouth

Elder: it’s over…

Page 108

Ge: ! digestive acid

Elder: I’ll melt you in a few seconds

Ge: it’s you who are going to melt

Page 109-110

Ge: Super Spiral Incineration Cannon

Page 111

Aftermath of Super Spiral Incineration Cannon

Page 112

Bo: …!!!

Ba: he finished it!!

Page 113

Elder Centipede tanks the hit, is fine

Page 114

Ge: at the end…

Ge: I am unable to…defeat…

Ge: nor able to protect…

Page 115

Ba: let’s get out of here

Ba: Bomb!

Ba: grab the rest of them!!

Elder: futile struggle

Ph: what’s the matter

Ph: you were still responsible for taking out half of the heroes, it can’t be that bad

Page 116

Ga: not like that!

Ga: This is not what I had hoped!!!

Ga: I…I wanted to beat them with my own strength!

Ga: only then I can be a symbol of terror…!!

Ga: that’s the purpose of the hero hunt!!!

Ph: symbol of terror? You? Hahahaha…

Ph: in your current state, if you went back there, you’ll just end up getting trampled to death with the rest of the heroes

Ph: right now, you do not possess the strength to disobey Elder Centipede or executive members of the Monsters Association

Page 117

Ga: crying…

Ga: sooner or later…I’ll show you what I’m capable of…

Ge: how could I…

Page 118

Ge: what am I missing…!?

Ge: are there several others like that?

Ge: in front of those monsters…

Ge: what can I do, besides look on with envy…?

Bo: Bang! This is bad

Bo: at this rate it’ll get outside the forest park!

Bo: there will be casualties in the city!!

Page 119

Bo: at this rate…I won’t be able to walk

Bo: how old do you think I am

Ba: I’ll leave it to fate…

Ba: brother

Page 120

Ba: for the last time in my life, I’ll give it my all

Page 121-122

King: Elder Centipede~!!!

K: yo! Pest!!!!!

K: I’ve brought your target – “Blast”!!!!

Page 123

Ba: !?

Ge: that voice…King!!?

Ge: Blast!?

Ba: what…!

Bo: !!!? Look!!

Bo: it’s stopped chasing and is going towards another direction

Page 124

Elder: Blast…?

King: thaat’s….riiiight!

K: the very one that beat the crap out of you and made you wet yourself, the hero Blast!!

K: if you want to fight him again, come over here!

K: why are you so scared you can’t move?! Straighten up!!! Hey, if you’re about to shit yourself you should go home!

K: a bug like you, you must want to run back underground and suck on your mom’s tits!!!!

Page 125

Association staff: King arrived at the location near S city where Elder Centipede has reemerged!!!

Staff: thank god! It’s King, he’ll have a solution…

Staff: …there are several other heroes onsite

Staff: when I warned him their battle might cause collateral damage and injure the innocent, he told me “I hope you could give me information that can provoke Elder Centipede”

S: he might have wanted to lure the monster to him and fight it one on one.

Page 126

Staff: it sustained grave injuries at the hands of Blast in the past, but escaped with his injuries underground

S: it would be great if we could finish it off this time…

S: even though it’s top secret information, I still told king the past between Blast and Elder Centipede

S: and explained to him if the battle were to become dragged out or increase in scope, it might causegreat disaster for the surrounding areas …

S: what did he say?

S: he just said “understood”.

The roar of the King Engine……

Page 127

K: luring it here so no one else gets involved…

K: finish it off with one shot before it escapes underground

K: damage must be contained…blowing it back into the city is not an option…

K: there’s very limited time to make your decision

K: that’s it

Page 128

K: …

K: …Saitama?

Page 129

K: Saitama~!!!?

K: it’s about to

Page 130

Shot of Elder Centipede charging

Page 131-138

SERIOUS PUNCH

Page 139

Saitama: ah

Page 140

Sai: Genos, is that you?

Page 141

Sai: you really are here

Sai: just like King said

K: by the skin of my teeth…that was a close call…

Sai: it’s all good, we’re here aren’t we

K: huh? Saitama, you sound…happy?

Sai: I feel awesome for some reason

Page 142

Sai: it’s a great stress release after getting owned by you in video games

K (thinking): it’s still bothering him …

K: that’s not it…I thought I told you it’s because of your inflexible, singular approach towards battles

Ge: Saitama sensei, can I ask you a question

Sai: what?

Ge: what am I missing?

Sai: huh

Sai: power, I guess?

Page 143

Ge: …!!!!

Ge: thank you very much

K: aaaaaaahhhhhh…that’s no good Genos…

K: you cannot use Saitama as reference

Ge: sensei has guided my path with his battle

Ge: the symbol of great strength, that is my goal…

Ge: I will be there

Page 144

Ph: Garou…he has finally lost consciousness

Ph: rest easy

Ph: we’ll soon be with Orochi

END