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yukipri · 4 years

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Marco’s Bauble Part 3 - a One Piece Mermaid AU Text Story

Here’s part 3 of the Marco’s Bauble story, posted last month on Patreon!

Finally, an appearance from Marco himself ^ ^

Contains mention of Marco x Luffy.

Continues off of, and should be read after:

👒🐟Marco’s Bauble Part 1

👒🐟Marco’s Bauble Part 2

Namur takes great pride in being a fishman in the Whitebeard Pirates.

Fishmen and merfolk are usually usually reluctant to join human-dominated organizations, and with good reason, given their long and painful history of suffering prejudice. And for those few who do feel the call of pirating, joining Jinbe and the Sun Pirates to be among their own kind is a natural and comfortable choice.

Jinbe's a good friend, and Namur has nothing but the highest respect for him and Aladine, but he's already chosen who to follow.

Pops, who stood up and protected Fishman island with just one word. Pops, who lets them keep his flag on the island without any tribute, which not even the world government would allow. Pops, who personally brings the wrath of colossal waves and quaking earth every time humans try to bring trouble to the undersea oasis.

Namur knew that he'd be alone among humans, but he trusts Pops, and trusts those who follow him and protect his home alongside him. And given everything he's done for Fishman Island, Namur feels it only fitting that fishmen be represented on the crew.

And so Namur became the first Fishman to join the Whitebeard pirates, but he wasn't the last. By the time Namur had been raised to the rank of 8th Division Commander, a handful of others had joined, along with a number of other people from various tribes considered not quite fully human. Some minks, some longarms, even one guy from a sky island.

In a crew as massive as theirs, diversity isn't surprising, and Pops has ensured they've never been alienated. Even so, the 8th Division became a natural gathering spot for those seeking others who are also a little different, and Namur's damn proud of his versatile, unique division that can handle missions that no other group can.

Namur's happiest aboard the Moby, and it's his one true home now. But at the same time, after spending so much time away from Fishman island, he sometimes misses his birth homeland and culture.

Which is why it feels like reverse culture shock when something familiar appears in front of him with no warning.

Like right now. On Marco's desk.

"Uh," Namur says eloquently, reports in his hand forgotten, eyes glued to the Thing that Marco's now wrapping in what looks like a letter, written in Marco's unmistakable elegant cursive.

"Sorry, I'll be done in a second, yoi," Marco says, and Namur freezes, realizing he must have intruded on possibly a very private moment--except Marco doesn't seem particularly bothered.

Well, even if Marco doesn't mind, Namur still feels awkward, and forces himself to avoid looking at the now-wrapped Thing. He really feels like he just saw something he shouldn't have. Had he knocked before coming in? He thought he had. He thought Marco had told him to come in, but now he's not so sure, because dropping by Marco's office to hand in reports is so habitual. Namur begins to sweat.

"Alright, what is it?"

Marco turns around, and he's wearing those glasses he always wears when he has to pour over documents for hours, that somehow make the legendary Phoenix look less like a terrifying warrior and more like an exhausted secretary. He's wearing his usual open shirt, Pops's mark proudly emblazoned on his chest, and his head still looks like a tropical fruit, and his face still looks kinda stoned. So, the usual Marco. Nothing amiss.

But maybe he's just hiding it. Humans can be so hard to read at times, and Marco wears his poker face better than most. Even though Namur's been his crew mate for roughly twenty years now, he still can't really see through it. Namur fidgets, palms feeling slick.

"Reports from the Eighth's last mission?" Marco prompts, and Namur flinches because oh, he'd been staring.

"Uh, yeah," he forces out, and raises his arm mechanically to pass over the bundle of documents he'd spent the entire morning writing up.

He notices that Marco uses his right hand to take it. He's heard that sometimes, humans wear the equivalent of the Thing on their left hand, and Namur realizes he hasn't seen (or perhaps just hasn't noticed) Marco's left hand in a while. He wonders if Marco's actually hiding it, and sneakily tries to peek at Marco's left side.

Apparently not sneakily enough, because Marco's sharp eyes flick to his side to try to catch what he must have thought Namur was trying to see, and Namur hastily straightens.

They stare at each other and the silence stretches awkwardly, and oh, Namur can tell this one, Marco looks very Confused. It comes off as sorta constipated, but Namur knows Marco well enough recognize the emotion on his questionably human face, and immediately feels bad. He didn't mean to act suspiciously, or snoop in Marco's personal life, but...he's so unbearably curious.

Namur supposes honesty is better.

"Marco," he tries to choose his words carefully, "that, on your desk..." Namur makes a vague jerky motion at the Thing.

"Oh, this?" Marco plucks up the little bundle that's now tied off with twine. "I was just going to send it off to Thatch."

Namur chokes on his own spit.

"You're, Th-Thatch?" Namur wheezes. "You're giving...to him?!"

Namur feels like he's just been sucked into a whirlpool, his world's suddenly tilting in every direction all at once. He doesn't have a problem with them being, y'know! Of course not! He supports his friends! It's just, well, he's surprised, because he'd never even suspected these particular brothers were anything but close friends, because it's Marco and Thatch, and he's been living with them for twenty years and--oh no, did everyone other than Namur actually know all along, is this Human Stuff again--

"Oh, no," Marco says with a soft laugh. "This isn't for him, yoi. He's just delivering it for me. It's for Ace's little brother."

Namur heaves out a huge sigh of relief. It's not Thatch. Oh thank goodness. Not that he doesn't think that Marco and Thatch wouldn't be great together. But. He's glad it wasn't just Namur misunderstanding...

Namur chokes on his own spit, again.

"Ace's little brother?" he tries hard not to shriek, and it comes out even tinier than expected, barely a whisper of a strangled sardine.

Marco frowns a bit at Namur's weird voice and offers him a bottle of fresh water from his side desk, which Namur shakily accepts. This is a lot to process.

"She's...ah, Ace said it's alright if Division Commanders know, but try not to spread this around too much. But she's a mermaid. I thought it'd be fitting," Marco says, shrugging nonchalantly.

"Ah," Namur nods, feeling numb. That does make a lot of sense, far more sense than giving That to Thatch at least.

A mermaid. Ace referring to his mermaid sister as "brother" also makes plenty of sense, given how vulnerable mermaids are in the world of pirates. In fact, it makes so much sense, and Namur wants to applaud Ace's discretion, he didn't seem the type to have that kind of tact and Namur's genuinely impressed, but his mind's also kind of overloaded right now.

"Although, Namur, since you're here..." Marco looks down at the parcel, dwarfed in his palm. "Do you think she'll like it? Or is it too bold, from someone she's never even met?"

It might be a trick of the light but...does Marco look, demure?

Namur's eyes bug out.

Holy shit. This is the real deal.

Namur's never known Marco to have a personal life or interest in anyone, the man's the definition of dedicating his life to the crew. But perhaps he was just being discreet, because surely everyone has a some soft spot or another, and Namur has just found Marco's.

And they've never even met?! They have a long distance relationship too. She's all the way in East Blue, and they correspond via letters and packages. All those oceans between them...

And on top of that, a mermaid and phoenix. She, bound in water, reaching up for the unattainable, while he, bound to the sky, doomed to drown if he touches her domain...like epic lovers torn apart by fate, just like the fairy tale of the fish princess and the bird, beloved by all fishmen and merfolk...

Namur feels his eyes sting a bit from the tragic romance of it all. But now Ace and Thatch have gone to retrieve her, and she'll be coming home to the Moby Dick soon. They'll be united. They'll get their happy ending.

Namur reigns in his overflowing emotions, remembering that he has an important task.

Do you think she'll like it? Or is it too bold?

Marco has consulted in Namur, his closest friend, his fishman expert confidant. This is his time to shine, his chance to give back a little for all the kindness and support Marco's shown him all these years. And Namur will not disappoint.

Namur composes himself, and then takes his reports back from Marco's hand, letting them go because they're suddenly utterly unimportant in light of Marco's blossoming future. He then grasps the now-empty hand, so warm and human, with both of his webbed ones. Marco's eyes widen in alarm as the papers flutter all around them, but Namur ignores them.

"Marco, I promise you, she'll love it," Namur pours every ounce of sincerity he has into his words, and feels his eyes begin to water again from the weight of it all. "I just want to say, I'm super happy for you, brother, and you can come to me for anything."

Marco stares at Namur, and Namur wills him to understand the depth of Namur's dedication to helping his dreams come true.

"...Right. Thanks, yoi?"

Namur doesn't see Marco's eyebrows climb up into his little mop of hair, doesn't notice him try and fail to extract his hand, doesn't notice him looking completely and utterly lost.

Because Namur's so overwhelmed. They grow up so fast! His friend's taking his next big step in life! And Namur gets to see it through! Being alive is incredible!

Namur leaves eventually, and Marco stares blankly after him, hand still cramped from being death-gripped by the fishman for who knows how long.

He has no idea what just happened.

He then looks at the reports that are now scattered across his entire office.

"...He could have at least picked them up, yoi..."

Namur is this guy here.

While he's a canon chara, he's also bg, and like most of Whitebeard's crew other than a core handful, we know very little about him and his personality and backstory is entirely me making it up ^ ^;

Next up in Marco's Bauble #04:

Namur values his crew's privacy. And given that he doubts he was even supposed to see Marco's secret, he absolutely can't disclose it to anyone.

Which is why he's snuck into Izo's room at ass o'clock in the morning, when everyone but the morning shift is asleep, but Izo's awake because he takes a few hours doing his hair and makeup.

Anyway, if you got through to the end, thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

As always, comments/reblogs/tags always immensely appreciated!!! <3 People sharing their thoughts with me motivates me to write so much more, and update more frequently, so thank you so much for everyone who’s so kindly done so in the past!! ;A;

(and if anyone wants an early look, the next parts are already up on my Patreon ;D)

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

Read the next part: Marco’s Bauble, Part 4

~This ask has been added to the Mermaid AU Text Headcanons Compilation post~

#OnePieceMermaidAU #One Piece Mermaid AU #Marco the Phoenix #Namur #Whitebeard Pirates #MarLu #longpost #long post #text headcanons #fic

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luccislegs · 4 years

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Hi!!!!! Can I request Lil scenario or hcs of Whitebeard pirates meeting Dadan after Marineford war (assume that Ace and WB didn't die ㅜㅡㅜ), pleaseeeeee? BTW I love your bloggggg ♥️｡◕‿◕｡

of courseeee and thank you ♥️

–

When Ace woke up a week after the fiasco that was Marine Ford, his first fear was that Whitebeard had died. When he tried to get up, Marco immediately pushed him back back down, promising he was alive and well.

His next worry was over Luffy, and again Marco assured him he was fine and had been saved by Law and taken to Amazon Lily.

After being reassured that everyone was okay, he was overcome by immense guilt. The whole thing was his fault, because he didn’t want to listen to Pops about Teach. Everyone he cared for had almost gotten killed and something in him just…gave.

Pops was sitting in his usual spot, looking cheerful as ever. He had survived being stabbed by one of his allies, the assaults of three generals, the sinking of the Moby Dick, and the near-deaths of hundreds of his sons and daughters, and had come out of it looking exactly like one would expect.

Tired and beat up, covered in bandages and tubes. Marco could work miracles, but he couldn’t beat old age.

Hesitantly, Ace stood before him, tears swimming in his eyes before wrapping his arms around Whitebeard, who hugged him tightly in return. The man had fought a war for him; it was the least he could do.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, son,” Whitebeard said, his voice gruff with emotion. He pushed Ace away so he could take a good look at him. Like himself, Ace had had it just as bad, if not worse. Akainu had punch a hole straight through him, and it was only by the grace of every miracle in existence that Marco had made it to him before he died.

It had taken a lot of time and a lot of care to keep Ace alive while Marco worked to close the gaping wound, but he had pulled through and no one could be happier than Whitebeard himself.

But Ace was looking guilty, and not just because of everything that had happened. “What is it you need to ask, Ace?”

He hesitated, trying to gather his thoughts before explaining. “I know…I know I just came back, and we just…just won a war. But I realized that…Dying made me…I want to go visit Foosha Village. Makino and Dadan…they’ll be worried and I haven’t seen them in–”

He got no further than that because Whitebeard grabbed his shoulder, giving him a sharp nod. “Yes, I agree. We should go visit them. I’d like to meet the woman that raised you, and give her my thanks.”

That wasn’t what Ace had expected, and he thought to argue, but changed his mind. He didn’t want to leave his family so soon again, and Pops and Dadan would probably get on like a house on fire.

Plus, he wanted them to meet. Two of the people most important to him deserved that much, at least.

“Alright. Thank you, Pops.”

–

Ace could hear the screams of children, saw them pointing in terror at the massive ship approaching. Even they knew Whitebeard’s flag, and knew it was to be feared.

But the adults knew better, and knew that his ship approaching could mean only one thing. Everyone already knew about the Navy’s defeat at the hands to the Whitebeard pirates, knew that Ace had escaped.

But no one knew for sure if he had survived.

Makino screamed as Ace stepped off, tears falling freely down her face as she threw herself into his arms. He wrapped them around her gently, holding her close as a familiar sense of comfort washed over him.

Woop Slap came next, giving his customary scolding about how bad he turned out, but Ace could read between the lines easy enough.

Friends came from left and right to hug Ace, and it was a long time before they finally allowed him to breathe.

Whitebeard waited in the wings, giving Ace a chance to catch up before walking down the ramp, instantly commanding everyone’s attention. The villagers all looked from him to Ace nervously, until he introduced Pops properly.

After that, everyone began to fervently thank Whitebeard for saving Ace’s life, with Ace nodding along. Someone started clapping, and then everyone was, with cheers and whistles mixed in. Whitebeard took it all in stride, while some of the others laughed in the background.

It was several minutes before they settled down again and even then they were so loud it was hard to think.

Ace looked down at Makino, who had latched onto his arm and refused to let go, and asked the dreaded question.

“Where is Dadan?”

Her face morphed from one of happy relief to nervousness. Before she could answer, though, a loud voice yelled his name.

He turned and found himself faced with the very woman he had asked about, who was barreling towards him like a rhino, looking for all the world like she was going to murder him.

Ace pushed Makino gently off so she wouldn’t be hurt, and braced himself for the inevitable impact.

Instead of the punch he had expected, he found himself swallowed up in a bone-crushing hug.

“You stupid, stupid fool,” Dadan choked out, and Ace realized she must be crying. “You absolute idiot.”

There was more, unintelligible muttering through her tears, and Ace could feel himself beginning to tear up. Unable to help himself, he hid his face in her bushy hair and let them fall, clutching her back as tightly as she held him.

He didn’t know how long they stood there, but finally a gentle hand on his back brought him back to reality.

It was Makino, and she was looking at him with a misty expression. “Let’s go to the bar for some privacy.”

With Dadan on one side and Makino on the other, they walked hand in hand into the warmth of the bar. Whitebeard and the others followed at a distance, wearing smiles or looking uncomfortable with the affection in turns, but all equally happy to see Ace smiling.

“Dadan,” Ace said once the doors to the bar were closed, “I want to introduce you to Whitebeard, my father.” Turning to Whitebeard, he said, “Pops, this is Dadan and Makino. They raised me and my brothers.”

Dadan got that angry look on her face again, and Ace thought for sure she was going to give Pops hell, but to everyone’s surprise, the exact opposite happened. He could have laughed at the look on Pops’s face as Dadan threw her arms around him and broke down again.

He awkwardly patted her on the back, looking suspiciously red in the face, until she pulled back again.

“Thank you, Whitebeard, for saving this fool. He’s an idiot, but he’s our idiot,” Dadan said, patting him on the shoulder one last time before returning to her seat beside Ace.

Makino had laid her head on Ace’s shoulder, and had yet to let go of his arm, but now she looked up with a warm smile. “I think this calls for a celebration.”

She served drinks with the ease of years of practice, and soon everyone held a mug of something.

Ace stood up, facing Whitebeard and the others and smiled. “To my family, and to Pops. I sure as hell wouldn’t be here without them.”

Dadan and Makino burst into tears again as the rest of the pirates burst into loud cheers and swarmed Ace, dogpiling him, while Whitebeard laughed loudly.

They all knew that right now was a memory that needed to be cherished because, when they returned to the Grand Line, the Navy would hunt them with renewed, if not more terrible, vigor. They had won one war and tarnished the World Government’s image, and they would pay for it.

Ace himself knew it, which was another reason why he wanted to return home. He knew that the chances of him ever returning were slim, and now was the best time to see them, to let them know he was okay and that he loved them. He didn’t want to die with this regret, and he almost had.

He raised his mug to Marco, who nodded slightly in return before looking to Whitebeard, who was looking at Dadan in amusement. She was regaling him with tales of Ace’s childhood, and all the trouble he caused along with his brothers. Makino was watching her with exasperated fondness, and Ace found he didn’t care all that much.

Dadan looked happy, Pops looked happy, Makino looked happy, and he himself was happy, and that’s all he cared about tonight.

#portgas d. ace #curly dadan #whitebeard #makino #one piece scenarios

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tlbodine · 4 years

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Three 1970s Horrors Worth Watching (that are not part of this film series)

The Horror by the Decade series started innocuously enough, with someone requesting some recent film recommendations. That got me to thinking about trends, and recommendations from previous decades, and how many movies that were true classics I was familiar with but had never seen, and thus the idea “hey, let’s watch movies from every decade!” came into being.

But obviously you can’t watch every horror movie from every year, so there had to be a selection process in place. Here’s roughly how I’ve been choosing movies:

Search Google for “horror movies {year}” for each year of the decade

Research them a bit and pick out everything that is familiar, historically significant, or seems especially interesting, and put them on a list

Pare the list down to 1-2 of the most interesting titles per year

Look for themes and pair movies up according to theme (since we watch two movies a week)

In order to save time, any movie that both I and @comicreliefmorlock have seen recently/a lot gets knocked off the list. In the 1970s, that means removing three extremely good, extremely important movies, so I wanted to talk about them a bit here.

Follow below the cut for thoughts on Jaws, The Exorcist, and Alien

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Jaws, made in 1975 by Steven Spielberg, is based on a novel of the same name written by Peter Benchley. Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider team up to kill an unusually large and aggressive great white shark that is terrorizing the beach in a quiet New England town.

Fun fact: Until Star Wars was released two years later, Jaws was the highest-grossing movie of all time! This is probably due in part to how much money Universal decided to sink into its distribution and marketing, but the film’s quality has to play a big part too. It really is a magnificent movie and is probably a big part of why people are still scared of sharks.

Some things that are notable about Jaws:

It has one of the most iconic and effective film scores in cinema. Everyone knows the Jaws theme, and it’s been used to basically mean “impending danger!” in a jokey way for...I mean, at least 30 years, because I know that was a meme when I was a kid. I imagine it has been since 1975. That’s just a really impressive feat, and John Williams (yes, the Star Wars guy) deserves acclaim for it.

Music aside, Jaws is an excellent study in suspense and restraint. Technological limitations meant they couldn’t show the shark as much as they’d wanted, so scenes had to be filmed suggestively to ramp up the tension. (You do still get to see a lot of wonderful big scary shark, though, and honestly the effects still hold up pretty well to this day)

The performances are really good, too. The leads have a great chemistry and play off of each other really well. The script was a joint effort, getting passes from several people (including the book’s author), but a comedian Carl Gottlieb got a pass at it, and that humor really helps to elevate the film.

The most powerful thing about Jaws, though, is that it taps into a mythic seed that renders it utterly timeless. There is an echo of Moby Dick in Quint’s character and motives, with a similarly tragic arc. But it draws on something older and deeper, too. The premise of “man-eating wild animal terrorizes a community, a bounty is put on its head, only a hero can kill it” has been a staple of mythology for thousands of years.

Man-eaters are real, and they become the stuff of legend -- dating at least as far back to the monstrous Nemean Lion that could be slain only by Heracles. Historically, there are accounts of man-eating wolves, lions, tigers, etc. terrorizing locals, sometimes inspiring local werewolf legends - you can read about just a few of them here: https://listverse.com/2010/10/16/top-10-worst-man-eaters-in-history/

I think I watched Jaws for the first time when I was 8 (I saw all the sequels too, there was a cable marathon) and I was utterly captivated. I feel pretty confident if I showed it to an 8-year-old today, they would be too. It’s just that kind of movie.

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The Exorcist, released in 1973 and directed by William Friedkin, was based on a novel by William Peter Blatty, who also wrote the screenplay.

The story is about a 12-year-old girl, Regan, who begins acting strangely after playing with a ouija board. Once medical causes are ruled out, her mother turns to two priests for assistance; they come to perform the exorcism and have a harder time than expected with casting out the demon, to say the least.

The film is still considered one of the most frightening horror movies of all time by some, and at the time of its release it was a sensation. Movie-goers were said to have all sorts of reactions, from fainting and vomiting to having miscarriages and heart attacks. Contemporary psychologists even wrote about “cinematic neurosis” in people who had watched the film: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1151359

The story crossed a lot of boundaries (even for the 1970s) and you have to bear in mind that this was a major cinematic release, not a grindhouse exploitation film. Most film-goers in 1973 were absolutely not prepared to see an innocent child spouting off vulgarity, urinating on the floor, and masturbating with a crucifix. And some of the practical effects, like the famous head-twisting scene, are still really creepy.

This is one of those movies that’s hard to watch with fresh eyes because it was so influential on all of cinema to follow. If you like demonic possession movies, this is the film that started it all. I know religious people who are deeply afraid of this movie and won’t allow it in their home for fear of inviting real demons, so, that’s the kind of staying power the story has.

** As an atheist, I am not particularly frightened of demon movies, and I suspect I will never fully grasp the real terror of watching something like this for people who believe that these types of things happen in real life. The Exorcist is definitely not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I can respect that it definitely is for many other people.

Fun trivia: The Exorcist is considered by some to be cursed because the cast and crew had an unusually tough time with filming: the set caught fire (but Regan’s room was undamaged), several actors were injured during practical stunts/effects, several people died during filming or in post-production (not on set), and the demon’s voice actor experienced an awful tragedy years later when her son killed wife, kids, and himself: http://www.the13thfloor.tv/2015/12/02/is-the-exorcist-movie-cursed/

The events are all most likely coincidental (and on a long enough timeline, everyone involved with a project will be dead!) but it lends power to the suspicion that this was A Very Cursed Movie That God Doesn’t Want You To Watch, which makes it all the more frightening.

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Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, came out in 1979 and is so powerful that it’s still a popular franchise today, spawning books, movies, video games, merchandise, and more.

The story is essentially a haunted house film set in space. A commercial space crew is woken from stasis by the ship's on-board computer to answer a distress signal, discovering a derelict alien ship and founding a chamber of eggs belonging to an aggressive, parasitic alien creature that infests a crew member with its egg, which later hatches violently from his body, grows up, and proceeds to terrorize the ship.

It's a tense cat-and-mouse game of searching for the alien as it picks off crew members one by one, and the music, atmosphere, and visuals are all compelling, with effects that still hold up pretty well for modern audiences. But what makes Alien especially significant is the performance of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley.

We’d had scream queens before -- female horror protagonists who survive as “final girls” against the mayhem and slaughter -- but Ripley is something different. She is badass, heroic in a way that girls rarely got to see themselves, and laying down a template for strong female characters in future cinema (for better or worse).

The script was reportedly written to be gender neutral, with no assumptions about casting, which allowed Ripley to defy gender norms and expectations. But despite this supposed gender neutrality, there is a definite flavor of female horror in Alien -- which is, after all, a movie about forced impregnation and death at the hands of a decidedly phallic monster.

And that is, I think, probably right at the heart of the film’s sticking power. Science fiction can swiftly become dated as our knowledge of the universe expands, but the horror of Alien isn’t really the aliens so much as what they represent -- and sad to say, sexual violence is something we humans may never understand. Here’s a fun essay on the topic: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/film/2019/03/forty-years-what-can-ridley-scott-s-alien-teach-metoo-generation

So, there you have it. Three movies we will not be watching in our film series, but which you absolutely should check out if you somehow haven’t seen them.

#horror movies #horror by the decade #horror through the decades #jaws #the exorcist #alien #i love these movies #so much

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sprnklersplashes · 5 years

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not beyond repair (8/?)

AO3

Veronica can’t deny her nerves as she pushes the gate of Westerberg High open on Monday morning. She hadn’t heard from JD for the rest of the weekend, a niggling voice in the back of her head telling her not to call him as she sat on her bed next to her phone, nervously picking at her nail, caught between giving him space and wanting him to know that he’s not alone. Apparently she picked the former and as she looks down at her destroyed nails on her right hand, she hopes she picked the right one. The yard is already alive with students, freshmen running around the place, one group using their backpack as a football, enjoying the rare late October sunshine before it’s gone completely, and inside is even more so. Despite the promise she and JD weaselled out of Kurt and Ram, she still pulls her coat a little tighter around herself as the hairs on her arms prick up. Even with their turned backs, she feels like everyone has their eyes on her, the word “slut” painted on her back in bright red. The irony of that image is not lost on her.

“Hey, Veronica,” the soft voice of her best friend greets next to her. Martha slides up to her, her brown hair pulled back in a braid and a gentle, excited smile that still warms Veronica’s heart on her face. There’s a gleam in her eyes too, the kind that promises exciting news.

“Hey,” Veronica replies, falling into step beside her.

“Did you hear?” Martha asks.

“Hear what?” she says, feeling slightly more cautious now. Kurt and Ram would never tell anyone-not even their dads, especially not their dads-about what she and JD did. Being a snitch is only slightly better than being a slut.

“Ram’s going around telling everything he and Kurt lied about the threeway,” she says, almost squealing in excitement. “That you didn’t do anything with them.”

“They are?” Veronica asks, looking around her. People don’t stop to talk to her, but no one did since before she was a Heather. No one is casting judgemental, disgusted glances at her, and there’s definitely no secret sniggering behind her back. She lets out a small laugh, feeling relief wash over her. “Thank god for that.”

“I knew it,” she says proudly. “I knew Ram would come through eventually. See, I told you he’s not so bad.” Veronica bites her tongue, smiling and nodding as Martha tells her about Ram’s so called ‘good heart’, listens politely as she tells her how his tough jock thing is an act he puts up for everyone, that he just wants people to like him. ‘If he wants people to like him, maybe he shouldn’t lie about who he’s slept with’ crosses Veronica’s mind, but she bites it back. She’s already broken Martha’s heart once. And besides, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. It’s hurting her, given how much she’s biting down on her tongue, but that’s not really important.

When she feels someone coming up behind her and the brief touch of a finger against her hand, she has to hold back the urge to sigh in relief, even though it comes with the tell-tale prickle of nerves down her back.

“Hey,” she greets, turning her head slightly to see JD beside her. To her comfort, he looks a lot calmer than he did on Saturday, his eyes clearer and his smile bright as he looks at her.

“Hey yourself,” he says gently. His head moves just a fraction of an inch-most likely to press a kiss to her forehead or maybe her lips if he was feeling bold enough- before he looks over at Martha, registering her friend’s presence. “Hi, Martha.”

“Hey,” she replies, toying with the ends of her braid. “How was your weekend? You two hung out right?”

“Yeah,” he answers, looking to Veronica for help. “We just uh-”

“Grabbed dinner,” Veronica finishes, covering for him. “Watched TV. Nothing exciting.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Martha says. “Uh, JD I was just telling Veronica, Kurt and Ram are telling everyone that they lied about the threeway.”

“Oh are they now?” he says, a proud tone laced through his voice that only Veronica could know. She grins, lacing their hands together, their secret hanging between them. “I guess someone’s conscience finally caught up with them.”

“That’s what I was telling Veronica,” she adds. “Ram’s not that bad, really. I knew he’d come clean sooner or later.” Veronica feels JD stiffen beside her, doing his best to still seem interested, but he rubs his thumb on the back of Veronica’s hand. “He’s a good guy, really.”

“I…” JD begins, his voice strained as he searches for the right words to say. “Do not doubt that one bit.” Martha grins, lighting up her face and the hallway. “Come on, it’s getting a little crowded in here.” They get their books from their lockers (Veronica’s now mercifully clean and devoid of any insulting graffiti) and JD walks with them to their homeroom, easily and calmly diverting the conversation to their English class, or more specifically, his and Martha’s English class, and their study of Moby Dick.

“I mean I read it for the first time when I was 14,” he explains. “But it took me a few tries to get the symbolism down.”

“But you know so much about it,” Martha adds. “Veronica you should see him in class. You’re like a college kid in there.”

“Wonder if that’s why Ms Greene hates me so much,” he jokes.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Martha assures him.

“She doesn’t particularly like me,” he reminds her. Martha bites her lip; now it’s her turn to try to search for the right words. “It’s okay though. I don’t particularly like her.”

“She’s not so bad,” Martha says. “Just a little… traditional.”

“Wow,” JD breathes. “You don’t have a bad bone in your body, do you?”

“T-thanks,” she replies, her cheeks going slightly pink as they normally do when Martha gets a compliment from anyone who isn’t Veronica. She opens the door to their homeroom and the three walk in. “But anyway, I think she likes that you argue with her. And how you’re on her level. No one else in our class is.” JD doesn’t reply, but the small, proud smile on his face is more than enough answer for both of them.

If he did have an answer it dies away when they walk in and see Heather MacNamara sitting alone at her desk, without the other two Heathers with her. She looks painfully different without them, her slight frame standing out more when she’s not flanked by the other two, her shoulders slouching without Chandler’s silent reminders to keep them up, her eyes lost when she doesn’t have one of her two focal points. Those big brown eyes land on Veronica, her pearly white teeth biting her pink lip nervously. She’s not the only nervous one; Veronica feels her own stomach sink at the sight of her ex-friend, remembering how she stood behind Chandler as that awful rumour spread like wildfire throughout the school, attempting to ruin every part of Veronica’s already-fragile social life.

“Hi Veronica,” she says softly. JD’s hand wraps around Veronica’s as she tries to think of a response, if she should give one at all. Although she wouldn’t have admitted it, she nearly considered MacNamara a friend. Unlike Duke and Chandler, she at least always made an effort to smile at her, invite her to hang out without the other two, took time to explain the completely foreign world of makeup and parties to her. Up until two weeks ago, Veronica might have called her a friend.

“Hi,” she says warily, moving backwards into JD when MacNamara stands up, picking at her perfectly manicured nails. Good thing Chandler isn’t here; she would go ballistic (if anyone is capable of going ballistic at someone as innocent looking as MacNamara, it’s probably Heather Chandler, although Veronica wasn’t in their group long enough to see it).

“I heard what Kurt and Ram are saying,” she says. “That they lied about the rumour. They made it up.”

“Yeah, they did,” she says, suddenly defensive. MacNamara nods quickly, her head bobbing up and down, making her blonde hair shake.

“Well… um, good,” she stammers. “Maybe then everything goes back to normal?”

She thinks to ask what exactly she thinks normal is, but the question stays quiet on her tongue as she settles for looking her up and down, watching as she fidgets uncomfortably under her gaze. The tension in the air is so thick that Veronica feels like she’s being choked, the presences of JD and Martha behind her, plus his grip on her hand, being the only things keeping her from collapsing underneath it.

“Veronica,” MacNamara begins. “Look I just wanted to say-”

She supposes she’ll never know what Heather wanted to say, because the door swings open and Heather Chandler storms in, followed by a less authoritative, but still compelling in her own way, Heather Duke. Chandler’s resentful eyes land on Veronica, and now it’s her turn to squirm and shrink back even further, even with her own supports behind her.

“So I hear Kurt and Ram made that rumour up,” she says, her voice thin, rage simmering just below the surface like a volcano that’s overdue to explode. Veronica only nods. “Interesting.” She sits down at her own desk and Duke follows, her back turned away from Veronica. Within a few moments, MacNamara follows suit, making her message clear to Veronica; she chose her side. Even though she knows how silly it is, Veronica tries not to be hurt by it.

“Let it roll off your back, Ronnie,” JD says softly to her as she sits up on her desk. She takes his wrist and pulls him closer so that his legs are on either side of her. Her goal isn’t necessarily to use him to block the Heathers out of her line of sight, but it certainly helps. She supposes that’s the plus side of having a tall boyfriend.

“I know,” she sighs, turning her hand over in his. “At least I’m back to just being a loser, instead of a loser and a slut.” She’s trying not to sound bitter, really trying, but it creeps into her voice anyway. Martha takes her free hand sympathetically and squeezes gently.

“You still have us,” she offers, glancing nervously at JD, but relaxing when he nods. Veronica chuckles, surrounded by the only two people she could ever see herself needing, in high school at least.

“Yeah, I do,” she agrees, smiling down at Martha.

The homeroom door swings open again and Veronica peeps over JD’s shoulder to see Miss Fleming entering, three heavy looking notebooks in her arms and a long green scarf trailing behind her. Veronica suppresses a groan and briefly rests her head on JD’s shoulder before bringing herself back up again. Fleming flies through the room before coming to a half at Veronica’s desk, taking in the sight of JD standing there, likely far too close to Veronica than she would like. Veronica bites the inside of her cheek to stop her from laughing as Fleming’s face slowly turns into a too tight smile.

“Jason isn’t it?” she asks, to which JD nods. “I don’t think this is your homeroom, is it?”

“You would be correct,” he replies coolly. Veronica grins as she feels a hush fall across the room, all eyes turning to the battle of words between JD and Fleming. Right now he’s a clear winner, Fleming’s grip tightening on her books so much that her knuckles turn white.

“Well maybe you should go to your own homeroom?” she suggests in a tight voice. JD’s mouth twitches up into a cheeky smile, one that hints at trouble but Veronica knows he has no intention of making any.

“Yes ma’am,” he says. He turns back to Veronica and gives her hand a tight squeeze. “I’ll see you later, darling.”

“Okay bye,” she replies softly. He bids Martha goodbye too before leaving, the proud smile remaining on his face as he walks out of the room, his coat blowing a little behind him. At Fleming’s disapproving look, Veronica slides off her desk and into her seat.

“You’re blushing,” Martha whispers, turning slightly in her seat. Veronica presses a hand to her cheek and sure enough, she finds it warm. Strangely, she finds that she doesn’t care, even if the entirety of her class has just watched her cheeks turning pink. She half-listens to Flemings’ morning announcements while scribbling in her diary, doodling hearts and flowers in the margins as she goes, breathing coming easy to her after the painful few days she had last week.

Dear diary, she writes. So my reputation is back on track… what’s left of it anyway. Not like I’m expecting any apologies, from Kurt, Ram, or anyone else. Certainly not Heather Chandler. Most people still aren’t talking to me, but I kind of don’t really care anymore. Maybe because I’m used to it. Maybe because I have Martha and JD now.

JD seems better. It’s like if I hadn’t seen him on Saturday, I wouldn’t have known that he got a little…. Maybe freaked? He was happier today I guess. I guess whatever was bothering him got worked out. Or maybe I just remember it being worse than it was. Whatever it is, I just hope he stays that way.

She twirls her pen around her finger underneath her desk, her thoughts circling around in her brain like a train, glancing up at Mrs Fleming, at least giving the façade of paying attention, while also sneaking a look at the clock. Seeing how close it is to the end of homeroom, she puts her diary back in her bag with a resigned sigh, the feeling of all her innermost thoughts and secrets weighing heavily against her legs when she stands, the bag brushing against her. Still, as she makes her way to her first class, her boyfriend worries slip to the back of her mind for now, lying dormant under piles of homework and assignments and reminders of college applications and deciding on what to eat for lunch.

*****

The sound of the final bell on Friday is music to Veronica’s ears, as is the sound of chairs scraping and exciting conversations blossoming over the attempts of her teacher to remind them of their homework and promise to start the Civil War on Tuesday. She lifts her heavy bag onto her shoulder and hurries out, clutching her notebook and diary to her chest. She passes Heather Duke on the way out, wearing her seemingly permanent scowl. When she’s with the other two, at least Duke is balanced by Chandler’s steady confidence and MacNamara’s charms. She even adds to them in turn, completing their little trifecta. But on her own, she has never been quite as strong. Chandler alone can still make a grown man kneel, MacNamara can charm any boy she wants without the help of the other two, but Duke? When Duke is on her own, all Veronica can see is an angry little girl with not much else to her. She certainly doesn’t see someone that would make her palms sweat as she passes, yet she ends up wiping her hand on her skirt anyway.

“Weekend plans?” she asks bluntly, no fake politeness at all in her voice, unlike Heather Chandler. She toys with the edge of her hair, winding it around her finger, which she focuses on so intently that Veronica is half convinced she didn’t actually say anything.

“Maybe,” she replies flatly before she feels a slight boost in confidence inside her, a daring spark in her chest. “Why do you care?” She winces internally once the words leave her mouth, a heavy feeling in her stomach warning her that she’s going to regret this.

“I don’t,” she says, dropping her hair and turning her eyes to Veronica, her hand on her hip, her chest pushed out. A cruel smirk curls on her lips. “I’m just surprised people are still talking to you.”

“Well… they are,” Veronica says, her tone not as tough as she might like. Heather’s accusation feels like a slap across the face. “Guess I didn’t really need you three.”

“Oh, please,” Duke giggles. “You, Martha Dumptruck and your psychotic boyfriend? I’m sure that’s a laugh a minute.”

“Watch your mouth, Heather,” she tells her.

“What are you going to do about it?” she asks in return, stepping closer to Veronica. Veronica stumbles backwards involuntarily and hits her leg on a desk. Duke might be almost half her size, but Veronica quickly that doesn’t mean she can’t hold her own. She kicks herself for underestimating Duke.

“Isn’t Heather Chandler waiting for you somewhere?” she asks, slipping past the desk and away from Duke. Her comment only makes her frown more, Duke’s hand on her hip clenching, her fingers digging into the green blazer.

“Chandler doesn’t own me,” she spits.

“Sure she doesn’t,” Veronica says. “Bye Heather.”

Veronica hurries out of the classroom, her chest feeling significantly less tight as she steps out into the hallway. She still feels Duke’s eyes burning on the back of her like little lasers, getting more intense as she hears the sound of her heels ringing off the linoleum towards her. She swears she can feel Duke’s breath on the back of her neck.

“Heather!”

In one single fraction of a moment, it appears Veronica and Duke are united in something; they both jump a mile high. As Veronica tries to will her frantic heart to slow down, she turns to the sound of the voice that caused them such a shock, despite already knowing who it is. Even if she didn’t have such an unmistakable voice, there’s only one person who could ever cause that reaction from Duke. As she turns her head in attempt to look anywhere other than Chandler’s shark like eyes, Veronica notices the students around her slowing down or even having so little shame that they stop altogether and linger against walls-heads in books but ears pricked up, hoping for a juicy tidbit to tide them over until Monday. She isn’t all that surprised if she’s honest.

“Am I interrupting something?” Heather Chandler asks, her chin lifted up just a fraction, which is all she really needs to do. She raises her perfectly arched eyebrow, silently demanding an answer.

“No,” Heather Duke replies, tugging on her jacket. “Girl talk.”

“Then why are you keeping me waiting?” she asks sharply. Veronica isn’t sure if she imagines it when Duke winces, and something inside her turns and she wants to tell Heather Chandler to back off. It’s an odd feeling to say the least.

“Sorry Heather,” she says, heading over to Chandler’s side. She keeps her head up, her chest forward, but she strides over there quickly and her hands curl into fists at her side.

“Let’s go,” she orders, turning around, her plaid skirt fanning out around her and her blonde curls bouncing before landing immaculately in place. “MacNamara’s waiting for us in the parking lot.” The sound of their heels clicking on the floor becomes softer and softer, until they’ve faded entirely, leaving Veronica in the hallway with her fellow students surrounding her. Once the Heathers have left, the school returns to normality, freshman running down the hall, eager to escape and celebrate the weekend, conversations fading back in like a radio tuning into a station. Veronica runs a hand through her hair and lets out a long sigh, the air feeling lighter and freer now that they’re gone. She feels her cheeks burning and she knows why. A part of her hates this- the feeling that the Heathers will constantly be on her back, nipping at her heels, finding moments when she’s alone and biting at her right up until the day she graduates.

She runs down the main stairs and out the front door, pulling her scarf out of her bag and wrapping it around her neck as the autumn air leaves her shivering slightly. Red, orange and yellow leaves scatter across the concrete as she makes her way across the yard, towards the iron gate that led out onto the main road, where two days of freedom await her. Well, two days of freedom, with the occasional study and homework moments. But she can’t slow down, especially not with college applications on the horizon.

There’s a surprising sight as she makes her way across the yard; his back might be turned to her, but the trench coat and dark curls are instantly recognisable. As she approaches, she guesses by the way he’s hunched over he’s reading again, probably one of the three books she saw in his bag that morning. He breezes through them during class, having somehow perfected the art of reading a book hidden on his lap while pretending to be paying attention. She shouldn’t be impressed, but she is, even though she still manages to get on him for it.

“Boo!” she shouts, grabbing him by the shoulders.

“Shit, Ronnie,” he says as she giggles. He runs his hand through his hair, grinning, while the other hand marks his page. “Not cool.” She cackles and sits next to him on the wall, facing the opposite way from him, her feet trailing along the ground, and kisses his jaw playfully. He smiles against her and she hears him chuckle.

“What are you even doing here anyway?” she asks. “Aren’t you normally gone by now?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I should be. I just had a run-in with Heather Duke. It was nothing.”

“Did she say anything to you?” he asks, turning towards her so he can wrap his arm around her shoulders, his book forgotten.

“She said some things to me,” she says, drumming her heels on the wall. She runs her hand up her arm like she can wash Duke’s words away from her. “Nothing important. Just the usual bitch stuff. You know I never knew…” She waves her hand in the air as if she can conjure the end of her sentence by magic.

“Never knew….”

“That she could be so vicious,” she finishes.

“You didn’t?” JD asks, scrunching up his face slightly. “How long were you guys friends?”

“Okay, stop,” she says, lightly hitting him in the chest. “It’s not that I didn’t know… I just sort of thought she was Chandler’s lackey. Guess I never realised there was something lurking underneath that frown.” Lurking like a shark underneath the water. JD runs his finger up and down her arm, tickling her skin gently and getting her to giggle.

“You sure she didn’t say anything to you?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” she tells him. When she sees his disheartened expressions, it’s her turn to comfort him, rubbing her thumb along his cheekbone. “Nothing I can’t handle on my own.” He nods, giving her a half smile and kissing the inside of her wrist. Veronica lets out a small breath, her heart picking up slightly at the touch of his lips on her wrist.

“You didn’t answer me,” she reminds him in a soft voice. “What are you still doing here?”

“Waiting for Claire,” he explains. He scoots closer to her so that their hips are touching.

“I thought you walk home.”

“I do,” he says, a cryptic smile playing on his face and his fingers toying with the ends of her hair. Normally she’d be bothered by something like that, but for him she’ll make an exception. “Only I’m not going home. I have an appointment out of town, and unfortunately I can’t drive myself there.”

“Oh,” Veronica replies. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course it is,” he replies, his fingers running off her hair and down her neck, stroking gently. “Just need to stay on top of things.” She nods, her concern not fading away with his comforting smile, rather a niggling worry clings to the back of her mind, poking at her despite him reassuring her. “Oh, speak of the devil.”

Veronica looks up and sees Claire’s little grey Ford pulling up onto the kerb outside. She honks her horn for good measure and JD responds with a tired wave. He slips his book into his backpack and pulls himself off the wall, Veronica not too far behind him.

“Want me to walk you to the car?” Veronica offers as their fingers brush.

“The chivalrous thing,” he replies with a grin, lacing their fingers together. “I’d be honoured.” Veronica laughs and he lets her lead him out the front gate and round to where Claire is parked, her glasses sitting on her head.

“Hi Veronica, how are you?” she asks politely.

“I’m great, thanks,” she replies.

“I’ll see you later,” JD offers, glancing briefly at Claire, who turns her attention to the opposite window, away from them. Veronica knows she isn’t imagining JD’s smile.

“See you later,” she agrees. She looks over at Claire too before looking back at JD, her pulse racing against his skin. They settle on a quick goodbye peck before he climbs into the car, saluting her with his finger as Claire puts the car into gear and waves before driving off, leaving a slightly breathless Veronica on the street by herself. She pushes her hair away from her face as she watches Claire’s car getting smaller and smaller along the road, driving along to whatever appointment he has. The one he remains deliberately cryptic about, hiding behind a coy smile and sparkling eyes, gentle fingers in her hair and soft kisses on her lips.

He’s told her it isn’t her job to worry about him. But she should get a pay raise anyway.

*****

“So how was school?” Claire asks over the sound of an old song playing on the radio.

“Fine,” JD responds, keeping his gaze fixed on the world outside the window. He imagines a little stick figure running along the path, keeping in time with the speed of the car, jumping over trash cans and swinging over pedestrian’s shoulders. It keeps his mind occupied and more importantly, his attention away from Claire.

“Don’t you have mid-terms coming up soon?” she asks casually.

“Yeah kind of,” he replies nonchalantly. He does, of course, there’s an essay due for American History and for English and he has quizzes coming up in biology and Spanish and social studies, and none of those books have ever really been opened outside of class, except for when he sits next to Veronica in study hall and they study together in whispered words and passed notes. Otherwise they sit in the back of his locker or the bottom of his bag until the night before it’s due in. He’s managed to pull off some minor miracles this way.

“Kind of?” she echoes with a soft chuckle. It dies quickly between them. JD imagines it hitting an invisible wall and sliding down sadly before writhing around on the bottom of the car amongst the dust balls and discarded popcorn bags. “Well if you want, we can go to that stationery store after your appointment. You can get some study cards, highlighters, the works.”

“My friend Martha uses a lot of them,” he laughs, more to himself than her. Of course, the word ‘friend’ makes her ears prick up, like she’s a puppy and he just said ‘walk’.

“Another friend?” she asks.

“Okay, technically she’s not my friend. She’s Veronica’s friend. I hang out with her.”

“But you like her?”

“I….” He looks back out the window. For a few weeks, him eating lunch with Veronica alone in their small, secluded garden, away from private eyes had been such bliss that no one else had really crossed his mind. His thoughts never really went to the future; just the next day’s lunchtime. Then when Veronica told him that she and Martha were friends again, it was a confusing experience for him, to put it mildly. Veronica’s happiness is his happiness, so of course he was never going to stand in the way of her being friends with Martha again, even though his mind had immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion; once Martha came back, Veronica would have no need for him anymore, and he’d be left in the dust. Or they’d all try to form a little threesome, which would inevitably collapse under the unnecessary weight; JD himself. Then the more time he spent with Martha, the more his worries were chipped away, and the more he came to realise that maybe Martha could be more than just ‘his girlfriend’s friend’. Sure, when they were alone together they barely made it past small talk, but with Veronica boosting them along, the two somehow managed to get a relatively easy rapport between them. He’s not sure how he’s managed it, but he did, and that has to count for something. Not that he’ll confess that to Claire. “She’s okay, I guess.”

“Cool.” JD hides the inescapable smirk behind his hand, looking up at the sky as she pulls to a stop at a red light. He knows what she’s thinking and he doesn’t even need to look at her to do so. He knows that having one girlfriend and one sort-of, kind-of friend is a huge step up from his old schools. And that all that information sits in a heavy brown file in his social worker’s office, and in Claire’s desk drawers. There’s probably a page that just says “MAKE SURE HE MAKES FRIENDS” in big red marker. “So about the study thing… maybe after I pick you up we can go get you some school stuff? Or we can go tomorrow?”

“That’s okay,” he says, shifting in his seat. “I don’t really need anything.”

“Oh… okay,” she says softly. “I mean if you’re sure… You’ve got all the studying under control then?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Jason… you are hitting the books, right?”

“Did you just say, ‘hitting the books’?” he asks. “What year are you living in?”

“Don’t try to change the subject,” she warns. “Jason, I know from your last schools that sometimes… you tend to struggle. And I for one don’t want to sign another D on a quiz.”

“Then don’t sign it,” he snaps. He runs a hand through his hair and focuses his attention on a passing tree as Claire comes to stop at a red light. He keeps his eye on a particular red leaf that’s wiggling in the breeze, about five seconds from falling off the tree. Anything to not look at Claire and the stupid, wounded expression she no doubt has on her face, probably blinking her big green eyes behind those thick rimmed glasses of hers. JD shifts again in his seat, resting his chin on his fist. She’s completely quiet, and yet somehow that’s worse than when she was filling the silence in the car by chattering about school supplies and friends and his stupid grades.

Claire is a complete paradox; every day he grows more annoyed with her and somehow, less annoyed. He hates not knowing things, and not knowing Claire has been driving him crazy in the few weeks he’s lived with her.

“Um, yeah, maybe we could go get some school stuff,” he says in a small voice. “Maybe I’ll take a leaf out of Martha’s book.”

“Really?” she asks, sounding surprised. He doesn’t need to turn around to see the dumb smile on her face.

“Yeah. Only if I get to pay for it, though.”

“Jason, it’s school stuff, I can pay for it.”

“Yeah I know, that’s what the system pays you for,” he chuckles, biting his tongue the minute after he says it. He knows the drill in every single home; ever since he was 13 he’s known they all get paid to take care of him and keep him out of trouble. He doesn’t harbour any ill will. It’s business. In his mind, they probably deserve a raise. Still, Claire’s smile dips as he says it. “I can pay myself, it’s fine. I’ll be the one using them.”

“Okay. Cool.” Her voice is lighter this time, and JD finds that the air in the car is much lighter than before. He slides up in the seat, looking ahead onto the road at the red brick buildings and half-bare trees. His bag slides against his leg as Claire pulls out of the red light and turns a corner, his homework and barely opened textbooks seeming to tap against him like a child on their mother’s arm, asking to be opened and looked at for more than ten minutes at a time. Well maybe tonight he will.

As Claire pulls onto a familiar street, he presses his thumb into his palm as his mouth runs dry. He feels a familiar sensation in his stomach, like someone is pressing a ball down inside.

“You okay?” Claire asks, frowning as she parks the car.

“Of course I am,” he sighs. “I’m always okay.” He sounds convincing enough, except for the fact that instead of getting out of the car, he’s sitting there scratching his palm with his thumb nail. He heaves a sigh and looks out the front window. “Claire… just… don’t tell Veronica about this, okay?”

“I never would.”

“No, I know,” he says. “Just… I want to tell her. When it’s the right time, you know?”

“Yeah,” she says softly, nodding. “Don’t worry, kid. My lips are sealed. If you’re ever planning on bringing Veronica over again…”

“Gosh, get out of my dating life,” he sighs, getting out of the car and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll be here,” she replies. “And hey-want pizza for dinner?” She half-leans on the open car window, offering him a gentle smile. He chuckles, scratching behind his ear and looking down at the pavement.

“Yeah. Yeah pizza’s great.”

“Great. See you in an hour kid,” she says, rolling her window back up again.

“See you,” he says under his breath. As he turns around, he hears her engine starting up and then the sound of her car shifting off the sidewalk and onto the road, heading off for her to do God knows what for the next hour. His activity for the next hour stands before him in a red brick building that would look perfectly normal and unsuspicious on this street, if not for the engraved gold plaque on the door. He pulls on the strap on his backpack as he heads in, cautiously glancing around the street. It’s foolish to look; no one at school who cares enough would be in this part of town on a Friday afternoon, but still, the shameful idea of anyone knowing clings to him like a spider on his back. He turns the door handle and heads inside. Another great gift from his father.

Next time, he thinks bitterly, maybe his dad can give him a puppy.

*****

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Veronica,” Mrs Dunnstock comments as Veronica and Martha make their way into the living room, armed with sleeping bags and candy and the menu for the pizza take out place. Veronica bristles, faking a smile all the while her heart beats irregularly and uneasily underneath her blue blazer.

“Been busy,” she offers weakly. “Senior year.”

“Oh I know, it’s all work now,” Mrs Dunnstock agrees. “Still, it’s lovely to see you against Veronica.” She pauses, eyeing Veronica’s choice of clothes, and while she can’t be certain, she’s pretty sure it’s her skirt that’s catching her attention. Veronica’s hand moves to her hem and tries to pull it down. “Is that a new skirt?”

“Um, yeah,” she says. “I got it a while ago.”

“Oh… it’s very pretty,” she comments. Veronica nods in thanks and follows Martha into her living room, letting out a long sigh behind the closed door.

“You do look great in that outfit,” Martha offers, trying to smile, sitting cross-legged on the couch, her eyes flickering to Veronica’s legs as she pulls up her blue knee-length sock. “I’d never pull something like that off.”

“Yes, you could,” Veronica insists, sitting beside her on the couch and taking her hand. “I know you could.” Martha nods, but looks down at her body, her hand running over her stomach, and Veronica feels her heart tear in two. She reaches out and hugs her tightly, resting her head on Martha’s shoulder. None of the Heathers would cuddle with her, she realises with a smile as Martha’s arm comes around her body and holds her just as tightly.

“More of me to love,” Martha whispers. Veronica wonders if she’s talking to her or herself.

“Exactly,” Veronica agrees, rubbing her cheek against Martha’s shoulder. Martha opens up the pizza menu. “The usual?” By ‘the usual’, she of course means two medium pizzas, one plain veggie, and two cans of drinks.

“I don’t know,” Martha says. “I don’t really think I’ll eat anything. Just order for yourself.”

“What?” she asks. “You not hungry?”

“I don’t know.” Martha pulls on the hair tie around her wrist and Veronica hopes to God she’s imagining the shakiness in her voice.

“Martha Dunnstock,” Veronica says sternly, tilting her chin towards her and frowning in her best impression of Miss Fleming. “You’re not a great liar.” Martha avoids her eyes, wriggling her chin gently out of her grasp.

“I don’t know… I just thought maybe it was time to eat healthy, you know?”

Veronica’s heart stops in her chest. She knows exactly what ‘eating healthy’ is code for and she refuses to allow it. Not to Martha.

“Martha,” she sighs, turning onto her side, searching for the impossible words. “Martha… No.” She wants to tell her that she’s perfect the way she is, but she knows she’s just echoing Mrs Fleming’s empty statements from morning assembly, even if she actually means them, it will sound empty and meaningless to Martha. “You don’t need to do anything to yourself. Diet, work out, anything.”

“I just…” Martha begins. “Forget it.”

“Can’t,” Veronica teases, albeit with a steely tone underneath it. “You’ve implanted it in my brain.” She shoves her shoulder gently. “You can tell me anything.” Her fingertips caress Martha’s cheekbone and she pokes the side of her mouth up into a smile like she used to when they were little and they confessed to stealing cookies from the jar while sitting in the backyard.

“I want someone to look at me the way JD looks at you,” she confesses, avoiding her eyes with a guilty pout on her face. “You must to see the way he looks at you in school. He’s head over heels for you.”

“I…” Veronica’s voice trails off, a frustrated sigh escaping her mouth. “Martha… someone will look at you like that one day, I promise. Someone’s going to love every single part of you. Just like I do.” Martha smiles, brighter this time, her shoulders relaxing into Veronica’s embrace. “So are we ordering the usual?” Martha looks long and hard at the menu.

“Okay,” she says tentatively. “As long as you’re eating some too.”

“Obviously,” she snorts.

Soon after they’re sitting with two pizza boxes spread out on their lap, their drinks and candy beside them and The Princess Bride on the TV. Veronica can’t help but notice Martha’s nervous eyes flickering to her every few minutes and hugs her a little tighter.

“Remind me to show this to JD,” she tells her. “Can you believe he’s never seen this movie?”

“Then he hasn’t lived!” Martha chuckles. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird?”

“That he hasn’t seen The Princess Bride?” she asks. “I guess, but he told me he hasn’t watched Disney movies either, so…”

“No, that he’s here,” Martha explains. “That he ended up back in Westerberg. You know, that he left and then came back to you.”

“Back to me,” she repeats, her face turning pink. “I guess it’s a huge coincidence.”

“Kind of romantic,” she says, pointing to the TV screen, where Buttercup and Westley are reunited with Westley as the Dread Pirate Roberts. “Like this, you know?”

“Oh yeah,” Veronica says, a smile tugging on the corner of her lips. “Westley’s even dressed like JD.”

That gets Martha giggling, hiding behind one of her mother’s good pillows.

“I mean… he does kind of?”

“Think I could get him to wear one of those puffy shirts?” Veronica asks, beginning to cackle as well. “Just once, just to see what it would look like.”

“I mean, you should try,” Martha adds, still laughing. “Oh, you know what you should do? Get him to do it for Halloween.”

“Like a couples costume?” she asks. “Hmm, maybe he would be into that.” She bites into another slice of pizza, trying to keep her mind on the here and now, the laughing and the pizza and the movie and the smiles, and not on the niggling worry about JD and his mystery appointment, her climbing anxiety that he’s not telling her something, no, not anxiety, she knows that he’s not telling her something. She tries not to wonder if every couple has parts like this, if JD is going to be a puzzle for her to spend her days working out, or a cryptic message to decode when he’s not around. She always liked puzzles, and now she seems to have one of her own. She’s gone from knowing nothing to being thrown into the deep end. As she nuzzles into Martha and watches Princess Buttercup and Westley declare their love, she can feel herself blushing as she lets herself feel the thrill it gives her; the idea of being the one who figures him out, having him leaning on her.

All she can really know for sure about him is that Martha is right-JD should dress up as Westley for Halloween.

#jdronica #jdronica ff #heathers the musical #jason dean #veronica sawyer #the fic i hate myself for writing but i write it anyways

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leigh-kelly · 5 years

Text

A continuation of NYU!AU

Santana gets her period again and she’s absolutely miserable. She knows from living with another woman that not everyone feels incapacitated by it, but she does. This one is particularly bad and she struggles to get out of bed and go to class. Every second that she doesn’t have to be somewhere, she’s curled up in bed with a heating pad, only getting up to change her tampons or refill her water bottle.

Brittany is absolutely amazing about it. She brings Santana chocolate and ice cream and salty snacks. She snuggles Santana when she’s feeling affectionate and gives her space when she feels like she needs it. Brittany even sneaks Santana food out of the dining hall when she’s feeling too crappy to go and get it. As bad as Santana feels, having Brittany be Brittany just makes everything feel a little better.

“Cuddles or space?” Brittany asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“Cuddles would be good.” Santana smiles a little and Brittany gets under the covers with her.

“Still no better?”

“No. I talked to my mom while you were eating and she thinks I really need to see the gyno about it.”

“She’s probably right, babes. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it, it you and you almost didn’t go to class this morning.”

“My cramps are just really bad. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“I know, you were tossing and turning and you got up three times.”

“I’m sorry I kept you up. You have a late class tonight...” Santana purses her lips and Brittany kisses them.

“Don’t be sorry for me, you’re the one who’s not feeling great.”

“I guess I thought this was normal until I was living with you. Your periods are a breeze.”

“I mean, mine are unusually light but yeah, being stuck in bed like this is totally not normal. If you want to make a doctor’s appointment, I’ll definitely come with you so you don’t have to go alone.” Brittany promises.

“This is going to sound so dumb but my mom always finds my doctors for me. I have to talk to her about how to use the insurance website.”

“I would have no idea how to find a doctor either. I think we’re only half grown up even though it feels like we’re more sometimes.”

“I’m just glad I have you. Before we were together I’d lay in bed and try to will a chocolate bar to come to me from the other side of the room. You take really good care of me.”

“We totally take care of each other. I have to leave in a few minutes to go to class though.”

“I really have to read some of Moby Dick today.” Santana sighs. “That’s what I’ll probably do while I wait for you to come home.”

“And call your mom about finding a doctor?”

“And that.”

Brittany refills Santana’s water bottle for her before she leaves for class and she kisses her goodbye. Once she’s gone, Santana is at least glad that she doesn’t have to get out of bed to read and she rolls over, grabbing the book from the desk next to the bed. She reads for awhile before she takes some more Midol and then she calls her mom, figuring she should try to make an appointment before doctor’s offices close. She doesn’t want to go while she has her period, that feels completely mortifying, but maybe if she can get an appointment for next week it’ll be good.

”Twice in one day.” Santana can hear her mom smile through the phone. ”Brittany must be busy.”

“She’s in class. I talked to her about the gynecologist thing and she said she’ll go with me. You know I’m kinda nervous but just having her in the waiting room might make it better.”

”You’re always so nervous about the doctor, you’d think your Papi wasn’t one. But I’m glad she’ll go with you, I don’t like the sound of you when you lay in your bed and cry in pain.”

“It’s just really bad, Mami. I know it sounds like I’m being dramatic...”

”Mija, I’ve seen you suffer with it. I should have encouraged you to talk to the doctor when you had your first appointment. But now it’s effecting your life more greatly.”

“Can you help me use the insurance website to find a doctor here?”

When her mom helps her, Santana realizes how easy it actually is to look up doctors by specialization and after she hangs up with her, she calls three places until she can finally get an appointment for next Wednesday. She writes it down in her planner and goes back to her book, hoping she can at least get a chunk of it done before Brittany gets back and all she wants to do is cuddle and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She really isn’t a Melville fan so the reading goes slowly and she’s only about halfway done when she hears the key in the lock.

“Guess who’s the best girlfriend ever?” Brittany holds up a paper takeout bag and Santana smiles at her. “Moo shu pork and egg rolls.”

“Britt, you didn’t have to do that.”

“Obviously I wanted to. I was totally craving egg rolls anyway and I figured they’d make you feel better.”

“I love you a lot.”

“Duh.” Brittany laughs. “And I love you too.”

Brittany brings the bag over along with plates and forks and she turns on the TV so they can watch while they’re eating. When the show is over, Santana notices that Brittany is quiet and she nudges her with her elbow, wanting her to talk.

“Sorry, class was just kind of crappy tonight.”

“What happened?”

“It’s just the usual thing when I’m in a class that’s not a math class, I have trouble making sense of things. I raised my hand and said something kind of stupid and immediately knew I was wrong.”

“Britt, you’re like, an actual certifiable genius. But I’ll help you with studying if you want.”

“You have so much to do and you’re not feeling well.”

“Honey, I always have time for you. I don’t want you to feel bad about your classes.”

“I just wish things came more easily.” She sighs. “When I’m doing math, I feel really smart but everything else brings me back to high school where I was the class idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. If you put math problems in front of me, I can’t solve them to save my life, but I can analyze a book like crazy. That’s why we have majors.” Santana plays with Brittany’s fingers. “This is the last class you have to take outside of math.”

“You’re right. I know you are, I just can’t help but get bummed out.”

“C’mere.” Santana stacked the plates on the desk on her side of the bed and opened up her arms for Brittany. “You’ve taken care of me for the past three days, now it’s my turn to be the cuddle giver.”

“You’re still feeling crappy.”

“And I feel better when I’m hugging my girlfriend.”

For a long while, Santana just hugs Brittany. When she was in high school, she’d always thought that the popular girls were like Teflon, but having Brittany, she’s learned that they have a lot of feelings too. When she knows that she absolutely has to go to the bathroom, she kisses the top of Brittany’s head and wriggles out from behind her. She takes the dishes with her and washes them before she goes into the bathroom and does everything she has to do to get ready for bed. Brittany isn’t far behind, waiting outside of the bathroom when Santana comes out and Santana kisses her lips when she sees her there before reheating her heating pad and getting back into bed.

Brittany holds her from behind when she gets back into bed and rubs Santana’s lower back where she always gets really crampy. They don’t say anything else, they’re both really exhausted but they fit together in just the right way that each of them knows they have a person who loves them so deeply, who takes care of them, who cherishes them.

In the morning, Santana gets up first. Although she knows she should be doing work, she logs into Tumblr and makes a post about how much she loves her girlfriend. She knows that Brittany checks her blog and she just wants to give sort of a public shoutout to Brittany for being so extra amazing while she’s been grumbling in bed. Santana thinks she feels it more because it’s something she never imagined she’d have but Brittany is real, Brittany loves her and she wants the world—or at least her followers—to know that she loves Brittany too.

“Why you up so early?” Brittany mumbles. “It’s Friday.”

“Just making a post about how I love you extra this week. Don’t worry, I didn’t include a picture with you drooling on the pillow.”

“I do not drool.” Brittany throws the pillow at Santana. “You’re the one who drools. Last week, my shoulder was totally soaked when you took a nap on it.”

“Psht, whatever.” Santana laughs and hits post. “Your shoulder is comfortable.”

“You’re in a good mood this morning. Are you feeling better?”

“I took three Midol at like three am so they’re still kicked in. But I think I’m getting there.”

“Do you wanna have a picnic in the park today? Now that it’s warmed up, everyone is doing it and I’ve been kinda wanting to take you.”

“I’d really love that. I need to read for a couple of hours before we go though.”

“Yeah, cool.” Brittany nods, grabbing her pillow back and rolling over. “Wake me up in an hour? I have to study.”

Before Santana starts her reading for the day, she decides to take a shower. She just wants to feel freshened up and she soaks under the hot water for a long time before drying off and pulling on jeans and a t-shirt. She’s glad the bed is so big because when she sits back on it, she doesn’t disturb Brittany’s sleep. She reads for a little while and then she wakes Brittany up. Even though she’s grumbly, she gets out of bed and brushes her teeth and the two of them quietly go about their work. Santana really appreciates that, how Brittany is never a distraction, and at noon, she puts her book down.

“Artie texted me.” Brittany tells Santana. “He wanted to know if we want to meet up with everyone later to go to some concert in Brooklyn. I told him no.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Britt. I know I’m not feeling great but you can do things that I don’t want to do.”

“I’m just, like, not into that scene anymore. Everyone gets wasted and I really don’t want to come in to you drunk at two in the morning.”

“Are you sure? You used to love that.”

“I don’t think I ever loved it, I think it was just something I did because everyone else was doing it. You taught me that I don’t have to do things just because other people do, you never care.”

“I don’t.” Santana shakes her head. “But no matter what, I want you to be happy.”

“I’m really the most happy spending time with you.”

“I haven’t been great company for the past few days.”

“I still like being around you.” Brittany shrugs. “There’s only so many days before it’s summer vacation...”

“Can’t you use your math genius skills to invent a teleporter for us?”

“I wish. I’m trying to convince my parents to move next door to your mom.”

“I hate my mom’s neighbors, I would really like that.”

“You have to work at camp this summer? You can’t just spend the whole summer with me?”

“I totally wish I could.” Santana sighs. “But it would disappoint my mom. She only has, like, this summer and next summer with me before I graduate. And even my dad is looking forward to spending time with me.”

“I know, my parents are too, it just sucks.”

“I know. But hey, let’s just go to the park and enjoy the day.”

By the time they get themselves ready to go to the park, rain is hammering down outside and Brittany sighs, flopping back onto the bed. Santana feels bad that she feels so bad and she sits down by her head, running her fingers through her hair. She really is going to miss being close to Brittany every day when they leave in less than a month so even if they can’t go on a picnic in the park, she’s going to spend as much of her free time with her girlfriend as she can.

“Now I’m going to feel guilty not studying if we’re going to be stuck inside all day.” Brittany groans.

“I’m not going to. We’re supposed to be spending the afternoon together, so what if we do it here? I’ll make EZ Mac and we’ll watch a movie.”

“Nope, my picnic, I’m the one who’s going to make the EZ Mac.” She smiles. “You pick out the movie.”

“We still haven’t watched Pretty Woman, should we do that?”

“Anything you want. You want your heating pad reheated before I use the microwave?”

“Yeah, that might be good.” Santana hands it to Brittany and she brings it over to warm up. “Britt?”

“Yeah?”

“I really love you, you know.”

“I really love you too.”

#brittana #nyu!au

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fandammit · 6 years

Text

Loss like the sharp edges of a knife (9/9)

Ao3 || Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Part 5 || Part 6 || Part 7 || Part 8 ||

[A/N: This is a massive 8100 word update. I’ll write a longer post later, but I just want to say thank you to everyone who has read, liked, reblogged and sent me messages. A special shoutout to @anextrapart, who should basically get co-writing credit for the amount of ideas, feedback and overall badassness she provided. Thank you, Kastle fam. You all are amazing! Edited to add: Now with the Ao3 link!]

It’s been almost a week and he’s only managed to get just a little more than halfway through the book.

This is partially because the story is pretty fucking dense to begin with, and each page is now filled nearly to the edges with some combination of his cramped letters and Karen’s looping script.

He also has a tendency to stop reading the moment he starts getting sleepy, which on some nights is embarrassingly early. He tells himself that it’s because he doesn’t want to accidentally gloss over or skip completely anything that Karen has written down, and yeah, it’s that, too. But there’s also the haunting memory of falling asleep midway through chapter 25 and dreaming himself into a conversation with Karen, her legs tucked up underneath her on his couch, Gracie sleeping in the space between them. He can still remember the way she’d tilted her head at him and asked a question he couldn’t answer in his dream, a question he now can’t remember in his waking hours. He’d reached out to brush her hair back from her face, an attempt to distract her that only succeeded in distracting him, an attempt he doesn't think he would've made in real life.

He’d woken up just as Karen had turned her face into his hand; had been breathless and wanting, a hopeless, desperate ache in the center of his chest.

So now he makes sure to set the book down now the moment he feels heaviness start to creep across his eyelids. He always picks it up again and reads it as he drinks his first cups of coffee, finds comfort in starting his day with Karen’s words on the page, her voice ringing in his mind and through the emptiness of his apartment.

But he also comes to realize that the other part of his slow progress is that he just has so much less free time now than in those first few months when he initially wrote himself into the book. Between training with Paul at the boxing gym and training with Gracie at the shelter, group with Curtis, afternoons at David’s and random invites to dinner and requests for handy work from various members of the Abaya family that he always gets paid way too much for (meaning being paid at all, despite the myriad of ways he tries to protest it), he finds himself with an increasing scarcity of time to just sit and immerse himself in the story of Ishmael and Captain Ahab.

He comes home late one night from some shitty bar around the corner of the gym -- a post-fight outing to celebrate winning his first official boxing match that had included some guys from the gym and David and Curtis, who had come to watch, and looks over at Moby Dick lying on his kitchen table, unread for the entire day. He sits down and taps his fingers idly across the front cover, realizes with a start that he’s somehow managed it --

Has managed, against all odds and at a pace slow enough to mostly escape his notice, to build a life for himself, to learn how to live life without waiting for the other shoe to drop. Has managed to fill in the silence with the sounds of something other than the quiet rustling of turned pages, something other than the sounds of his own labored breathing after a nightmare.

It fills him with a conflicting sensation of pride and frustration. Pride that he’s managed to build an after that he can look at with some small measure of satisfaction, frustration that it’s left him with only snatches of time here and there to indulge in this phantom, ongoing conversation with Karen.

So he starts to carry the book everywhere with him, slowly makes his way through it page by page as he's sitting at Vigilantes, or waiting for Emeline to finish her homework so he can check it, or at the dog park mid-day while Gracie sniffs around the fence posts. It gives him a small bit of peace -- knowing that even disconnected from him, she’s still managed to become interlaced into the pattern of his life, is still present in all the ordinary little moments of living.

There are times as he’s reading that he can picture her looking at his margin notes and then shaking her head at him. He pictures her looking up from the book and staring at him across the miles of asphalt and glass, imagines her looking straight through him with those wide blue eyes, their irises filled with a compassion and a sadness that he both wants to fall into and run from.

He thinks of this when he comes across one of her notes in the back half of the book -- a circle drawn around a question of his and a note next to it that reads:

Frank, stop. Of course not.

He imagines her reaching out to him as she says it. Imagines her leaning forward in her seat and brushing her fingertips across the back of his hand in an effort to make him believe her, him brushing his thumb against the soft skin on the underside of her wrist to let her know that he wants to.

Other times, he can almost hear her scoffing at what he’s written, can see her rolling her eyes at him in a way she never has in all their interactions together.

There’s a jaggedly written note at bottom of one of the chapters, one of his observations circled multiple times with an arrow to Karen’s reply, which is just:

Don’t be an asshole, Frank.

It makes him laugh out loud when he gets to it. Reminds him that he’s always been more than just the Punisher to her -- that he’s also just a man, just Frank to her. That he is someone she would cross red lines and red tape for to find the truth, someone she trusts enough not to be afraid of, no matter how much blood is dripping from his skin.

Some part of him sees that note to him -- the brazenness, the openness -- and remembers the steely-eyed honesty that Karen has always had when talking to him, the utter lack of fear when she pushes against his actions or his words. Can think nothing but of course -- of course they’d make him want to see her again, of course he likes that time and distance has not lessened the honesty between them.

Another part of him thinks that he must really be truly fucked if what he wants is to hear her call him an asshole in person.

“So, any movement on Moby Dick?” David asks the following Monday.

He’s been at David’s for close to an hour now, and has managed to accomplish nothing but to install four more of the frame joists. David has been essentially useless for most of it, though that’s no more or less normal than all the other times he’s come over.

Frank sets down his hammer, picks up his beer and takes a long drink before answering.

“Some.” He glances over at David, who’s staring at him with an intensity he thinks is a little much given the question and the moment. “She gave me back the book, left me notes in it. Been re-reading the whole thing. Still got a few more chapters to go.”

David nods, then eases back and rests his elbows on a tall stack of lumber.

“Good, good, that’s good, Frank.” He clears his throat. “So I, uh, got an interesting message from Madani for you.”

He furrows his brows and tilts his head at David, who gives him a crooked smile.

“You’re still talking to Madani?”

David nods.

“Yeah, well, I work for her. Officially. Well, more technically than officially.” He shakes his head and bites his lower lip, then huffs out a laugh. “Or actually, not officially at all, you know, but technically.”

Frank nods slowly, narrowing his eyes at David.

“Huh. How long’s that been going on?”

“Few months. Well, no. More than a few -- basically a month or so after, you know. Everything with Billy.”

“Weird that you didn’t bring it up before now.”

David sighs.

“Yeah, I know.I wasn’t trying to hide it or anything, Frank. I was trying to, to, you know -- .“

Frank tilts his head and raises an eyebrow, stretches his hand out in front of him with his palm facing up.

“You were -- ?”

David clears his throat, throws his hands up in front of him with his palms in front of him.

“I was trying to keep it all separate from you. Protect you, I guess.” He looks away from Frank and clears his throat, looks back up at him. “When you showed up again, I thought about mentioning it. But I didn’t want you to get back into that headspace, into -- into that place. Not when it seemed like you were working so hard to dig yourself out of it.”

Frank looks away from David, down at his hands, over at the unfinished deck. Looks back over at David and nods. Hopes that David knows him well enough to see the ‘thank you’ that’s implied.

“So, what’s this message from Madani?”

“It’s -- .“ David laughs, though it’s a mix of bewilderment and nervousness rather than straight amusement. “So, here’s something that I just found at the other day -- Karen and Madani...they’re friends.” He catches the look on Frank’s face and grins. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Madani asked her for help with something she’s working on for Homeland and I guess, you know, they really hit it off because now...now they apparently go out for dinner and drinks a few times a week.”

He blinks rapidly a few times. It’s not the last thing he would’ve thought to hear from David, but it’s pretty damn close. He has to take a few moments to process it. Once he does, he looks over at David, then tips his head forward and lets out a long, loud laugh.

“Jesus Christ, David. Karen and Madani -- friends.” He shakes his head, a grin still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Goddamn, I wouldn’t want to be on those two’s shitlist.”

David smiles, then tips his head in Frank’s direction.

“Well, right now, that's you. At least for Madani.” He clears his throat. “She told me to tell you to stop being an asshole”

Frank purses his lips and frowns, gives a slow, small nod to David as he does.

“She, uh, a little more specific about what exactly? I’m kinda an asshole about a lot of things.”

“Kinda, Frank?” David laughs at the scowl that Frank gives him. “Well, you’re not really going out and, you know, punishing anyone lately, so what do you think?”

When Frank doesn’t say anything, David huffs out a laugh.

“About Karen, Frank. Obviously.”

He licks his lips, squints over at David. He mostly doesn’t want to ask his next question because he feels a little bit like some awkward middle school kid, passing notes and information through a long line of friends rather than risk talking to someone face to face.

He asks it anyway, because he’s too curious not to.

“She say anything else except not to be an asshole? Is there something in particular I’m supposed to stop being an asshole about?”

David shakes his head.

“No, but we can assume, right?” David clears his throat. “I mean, you are kind of being an asshole by not seeing her.” He glances over at Frank. “She write anything of note in Moby Dick for you?”

He shrugs, has to bite his lip to keep from grinning.

“Well, she, uh, she also called me an asshole.”

It must be a pretty poor attempt to hide his smile because David takes one look at him and laughs.

“Of course you’d find that appealing.” He shakes his head, chuckling to himself. “So I’m guessing I was right and she doesn’t give a shit that you have a strange affinity for Ahab?”

He pulls in his bottom lip between his teeth and lifts a shoulder.

“Haven’t finished the book yet.”

“Well, I’m sure when you finish it, I’ll still be right.” He steps away from the pile of lumber he’s resting on, stretches down to grab his beer. “And when you’re done, you’re gonna stop being an asshole, right?”

“That’s -- you know -- that’s a pretty big ask, David.”

David laughs.

“Well, you’re gonna stop being an asshole about Karen, at least?” He tips his head down to catch Frank’s eye. “That is the plan, right Frank?”

“Yeah, David.” He says, looking away then back at him. “Yeah, that’s the plan.”

David smirks.

“Good, because I don’t won’t have to protect you from Madani. I mean, I will -- I just, you know, don’t want to have to.”

Frank huffs a laugh.

“You will not have to protect me from Madani.”

David nods, satisfied, then steers the conversation away from Karen and Madani, onto more mundane things like the fact that he still can’t install a deck joist despite being shown how to on three different occasions. Sometimes Frank thinks he’d have better luck and faster progress working with Leo.

They do actually manage to finish installing the rest of the frame, and the work does a pretty good job of keeping his mind off of Karen for the rest of the afternoon.

He winds up thinking about her on the drive from David’s to the gym. Thinks about that picture of her outside the krav maga studio. Wonders if it was Madani that took that photo, wonders just how much shit the two of them are managing to stir up together.

He smiles at that thought, even as he ignores the low of hum of worry that it drags up within him, too. Madani is certainly no amateur and Karen is nobody’s fool, and he really did mean what he said to David -- he doesn’t envy whatever piece of shit winds up on the opposite end of whatever crusade those two decide to go on.

He wakes up the next morning nearly an hour before his 5:30 a.m. alarm goes off, his dream fading to the edges of his mind. All he can recall are snippets of it -- a flash of blond hair in the sunlight, blue eyes hovering above his, the feel of soft skin beneath his fingertips. The images flicker in and out of his consciousness, like he’s looking at the dream through the slats of a fence. It’s so brief, so fleeting, but it’s still enough to set off a low buzz of want in his veins, to press against the inside of his ribcage and leave him just a little breathless.

He sighs heavily. It's a better way to wake up than from a nightmare -- heart pounding, mind racing -- but it still manages to throw him off balance all the same.

He runs his hands through his hair, one, two, three times, each one rougher than the last, then sits up and turns on the light. He looks over at Moby Dick on his nightstand. He'd tried to put it down the moment he felt his eyelids start to droop, but apparently it still wasn't soon enough.

He grabs the book from his nightstand and starts reading, tries to force the dream back from where it’s creeping into the center of his chest, tries to lose himself in the salty spray of the sea, in the mad ferocity of Ahab.

But of course it doesn’t quite succeed in helping him forget the dream either, because Karen is all over these last chapters, her looping cursive becoming more compact to accommodate the flood of words.

Towards the end of the book, she’s circled a passage he’d underlined and written a reply to his notes that spans the next three pages, that ends with:

Ahab had it wrong. There’s nothing preordained about the paths we choose to take -- there are just the things that happen to us, and the choices make in the aftermath. Sometimes none of the choices are very good, but we have to make them anyway. Sometimes we choose wrong. Either way, we have to go on living with what we’ve chosen to do. We have to make a life out of those choices. We have to at least try.

He has the sensation, one that has increased in frequency the further into the book they’ve gone, that what she’s writing is just as much about herself as it is to him.

He thinks back to what Curtis said that night at the bar -- that Karen leaves things to let him know she’s thinking of him, while he leaves things that tell her about himself. Thinks of how the exchange of this book has flipped that pattern, has been given back and forth in a way that takes on the other’s intention.

He’d offered it to her as a way to tell her about himself, true -- but it had also been a way to tell her that he was thinking of her. That he hasn’t stopped thinking of her since that night at the bridge when she’d asked where it all ended, when she'd ask him to think of his after. Then, the answer had only been never or in death, his after only defined by suffering.

Now...now, the answer is different for both those questions. That’s what leaving her Moby Dick was meant to do -- to draw a line from who he was that night at the bridge to who he is in the silence when the gunfire ends. To make her understand that drawing that line is only possible because of how often he thinks of her.

And what she’s given him in return is a way to see into her -- to look past the steeliness of her spine, the softness of her touch -- and understand how both can exist. This book is no longer just about him, it’s about Karen, too -- about how she sees the world, how she sees him, how she sees herself. She writes herself into her words, raw and real and intimate, puzzle pieces of who she is that he hoards, tries to fit together in some semblance of an image of her.

It can only ever be incomplete, but it’s still more than he’s ever known given the lack of opportunity, the lack of quiet, the lack of stillness; it’s still more than she’s ever offered to him before.

He thinks that would still the want in his veins, but it only ever serves to magnify it.

The last Tuesday night group participant is barely two steps out the door when Curtis turns towards him and crossing his arms in front of him, and there’s something about the way he does it that makes Frank feel like he’s about to be reprimanded for something.

He’s pretty sure he already knows what it is.

“So, I got an interesting visitor after Monday night group.” Curtis says, an aggravated look in his eyes. “Karen came to see me.”

He freezes with a chair in his hands raised mid-air. Slowly brings it back down in front of him, grips the back of it so hard his knuckles go white.

“Yeah?” He asks, and he’s proud of the way that his voice stays steady.

Curtis purses his lips, taps his fingers on his bicep in a way that seems vaguely threatening.

“Yeah,” the word cut short, clipped at the end.

He’s tempted to ask how she’s doing, how she looked, if she was as happy as he’s been imagining since he got that photo of her. Realizes that each question is more ridiculous than the last to ask of someone that’s only met Karen for the first time.

He swallows thickly, rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet before he looks over at Curtis.

“How’d she know to find you here?”

“That picture you took, Frank. That’s why you stood where you stood, isn’t it? To let her know you were coming here, let her know you’ve been healing.” He nods his head. “She’s a journalist, right -- figured out when and where and who I was.” He points at Frank. “And you know what -- you are just damn lucky that I didn’t tell her to just show up on Tuesday night.” He shakes his head. “Part of me still wishes that I did.”

Frank looks down at his hands.

“Thanks for that, Curt.”

Curtis scoffs.

“You know what, Frank, you need to explain this to me before I really do get up from this chair and kick your ass.” He leans forward in the chair, rests his palm flat on his knee. “Because I thought you said you wouldn’t be a wallowing asshole. I thought you had committed to not waiting for the other shoe to drop. I thought Karen was -- is -- your friend.”

His head snaps up at that.

“C’mon, Curtis, Karen’s...” He trails off, not sure how to end that sentence.

“Well, is she?” Curtis asks.

“What?”

“Is she a friend?”

He shrugs, though it’s a stiff movement. He knows he should just say yes, because it’s not untrue, because it’s the easiest way to explain what Karen is to him. But it also feels wrong, because friend seems like such an easy word to hold the complicated swirl of emotion he feels when he thinks about Karen. It’s both too much and too little to describe what she is to him -- a person who has been ally and advocate and antagonist all rolled into one, whose name has been both an invocation and affliction, whose memory sets off a warning light behind his eyes and a low, steady burn of longing across his veins.

“She’s...important to me. You know that, Curt.”

Curtis looks askance at him.

“Yeah, I’m not sure I know much of anything, Frank.” He folds his arms in front of him. “Because I know you finished that book again almost two weeks ago. But you know what she told me? That she hasn’t heard from you since she gave it back to you -- not a photo, not a note, not another pot of flowers. Nothing.” He shakes his head. “And she didn’t tell me this, but she obviously came here trying to look for answers. She was here trying to figure out if you were ok, if something had happened to you. And the only thing I can think of that happened is that you decided to be ten kinds of asshole after all and just leave her hanging.”

“It’s not -- that’s not. I didn’t want to do that. I don’t.”

“Well, it’s what you’re doing, whether you want to or not.” He scoffs, then takes a long, slow inhale before he starts talking again. “What was in that book, Frank? The way she was talking about you, asking about you -- seems like all she wants to do is see you.” He leans back, crosses his arms again in front of him. “So why don’t you want to see her?”

He shakes his head, barks out a laugh that’s more bitter than anything.

“I do want to see her. I -- goddammit, it’s, it’s so...it’s so.” He exhales sharply and shakes his head. “It’s so fucking stupid how much I want to see her. I think about it all the time, you know? Imagining what she’s gonna look like, what she’s gonna say.” He huffs out a laugh and looks away from Curtis, runs his hand over his chin. “I mean, she’d probably call me an asshole one or five times, right? And shit, that’d be the least of what I deserve.” He glances over at Curtis, looks away, looks at his hands, at the way he’s twisted them around one another. “Believe me -- I think about seeing her all the time, Curt.”

“So why don’t you?”

He looks down, sinks further down into the chair. He twines his fingers together in front of his face, rests his chin atop his thumbs. He doesn’t say anything, just falls into the silence between them, lets it drag on and on.

Curtis closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly before opening his eyes again and sitting straight up in his chair.

“Is it Maria?”

Franks sucks in a breath at the sound of her name. He raises his eyes slowly over the edges of his fingertips until he meets Curtis’ gaze. Lifts his shoulders but still doesn’t say anything. It’s a question he’s been avoiding -- one that’s easy to, now, because there are so few people left alive who knew him as anything but Frank Castle: survivor, widower, Punisher.

“You’ve been making so much progress these last few months -- I didn’t want to bring her up unless I needed to,” Curtis says, his voice soft, almost cautious. “But now -- I think I do, don’t I?”

He drags his teeth over his lip, looks back down at his fingers, flicks his eyes back up to Curtis and nods once -- a small incline of his head that barely registers as a movement.

“I don’t dream about Maria the way I used to.” He says it quietly, his voice low in the back of his throat. As if he’s mostly saying it to himself. “If I close my eyes right now, I can still see her. Still see her smile, still remember the way she smelled, the way she felt.” He takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly before he glances back up at Curtis. “But I don’t see her in my dreams any more. Not the way I used to.”

He chews on his bottom lip.

“I -- you know, I...I dream about Karen, sometimes. A -- a lot,” he stammers out, unable to look in Curtis’ direction. “Just -- just normal shit, mostly. Getting coffee, talking to her, arguing about Moby Dick.” He tips his head down and up again, darts glance between Curtis and the floor. “I try not to, you know-- I can’t even stay up late reading Moby Dick because all it does it give me dreams about her, about seeing her again. But I -- I can’t help it.”

Curtis reaches a hand out to him, fingers splayed, palm up.

“You need to be ok with feeling the good stuff, too, Frank. It can’t always just be about anger and sadness and regret. You’ve worked so hard to not have anger as your driving force forward. I don’t want to see you just turn around and replace it with guilt. You have to let yourself feel what you feel.”

Frank tilts his head, squints a bit at Curtis.

“You know, I said the same thing to Sarah once.”

It feels like a lifetime ago, now. In a way, he supposes it was.

“Yeah? You mean it?”

Frank shrugs.

“Yeah, for her.”

“But not for you.”

“Nah. Not for me.”

Curtis sighs, dips his head down, rubs his hand against his forehead.

“Why, Frank? Because it’s so different for you? Because you're the Punisher?”

He shrugs his shoulders, purses his lips and looks away from Curtis, drops his gaze down to his hands.

“Can’t really be the Punisher any more, Curt,” he says, a reply that answers the question without really answering it. That answers it as well as he can. He skims his eyes across the floor, the chairs in the room, then back over at Curtis. “There's no one left for me to punish.”

Curtis breathes in sharply.

“Except you,” He says quietly, his eyes wide with understanding. Frank looks down and bites down hard on his lip, then flicks his eyes up to meet Curtis’ for a quick moment before looking back down at his hands. “That’s what this is, isn’t it, Frank? Punishment?” Curtis tilt his head towards him, angles his face so that Frank is forced to meet his eyes. “That’s why you won’t see Karen -- even though you want to.” He softens his voice. “There’s no one left for you to punish, so now you have to punish yourself.”

He forces his gaze away, flicks his eyes back and forth between him and random spots in the room instead. It feels like Curtis is reaching in through his stare and taking out every hidden thought and feeling he’s kept stored away -- secrets he’s kept even from himself at times -- and bringing them out from the darkness, shining them up against the brightness of day and of truth and of time.

It feels painful and liberating at the same time, makes him want to draw closer and close himself off.

“You don’t have to spend the rest of your life avenging your family, Frank,” Curtis says, his voice soft, his tone gentle. Like he’s trying to ease Frank into the words, like he’s throwing them out as a careful lifeline.

Frank glances back down at his hands, chews on the corner of his lip.

“Without it...it feels like forgetting them. Like I’m trying to.” He looks up at Curtis. “I don’t want that.”

Curtis shakes his head.

“There are ways to remember them that having nothing nothing to do with suffering Frank -- other people’s or yours.” He pauses, leans forward in his chair. “I think it’s right to want to remember them, Frank, and you should. But it’s worth it to try and do more than remember them. It’s worth it to try and honor them, too.”

Frank drops his hands into the space between his outstretched legs, folds them one on top of the another, and taps a finger against the back of his hand.

“And how do you think I should do that?”

Curtis licks his lips, takes a deep breath in.

“I think you already know, Frank. What do you think Maria would want for you?”

Frank gives him a long, unblinking stare. It’d be the wrong question to ask if it were anyone else but Curtis. Because how could anyone else possibly know? But Curtis is the last living person in his life who knew Maria -- ate her meals, heard her stories, probably listened to her complain about Frank at some point. He is the last living person in his life that Maria loved, too, and who loved Maria.

And he is the last living person in Frank’s life who would know when the answer is the truth, rather than just a reflection of his own hopes and wishes.

“I think she’d want me to be happy,” he finally says, surprised at how easy it is to reveal, only vaguely surprised at how right it feels.

Curtis nods slowly.

“She would, Frank. She loved you, and she was good to you and she wanted good for you. She’d want you to be happy, especially now.” He waits for Frank to meet his gaze. “She’d want you to at least try.”

“And you think...you think this -- doing this, seeing Karen -- that’s the best way to remember them? To honor them?”

He draws his brows together at the center of his forehead, narrows his eyes at Curtis, who simply nods at him.

“I do. I think sharing their memory with people you care about is how you remember them. And I think living a life that makes you happy, that has all the things they’d want you to have, all the things they gave to you -- that’s how you honor them.”

He clenches one hand in a fist, folds his other hand on top of it, holds them against his chin. He closes his eyes as he turns over Curtis’ words in his mind, thinks about memory and forgetting, looks closely at the separating line between avenging and honoring. Wonders where deserving and earning fit into it all.

“It’s worth a shot, right Frank?” He opens his eyes and looks over at Curtis. His are elbows resting on his knees and he his hands out in front of him, palms facing up. “You said it yourself -- you aren’t the Punisher any more. So maybe try figuring out something different this time. Shoot for happiness instead.”

Frank breathes in deeply and looks down at the floor, lets the breath out slowly before he looks back up at Curtis. Nods, once -- a short, small tug of his head that’s almost imperceptible.

It feels momentous anyway.

He licks his lips and nods again, the movement bigger, more obvious this time. He’s almost there, could almost go on without asking -- but he knows that this last, worrying question will keep digging at the back of his mind until he does.

“I do wonder, you know -- sometimes.” He clears his throat, flicks his gaze over to Curtis and away again.“I think maybe -- maybe this, all this -- maybe it’s more than I deserve.”

Curtis gives him a gentle smile, a half-shrug.

“Maybe, Frank.” He tips his head to the side. “But what about what Karen deserves?”

He lets the question hang in the air between them for a long moment.

Frank grabs it from the air, finds that he has a dozen different answers to that question -- all of them beginning with more.

Curtis studies his expression.

“I may not know everything, Frank, but I do know this: Karen knows what you’ve done, she knows who are you, knows who you aren’t -- and she isn’t running away. She wants to stay.” He pauses, then leans forward in his chair. “She wants to see you, in spite of and because of everything she knows about you. Whatever else you might think about her deserving more or better or whatever self-sacrificing shit you got running through your head right now -- the simple truth is that she wants to see you. Don’t you think she at least deserves that?”

And what can he say to that, except the only real answer there is --

“Yeah, she does.”

He spends the entire car ride home replaying his conversation with Curtis in his mind. Sits down at his kitchen table with Moby Dick laying across from him, stares at it and imagines that Karen is there in its place instead.

He flips through the book, the story that is now a composite of Ahab’s and Karen’s and his own. Stops when he gets to the section he’s looking for, rereads one of Karen’s final notes -- a trailing sentence written below one of the last scenes of the book:

We can be more than the stories told about us, Frank.

He closes the book again, leans back in his chair and looks towards the ceiling. Thinks about the stories that have been told about him, the stories that he’s told Karen, the precious few stories they’ve shared with one another.

He thinks of everything that Karen already knows about his past -- the broad strokes laid out in stark facts and figures in computer databases and official government files, the smaller details laid down by his own meandering stories to her. He thinks of everything he doesn’t know about Karen -- her past, apparently easily uncovered by a quick internet search; her present, steeped in loneliness, in the fight against it that he desperately hopes she’s winning.

It’s true that they’ve never really had the time, the space, the moment to indulge in anything even approaching normal. And it’s true that even despite this, there’s a connection between them, an intimacy -- one that has only ever been communicated in wordlessness: in the press of her forehead against his, the brush of her breath across his eyelashes, the feel of her arms wrapped around his shoulders.

But what’s also true is this: he has never asked for her own story, has never thought to delve into the specifics, has never paused to consider just why she offers up the entirety of herself in pursuit of the truth while offering so little of her own story to those around her. He wonders if it’s because she’s used to not telling it, or if she’s used to never being asked.

He wants to be the type of person who asks. No, not the type of of person -- He wants to be the one who asks. Who keeps asking. Who never stops letting her know that she matters, that she deserves to be known.

He wants to be the one who knows more than the stories that are told about her.

He flips to the very last page and rereads her ending note for what feels like the thousandth time. Traces over the words with his fingertip, feels them slide up his shaking hands and push out the trembling terror in his heart. Lets them blossom into hope instead.

When can I see you?

He wakes up even earlier than usual the next morning, gets to Vigilantes just as they’re opening for the day.

He orders a large Punisher to go. Shuffles back and forth on his feet, half hoping that he won’t run into her, half hoping that he will. He nearly sprints back to his car the moment he gets his order, checks and re-checks his rearview mirror to make sure there’s no telltale sign of blond hair flashing behind him.

The drink is half empty by the time he gets home, and he thinks that it definitely earns its title as strongest coffee in the world given how fidgety he feels. Though maybe it’s nerves and anxiety and excitement rather than the high volume of caffeine coursing through his veins.

It’s something approaching agony -- the prospect of the hour and a half wait until 7:00 am, a time he tells himself is appropriate to contact any normal person without them wanting to tell you to fuck off immediately. He goes on a forty minute run, takes a nearly twenty minute shower. Spends the next half hour after that pacing restlessly in his apartment, alternating between pretending he has the presence of mind to sit down and read a book and pretending he has the focus required to make a sandwich for himself.

He winds up reading the same two sentences over and over again, making a sandwich that has three slices of cheese, no meat and mayonnaise that he’s almost sure has been expired since he got Gracie.

A quick glance at his phone tells him that it’s five to seven, and really, there’s not a lot of difference between 6:55 am and 7:00 am, all things considered. But he’s so wired from nerves and caffeine and eight months of longing that he thinks even the slightest deviation from his plan would feel like an a bad omen.

So he forces himself to sit down at his kitchen table, fingers tapping across the cover of Moby Dick, grounding himself in the movement, in the tangible reminder that Karen wants to see him.

When the alarm finally, finally does go off, he freezes -- as if he hasn’t been waiting for this moment since the minute he woke up, as if he hasn’t been thinking about it since he came home last night.

(As if he hasn’t been dreaming of it for months now.)

He sits down at his kitchen table and takes Karen’s business card out from his pocket, a last parting gift from Curtis the night before.

It has the same number on it that he’s had stored on his phone for these last eight months -- the same number he’d told himself might no longer be hers on those nights he was tempted to call it, the same number his thumb has hovered over time and again but never touched.

He takes a deep breath and sets the card down, picks up his phone in one hand and the Vigilantes coffee cup in the other. He clicks on the camera and positions his phone in front of him, takes photo after photo after photo -- shifting the angle of the camera, rearranging the placement of his features. What he wants is to convey a sense of apology and hopefulness and excitement in his expression all at once; at the very least he wants to not look angry or bored, which is the expression his face inadvertently tends to take on when he isn’t smiling.

He clicks on Karen’s name in his phone and even that -- even just the act of tapping on her name -- gives him a thrill that’s as exhilarating as it is embarrassing.

He opens a new text message and inserts the photo that he just spent far too long taking --

Him looking directly at the camera, expression some approximation of hopeful and honest -- he thinks (hopes) -- the coffee cup covering half his face as though he’s drinking from it. The large, blocky lettering of Vigilantes is clearly visible and, just beneath it, written in his own crooked handwriting --

This Friday, 7am?

He hits send before he can talk himself out of not doing so. Feels a strange sense of awe at the ease of sending it to her -- at the knowledge that he could’ve done this months ago, that he might have never done it at all.

He puts his phone on the kitchen table, face down. Tells himself that Karen probably won’t respond any time soon -- that she has a job to get ready for, a day to begin. That the last thing she is expecting is some early morning text from someone who’s spent the last eight months as an object outside her window sill. That the last thing he deserves is for her to send him a quick reply -- not when he’s given her nothing but silence these last two weeks, nothing but irregular snippets of his life in the last eight months or so, nothing but a memory wrapped in sadness and gunpowder even before that.

He breathes in deeply and shakes his head, reaches for his coffee cup and takes a long drink of the long-cooled coffee.

Nearly drops the entire thing in his lap when his phone buzzes.

Of course, he does actually accidentally drop it -- but he at least has the presence of mind and the built-in reflexes to move aside in time and let it splatter all over the floor.

Gracie gets up from her bed in the corner and lets out a whining yawn, stretches out before padding over to him and resting her head on his knee. He reaches down to pet her, realizes that there’s a tremor in his hands as he does it.

He turns the phone over and clicks on Karen’s text message. Laughs out loud with relief and euphoria and something that kinda feels like it’s approaching delirium.

She’s sent him a picture in return, something that manages to both calm his nerves and set off a buzzing just beneath his skin. Her blue eyes are wide and sparkling, bright against her pale eyelashes and pale skin. He can’t be sure -- half her face is blocked by a plain cardboard box -- but he thinks she might be smiling. Her hair is down, the waves more pronounced and slightly darker than he ever remembers seeing it. He looks closer at the picture and realizes that it’s damp, that her skin has that fresh dewiness to it that he associates from just emerging from the shower.

He takes a sharp breath in, chews on the corner of his lip to distract himself from the sudden spike of yearning in the center of his chest, from the quiet sort of intimacy that the photo implies.

He moves his eyes onto the rest of the photo, to where the bottom half of her face is covered by a cardboard box. When he sees the block lettering that reads Bark Box that’s stamped across it, he laughs, even if he’s more than a little disgruntled that it blocks him from tracing the contours of her chin, her lips, her jawline.

Written beneath the words Bark Box is Karen’s own swirling script, bold and bigger than he’s used to seeing --

Bring Gracie!

And beneath that, written in slightly smaller text --

(Don’t worry -- there’s something in here for you too, Frank.)

He chuckles to himself. Spends the next few minutes studying the photo, overwhelmed by the the words she’s written to him, at the existence of this photo at all. It’s a reminder that Karen is no stranger, despite the strangeness of their connection one another. That she sees him, no matter how much he tries to stay hidden.

He looks at the copy of Moby Dick laying on the kitchen table, the photo in his phone, the bag of Death Wish Coffee sitting on his countertop. Glances over to the shelf, where the picture of Karen in his beanie is propped up against his copy of In Cold Blood -- no longer kept separate and hidden, because the only one he’d been hiding it from was himself. Because he recognized that he no longer needed to.

He knows that if he were to walk into his room, the blue beanie she gave to him would be on top of his dresser, that the plaid shirt she gifted would be hanging in his closet, that Gracie’s matching bandana would be draped over the side of his bed frame.

Everywhere he looks, he’s reminded of her, of what they’ve built between them in these last few months -- a framework constructed on photographs and flannel, on sprawling notes written across the pages of classic literature.

He laughs out loud, a sound that’s half joy, half bewilderment, finds himself wholly consumed by the sensation that he’s both a dumb and lucky piece of shit. Because he realizes that he won’t have to make room for Karen in the life he’s built for himself -- she’s already there.

He re-reads his favorite parts of Moby Dick that night before bed.

Or rather, he re-reads all his favorite things that Karen has written about Moby Dick. All of it seems more real, more present, more raw now that seeing her again is a fast-approaching reality rather than an ever-fading dream.

He tries to catalog everything he wants to ask -- about all things she’s written in the book, all the things she’s done in the last eight months, all the things he doesn’t know about her.

He reads and re-reads and re-reads her last note to him, can almost hear her asking --

When can I see you?

He imagines her saying it softly, her breath brushing up against his ear, her voice nothing more than a whisper. He drifts into that place between dreams and waking with that thought repeating in his mind, finds himself falling into a scene that’s more memory and dream --

It’s him and Curtis from the other night, wrapping up their conversation, saying goodbye. Everything playing out like it did in real life, except in this dream world they’re standing in his dimly lit living room rather than the harsh fluorescent lighting of the church basement.

“I’m gonna see her,” he says, the warmth and excitement and awe battling against a rising tide of anxiety. “I’m gonna see her,” he repeats, louder this time, as if he can will it into being that very moment by the force of emotion in his words. He huffs a laugh, then licks his lip and tilts his head. “But what happens after that?”

Curtis narrows his eyes at him momentarily, then chuckles softly.

“I don’t know, Frank. That’s living, right? Figuring it all out.”

Frank scoffs.

“You know, I gotta admit -- I thought you’d have a better answer than that.

Curtis smiles.

“That’s life, Frank. Time to figure out how to live that part of it again.”

He nods slowly at that and smiles, lifts a hand in goodbye and turns around.

“Hey, Frank?” A voice says behind him, and here is where he knows he must have sunken fully into a dream.

Because the words are quieter this time around, the voice higher, the tone shot through with affection.

He turns around, a hushed oh escaping from his mouth as he faces Karen, her eyes bright in the dimness of his living room, her smile radiant and warm. She’s lit with a soft glow of some cheap lamp behind her, beautiful in a way that he thinks has nothing to do with the fact that he’s dreaming.

He knows what she’s going to say next, knows the words because they’re the same ones Curtis spoke to him the other night.

But where Curtis was teasing and glib, Karen is tender and honest and always more than he thinks he deserves.

She steps in closer to him and cups his face in her hands, brushes her thumb across his cheekbone and smiles.

“Welcome back to the land of living.”

#kastle #kastleff #frank castle #karen page #curtis hoyle #david lieberman #the punisher #my fic #fic: loss like the sharp edges of a knife

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mythologygirlfanfic · 7 years

Text

Phoenix Down: Chapter Two

Summary: Her parents must have really wanted a son if they named their only child - a girl at that - Marco. (OC Reincarnation/Rebirth story) Or

An obsessive gamer girl is reborn and now has to navigate the world of One Piece as a female version of Marco the Phoenix. Shenanigans ensue as she drags everyone around her into her delusions do to the trauma caused by the loss of her precious games. So what if she gives her so called brothers a few heart attacks when she pretends to be dead until one of them yells, if not a little dramatically, “PHOENIX DOWN” with an accompanying eye roll, before ‘reviving’ along the way. That’s just part of the fun. The poor Whitebeard Pirates are in near constant exasperation with their sister’s sure, but that doesn’t mean they love her any less. Now, if only she could convince Ace that MMOs were a real thing.

Rating: T

Hellion.

That is what the old biddies in her village called her at least. Well, everyone in the village called her that, but they were all pretty much old biddies, so fuck them.

(Well, not really ‘cause that would be gross. Marco shivered at the thought.)

Who knew that trying to engage this dreary town in a riveting game of Splatoon would lead to her immediate and irrefutable exile from the only place she knew in a world she knew was much more vast and dangerous than most people could even comprehend.

She regretted nothing .

Nothing except maybe not being able to beam the mayor in the face with a balloon filled with pink paint and glitter. Marco had been stopped by the villagers before she could chuck that particular balloon, one of the bastard having snuck up behind her and tackling her to the ground before others jumped on her as well in some sort of impromptu dog pile. It had caused the young woman to be the one to get a face full of the mixture instead of her intended target. It had been a bittersweet defeat.

Now, here the pale blonde stood, not even a full day after what the fiasco the villagers irritably had started calling the ‘Day of Reckoning’ under their breaths, loading the little dinghy her parents scrounged up for her. She was so sure that Original Marco had lived a childhood of bloody strife. Her she was though, getting the boot from her home for simply throwing one too many paint balloons.

True, it had technically not been her first offense. Also true, that it hadn’t really been the worst thing she had done either, but for the people of her home island, it had been the last straw. Marco was pretty sure it was just because the sticks they all had shoved up their asses, that they were all just allergic to fun. The kids of the village could at least appreciate her genius, some having even thrown a mini protest over their favorite playmate’s severe and unjust punishment. Well, until they were threatened with dish duty. That had gotten Marco’s followers to disperse rather quickly. The little traitors.

(She carefully did not look into Mom 2.0’s tearful eyes and decidedly ignored the fact that Papa 2.0’s own looked even more droopy than before, like a basset hound whose favorite bone was being taken away. Marco even ignored the small pain in her chest when she thought of leaving them, that she would miss them.)

The farming life hadn’t been for her anyway. Her boobs made her back ache after all and the physical labor of tilling the land just didn’t justify that pain. Honestly, why did nearly all the girls who spent more than five minutes with Luffy have to have huge tits? (And the original Marco had, they had fought a war together. Screw the fact Original Marco had been a male.) Sure, they weren't as large as say Nami or Robin’s, but they were still annoying as fuck.

She was looking for a quest to complete anyway.

Quest objective: find Whitebeard and join his crew.

This quest sucked. It sucked balls. Hard .

She had been randomly sailing around the seas of North Blue for months. Months . And the teenager couldn’t even say it hadn’t truly been random sailing as she was in no way a navigator. She had slapped herself multiple times for not studying maps, but she hadn’t been planning to set out to sea by herself either. Honestly, Marco had thought Whitebeard and his band of jolly sons, more akin to a massive raid party, would be the ones to find her. You know, at home. On the island she had been born on.

Marco once again cursed the mayor and the citizen of Uptightville. She would have preferred they all would have left themselves, like all the potential critter friends she ignored in Animal Crossing , then have had them figure out the best way to get rid of a shitty neighbor was just to exile them from the town. (She briefly found herself lamenting who her virtual town had more than likely gone completely barren by now, before the thought become to unbearable and she had to shake it off. Sort of like the one Taylor Swift song.)

It hadn’t been all bad. If Marco ignored the fact she had almost starved, dehydrated, gotten nearly eaten by various sea monsters, and other things that had caused some minor bodily harm, the young woman could think of a few things to be grateful for. She finally got to update her appearance!

On the first island she had unceremoniously crashed into (Seriously, she didn’t mean to fall asleep! The sailing had been so boring to the point she had started talking to her own reflection on the water’s surface.), she found herself chopping off most her long, blonde hair. She had cropped it into a sort of mohawk, with the sides of her head shaved and a strip of slightly longer locks remaining on top. Of course, she only did this when she was certain Mom 2.0 didn’t have some sort of radar that would let the older woman know what her daughter was doing. Marco liked her limbs where they were and she wouldn’t put it past the lady to somehow find her due to some sort of messed up need for vengeance.

She had also acquired (Maybe, sort of stole) some new clothes. Nothing against what she had been wearing, the overalls were as comfortable as hell, they just weren’t exactly the best clothes to be traveling the wide up sea in. Marco now proudly donned a light blue corset and with blue shorts that rode maybe a little too low. The young woman had decided to forgo shoes, more so because she had been chased from the store before she could grab a pair. And, hey, this outfit was probably even less practicable than overalls, but if she was going to be a pirate, a pirate in the World of One Piece at that, she was going to looks bad fucking ass while doing.

She was 18 and partly delirious when she found him. Found the man that had been Original Marco’s Oyaji. The man that would be her Oyaji too. Or at least, she hoped he would as she pulled alongside the massive, whale shaped ship. She was a little surprised that the Moby Dick had already been made and set sail, for whatever reason she was sure Edward Newgate would have had another ship, at least up until Gol D. Roger’s execution. She was happy to see it though. The large whale always looked so happy in the series and it looked even more so in person. If a just a tiny weensy bit intimidating. That and it also brought on the age old question of why it was blue? Had the gigantic man never read the novel? Did the novel even exist here? Wait, she had never read the novel, so this was a moot point.

Marco didn’t waste anytime.

“Make me your kid-yoi!” Her load exclamation caught everyone’s attention as they stared down from the large whale shaped boat at her little dinghy. It had certainly caught Captain Whitebeard’s as she could almost feel the older man’s gaze piercing through her. He was younger, his hair not completely white and his mustache just a tad less magnificent. It was like Mario and Dr. Robotnik’s facial hair had a baby. How much time did the man spend styling it?

“Eh? What was that brat? I didn’t hear you.” Edward Newgate was an incredible man, for that the young blonde girl was certain. His voice carried all the way down to her as if the roaring wind and crashing waves against the hulking vessel he rode upon allowed it passage. The captain before her didn’t even have to yell. Marco admitted she may have been a tad jealous at that.

Marco set her shoulders back further standing as straight and tall as she possible could. Her posture was so stiff it was starting to hurt, yet she had to make this man, the one fated to be the strongest on all the seas, this man with such an enormous legacy, take her on. “I said, make me your daughter-yoi!”

“Why should I?”

Okay, now she was sure the older man was messing with her. Still, she responded, “Because you’re like the final boss after a particularly hard dungeon that one has to level grind for like hours to beat-yoi.” At the confused silence that greeted Marco, she decided to take pity on the poor uncultured souls that would never really know the joys and sorrows of dungeon crawling and elaborated. “I think you're badass-yoi.”

Whitebeard threw his head back and laughed.

#MythologyGirl #MythologyGirlFanFic #fanficiton #fanfic #Phoenix Down #Chapter 2 #One Piece #OC #Marco the Phoenix #rated: t #eventually it will be edited #humor #Also posted on AO3 #also posted on ff

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rusticrevivals · 7 years

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Last week you read about life off The farm called "Blue Bell - don" This week's a silly story, 'bout Winter HERE, and who has come... For many neighbours in this valley Pop by for words of praise Or blessings of encouragement To get us through cold days. ************************************* Last June, our Smitty, "RESCUE DOG", Took a hunk of Eileen's arm (Eileen lives just up the hill On the neighb'ring Danish farm). But since then, Eileen's persisted In attempts to "Buddy Up" With our Labrador/Rottweiler cross, So abused as a young pup. Quite early on many a winter's morn And when my bare ass hangs off our bed, Eileen and Thunder, her fat old pooch Pass right by my window ledge! And traverse to our side porch Purpose : "Can Smitty come and play?" And in pajamas, Richard porch-leans And thus in bright sunshine will stay And visit while the dogs scoot 'round And Smitty gives Eileen a slurp To say he's ever so sorry - Then jogs off with a belch and a burp!

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But Thunder doesn't like 'being used' As a distraction or a foil For his mistress, to make another friend... It rather makes his old blood boil!

So off he totters back up hill And Eileen must quickly trot She once more passes the big window But this time I'm 'out of cot' ! For the less one sees of my repose With menopausal flashes The happier one will usually be- NOT to see protruding asses! Speaking of 'behind' the times Every Thursday Mom enjoys Offering, like in days of old, Piano lessons to teen boys Who want creative outlet In this remote mountain vale And often in the kitchen Our entertaining will prevail As one mother we'll call Fairlight Who's a hermit quite like me But feels her son should benefit: He plays; she has a cup of tea! On Sundays, it's off to St. Peter's For miles you can see the steeple As it sits up there on Clockedahl Hill And beckons all Danish people. This year, its special hundredth Is a time we will rejoice And celebrate its history With song in much-raised voice We appreciate its craftsmanship And the beauty of its wood We enjoy the parish folk so much -- They're welcoming, warm and good.

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A neighbouring town is Plaster Rock And is famous for two sites The place where massive ferns will grow... (Read of this in my future writes), And the world site of Pond Hockey Where every Febr'ary cold Hundreds of teams from 'round the globe Play on the small lake of old. In fact, it too celebrates this week It's in its one hundred-FIFTIETH year! Since 1867, teams have skated On that ice so sheer. Teams named with silly humour Like "Pond Scum" and "Timber Twats" Or, one of our favourite names: "The Raggedy-ass River Rats" ! There are teams of men, but ladies too And they're all TOUGH, outside the tent Where beer is poured quite freely At this world-renown event. How often in the winter Do you see an outdoor sport Where the loos are placed in snowdrifts And the players roughly cavort RIGHT beside Joe Public Which is why the nets are tiny (Though Richard had a puck zip by And he fell right on his hiney!)

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Meetings in small communities In the rural countryside Are another way of getting involved And taking some local pride. While Richard worked the potato fields Last fall, to feel a part I'm now off to meetings galore Historic, Planning and Horse Club, to start! While Founder's Day celebrations With parade, barbeque and dance Are traditionally planned, I don't see how A tomboy like me could enhance A BEAUTY PAGEANT? of teenage girls Who will dress up and model and pose. All I know is grubbies and sweatshirts NOT lace, and sequins, and hose!

And while a saddle club's more my style I can't seem to find the straight path Everyone argues and thinks they're right (Mostly women, who cat-fight with wrath!)

Saddle Clubbed-to-Death

Pretending we all get along…

So, I'm not sure how long I'll be meeting In these groups where I've tried to fit in But I'll give it a go, for this year at least, Do duties with tongue-in-cheek grin. Another winter-time delight In mountain-country deep (Other than waiting for spring to come By reading oneself to sleep!) Is having neighbours over To play games into the night But this week, we were brought to realize That mere Scrabble evokes a good FIGHT! For many years I've struggled To beat Richard at this game, A few times I've come close But more often, I admit with shame That though I'm a teacher of English He can whump me by a mile And as he's most competitive I don't always end with a smile. Joy bought me a version that SHOULD have helped more But, until this year, it Did NOT bring me to fore:

However, just this winter I've finally learned to beat That man I call my partner Whose NOT happy in defeat! And this weekend we found out That ANOTHER man is faster And of equal strength to Richard's - And THAT man's our meekest pastor!

His wife, like me, got angry, And I understood her scorn As myself, the organist, (and Richard, too!) Began to feel forlorn. That vicar is competitive! Just like ole Rich, he sits And plans so many moves ahead While we just take the hits.

Richard at work trying to beat all…

Despite extra points for authors' names Or a literary phrase (The pastor's wife got "Dante" Which SHOULD have put him in a daze As it was like the devil himself From the famed Inferno came To visit the board and take over at will... -But Pastor STILL won the game!) While all this serious intellect Went on beside our fire Down the hall were bellows and grunts And great yells of "You're a LIAR!" As Balderdash was loudly played And later, "Dirty Marbles". So, we took deep breaths and calmed ourselves To ease the tension of these squabbles. "Everyone to the living room!" I called, for my favourite time Is when drama and hilarity Team with parlour games of rhyme, Or witty word games, acted out. Thus, within this larger group Charades became the favourite Of this New Denmark troupe. But again, like Richard, Vicar sought To beat my team right out (Both from Ontario with German surnames - Could THAT be what this is about?) How could my team of thespians Act out "Titanic", or "Moby Dick" Without pointing to body parts That were embarrassing in front of The Vic? But HE had no compunction About hurling himself to the floor And writhing about with urgency To try and get the top score!

******************************************* Ah, the long days of winter, then Have been thusly passed with ease As long as the dogs don't bite And pastors continue to tease. For whether or not my butt is seen After 9, either day or at night. When Thunder's coerced to go for a walk And Eileen might be in for a sight, And whether or not hot chocolate Isn't drunk as much as the liquor It takes for Peter to do "Titanic" With his nipples, in front of the Vicar, We'll always get through the storms Of this 'time on hold' of all seasons In the hill-billy mountains of N.B. With our Raggy-ass River-Rat Reasons! - J. Ivanel Johnson, 2017

The Vilified Vicar and the Coerced Canine Last week you read about life off The farm called "Blue Bell - don" This week's a silly story, 'bout Winter HERE, and who has come...

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obscureliteraryhumor · 7 years

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We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On: Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen / รักที่ขอนแก่น 2015)

Last night, my sleep was filled with a series of vivid dreams, featuring the appearance of abundantly metaphorical imagery and almost-forgotten figures from my past. It was a deep and continuous sleep, and long. The evening prior, I finished myriad small but important tasks that I’d either forgotten or been putting off, and I did so with a vigorous energy previously hidden by layers of lethargy and procrastination. That afternoon, I watched Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul’s Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen / รักที่ขอนแก่น 2015). There’s a certain kind of film that reminds me of something Richard Brody once wrote, a sort of peek into his critical psyche, in a piece on the state of independent film in 2016:

"In any case, movies, and art over all, don’t help, can’t help, aren’t meant to help—in the short term or in specific terms. The good they do reaches deep into the marrow of the soul of a relatively few people and does so spontaneously, unexpectedly, irresistibly, decisively, and sometimes even unconsciously. The changes that the best movies wreak may not be perceptible in any reasoned public discourse close to the time of their release. But, for just that reason, these movies are all the more essential and enduring—they bring about changes in mood, tone, emotional tenor or temperature, changes in the inner life, in the inner inner life."

Most of the time, the film that reminds me of this quote is by Terrence Malick, or Andrei Tarkovsky, or even Shane Carruth (Upstream Color (2013)), whose images are often objects of delirious beauty. But Apichatpong here conjures another form of beauty, one less indebted to the realm of painting and photography and, thus, one that is more cinematic. Cemetery of Splendour moved me ineffably, and to try to render it less ineffable (more effable?) feels like an act of violence. Somehow, the best thing I can say about it is that it renewed my sense of the life force both within and surrounding me, motivating me from a within that’s outside of me, as it were. But since that’s way too vague, let’s get violent. Let’s say that what distinguishes the moving picture from the regular ol’ picture is the fact that the moving picture, um, moves. Yet this simple fact can sometimes be lost on cinemagoers and even filmmakers. The most common form of film “movement” is the cut, and when done well it evokes all the thoughts and emotions a good montage is supposed to. But that’s really less a movement and more a juxtaposition, a forcing of contrasts. Another common form of movement in film is the movement of the camera, most notoriously in the “shaky cam” cinematography that apparently only Paul Greengrass can do well. Usually, though, camera movements are tracking something within the frame, or emphasizing a character’s frame of mind, or even attempting to induce a frame of mind in the viewer (think of the camera placement in horror films). These are movements in the service of something else, and it can appear also in the manipulations of form in great works of literature, among other artistic media. No, what I have in mind, what this film showed me for the first time, is the kind of movement that’s in itself unexpected, radical, miraculous. It can happen in everyday life at any moment. The true magic of cinema is in capturing movement of this kind along with whatever it is that makes it astounding. Apichatpong’s camera is static, and his shots are long. But unlike the images of some of the aforementioned filmmakers, his images and compositions aren’t centered on beauty, natural or otherwise; in fact, some lingering shots are objectively ugly. What they do, and what Apichatpong wants them to do, is capture some kind of human action: a woman hanging laundry, the soldiers’ digging machines going at it, a man taking a shit among bushes and low trees. These actions are mundane, but the emphasis on their banality gathers the emotional, even sublime strength that’s non-cathartically released near the end of the film. That is the movement I have in mind: a single action both mundane and sublime. Cemetery of Splendour is about Thai soldiers who succumb to an inexplicable sleeping illness while digging a foundation for a secret government project (one character notes: And yet they dig out in the open!). Jen (Jenjira Pongpas) volunteers at the local “hospital” (an old schoolhouse) where the soldiers are taken care of, and there she befriends Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a young woman who uses her powers as a psychic medium to assuage worried family members that their sons are doing okay. This is the first hint that the film is more than it appears to be, not only because everyone treats her with respect, including the doctors and nurses, but even more because psychics, of course, usually communicate with the dead. The soldiers seem to be having bad dreams, so the doctors bring in machines that employ light therapy to help calm them. Each machine has a long, curving LED tube (“They look like funerary urns,” one characters says) that changes color in tandem with the other machines as if each color were rising from the ground. The film has numerous scenes of the room and its furiously spinning ceiling fans slowly changing color in the dark of night, and this otherworldly imagery becomes a motif, a theme, and even a symbol for the film as a whole, reinforced by the sound effects of more significant scenes (ceiling fans, digging machines, night sounds) bleeding into the preceding and subsequent scenes. Jen, who has a bad leg, often prays at a Laotian shrine. One day as she’s enjoying some longgan at a picnic table, two beautiful women walk up to chat. Turns out, they’re the goddesses to whom she prays, and they come to thank her and to tell her that the sleeping sickness is caused by the still-warring ancient kings buried in the palace ruins beneath the school, who siphon off the soldiers’ energy. Here I should point out that, as talk of soldiers, kings, and Thailand should’ve hinted at by now, Cemetery of Splendour is on one level a political allegory, but it’s “about” politics the same way that Moby-Dick is “about” whaling: Yes, you can learn a whole frickin’ lot about whaling from reading it, but it’s so much more than a whaling manual. And Cemetery of Splendour is at one remove from even that—good luck learning much from the film about Thailand’s political troubles. Jen takes particular care of a soldier named Itt (Banlop Lomnoi), whose family doesn’t come to visit. For the viewer, he’s the stand-in for all the sleeping soldiers; for Jen, he’s the conduit to a unique perspective on life. One day, he suddenly wakes up and tells the surprised Jen that he could hear and understand everything around him while asleep. (Later at a night market stall, he adds that he can hear, smell, and perceive the heat of everything around them to an extended distance.) They and the other awakened soldiers go to the canteen for a meal. One soldier falls asleep, and the film implies that the rest of them do as well. Thus is the pattern of the film established: When Itt is awake, we follow his interactions and conversations with Jen; when he’s asleep, the film is free to do other things—follow Jen around, yes, but also give us haunting imagery of the sleeping soldiers and, in one mesmerizing sequence, of various nighttime scenes around town. There is never the sense of being haunted in the Western sense, as if unseen spirits were following people around, attempting to communicate or effect changes—the scariest scene is probably when Jen discovers that Itt’s notebook is filled with sketches that seem to depict the underground palace. The existence of something more than this empirical world is simply presumed, and when events are attributed to its influence, they and it are adapted to quickly and naturally. For instance, when the goddesses reveal themselves to Jen, she’s at first understandably shocked, but then they share the longgans together. And when Jen relates the explanation of the warring ancient kings to Keng and head nurse Tet (Petcharat Chaiburi), one of them jokes that at least the soldiers are kept useful in their sleep. Ingeniously, this attitude is forced on us by the film’s very premise: If we tried to explain the sleeping sickness, we would immediately get stuck, and the rest of the film would become meaningless. Only by taking it on its own terms, as it takes the lived-in mystery of its world, can we appreciate the artistry before our eyes. (I dare you to try to explain the scene, almost repeated later in the film, of pondside parkgoers rotating among benches as if playing a silent game of musical chairs.) The final main sequence intimately and powerfully brings together the two dimensions that Apichatpong toys with throughout the film. Jen and Itt are having a picnic when he falls asleep again. It’s a beautiful day, so she’s in no rush to get him back; who knows, he might wake up again. Keng passes by and offers to help them communicate. Itt (through Keng) asks Jen if she’d like to see what he sees, and she says yes. So he inhabits Keng’s mind (“possesses” would be too strong, since she’s still in control and can use her earthly perceptive faculties), and Keng and Jen take a walk through a park, which turns out to be a real-life famous religious park dotted with religious mantras and sculptures, some of them in ruins. Itt describes through Keng the ancient palace they’re walking through, pointing out thresholds and low ceilings, mirrors and thrones. Jen obligingly directs her gaze, and sometimes points out worldly things for Itt/Keng to look at, too: trees, leaves, sculptures, and flowers that she helps cultivate. They come across a pair of sculptures—a loving couple on a bench, holding hands, and beside that the same couple, now skeletons—and sit on a bench nearby. Jen shows Itt/Keng (but really Itt) her bad leg, rolling up her trouser to reveal its elephantine deformity. She offers Itt a homemade remedy to keep him awake, but instead he takes it from her, pours it onto Jen’s bad leg, and starts kissing it where the liquid has flowed. Amazingly, this scene works if we understand Itt/Keng to be either Keng or Itt: the psychic attuned to the other world, or the sleeping soldier inhabiting it. Itt/Keng’s ablutions and intimate blessings bring Jen to tears, and we too feel the full force of the connection between this world and the other world that ensconces it. But the film has one last surprise in store. Jen asks Itt/Keng to open her vision, and Keng stares into Jen’s eyes, telling her to open them wider, wider. And then: done. We don’t see any change, either directly, or indirectly through Jen’s actions, but by this point we’re far beyond doubting. The penultimate scene pairs a morning dance-aerobics session in the park with a soundtrack of an oracular French spoken song about a brick wall pretending to be soft and welcoming. And as if we, too, see this wondrous flowering brick wall, the final scene is a shot of Jen, staring in the direction of some boys playing soccer in the dug-up field, but really staring into the other world, wide-eyed. The soldiers’ plight is never resolved, as the goddesses foretell, but it’s rumored that the government will be moving them soon.

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#allegory #cinematography #editing #emotion #non-Hollywood #plot #politics #sound #symbolism #apichatpong weerasethakul #cemetery of splendour #film review #this is the whole thing

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michaelfftv · 7 years

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I may have fucked up my life and it’s all Bill Murray’s fault. I know it’s fashionable to blame Donald Trump for everything these days- and that trend will undoubtedly continue to grow, but, to be blunt, I don’t worry about Trump.

I mean I certainly understand that I’m going to suffer some terrible repercussions from his election, but at this point, it’s water under the bridge. I did my best to keep him from being elected, but the stupid, greedy, sleazy, immoral and apathetic people won and now we can all suffer the consequences. So fucking be it.

Which doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on life. I’m certainly not going to dress in sack cloth and ashes and bemoan my life or the stupidity, immorality, greed or sleaziness of the people who elected Trump and his pack of shit brained fools. That would be a waste of my valuable and precious life, and besides, karma is going to go pitbull and tear the throat out of those greasy shitbags soon enough.

No, it turns out that even after Trump was elected, the sun came up and the wind blew through the trees. I woke up breathing pretty much like any other day and was forced to decide what I would do with that day. and by extension, what I would do with the next week, month year and remainder of my life.

It’s obviously a decision each of us makes every day- either consciously or by default. And just because an alleged pedephile with the IQ of dog sperm is running the country, doesn’t mean that we have to pack it all end. It’s not game set and match.

So what next? That is again, obviously, dependent upon who you are and what you believe. If you believe in God, arguably it doesn’t matter which path you take, because he’s got your back no matter where you go. As God was alleged to have said in the Book of Genesis- as rewritten by King James, “And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”

Which- if you are a person of faith, pretty damn sweet. However (long dramatic pause)…. not all of us can rustle up that kind of blind faith no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we would like to be comforted by by said alleged god.

Which pretty much leaves me and ye of little faith standing on the side of the road, looking far into the distant and hazy horizon thinking, “well, what next?”? Or, as Jack Kerouac said, in cribbing the Lord: “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car at night?”

To be clear and as truthful as possible in this post truth society, I don’t have a car, let alone a shiny car, but I do have a dusty, dinged up bright red pick up truck, which brings me back to Bill Murray being an asshole.

My thought at this point is that I should pack up my bright red pick up- or at the least jump on a train- and- as Huck Finn would have it- head out for the territories. Which is pretty much what I have always done.

For my own personal life narrative goes something like this: I believe that we’re born and we die and that I can’t do a damn thing about either of these conditions, but as the great sage Eddie Vedder once said, “I know I was born and I know that I’ll die, the in between is mine.”

Which brings us to the parable of the grasshopper and the ant.

THE ANT AND THE CRICKET

During the wintertime, an ant was living off the grain that he had stored up for himself during the summer. The cricket came to the ant and asked him to share some of his grain. The ant said to the cricket, ‘And what were you doing all summer long, since you weren’t gathering grain to eat?’ The cricket replied, ‘Because I was busy singing I didn’t have time for the harvest.’ The ant laughed at the cricket’s reply, and hid his heaps of grain deeper in the ground. ‘Since you sang like a fool in the summer,’ said the ant, ‘you better be prepared to dance the winter away!’ This fable depicts lazy, careless people who indulge in foolish pastimes, and therefore lose out.

This was, of course, a favorite parable of the nuns who raised me and every CEO who ever wanted to harness my energy, at minimal pay so that he might enrich his own personal coffers. The ant represents all the good boys and girls.

The cricket, of course represents all those artists and bad boys and general near do wells you so admire but never emulate in life. Those who go through life starving and scraping by and acting irresponsibly so that might, you know, enjoy life now instead of waiting till they’re nearly dead and/or in heaven- which may or may not exist.

Most of us struggle with this dichotomy. I myself spent a large part of my being a good ant. I worked for a large insurance company- and was fantastically underpaid by said wealthy company for a long time.

I also worked for myself. And even though I was calling the shots, I worked- for a very long time as an even more industrious ant. I worked my ass off and rendered unto Caesar and tried to be fair unto everyone- until it because very clear that the whole ant thing was a very large con game.

In writing of man’s need for certainity, conformity Maria Konnikova in her work The Confidence Game: What Con Artists Reveal About the Psychology of Trust and Why Even the Most Rational of Us Are Susceptible to Deception, writes that:

Human beings don’t like to exist in a state of uncertainty or ambiguity. When something doesn’t make sense, we want to supply the missing link. When we don’t understand what or why or how something happened, we want to find the explanation..

Which is why man- as a whole, is so gullible. Man and women will believe damn near anything- no matter how ridiculous the explanation, so long as the explanation serves to calm their anxious soul, serves to smooth their furrowed brow.

Oh my, we’ve stumbled into Donald Trump Territory again haven’t we.

But then it’s always been a con game. Sort of like the Plantation owners reading verses to the slaves so as to justify their enslavement. “Colossians 3:22:Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.”

Sort of like when the banksters bankrupted America in 2008 and the government bailed them out and left the vast majority of us hanging…..

All of which is actually beside the point. Because if the question is, should one check out of society and chose to live a simple life rather than live as a rat on a treadmill counting the days till his or her first heart attack, then the answer is simple.

We should all check out and do whatever in the hell makes us happy and fuck our governmental and corporate masters.

But life never is that simple is it? Because it’s never about just us is it?

We want to believe we are the star of the show, that we are a rugged individualists. We buy wholesale into the saw that America is the land of the individual. As one writer would have it in outlining the common trope known as the rugged American, “America has been the land of the individual, and most Americans have thought of themselves as individualists. We still speak favorably of individual rights, individual initiative, individual responsibility, individual opportunity, and individual achievement.”

Which, of course is why, “the American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 942 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories,” because we are the freest people in the entire solar system.”

No, the truth is that we are a nation of conformists and we hate people who go their own way. We claim to admire them, but our entire society is constructed to keep people in line because man is a conformist and American’s are no different The government is not an expression of our ideals, but an institution we have created to generate the illusion of safety we require to sleep through long winter nights. It’s in our nature, our DNA. We are programed to conform because there is safety in conformity and profit, or so most Americans actually believe.

I trust that you appreciate that the above tale of the cricket and the ant is from Aesop’s Fables . And do you know what I learned this day from my research? Aesop was a slave. “a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE.”

Of course there have always been those who- no matter what the odds, decide to go their own way-buck the system. They gain their freedom through cunning, wit or sheer determination. Aesops, for instance, was such a man.

While Aesops served as a slave under not one, but two masters, named, Xanthus and Iadmon, “the later gave him his freedom as a reward for his wit and intelligence. As a freedman he supposedly became involved in public affairs and traveled a lot—telling his fables along the way. King Croesus of Lydia was so impressed with Aesop that he offered him residency and a job at his court.”

In fact there are scholars who maintain that the fables served as both morality tales and as a means of subversive, hidden speech, a means of speaking truth to the power during times of political repression.

Of course, playing both ends against the middle can always be a tricky thing- as evidenced by the fact that Aesop was executed, apparently as an act of appeasement to the gods or some offended government….

Such lessons have always been lost on some throughout history. There have always been those who, despite history’s lessons, take to the open road nevertheless. They go in search of wisdom, riches, fame and enlightenment-satori. Some go because they simply cannot stand not to go: Melville famously wrote in Moby Dick.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Indeed. Is it possible to say that you have lived until you have obeyed the urge to flee? Those who have quietly taken to ship comprise a respectable society- if not a large one.

One such kindred spirit was W. Somerset Maugham, who in 1944 published, the Razor’s Edge- which was twice made into a movie. The lead in the second movie, filmed in 1984, was, of course, played by Bill Murray in a rare early dramatic role.

The Razor’s Edge epigraph reads, “The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.” In paraphrasing this epigraph- taken from the Katha-Upanishad- Maugham says of the mendicant seeking enlightenment, “Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.”

The actual quotation is “Arise, awake, and learn by approaching the exalted ones, for that path is sharp as a razor’s edge, impassable, and hard to go by, say the wise.“

Which is a release and relief when you read it.

As Americans we think that we’re entitled to whatever we want when we want. We’re then shocked and angered when things turn against us. If, however, we’re smart enough to head out on the road knowing that freedom is a motherfucker, then we can adjust our expectations accordingly; put on our game face, bring our A game.

The Razor’s Edge tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatised by his experiences in World War I, who sets off in search of some transcendent meaning in his life. … His rejection of conventional life and search for meaningful experience allows him to thrive while the more materialistic characters suffer reversals of fortune.

The book, it is said, owes much to Maugham’s Asian walkabout. His travels allegedly included a visits to Shri Ramana Maharishi’s ashram in 1938. Maugham, some say, foresaw the West’s fascination for Eastern culture—which would not reach its zenith until some two decades later.

***

I have known many crickets in my life. Some I have known personally, and others I have met through their stories and other works of art.

Many of the crickets I have known are well known, the usual suspects. The Beats, the Transcendentalists, Thoreau, the rock stars of my youth prior to rock and roll being co-opted by Madison Ave and tied to every roll of toilet paper sold in America….

And, of course, there was Joseph Campbell. The man who after reading tales of hero quests in countless cultures throughout time, encapsulated those tales in a common template which serves as the basis for nearly every tale of bravery and conquest ever written by man, or filmed by Hollywood.

I love Campbell’s explanation of the hero-quest, the hero leaves the safety of his society- normally after being ostracized or failing to conform with his society. The hero then goes out into the world where- by engaging in battles and trials, he gains wisdom. Ultimately, she or he returns home to his society bearing hard earned gifts and wisdom which benefit the society.

To Campbell, the cricket is a hero, not a slacker.Maugham as well:“You see, money to you means freedom; to me it means bondage.”

But of all the crickets I have ever met- for whatever reason- none have suckered me as badly as Bill Murray’s portrayal of Larry Darrell in the Razor’s edge. I have seen both movies and read the novel. For whatever reason, the 1984 movie and Murray’s appearance live in my head.

And I went many places and had may adventures and arguably have gained some wisdom. But I am alo now faced with the question- should I go back, can I go back. Is it too late, after spurning all appearance- for the twenty years or so, of a normal life, is it possible to go back and hide heaps of grain deeper in the ground?

Because here’s the problem. Early on in your life you’re going to make the choice to be an ant or a cricket- either consciously or by default or through inertia and apathy. What no one will tell you though is that there comes a point in time- far sooner than you will appreciate, when you can no longer go back.

And so I went, for years, for decades. And winter now approaches. Larry Darrell: “It’s easy to be a holy man on top of a mountain.” Which is true enough. It’s also a very tough gig to be a holy man in America, in Milford Ohio, in 2017.

Maugham’s hero aso says that, “I found out there’s another debt to pay – for the privilege of being alive.” I’ve been chewing on that for a long time now. Do we owe for our birth? Do we owe to others? To whom and what?

Specifically, in my case- what do I owe to my sons, especially my schizophrenic sons. Do I work every minute for the rest of my life to help provide for them- or do I still owe myself a life? Is there a balance, and if so where is the line and who gets to draw it? Me, them, the church, the government?

Maugham: “Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.”

Which, at the end of the day doesn’t really answer the question. Which is too bad, because I don’t have the answer either. Which is really too bad- because I very much need the answer. Because if it isn’t too late, it’s getting close to too late for me.

All I know for certain is that if there is an answer out there, it lies on the road. If I have learned nothing I have learned that there is no wisdom and objectivity like the wisdom of the road.

I know there are also wise men and women out there. So I’ll go in search of both and I’m no coming back until I have the answers I need. I know there answers I need and the people I need to meet are out there. Again, as Maugham has written; “Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.”

So I go. I go to speak to the road, to speak with cranes and eagles and geese and deer and wise men and wise women and holy men and we shall see. Most of all I’m going because I can- I know I owe myself that.

“I don’t think I shall ever find peace till I make up my mind about things,’ he said gravely. He hesitated. ‘It’s very difficult to put into words. The moment you try you feel embarrassed. You say to yourself: “Who am I that I should bother myself about this, that, and the other? Perhaps it’s only because I’m a conceited prig. Wouldn’t it be better to follow the beaten track and let what’s coming to you come?” And then you think of a fellow who an hour before was full of life and fun,and he’s lying dead; it’s all so cruel and meaningless. It’s hard not to ask yourself what life is all about and whether there’s any sense to it or whether it’s all a tragic blunder of blind fate.”

And so I go and I’m not coming back until I have answers. Maybe not the answer, but answers that let me sleep at night. I’ll see you then. Maybe I’m a fool, maybe not.

It’s interesting to note that after the Razor’s Edge and flying home from Nepal to do Ghost Busters; which was Murray’s price- his tradeoff- for being able to make TRE- he quit acting for four years and moved his family to Paris. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne.

Maybe in the end, the only true suckers are those who never take the time to seriously ask themselves what this life is about. Maybe those are the people who need to comfort themselves with self serving parables.

Maybe I’m insane. Time will tell. More later.

Questions Pt. 1 (or, Bill Murray Is An Asshole). I may have fucked up my life and it's all Bill Murray's fault. I know it's fashionable to blame Donald Trump for everything these days- and that trend will undoubtedly continue to grow, but, to be blunt, I don't worry about Trump.

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