#had to stop and reassess my entire argument to go 'do i want to change my mind actually if i'm agreeing with This Guy?'

[sroloc--elbisivni]

fucking. academic humble pie of realizing that someone whose research you normally hate actually has exactly the evidence you need to make your point.

[post-it-notes7]

Is there a reason as to why Falspar is so protective of Dragato or is he that way with all his friends? I think you once implied something between them

Oh boy anon, strap in this is going to be a long one. It's time for some GSA backstory.

(Fair warning, this'll make the most sense if you've read most of my fics, namely In Your Dreams and dumb luck)

So, starting off! The four remaining orbs of the GSA (Arthur, Nonsurat, Dragato, Falspar) all went through some rough character development following the abrupt split of the GSA (where Nightmare attempted to wipe all of them out in one fell swoop, and what caused MK to be split up along with the rest of them, leading everyone to be presumed dead.) This took place several years ago on the H&S timeline, marking the gray period when MK thought he was truly the last star warrior, and leading all the way to Kirby landing in Dreamland, and so on.

Almost everyone was scattered to a different part of space, with Arthur being sent in one direction, Dragato in another, and Nonsurat and Falspar being the only two who ended up in nearly the same place. From then on, it took years for the four of them to reassemble. This had different effects on everyone.

Arthur had to grapple with the fact that he'd lost his entire army. This evolved into a far worse paranoia about losing what little he has left, and made him fearful that his entire purpose (to defeat Nightmare) was essentially now a lost cause. Nonsurat used to council Arthur much more regularly about decisions, as he helped shaped the GSA with Arthur and served as his right-hand-man. However, upon reuniting, Nonsurat had grown his own fears, and now worried that pushing against Arthur's word would end up fracturing what small pieces were left of the GSA. It's a mess. Their current relationship is built off of ignoring everything bad that's already happened in hopes of making something better out of it. All of them could really use the time in Dreamland to relax.

Now we move onto Dragato. He became much more independent in the time spent split from the rest of the group. If you compare him to his past self in the fic dumb luck, he knows the importance of working as a solid group, and he also trusts Arthur's commands. He doesn't like solitude. He'd never turn against the GSA—but years later, after the split, in In Your Dreams, he has the experience of functioning on his own that lets him wake up to the fact that Arthur's plans aren't reflecting the true spirit of the GSA's anymore. Arthur has changed, and that the only way to stop Arthur from leading the group down a bad path is for Dragato to break away from it, and demand they reassess themselves.

If you're still with me, it's now finally time to get to Falspar! He was the most outgoing and social of the group, and being torn from the GSA, the community he'd come to see as his home, was bad. It was real bad. Falspar thrives in company, and finding himself all alone is terrible fear of his. If Nonsurat hadn't been there with him for the duration of the split, he does not know what he would have done with himself. Now that the four of them have come back together, with Nightmare gone, he will do everything in his power to keep them safe from harm, even if that means acting on complete impulse and fumbling his way through it until it works. Arthur brought them together in the first place, and he has to trust that following Arthur now is the only way to ensure that everything stays that way. He can't keep lose others. He doesn't know what he'll do if he finds that he's alone again.

And so, with that context out of the way, we get to Falspar's current relationship to Dragato.

They were recruited into the GSA around the same time, they rose through the ranks together until both becoming generals, each for their own reasons, and they're essentially best friends. They get into arguments a lot, as shown in dumb luck, but at the end of the day they care about each other. They want to outlast the war together.

Somewhere along this time, Falspar developed a small crush. He didn't tell Dragato. In fact, he squashed it down and pretended it didn't exist until it became scarily apparent how much of his heart he had put into the idea "we'll make it through the war together."

Dragato on the other hand, is completely and entirely oblivious.

Once more, in dumb luck, it's discussed that Dragato is well-versed in shoving aside his emotions so he can focus on the necessary conflicts at hand. So long as there's something he views as more important than himself going on, he is focusing on that and relying highly on the logical side of things to get him through it, not so much his own emotional input. He doesn't think he can reliable trust his own emotions when they get him in so much trouble at times (i.e. challenging Falspar to a duel out of essentially a stress-induced, emotional panic). He's not good at reading what he feels. Falspar is his friend, but in dumb luck it's possible see just how little of a grasp he has on what that means to himself, and how he actually feels about it. He cares for him, certainly, but he can't gauge how much, and often not until some damage is done.

He could requite Falspar's feelings, and have no idea.

This sort of disconnect makes it that Dragato is easily blindsided by his own emotions. He needs time to adjust to a life without the threat of NME hanging over his head before he can focus on himself. Until then, he's sticking with the notion that Falspar is his friend, whether it means they're standing on opposite sides or not. After all, together is a much looser concept to him. The both made it out alive, what more could he have asked for.

Falspar is taking this far worse. They've made it through the war, but there's so many loose ends to tie up and they've lost so much that his idea of the future is no longer simple. He loves Dragato, but there's no place for that when there's still NME monsters to pick off, and a new potentially galaxy-wide threat to fear. He doesn't know if Dragato will ever see him as more than a friend. He doesn't know if Dragato's idea of together was only the GSA.

One thing is certain though, and it's that despite orders from Arthur, his duty as a star warrior, and common sense, Falspar will always put Dragato's safety first. If he loses him, what's left of his dream would be gone. Falspar doesn't know if his heart could take it.

So, to answer your question at last anon! Falspar has always been protective of his friends, though the time spent separated twisted this into something he completely panics about under certain circumstances. Dragato is his friend, and then some, and he'll always be Falspar's first concern.

[mochegato]

Pixie Spy

Chapter 5

Chapter 1    Chapter 4

Marinette laid on Nino’s living room floor studying the stolen Grimoire files on her tablet.  She had been staring at the same page for the last two hours, making little progress.  Just because she could translate the ancient text, it didn’t mean it was easy or quick.  In fact, it was headache inducing and with Adrien focusing on keeping them caught up on homework while she and Chloe were otherwise occupied, she was translating alone.  She knew there were amazing secrets held in the texts, the drawings promised amazing new powers for each of the miraculous, she just needed to decode them.  

She scrunched her eyes closed and rubbed them to clear her vision that had started crossing.  Now, she decided, was a perfect time to take a break.  She looked around the room for a distraction. Adrien was near her on the floor, leaning against the couch and working on the physics assignment they had received that day, having already finished the calculus assignment.  Alya, having already passed her research onto Chloe, was on the couch working on the French Lit homework. Nino was sprawled out on the couch with his feet propped up on Alya’s lap, not working on anything, staring off into space with a furrowed brow instead.  

Everyone was working quietly except for Chloe who was making her discontent with her surroundings abundantly clear through her frequent huffs and exaggerated movements.  She was sitting in a chair making notes in a notebook referencing her laptop occasionally.  She huffed and wiggled uncomfortably in the chair, “Tell me again why we have to do this here?” Chloe demanded, not bothering to mask her disgust with the middle class surroundings.

“We can’t meet in the hotel because we can’t take the chance the Waynes would see Marinette walking in the lobby or the hallway. We can’t meet at Adrien’s place because Asshole Dad.  We can’t meet at Marinette’s in case they’ve made her already.  That leaves my place or here and my place has the twins who are currently both grounded and bored so… that leaves here.” Alya explained calmly, not bothering to look up from her homework.

“Yeah, yeah, but couldn’t we have met at like a nice café or pub?” Chloe whined, rubbing her arms as though contact with the chair fabric were scratching her.

“And take the texts outside?” Adrien asked with a raised brow motioning toward Marinette.

“Plus until we know how much they know, it is probably best I’m not seen out more than absolutely necessary, hence the…” she indicated the oversized hoodie she had stolen from Kim some time ago she had been wearing all day, mostly with her hood up, completely enveloping her head.

“I thought that was so you could hide from Laurence…” Alya said with a sly grin.

“Or Noelle,” Adrien threw in.

“Or Ignace…” Chloe added, keeping her focus on her laptop.

“Okay stop.  Really, Chloe?  Wouldn’t you much rather talk about the throngs of people throwing themselves at you?” Marinette attempted to divert her to one of her favorite topics, herself.

“Oh sweetie, we don’t have that kind of time.” Chloe said throwing her ponytail over her shoulder.  “We’re just talking about the ten or twenty we know about willing to let you tie them up and beat them like a piñata then thank you for the privilege.”

“That sounds like a regular Saturday night for you, Chlo,” Alya grinned.

“I…I don’t know how to react to that.” Marinette scrunched her face in confusion.  “My first inclination is to say she’s exaggerating, but it’s Chloe and if anything she would underplay it.  Plus I am extremely not happy with that little insight into Chloe’s bedroom, so… I’m going to ignore this entire conversation.” Marinette said turning back to her tablet.

Adrien looked up from his notes for a few moments staring in thought at nothing, “Valid,” he nodded, turning back to his work as well.

Nino had stayed silent throughout the conversation staring instead unfocused at a spot on the floor for the past few minutes. Adrien glanced back at him with curiosity.  “Hey,” he smacked his hand into Nino’s leg, “you okay there?  You completely missed us teasing Marinette about her fans. That’s one of your favorite topics.”

“Ahhh, Laurence… yeah, that dude makes me nervous. Michel is cute though.  I could see that.” Marinette gave an affronted squawk. Nino continued without acknowledging her, “No, I was just thinking… we know Batman’s secret identity.”

“Yeah,” Adrien said uncertainly.

“And he doesn’t know ours.” Nino continued.

“Right,” Adrien encouraged still not sure where the conversation was going.

“And we have you and Chloe, both pretty famous and could easily end up at a party or event with at least one of them…” Nino mused thinking out loud.

“True.”

“So… how much can we mess with him about it without getting killed?” Nino asked raising his brow with a playful glint in his eyes.

“Dude!” Adrien exclaimed excitedly, his eyes lighting up at the thought.

“You want us to prank the Dark Knight?” Alya looked at him like he was crazy.

“Really?” Marinette deadpanned.

“Yeah, you’re right.  It is potentially fraught with danger.  We might need to bring Alix and Max in on this.” Nino nodded still thinking about how he could manage it.

Alya dropped her head into her hands, “Idiot.” She muttered shaking her head in her hands, not entirely sure if he was joking or not.  Honestly, either option was possible.

“Well, that makes you two perfect for each other,” Chloe deadpanned still focused on writing something down in her notebook missing the withering look Alya shot her.

“Okay Kim,” Marinette rolled her eyes at Nino.  She looked uncertain for a moment then pushed herself back until she was sitting on her heels and spoke hesitantly, “Or… we could discuss if we are still certain we don’t want the Batfamily here.  Are we sure we don’t want their help?”

“Yes, yes we are,” Alya replied, her voice bordering on disbelief that Marinette would even ask.  “We know what the Justice League is like.  We know what they’ve done and we have a damn good idea what they could do given half the chance.  We gave in on Constantine and look what happened.  We cannot trust them.”

“Think about the last few weeks, Marinette.  Think how much worse they would have been if those people had powers to begin with and understood the extent of their powers, how to push them, how to exploit them.  What to ask for from Hawkmoth to do the most damage?” Nino added.

“The bats don’t have superpowers.” Marinette defended.

“But they work with people who do.  They have strategized attack plans around people who have powers. They understand them and what’s most effective…” Chloe added barely looking up from her notepad.

“And they are incredibly well trained in combat and strategic planning… It would be hard enough without them having super powers. With them, we would be fucked.” Adrien added cutting in on Chloe’s statement.

“We are barely keeping up as it is.  If one of the bats of Justice League were to get akumatized…” Nino let the statement trail off, allowing everyone to use their imagination to fill in the rest.

“Exactly!  We are barely keeping up.  Do we need to consider getting help?  From someone with more experience and different skills?  From someone with experience using superpowers against an opponent?” Marinette ran a hand over her face, “I’m just… I’m getting scared. And I don’t know if that is because I’m seeing a pattern or if I’m just frustrated with where we are and desperate for any change.  And the more distance I have from it, the more I wonder if Constantine was right.  Is it time to bring someone in, but we’re just too scared to try something different?”

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by a banal, obvious statement,” she glared at Adrien, “they have a good understanding of powers, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to strategize around them, which would make them powerful akumas, or incredibly advantageous assets against an akuma.”  Everyone stared at her in surprise.  “Stunned looks terrible on you.” She said making clear she was directing it to all of them.  “The silent awe of me is appropriate though.” She said sitting back in her chair only to immediately grunt and start squirming against the fabric again.

“It isn’t just the powers, I don’t trust them, especially Batman.  If we give them half the chance, I’m afraid they will try to take the miraculous because they think they could wield them and protect them better.” Adrien admitted.  

The group took a second to let both sides of the argument sink in, unsure how to move forward.  Both outcomes could lead to horrific outcomes that nobody wanted to allow. They were all afraid and they knew they were, but like Marinette, they didn’t know if the fear was holding them back from making a mistake or from having a breakthrough.

After a few moments of quiet, Nino broke the quiet in a soothing voice, “We have no way to know which way things will tilt.  Let’s see what we get from the files and reassess then. No reason to introduce more chaos until we know what we have to work with already.  Have you found anything yet?”

“A bit.  Ugh,” she said accepting the change of topic and looking at her notebook with disgust, “this would be so much easier if the kwamis could just tell us all the possible uses of the miraculous were and the ways they could be combined.”

“Yeah, but then Hawkmoth would have known too… and Mayura and Argus.” Tikki pointed out.

“That’s a horrifying thought.  I don’t think we could have taken Hawkmoth and Mayura when we started if they had known all their options.” Adrien shuttered thinking about it.

“That’s why they created the rule that kwami could only tell the very basic powers and responsibilities.  Anything more than that can only come from the Order, so if anyone stole a miraculous, they wouldn’t be able to effectively wield it, making it easier for trained wielders to get it back.”  Trixx said.

“A bit more effective back when there was an Order and masters who actually trained wielders, but you know, times change,” Plagg shrugged with a thinly disguised disgust.

“Okay but let me just say not having known this,” Marinette turned the tablet around for them to see the image of the dragon miraculous she had been studying, “was an option is extremely upsetting.”

“Dibs!” Nino called out, jumping up from the couch before anyone else could call it.

“Fuck you, I saw it first.  I’ve got dibs.  I’ve got plans for it.”  Marinette blew him off.

“No way, you’re going to see all of them first.” Nino pouted.

Marinette grinned at him, “Guardian” she singsonged.  

Trixx floated up closer to the tablet.  “Oh that one.  Yeah, everyone likes that one.  It’s actually just a variation of the power you know already so it is a lot easier to pick up than it looks.”

Plagg floated next to her to check it out too.  “If you like that one, just wait until you find out about…” his sentence was cut off by an overflow of green bubbles falling out of his mouth, causing him to glare at nothing and everything at the same time.

“Okay enough of that.  My turn.” Chloe announced turning her laptop to display pictures of each of the Waynes and their alter egos.

Adrien leaned forward to get a closer look at the images and suddenly his eyes got huge and he gasped, “Oh my God… in the name of all that is holy and good in this world, please tell me the one in the godawful, Red Skull wannabe mask is the one you were making heart eyes at all night.  Please, please, please…” Adrien begged Marinette.

Marinette refused to meet his eyes and pursed her lips, focusing intently on the laptop.  “No comment.”

“It is him! Can I please, please be there when you ‘discuss’ that mask with him before we kick him out?” Adrien said shaking with delight at the thought of it.

Marinette glared at him, “We are going to be focusing on getting them out of Paris without drawing further curiosity or ire, not their wardrobe.” She pointed out turning to Chloe with an expectant look trying to prompt her to continue but couldn’t stop herself from whipping back toward Adrien, “And, I don’t even know if he was even interested in me at all.  It’s far more likely they are concerned about the situation than he is about getting a date.”

Chloe rolled her eyes, “You’re not that stupid, Dupain-Cheng. The honeypotting wouldn’t have worked if he wasn’t interested.”

“I did NOT honeypot him…. And I still don’t know what that means!” Marinette yelled exasperated.

“Yeah, yeah.  But I get to be there right?” Adrien implored ignoring her annoyance and still not giving her a definition.  At this point, it was a matter of pride… or comedy.  Either way, he was dedicated to never telling her what it meant.

“Oooooo and me too,” Alya jumped in.

“You should just leave your com on so we can all hear.” Chloe commented with feigned disinterest.

“We should put it on speaker.  The kwamis will want to hear it too.” Nino agreed with a grin.

“I hate all of you,” Marinette grumbled crossing her arms in front of her as she pouted.

Adrien chuckled at her before putting her out of her misery, “Okay, Chlo.  What did you figure out?”

“So, I focused on Bruce Wayne, Richard Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne.  I couldn’t get an identity on Spoiler and there is no public information on Cassandra Cain, who is probably Batgirl, so I could only look at her vigilante work.  But if Constantine is right, they are both still in Shanghai.  It is unlikely they would have brought them in just to talk with us.  So for tonight, they don’t matter.”  Chloe explained before continuing with her analysis.

“The rest of the Wayne family are a treasure trove of insecurities, pressure points, and triggers.  I’m just going to go over the biggest ones since we hopefully will only have to deal with them for a few minutes at the most.  These unstable assholes are definitely Hawkmoth’s wet dream. Extremely well trained and no control over their emotions.  All have extreme versions of insecurity complexes, but react differently.

“Bruce Thomas Wayne is a control freak.  His public persona isn’t much help.  As far as I can tell, most of it is a mask.  He pretends to be a drunk, irresponsible, billionaire playboy but we know he’s Batman so all that is bullshit.  What isn’t is that he is a good negotiator and actor, all of which means he can be a good manipulator and we know from his experience as Batman that he is extremely strategic.  Be suspect of anything he tells you.  His intentions appear to stem from a genuine concern with making lives better, but how much he is willing to listen to other people’s opinion of what constitutes better is questionable, especially after what we know of the Justice League’s actions. He has a history of enforcing his vision onto other people, whether they want it or not, of taking control.  He needs to be in control, or feel like he is so he can prepare for what is coming and make sure it doesn’t turn against him.

“The oldest, Richard John Grayson, has a martyr complex.  He’s so devoted to the saving people thing he became a cop in his civilian life as well, by all accounts an uncorrupt one, and that’s saying something in Gotham and Blüdhaven.  Takes on too much at one time trying to fix everything and feels responsible for every bad thing that happens, even if he wasn’t there… especially if he wasn’t there, to stop it.  If he only would have done whatever, then the bad thing wouldn’t have happened.  If only he was better, blah, blah, blah. Sound familiar?” she looks pointedly at Marinette.  “That’s his weakest spot.  He takes the blame.

“The next, Jason Peter Todd has abandonment issues.  He’s constantly waiting for people to walk away from him like his parents did.  There is something more there, I know there is, like whatever happened when he disappeared for a few years, but we don’t have access to that information. Ridiculously protective of kids on the street, I think because he essentially grew up on them himself. But, here’s the catch, he became a crime lord in order to protect them.  He is willing to go dark to protect people, so they never have to feel like he did and never have to do what he had to do.  He’s straightforward and aggressive.  He feels like everyone is going to walk away from him because he isn’t enough for them to stay.  He’s dangerous.

“The next, Timothy Jackson Drake has inadequacy issues. Wealthy, absentee parents who likely never treated him like anything more than a business asset.” She looked sympathetically at Adrien.  “He is a certified genius.  Started running Wayne Enterprises a few years ago.  He likes a challenge and is an incredible negotiator.  He likes working things out on his own.  He’s smart and curious.  He knows exactly what to ask in order to get the information he needs without you even knowing that’s what he did.  Be careful answering any questions or reacting to any statements from him.  He is constantly trying to prove himself so people will love him.  He takes any failure extremely personally because it means he doesn’t deserve love and a reminder that he isn’t who he thought he was and therefore not worthy.

“The youngest, Damian Wayne, known as the Ice Prince in Gotham, has a superiority complex.  Nobody gets close to him and nobody wants to.  He showed up in Gotham at age 10 with a fully-fledged attitude.  Everyone and everything is beneath him.  He also drives himself to extremes in order to confirm his superiority.  He insults and belittles others because he believes he should be superior to everyone around him, but he is afraid he isn’t and if he isn’t better, then he is significantly worse.”

The rest of the room looked at her sympathetically.  They all knew she wasn’t just talking about Damian. That was her up until a few years ago. She needed to believe she was better than everyone else and needed everyone around her to believe it too.  If she was better then she deserved her parents’ love.  If she had everyone else’s love, it made it easier to fool herself into believing her parents loved her as well, or blunt the feeling when she would realize just how much they didn’t.  But years of therapy, a higher purpose, and real friends that truly wanted the best for her but refused to take any shit from her, made her realize she didn’t need to be that person to deserve love.

“Also keep in mind there are likely significant trust issues going on here.” Chloe continued ignoring the looks from the rest of the room.  “There are a lot of reports of violence between Red Hood and Red Robin, Red Hood and Robin, Red Hood and… everyone actually, as well as Robin and Red Robin.  Based on fact that violence is higher immediately after a changing of the guard, I’d say the passing of the mantle from one Robin to another has never been consensual and likely contributed to their complexes.  They are held together by the thinnest of threads.  We can snap that if we need to… but I don’t think we want to go that far.  If we snap that… I don’t know how much damage that will do or if they will come back from it.” She cautioned hesitantly.

“Agreed.  I don’t want to go there.  There is plenty to use without going into the family issues, without causing irreparable damage.” Marinette concurred.  They didn’t want the Bat family in Paris but they didn’t want to destroy them either. She wasn’t willing to let herself or her team become monsters in order to stop them.  At the end of the day, they were ultimately all on the same team, they all wanted the same outcome, they just had different ways they wanted to get there… and different ideas about who got to decide that… and who should lead it…

“God these people need a hug not whatever that ‘family’ of theirs is providing each other.” Nino said aghast at the report.

“Marinette’s already on top of that, at least for one of them…” Alya smirked.

“Fuck you, bitch.” Marinette narrowed her eyes at her.

“I’m on top of that one,” Nino grinned, raising his hand.

“Oh God.  Seriously we need to investigate that brain bleach thing,” Marinette groaned squeezing her eyes shut trying to keep that image from appearing.

“Okay,” Adrien announced over everyone, “we all agree after this whole Hawkmoth thing is over, I get to kick Constantine’s ass and we all portal over to the Batcave and hug the insecure, unfairly cute, prickly, little echidnas until they feel better, right?” Adrien asked solemnly.

“Ugh, fine but I’m not hugging the gremlin.  Someone else gets that one,” Chloe called out throwing out her arms.

The room stilled as everyone else looked at each other, “Not it!” they all called at almost the exact same moment.

“Damn it,” Nino cried as he realized he had been a few seconds slower than everyone else.

“That’s what you get for being a turtle.  When the confrontation happens, I got the pampered rich kid.”  Chloe announced.  This was her area.  She knew just where to push kids like that, like her.  She knew exactly what to say to get them, her, to hit them at their most vulnerable.  To push just enough to make an impact without breaking them.

“No, Chloe.  We don’t want to tip our hand and we need you guys to stand sentry.  I want you, Alya, and Nino to hang back acting as scouts. This is likely to go bad and I need you guys in a triangular formation a block out watching for akumas.  Adrien and I will talk to them.”

“Alone?” Nino asked tentatively.  His job was to protect.  He didn’t like the idea of not being close enough to act if they should need it.

“They aren’t going to attack us, at least not physically.  And we will take an extra miraculous each.” Marinette smiled gently to placate him.

“Are you sure two is enough, m’lady?” Adrien asked curiously.

“You sure you aren’t just trying to keep it a bit more intimate for you and your boy?” Alya waggled her eyebrows.

Marinette glared at her, “Two should be enough.” She said ignoring the previous statement, “Combined with your two, we should be able to cover what we need to. It’s just the Batfamily.  We should be able to handle them with just one each even if they wanted to attack us.” She grinned at Adrien.  “Magic, gotta love it.”  

“Okay but when he calls you incompetent, which he will, you need to push back.  Point out the ways he’s failed.  He isn’t better than us, no matter what he thinks and the sooner you make him realize that, the sooner the real conversation can start.” Chloe warned.

“He is all of, what, 13?  We are not going to try to emotionally damage a child.” Nino stated flatly.

“As long as he thinks he is better than us, he won’t take us seriously.” Chloe warned.  Nino just glared back at her, not willing to give in on this.  “Fine, if you don’t want to point out his failings, then point out the most impressive things we’ve done that they haven’t.  That should suffice.  Not as effective, but it should get you there.”

“Okay, if we’re going to start discussing strategy, we’re going to need some sustenance.  Let’s get dinner ready so we can start discussing the plan for tonight,” Alya said throwing Nino’s legs off her lap.  Marinette and Nino followed her to the kitchen leaving Chloe and Adrien behind.

“You know, I noticed something with your analysis, Chloe,” Adrien started quietly keeping his eyes on their friends.

“I would hope you noticed more than just one thing,” Chloe chided him.

“Cute,” he said rolling his eyes, “Jason was the only one you said was dangerous, why is that?  

“I thought it was obvious?  The others have a limit.  I don’t know that he does.  And Marinette likes him, a lot.  He has a power to hurt her that the others don’t.  And they are very different.  They are both willing to go as far as necessary to help others, but to her that means killing herself, to him that means killing everyone else and himself,” She looked at him uncertainly, “and I’m not sure how she will react to that.”

“You think he would do that if we let him stay here?”

“I don’t know enough about him to predict what he will do.  He dialed it back to work with the bats again but… There really isn’t that much on him. I can tell you what Red Hood has done and that is bad, but not Jason Todd.  Since he disappeared, presumed dead, hell maybe he was, who knows what happens in Gotham, there is nothing on Jason Todd.  If you want me to try to predict, you can hop on down to Africa and see if you can borrow the kwami of prediction.  Until then, it’s all guesswork.  I need to see him.  See how he acts before I could even try.”

He stared at her for a few seconds a look of utter confusion on his face, “You think the kwami of prediction is in Africa?”

“Do you ever hear any miraculous related shit doing down in Africa?” she fixed him with a knowing stare.

“No,” he said cautiously

“Exactly, because they know what’s coming and they do their fucking jobs.” She winked at him and walked away.

<><><><><> 

Bruce, Jason, Tim, and Damian sat in the living area of Bruce’s hotel room in various states of suited up for the night.  They had barely had time to throw their bags in their rooms before meeting up to prepare for the night.  Damian was completely dressed and ready to go on a moment’s notice, as always more than ready to focus on business.  Bruce and Tim were in everything but their masks, choosing comfort until they had to leave.  Jason was sitting in a large chair in just his pants and shirt, attempting to look relaxed and nonchalant about them being so close to the girl he met at the gala. They were all staring at a massive screen linking them to Dick, Alfred, and Selina in the Batcave.  

“So, how’s Paris, boys?” Selina asked from her position lounging in one of the chairs.  “Meet any interesting people yet?  Jason?”  She added with a smirk.

“You know Bruce, all work and no play.  We haven’t gotten a chance to get out and meet anyone.  Doing this instead.” Jason shrugged with a practiced indifference, forcing himself to recline further back into the chair in an effort to seem casual.  

“Haven’t even gotten to see the Eiffel Tower yet?” She asked in mock sympathy.

“Oh, no, we saw it… from the plane.” Jason played along.

“You really should make sure to visit the Eiffel Tower while there, Master Bruce.”  Alfred threw in trying to downplay his amused smile.

“It’s not as impressive as you think it will be,” Tim muttered to nobody in particular.

“We’re here for a reason, Jason.  If we don’t want to lose today, we need to get started immediately…”  Bruce admonished him but upon looking up and seeing Alfred’s unimpressed look added, “We can get lunch near the Eiffel Tower tomorrow.  Better?” He looked to Alfred who switched to small smile instead.  Taking that as approval, Bruce nodded to Tim indicating they were ready for him to start his presentation.

Tim nodded to Bruce and moved to the front of the group and pulled up an image from the Ladyblog displaying five superheroes and their names on half of the screen.  “I’ve found a few local resources on the heroes we couldn’t see back home and have downloaded their contents and sent them back to you guys,” he said nodding toward the half of the screen displaying the cave, “so you can look through the information as well.  I’m not sure what is preventing the data from being accessible from America, but I suspect magic.” He glared at the screen like it personally offended him, “I hate magic.

“I’ve only had about 30 minutes to prepare so this is going to be brief.  I mainly focused on… well actually I mainly focused on figuring out the best resources for information, downloading copies of the site content, and sending a copy back to the batcomputer.  But after that, I mainly focused on figuring out who the heroes are so we know who we might run into and who to look for tonight.  

“The available information indicates a villain named Hawkmoth appeared in Paris roughly five years ago…”

“Huh. Where have I heard that before?” Jason muttered from his seat.

“… and the heroes Ladybug and Chat Noir appeared at the same time.” Tim continued a bit louder this time.  “There appear to be five regular heroes and a few heroes that appear from time to time. Here are images of the heroes we know about,” he nodded to the image on the screen.  He switched briefly to another image displaying the lesser known heroes before returning to the image of the main five heroes.  “Not every battle is caught on camera and of the battles that are caught, most of the actual fighting is not caught, making it easy to miss heroes and villains in the fight.  The resources make it clear there likely are more heroes that we don’t know about, which I would say is a definite since your girlfriend didn’t appear on any of the sites.” He nodded toward Jason who just huffed and crossed his arms in response, not willing to give him the satisfaction of a reaction.

“The primary heroes are Ladybug and Chat Noir, with Ladybug as the leader.  Those are the two we need to convince if we want any information.  We know a few identities of past heroes, including a girl who lives in this hotel, Chloe Bourgeois.  She was a bee themed heroine named Queen Bee.  Since then another bee themed heroine has appeared and is one of the 5 regulars.”

Jason narrowed his eyes at the screen, “It looks like the same person.  Could it be her in a different costume?”

“I don’t think so,” Tim answered shaking his head, “When I was looking at her page on the sites I think I saw that she has been seen at the same time as the new bee hero.  I can analyze it more when I get more time, but the local experts don’t appear to think they are.  We don’t know the identity of the new bee.”

“You think they look similar?” Dick asked incredulously.  “You’re crazy.  Their costume, hair color, eye color, height, everything is different.”  Jason looked between Dick and the image of the two bee wielders a few times.  One of them was crazy, he just wasn’t sure which one of them it was.

“Figure out where she lives then you should arrange to run into her tomorrow.” Bruce said nodding toward Tim.

Tim gave a single nod to Bruce accepting the assignment.  “There seems to have been a massive overhaul of heroes about a year into the fight.  All of the heroes except Ladybug and Chat Noir were replaced with new heroes.  No explanation was given… or maybe there is one I just haven’t found it yet.”

Damian scoffed, “There’s one villain and five or more heroes and they haven’t been able to take him down?  Pathetic. These are the people entrusted with objects capable to destroying the world?”

“I haven’t been able to get much information yet so we don’t know exactly what is going on but it looks like there is more than just Hawkmoth.  He might be a leader or mastermind behind the villains.  I’ve seen at least a few other villain names mentioned when looking up the heroes.”

“Do we think they all have a miraculous as well?” Dick asked.

“Not sure.  I haven’t gotten that far yet, but it stands to reason.” Tim nodded absentmindedly.

Jason moved closer to the screen staring intently at the pictures of Ladybug from different years.  There was something familiar about her but there was something else sitting on the edge of his consciousness, he just needed to figure out what his subconscious was trying to tell him.  His eyebrows furrowed and he narrowed his eyes trying to block out anything but the images.  His eyes widened as the realization suddenly hit him, “Mother fucker!”  He whipped around to Tim, “Do we have any indication of how old these heroes are?  They look like babies in those older pictures.”

Tim shrugged, “Haven’t gotten that far yet so, not sure.  But I glanced at a section on Ladybug and Chat Noir throughout history so at least for them, somewhere between 5 and 5000.  I should have a better idea tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to read a bit more.”  He squinted at the pictures, “You think they look young?”

“You don’t?” Jason asked incredulously.

Damian examined the images a bit harder as well.  “They do seem around my age in the first images.”

“Really?  I’m with Tim, I can’t tell either.  I can’t get a good feel for age when I look at the pictures.” Dick’s voice came over the speaker.  “That’s strange.  Their faces are at least partially exposed.  I should be able to get an idea at least.” He paused for a few seconds. “Do you think the magic is helping conceal their identities as well?”

Tim stared at the images as well, moving slowly closer to them, “Maybe,” he nodded subconsciously, “I can’t get a feel either.  The longer I stare at them the harder it is to tell anything.”

“Magic.” Bruce shook his head in disgust.  “Anything else to tell us tonight, Tim?”

Tim shook his head “Not today.  I’ll have more tomorrow.”

Bruce nodded a thanks and switched places with Tim.  Damian scowled at Tim and moved to put some distance between him and Tim.  Tim fought off rolling his eyes in annoyance, but only just managed it.  Bruce turned to the rest of the team, “Okay, as soon as we are done here, we’ll start scouting the city to see if we can make contact. We are not looking to be too subtle with this.  We want them to know we are here.  If you catch sight of them, let the rest of us know we will send someone to talk to them about a meeting later tonight or tomorrow.  I want to make this very clear.  Our goal today is to meet the local heroes and set up a meeting in the next few days in order to gather more information.   The primary mission is recon.  We have no idea what exactly is going on here or how dangerous it is.  We are not engaging tonight.  We want them to trust us, think we’re on their side, and get as much information out of them as we can, on the situation and the miraculous.”

“If we want them to trust us, we should leave the rabid squirrel here.  Or better yet, send his petty ass home.  He’s only going to cause trouble.” Jason griped, motioning toward Damian.  Tim did roll his eyes this time.  It was a stupid fight to pick.  Damian wasn’t going anywhere.  Damian wanted to come and Bruce gave in.  They were just on containment duty now, trying to minimize the damage Damian would do.

“You’ve made your feelings more than abundantly clear on the matter, Little Wing, frequently.  Damian is there now.  Deal with it.” Dick reprimanded him, tired of this conversation. Jason hadn’t gotten his way in their discussion in the Batcave.  He hadn’t gotten his way discussing it the next day.  He hadn’t gotten his way in the car on the way to the airport or boarding the plane or on the plane or deplaning or while checking into the hotel, he wasn’t going to get Damian kicked off the mission now.

“Someone needs to be there to make sure you don’t tell them all our secrets trying to impress some vapid, philistine harpy.” Damian snapped turning his back to Jason.  

It was a small miscalculation, but in this family that is all that is needed. By moving away from Tim, he had placed himself close to Jason and by turning, he had left himself open to Jason’s much longer arm reach.  Jason grabbed Damian’s cape and yanked back sharply.  “Watch your mouth, you puerile, creepy, little shit.”  Damian let out a startled grunt before landing with a loud thump on the ground.  He growled at Jason and tensed to pounce on him.

“Jason!” Bruce admonished moving between the two boys.  “Let’s focus on the mission.”

Jason rolled his eyes.  Of fucking course that would be Bruce’s reaction. “Right. Don’t want to prevent the oncoming disaster if it’s coming from inside the house.” He leaned back in the chair with a huff.  “You want to focus on the mission, Old Man?  Fine.  Coming at them with an almost full team that includes this asshole,” he motioned toward Damian, “doesn’t exactly scream ‘trust us’, does it?  Do we really want everyone to show up to this thing?  Maybe one or two of you should stay in the room.”

“Considering your girlfriend threatened to leave us bloody and broken, more is probably a safer bet.  We probably should have insisted on Dick coming as well, maybe have the girls meet us here too.  And do you really want to leave Damian unsupervised?” Tim asked with a raised brow fully facing him.  The only way to attempt to contain Damian at this point was to keep him close and Jason knew it.

“You could stay with him.  We weren’t planning on actually having a discussion tonight anyway.  That way you could get more research done and someone could watch the child.” Jason reasoned. Tim nodded in thought.  Not a bad idea at all.  He would like more time to research before they actually interacted with any of the heroes.  But it came from Jason so there must be something wrong with it.  He just needed to figure out what it was.

Damian growled at the description.  “I am not a child.”

Jason scoffed back at him, “You act like one.”

Damian jumped at him flipping midair and unsheathing his katana, landing with it a few centimeters from Jason’s jugular, “Could a child do that?”

“One just did.” Jason glowered at him, hitting the sword away.

“Jason has a point.” Dick spoke up, breaking the tension.  Damian whipped his head to Dick’s image on the screen his face giving away a flash of hurt before almost immediately schooling his expression into a blank look.

“Did that hurt to say?” Jason asked with a smirk, “It looked like it hurt. That’s okay sometimes the most satisfying things do.”

“Yeah, that’s healthy,” Tim muttered to himself.

Dick rolled his eyes and continued on, ignoring Jason, “Sending so many, especially hostile ones, looks like a power play.  It looks like you’re trying to intimidate them.”

“We are,” Damian snapped at him.

“You aren’t.” Dick corrected him. “You’re trying to get them on your side. You are trying to get them to trust you.  Not scare them.”

“We won’t all show up to meet them.  I’ll take the lead along with Tim.  Jason and Damian will hold back and watch.” Bruce clarified.  “For tonight I want everyone out and about so we can cover more ground and hopefully either run into one of the heroes or make our presence known enough to get their attention for tomorrow.”

“If this” Damian indicated all of them in the room, “is all it takes to scare them, they need our help more than we thought.”

“He didn’t say it would scare them, he said it looks like we are trying to scare them.” Jason responded with a sharp edge to his voice.

“You’re welcome to stay back in the room.” Tim offered annoyed with the conversation.

“I have information I want too” Jason growled at him.

“We are not here to get information on that woman.” Tim rebuked him.

“You aren’t” Jason muttered turning away.

“Jason” Bruce said sternly, “We are here to collect data on the miraculous and the heroes and see how much danger we and the world are in and if something needs to be done.”

“Not get you a date with a girl you don’t know and don’t even know if she is interested.” Tim taunted him.

“This is not about getting a date,” Jason defended himself.

Tim, Dick, and Damian all scoffed in unison while Bruce and Alfred gave Jason a skeptical look.  Selina sat in the background with an amused smile.  Really, the only result she was interested in from this mission was Jason finding his girl.

Jason glared at him before turning to Bruce, “I know what we’re here for…” He wouldn’t turn a date down if it should come up and if he managed to find her, he was definitely going to ask her.  But, his priority was to help her, which meant both finding her and getting information on the miraculous.  If he wanted to achieve both of his goals, he first needed to focus on that the family wanted… for now, so they would be distracted and he could focus on his other mission alone.  “What exactly were you thinking might need to be done?”

“Whatever we have to.” Bruce responded calmly but with steel in his eyes.

Jason furrowed his brows at Bruce.  That explanation was significantly more hostile than the original mission statement.  Not that he was surprised, but Bruce stating it so plainly meant he considered it a higher probability.  “That’s a far cry from the ‘we’re just gathering information’ mission you extolled earlier.” Jason gritted out.

“It’s all related.” Bruce stated.

“Why do you think we’re here, Todd?  We need to figure out if we need to acquire the miraculous and how to do so.” Damian snapped at him.

“You’re planning on taking the miraculous?” Tim rounded on Bruce, his confusion evident, having come to the same conclusion as Jason.  “You said over and over again you didn’t think we needed to worry about the girl that broke into the cave and now you’re planning on stealing their miraculous?”

“We are not going to steal their miraculous!” Jason exclaimed.  What the hell was going on?  He had thought they were making progress.  Bruce agreed to investigate and offer help fight Paris’ villain and now they were planning on taking out the heroes themselves.

“We are going to assess the situation.” Bruce clarified trying to pacify them and bring emotions down to a quiet rumbling rather than a full out roar. Completely content was never an option and Bruce knew it.

“We wouldn’t steal Green Lantern’s ring, we shouldn’t even be thinking about touching theirs.”  Jason yelled.

“We would if he were evil.” Dick reasoned, not at all surprised by the turn of events and long past getting upset when Bruce made plans like these. Bruce liked to be prepared.  The Paris heroes might not ever do anything evil. They might become allies, but that wouldn’t stop Bruce from figuring out their weaknesses and how to take them down should the need arise.

“If they were evil, Constantine wouldn’t be helping them.” Jason argued back, his face starting to turn red, “Not wanting to have you interfere doesn’t make them evil B.” Jason argued back.

“We are not planning on taking anything, but we need to be prepared if things go bad.  We don’t know enough to even begin to guess what could go wrong to cause us to step in. At this stage, we are just trying to get an idea what is going on so we can get a better idea of what to ask later so we can make a plan.” Bruce started moving toward the balcony doors as he pulled on his cowl, “Now finish suiting up.  Let’s go.”

“Oh this is going to go just fucking swimmingly,” Jason muttered under his breath as he pulled on his jacket and grabbed his helmet.  Tim hummed in agreement and started bracing for the worst, which was standard practice at this point.

   Chapter 5

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 Note: *Sigh* I honestly thought they would meet again, kinda, in this chapter, but then they didn’t, the unruly bastards.  So very sorry.  Next chapter I promise!  I swear it is the next scene.

[lizacstuff]

Can’t wait to read you thoughts on this episode. Eda and Serkan are getting engaged! ngl seeing the rings did something to me, I haven’t recovered yet.

I KNOW!!!!! I missed the rings so much. When folks were upset during the filming of 20 when it became apparent he wasn't wearing the ring anymore, I remember saying that they have to take them off so they can put them back on for real, and it will be oh so sweet when they do. Flashforward six weeks and YES!!!! Just seeing those rings again is sweet we're going to die when they actually slip them on during the next episode. I'm not attached to any of my own jewelry the way I'm attached to their rings, lmao.

As a whole this episode was very enjoyable for me.  The new writers clearly realized they needed a mood change after episode 25, and I was thrilled to see the show return to its roots. The tone felt more like the first batch of episodes than any in recent memory. What a relief. Also I've said prior to this that I suspected that where we would feel Ayse's absence was in the humor and lack of sparkle.  Well I thought this episode had plenty of both, so I stand corrected. The first Edser scene with Serkan gliding by Eda without saying a word and then having his trusty sidekick Leyla keep an eye on what they were doing outside set the light comedic tone and put everything on the right footing from the get go. 

More later on Edser, let's start with all the nonsense they use to fill the rest of the 2+ hours. 

(continue under the read more)

What in the frack is Babaanne's endgame?  Does she have one?  Is it to take revenge on Serkan? To get Eda back in her orbit? Or just to cause chaos? Or is she testing them? Not sure. 

I enjoyed the scene between mom and son, Aydan and Serkan's relationship has really become one of the best on the show, certainly better than recent Eda/Ayfer.  Which is interesting, because in the pilot they established that while Serkan may be rich with material things, he was lacking in love and emotional familial support, while Eda was poor in regards to material things, but was surrounded by love in the form of her family/friends. Though perhaps one of the greatest gifts Eda's given Serkan is an improved relationship with his mother, and the impetus to distance himself from his unloving father. While Serkan has inspired her growing independence from her aunt. 

Speaking of them, let's move on to Aydan and Ayfer. PLEASE MADE THIS CHEF NONSENSE END! Good grief. I really don't enjoy watching these two ladies making total asses of themselves over this douche. Both of them trying to catch him on his jog and then going along with his aikido nonsense. It feels like he's just playing with them for his own amusement. Both deserve better and I don't even like Ayfer. Also if my boss gave me a single red rose for being employee of the month, I'd find that both creepy and hella disappointing (crash prizes please.) 

Meanwhile Ayfer is still testing my last nerve. When Aydan and Seyfi show up and inform her that they've found out that Serkan and Eda broke up and she responds with, "Were they even together to break up?" I wanted to slap her upside the head. Whatever official relationship status Eda and Serkan have, they have been connected and in a romantic relationship this entire time. The bit of time jump at the start of 15 before she goes back to work for Efe, is really the only section of time since they've met where they weren't in a relationship. And while Eda isn't all that forthcoming with Ayfer when it comes to Serkan, she hasn't really hidden it well. It was at Ayfer's birthday when they were on the ice together being very romantic, Ayfer was at Aydan's 70s party and could very well see Eda and Serkan attached at the hip all night and wound around one another intimately slow dancing, Ayfer knows Eda spent the night at Serkan's when she left because of Babaanne, Ayfer was at the NY party and saw them together there. Not to mention Ayfer knows Serkan saved her business and why, she knows Serkan was still wearing his ring, and she knows Eda looked completely shattered over leaving Serkan as Ayfer heartlessly reacted with glee in the last episode. 

So asking "were they even together" just completely diminishes what Eda is currently going through, as if parting with him is no big deal because there was nothing there to begin with, when she knows better. When she's seen it with her own two eyes. Seriously.. fuck her. Every other character who is a friend of Eda and Serkan all know that they're a unit. I don't even feel bad that she came to ArtLife to beg for Eda's company, but Eda ended up blowing her off. Surprising Serkan with a proposal was a much better use of her time.

Engin and Piril, yeeesh, I feel for Piril, trying to put off this meeting. I'm sure she's thinking it's for Engin's own good, but her flipping into total bitch mode when they're newlyweds... not great. Not an auspicious start to the marriage. Even if she wants to keep Engin away from her father, she ought to confide in Engin and tell him why she's freaked. I'm assuming we'll get more of that in the next episode since Engin is looking rough in those promo stills. 

My favorite side plot was probably Grandog's henchman's (what is his name?) crush on Melo. Melo deserves to be crushed on, and I love that she is so uninterested that she doesn't see it.  Much more fun to have him chasing her, and her being oblivious. Poor Leyla, trying in vain to get his attention when he only has eyes for Melo. Enjoyed that Melo and Leyla made the agreement that Melo would help Leyla get the dude and Leyla would help get rid of Erdem. I'm looking forward to see where this goes. 

Ceren and Ferit... were there too. 

Now onto the A story (and let's be real the only one that matters) Eda and Serkan. Obviously 25 left us off in a very sad, heartbroken place. I'm not sure what decisions were made, when or why, but at some point TPTB decided they needed to get back to their roots and thank goodness. Episode 25 was just so dark, Eda was miserable the entire episode, as was Serkan, and that's not fun to watch for 2 hours. The way they handled them here is much better. 

I know some feel the tone shift was too much. To that I would say, it was so dark in ep 25, I'm happy to do a 180, no matter the reason, to get back to a place where watching is fun, and also I think of the breakup as Eda throwing the breaks on a runaway train and once she did, and she was sure the train was stopped at least for the time being, then she could take a moment, reassess the situation and potentially decide it wasn’t as dire as she thought. In the last episode, every moment Eda delayed giving that old bitty what she wanted, something catastrophic befell Serkan, his business, or his family. The pressure mounted, the stakes were high and in the end she had to do whatever was necessary to stop Babaanne's assault on Serkan. 

This episode we saw her catch her breath and then formulate a plan. I think a tone shift fits with that. Of course she feels lighter knowing that even though she hurt Serkan, he's protected for the moment. Now that that's taken care of, she's ready for next steps. So it works that the next morning we see her telling Melo and Ceren that she's not going to give up Serkan, and outlining her plan around getting close to Babaanne in order to get something on her. Good girl!  

As I said above, I just adored that first scene outside ArtLife. The girls gathered around, trying to warn Eda that Serkan was coming, and then his walk by where he KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING when he got right up in Eda's business without even looking at her.  He knows what makes her weak in the knees. And I love that Serkan decided to play it like this. HE KNOWS. He knows she loves him, he knows there's more to the breakup, and he knows how to deal with it. Drive her crazy until she cracks and tells him everything. OR drive her crazy until they end in a passionate, possessive sex explosion. One or the other.  

Quick poll, who didn't love watching Serkan take back the reigns of his company? This gal did. YAAAAAAAAAAASSSSS. Alpha Serkan is back. Kick the old bag's throne to the curb. Kick the old bag's creepy client to the curb. Now we just have to kick the old bag and her deranged, obsessed sidekick to the curb as well.  But for now, I loved seeing him at the end of the table, making decisions, not brooking opposition. The team squabbling over his decision, but he just sits back, unbothered. Total power move. I appreciate Ferit questioning the decision, questioning it is the right thing to do in his position, but he may have gotten a little too pissy about it. Dude, this entire company IS Serkan. The success of the company is due to his talent, his vision, his business acumen. I get they're all worried he's making a decision because of Eda, but he's got a proven track record of, you know, being right, so there's no reason to get shirty. If Serkan doesn't want to work with someone, his instinct is probably on target.

Eda getting Babaanne to stand down warmed me from the inside out. I find it interesting that she used the argument that they were pushing him too hard and he didn't deserve it, and Babaanne bought it. For one I think Eda was worried Serkan was going to snap and do something that might start Babs' Bolat revenge cycle again. For two, she just wants the love of her life to win and be calm. However, if anyone in that room didn't catch onto what happened there, that Eda and BigB leave and then come back a minute later and BigB has done a 180, I question their competence. *cough* Ferit *cough* He's just not the sharpest tool in the shed. However, obviously, Serkan knew. 

On another note, they've gotten pretty murky with the line between ArtLife and the holding.  Babaanne has 45% of the Holding, not ArtLife. Ferit has 5% of the holding, not ArtLife. So which company was working with the Prince?  Since it was a project to design a house, seems like that should be ArtLife? But Babs and Ferit seemed to think they had a vote which they shouldn't if it's ArtLife.  Who knows... whatever. 

Have you ever seen anything cuter than Eda in her coat and boots and protective helmet, leaning over, clutching her chest, exhausted after climbing all those stairs?  I mean she's an adorable bean just bent over and huffing and puffing, but the fact that she just climbed up goodness knows how many flights of stairs (judging by that view, an impossible number, but we'll allow it) just to see Serkan?  We giggle at her excuse that she did that because he gave her too much work. Eda, he's not going to buy that, luckily none of us want him to buy it. These two, they can't stay away from each other. Ever. She was also probably worried after the foreman told her he'd been up there for hours. Again, I think she's concerned that she's pushed him too far. So now she's in Serkan's shoes after the first breakup. Navigating that push pull of wanting to be with him, but sticking to the decision to end it for his sake. 

It's nice to see that her claustrophobia was not "cured" after going up in the elevator with Serkan one-time. On her own, she's still not able to face it. I'm sure she could do it again with him, but there's more work to be done before she can face it without him. 

Serkan was surprisingly vulnerable in both his conversation with Engin and with Eda on the top of that skyscraper. Even just telling Engin he was too out of sorts to join him for lunch, tells us that while he knows what he's doing, he knows there's more to the story, but he's still hurting and unsettled after the breakup. Then, "I create to make people happy, but I myself can't be happy. It's strange." Oh Serkan. I think you ripped my heart out with that... Eda's too. 

Eda was so discombobulated by Serkan's attitude. Whatever she expected from him, his acceptance of the break up, wasn't it. His proposal that they be "friends" threw her and she looked so distressed when he said, "Everyone will live their own life." Alarm bells started going off for her, much as they did for him at the top of ep 19 when Eda said she was going to start living her life. She did NOT like the idea of Serkan Bolat out there living a life that didn't include her, lmao. 

It's crazy to me that Eda has a friend like Fifi, who probably breaks and enters for a living, and yet she chooses Melo for a clandestine operation. Come on, Eda, you got to choose the right person for the job, lmao. I also question Eda's choice of cat burglar wardrobe. Seemed a bit... restricting and flashy. Though her skin-tight, snakeskin breaking-and-entering dress and fashionable trespassing boots did make it easier to transition to fine dining and driving your man towards rambunctious breakup/makeup/jealousy sex.  Not much to say about the restaurant scenes. The prince is creepy af, and was that the most awkward dance.... ever? The looks back and forth between Edser were excellent, so much tension and longing and jealousy. But boy is it hard to watch a scene with Balca in it, ugh she makes my skin crawl and I don’t even like looking at her. Also the deliberate way the actress has chosen to speak is irritating. Anyway, we now know Balca is pretty much capable of anything, if she’s capable of essentially poisoning the man she thinks she loves. Yikes. Did Nana realize that Balca poisoned him? I have to believe she did, because him being sick seemed part of the plan. THEY'RE ALL FULL EVIL!!! .

One thing I don't believe is that Eda Yildiz would ever walk out of that restaurant with Serkan looking that bad. No way she leaves him to Balca's care, or anyone else's for that matter. Nope, regardless of who was watching she would have insisted on taking him to the doctor herself.  But I get they were setting up the plot, so they sacrificed that bit. 

These villains are really bad at driving a wedge between two people who love each other. AngryGran is all like, "I know a foolproof plan, let's put them in the same room and get 'em all riled up with jealousy, then make Serkan sick so Eda's worried, then I'll convince her to go check on him and let's see what happens!" LMAO. Cheers to you, dumbasses, you brought us a whole heaping plate full of S.E.X. They were really banking that Eda was going to fly off the handle and think that Serkan went from an allergic reaction to sexing up the new obsessed employee very quickly. It's great that they all underestimate Eda and Serkan's relationship and connection, that should continue to help Edser as long as these fools continue to meddle. 

Eda was, wait for it, LEGENDARY, in her smackdown of Balca. QUEEEEEEEN. I'll never be over the, "You can only be with a statue of Serkan, darling." BWAHAHAHAHA. Yes! Throw her creepy, inappropriate present back in her face. And Balca's gall asking Eda to leave and then continually lecture Eda that they'd broken up. That takes either big cajones or huge helpings of delusion, because Balca has very little information when it comes to their relationship, yet she's playing her hand like she knows it all and like she doesn't care what gets back to Serkan. However, got to hand it to Balca for keeping her composure once Eda saw through her little staged production, because her story was painfully weak. Let's say for real that you're at your boss's house, the boss is sick so you're hanging around downstairs by yourself just to make sure everything is okay. What's the problem with just... you know... wearing your outfit with a coffee stain?  Unless you had a massive big gulp sized coffee and poured it over your head, why even change? Don't you just... live with the stain? It's not like you're making a presentation to the board of directors in 5 minutes.  For the love of god you're sitting there and no one else is around. Weak alibi.  

Poor Serkan, he's just there trying to sleep off having his allergies maliciously triggered, and he completely misses out on the love of his life fighting for him downstairs. Oh how he would have loved to see that. But oh what a way to wake up, with Eda Yildiz standing over him, looking magnificent, and rousing him with a scolding tone. I've already talked about how HOT the jealousy and possessiveness was here, so I'll focus on the scene itself. 

Let’s talk about the fragman first. Due to the short production timeline of this show, when they create a trailer they're doing it from the dailies, not from the show itself. That part of the show usually hasn't even been edited yet so the fragman exists before the episode. That means often there are scenes or angles that appear in the fragman, but not in the episode. It happened bigtime with the shower scene in 19, it happened randomly with the fragman for 20, they showed that really great shot of heartbroken Serkan in red, but didn't show the full thing in the episode, (when giffing it I had to use the fragman) and here, several of the best shots of Eda and Serkan ripping each other's clothes off were in the fragman and didn't make the episode. We can live with it for a lonely Serkan shot, but it's quite a bait and switch in this instance. Especially when pretty much every member of the cast (except Hande, Kerem didn't post anything either, but he did appear in that IGlive where the cast mercilessly teased him about it) promoted the scene. Not cool. I realize that they're dealing with sensors and may have had to cut things in order to avoid fines and such, but then they probably should have found a way to release the uncut scene on the internet as I've read other Turkish shows have done and like they did with episode 13. If you're gonna put something like this in the fragman to entice viewers, and have the cast promote it, you need to be willing to deliver. Badly done on the part of both Fox and MF Yapim.

That being said, one of the great things about the tighter restrictions this show has to adhere to, is they really show the intimacy instead. On an American show, these characters would have started eating each other's faces off and then tumbled into bed. There is something very hot, though, about them just invading each other's space, breathing each other's scent, nose to nose, nose to neck, nose to cheek... without breaching. Plus we got to see him carry her to the bed... even if they darkened it to the point you can barely see. I saw enough. HOT. The scene was short, but more tantalizing than lots of love scenes I've seen.

I was sad she left while he still slept in the morning. For him not to feel her get out of bed, she must have worn him out! It really would have been nice to see them wake up together, but I'm sure that will come. Plus it gave us the tension filled scene in the office. The knocked over lamp in the background was a delicious detail. Things got rambunctious! I'm glad Eda got to return the sentiment that only she can touch him, if only Serkan had heard it! Another thing that would have made him so happy if only he knew about it.

Melo is all of us upon learning about their night of passion. She's a whole cheerleader for them, and I love it. 

The post-sex scenes at the office were amazing. For several seconds I thought that he really did think it was a dream. Panic started to set in until she admitted she'd had it too. Phew. No hiding for Eda. I'm glad he flirted, instead of getting offended, and that she was at least honest about there being something she needed to do before they could really be together. Eda also handled the office conversation with Balca well. Love that she didn't show any reaction to her claim about Paris, just wished her a good trip. I felt that deep breath she took before going into his office. Yes, girl, calm down before you march in and accuse him of something, good thing he immediately invited her. I just about melted at, "I don't want to argue... you're precious to me." Serkan is gradually learning how to head off her fits of pique. 

The proposal... I... just... okay... my heart... I need a minute... still not over it. 

It was perfect. She made a surprise for him!!!!  After he asked her for a surprise a few episodes ago she did it and surpassed even his wildest dreams. It was quite a surprise for us too! Thank you for not spoiling it, show!  Serkan has told Eda he loves her about 3 dozen different ways, he's made it clear how he feels and what he wants ("Eda Bolat, sounds nice."). There is no doubt that he was ready to propose the moment he felt she'd be receptive, so it was wonderful that she threw caution to the wind and did it. Both Serkan and the audience needed to see exactly how much she loves him, and this was a wonderful way to do that. It's pretty much the biggest thing she could have done.  Also for those of us in other parts of the world (I'm in the US) it might not be too out of the ordinary for a woman to propose, but from what I understand it's rare and possibly non-existent on Turkish shows. That's pretty cool.

Did you see his face!?!? He was so happy at first when he registered that she was actually standing in front of him and then just totally gobsmacked when he saw the rings and realized what was happening. As for Eda, she was just glowing. GLOWING. And don't even get me started on the plane. That trip on the day after they met is such an important part of their love story and the call back here is wonderful. The first time around he thought she was there for him, this time he can't believe that she's there for him.  

Can't wait to see the way the full conversation/proposal plays out, do ya'll think he'll say yes? (hee)

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 23

��Erica,” I ask her, “what the fuck are you doing?”

“Shut up,” she tells me, glancing behind her. I hear movement and then Marcus comes into view. He has a slim pistol gripped in his hand and casts a wary glance around the interior of the Cord before his eyes fall on the Sergeant’s prone form, laying just ahead of us.

“Is he dead?” he asks.

Erica prods at him with her foot gently. The Sergeant doesn’t move. I glance over at Elena; she is staring at his dead body with an unmistakable look of horror. I’ve never seen her look scared before.

Erica’s gun is still trained loosely on us but without it pointing directly at me I begin to relax a little. Her hand, I notice, is shaking a little.

My heart is still pounding and there is a heavy, queasy sensation whenever I look at the Sergeant’s body, but I shut it out, don’t even begin to process it. I can see the golden gleam of the other bullets in the revolver’s cylinder, pointed at me, blunt and shark-nosed. I can feel myself trembling lightly, adrenaline and exhaustion and grief all welling up inside of me.

“You aren’t going to get away with this,” Elena says, and Erica rolls her eyes.

“Can we have a little less from the peanut gallery?” she asks. “Hand over the crystal and nobody else is going to get hurt.”

There is a moment of frozen silence before Elena and I both blurt out our responses to this ludicrous request at the same time. “The crystal?” I ask. “You know about the crystal?”

“Nobody else?” Elena asks. I can feel her fists clench next to me and I have to resist the urge to reach over and hold her back. “Nobody else?” she repeats. “You didn’t have to fucking shoot him!”

“I’m not here to get in a goddam argument,” Erica growls, prodding the barrel of the revolver into Elena’s chest. I eye Marcus warily; our eyes meet for a moment and he looks away, glancing over at Erica, but his pistol remains trained on me.

I can see Elena thinking about it, as she looks down at the pistol. Erica has committed one of the cardinal sins of holding someone at gunpoint – you never actually touch them with the gun. Or touch them at all, really, if you can help it. Every point of contact between them and you is a conduit for information – they’ll be able to tell the way you’re moving, how distracted you are, might even be able to guess how willing you are to actually pull that trigger if you try something.

And it can be a point of attack. During my Karate years in Oklahoma we did a section on realistic encounters – what to do if someone pulls a knife on you, pulls a gun on you, and so on. If they’re holding it close to you and you are very, very quick, you can snap your hands down from where you’re holding them up and empty-palmed and jerk the gun away, maybe even get it into your hands. I don’t know what hand-to-hand training in the Coast Guard or in the park ranger service was like, but if even I know the technique Elena probably knows something similar.

And she will also know that it isn’t something you can ever realistically pull off. The person with the gun has to be distracted, or possibly just disabled, not to be able to react in time. There’s a reason Ali always told us in class, very seriously, that if someone was holding us up to mug us, to just give them what they wanted. “You are not,” he said, “going to be faster than someone’s index finger moving a couple of centimeters. You will die, unless you are very lucky. If they want something, give it to them. If they’re going to kill you, though,” he said, waggling his finger at us, flashing that brilliant smile, “it’ll be better than nothing.” Then we practiced headlocks and sleeper chokes.

So even though I can see Elena’s hands flexing with an unconscious urge to rip and choke and get us out of this situation, she doesn’t move a muscle. I see her glance over at me, just a flicker, like checking a pulse, making sure I’m still here, I’m not panicking.

“Hand it over,” Erica repeats, glancing between us. I am very curious to find out how she expects us to just give her a crystal that’s roughly the weight and shape of a refrigerator, but maybe she doesn’t know how big it is. How the hell does she even know about it to begin with?

Makado. Somehow I know it must have been through Makado, one way or another. If she was willing to tell me, she’d potentially be willing to tell someone else, someone even more of a security risk than I am.

I remember Peter telling me, what feels like ages ago now, that the cult was harmless. Just a bunch of broken people trying to get by.

“We don’t have it,” I tell Erica. “It was a mess down there, an ambush. If you want it, go get it.”

Erica’s eyes are very cold. I can practically see the gears working as she measures what I’ve said. Elena edges slightly closer to me and the feeling of her there at my side is a comfort, but I am just praying that Erica isn’t cold-blooded enough to just shoot the two of us right now that she knows we don’t have the crystal.

Erica finally tells Marcus to search us, and he does so, tossing all of our various tools and gear into a small pile on the floor. I hear the lens of my camera shatter when he drops it and I can’t help but wince. He doesn’t pat us down very proficiently besides searching our pockets and our bags, which makes me reassess my initial assumptions – maybe this isn’t something that had a lot of planning put into it? Or at least she definitely couldn’t have been expecting to run into us here.

I look Erica over, head to toe. She’s dressed in hiking gear, but loosely – long shirt, long pants, but fairly thin. Without a climate controlled suit the humidity would be the real danger. Marcus is dressed similarly; I can’t tell for sure but I think he must have changed clothes at some point after he got into the Pit, changed into something more suitable for a long stay. And there must have been – well, what would he have eaten? Just – carved out bits from the walls? No way. Even if you were a certified card-carrying badass on a mission you’d have brought your own food. And Marcus does not strike me as the disgruntled ex-Army-Ranger type. Even just the way his hands traced over me with extreme delicacy and hesitation when he’d searched me made me think that taking captives must be an entirely new experience for him, and not one he’s comfortable with.

No, Erica is improvising. Which makes her more dangerous, especially if she gets desperate.

So let’s not make her get desperate.

“We’ll take you back down to get it,” I suggest. Erica looks over from her huddle with Marcus. Well, half a huddle, both still turned towards us, watching cautiously, guns still aimed at us but fingers off the triggers now. Elena nudges me and looks at me like I’m crazy but I shoot her a look that I hope says ‘trust me.’

“I thought you said it was an ambush?” Erica asks. “Down in the barrows?”

“Well, yes, but –“

“What, do you want us to go down there just to get eaten by copepods?”

“Do you want the crystal or not?” I shrug. “Doesn’t bother me none.”

She looks at Marcus. His face is tight and unreadable. “We’ll go down and check,” she says, nodding. “We’ve come all this way, it’d be stupid not to.”

“What about them?” he asks.

“Look,” Elena says urgently, “the Sergeant had a tracker PDA in his bag. It’ll show you exactly where the crystal is. Just take it and follow it and we’ll leave and pretend we never saw you.”

I resist the urge to bury my face in my hands. Elena’s got plenty of strengths but negotiation isn’t one of them.

Erica laughs at that suggestion and informs us that she has a better idea.

“Why don’t I,” she asks, rummaging through the pile of gear and coming up with a short length of rope, “tie you two up, and then you’ll lead us down to get the crystal? Or,” she says, brightening, “how about I get rid of one of you first –“

Elena stiffens next to me, but all I can feel is a cold hard knife-edged anger slicing at me. I look at Erica, really look at her, force her to look at me, cram all of the casual hate I can into my gaze and throw it at her. “You’ll have to kill both of us, then,” I tell her. “Because if you kill her, I’m going to do the best I can to lead all of us straight into a copepod’s mouth. And if you kill me –“

Elena picks up where I left off, a little more bloody-minded: “and if you kill her,” she finishes, glancing over at me, “I’m going to do whatever I have to do to tear your throat out with my teeth before you put me down too.”

I have to stop myself from smiling when I hear her say that; I content myself with nudging a little closer to her as well so that our hips touch. That will have to be enough for now.

Erica has faltered a little. Even though she’s still got the gun, hell, she’s got two guns on her side, she isn’t certain. You can see it in her eyes. She draws back, then tries to save face. Predictable. “I was just – I wasn’t going to actually do it,” she says.

There is something very strange going on here. This is too disorganized to be a real attempt to – to what, steal the crystal from us on the way back up? No way. Even if she’d brought the material and equipment needed to actually transport it without the use of Joker, she’d still have to contend with what should have been a full squad of combat-trained rangers, plus two useless hangers-on (me and Euler). She’d have had to have brought enough people to outgun us, and even then it’d be dicey in tight quarters like these, especially if the people she brought weren’t familiar with the Pit.

This – her and Marcus – can’t be it. It simply can’t. Even if she thinks that the crystal could fit in her pocket she would still have to take it from us. This is something opportunistic, something important to her for some reason, important enough to throw her entire life away for a shot at, for a crazy shot at, for a Hail Mary at the buzzer.

I turn and look down the Cord, at the sparking depths of it, at the rows and rows of spiral-staircase encasing it. I wonder where Fumi is, what Fumi’s doing, whether he’s okay. Maybe it was cowardly for him to run but I’m glad that he did, I’m glad that at least he got out of this okay. For the moment anyway.

She’s going to make us go back down. There’s no way around it. I can feel myself sagging at the thought of it, at the thought of going back down there and seeing with fresh eyes all the death that’s waiting down there. I had kept it together admirably well up until now but I can feel myself clenching, I can feel myself freezing up, shying away from even thinking about it like if I don’t it won’t be able to touch me. I want to close my eyes and cry, for Euler, for the Sergeant, for Ellis, for Slate and Crookshank and all the others that are down there even still, I want to just heave out sobs until I can’t any more and I’ll be empty. Being empty sounds good right now but I’m not and I can’t be.

I wonder for a brief moment whether this is what PTSD is, whether I’ve been damaged somehow, and then my lip curls without any conscious effort and I can feel myself tighten, drag myself back upwards like chains ratcheting along my spine.

“Fuck it,” I say. Everyone looks round at me and I realize that I’ve said it a little louder than I meant to. Ordinarily I’d shrink and get embarrassed but I have gone through so much shit lately that I feel an uncharacteristic willingness to take up space, to be violent. I am tired.

I look at Erica again. “If this crystal is so fucking important we’ll go back down and you can look at it and admit that it was a stupid idea to go down there and then we can come back up. Alright? But don’t you ever point that fucking gun at her,” I say, pointing to Elena. “No, fucking look at me, I’m serious. I don’t give a shit. You don’t know this terrain, you don’t know this area, and even if you’ve been here before you don’t know the lay of the land right now. You need us, both of us, so give us a little fucking respect. We’ll fucking guide you down there but treat us like fucking human beings, you bitch.”

Erica’s eyes are very wide, and it is very, very quiet as my voice fades into the dull, thick air. Then her eyes go slatey and hard and she strikes me across the face. I see it coming and could have blocked it but I stopped myself, which is a little harder than it sounds, because the instinct when you can see a blow like that is to either dodge it or put your hands up, but she’s still got the gun.

I can feel the butt of the revolver smack into my cheekbone and there’s a starburst of pain there. I stagger back a little, bumping into Elena, and then she is holding me. I can hear her growling at Erica, calling her a bitch, but Marcus points his gun at her and she quiets a little. Then Erica hauls me to my feet. Her nails are digging into my shoulder painfully and I cry out softly. She digs the barrel of the gun into my gut and the feeling of it is like icewater. My hands are shaking and no matter how hard I try I can’t stop them.

I begin to realize that I may have made a mistake.

“No,” Erica snarls, “you listen to me, you little shit. You are in no position to make any fucking demands. You’re going to lead us down there and thank us profusely if we decide not to end your miserable lives once we’ve got the damn crystal. You understand?”

Her hand tightens further around my throat – when did she start choking me? – and I croak something out, but I am too busy panicking to realize whether or not I actually meant to form words or if I just let out a mindless squeak of fear.

One thing karate in a dojo will not teach you is how to handle imminent mortality. Nobody who learns karate expects to ever actually need to use it. Karate isn’t even a real way of fighting – it’s more of a sport, something for lazy dojo tigers to pad around showing off, sparring for points. The grabs and chokes and defenses I know are more MMA than anything else. What’ll karate, pure karate, do to help in a real fight? Are you going to throw a spin kick at somebody? Please.

I can’t breathe. I bat ineffectually at Erica’s face and her shoulders but she doesn’t even bother to stop me. Finally, after what seems like forever, she lets go and I fall to the ground in a huddle, coughing and gasping. Elena is there, curled over me protectively, glaring daggers at Erica, and even Marcus is eyeing her a little warily.

“You could have fucking killed her!” Elena spits, and a little of that uncertainty returns to Erica’s eyes, or at least I think it does – mine are still a little bleary. When I can blink the tears from them and look at her again she seems utterly unruffled.

“Tie their hands,” she says to Marcus, and after only a moment of hesitation he does so, and then we are making our slow, awkward, armless way down the Cord, back towards the barrows.

 * * *

 “We need a break,” Elena points out again, and again Erica does nothing but click her tongue and urge us onward, gesturing with the barrel of the revolver. Not only has Marcus bound our hands but he’s also tied us together, making it so that Elena and I are linked by only a couple feet of paracord. It’s been biting roughly into my wrists for the last couple of hours and if this keeps up I’m going to have ugly welts because of it. Erica and Marcus have both relaxed a little, especially since they’ve gotten rid of all of our gear. She got Elena to show her how to work the Sergeant’s tracker, and I almost cried when they had to flip him over in order to take it from his bag. The look of stunned surprise frozen on his face was so gentle and unlike him that it almost made him look like a different person entirely.

I don’t even know why I was crying – he was an asshole, for sure, but there was something, I don’t know, something meaningful to him that made me think that there were reasons. And of course there are always reasons that people end up acting like that but sometimes people end up being so crabbed and gnarled and nasty that you don’t want to find reasons to unpeel them from themselves and look at the kind of person they are really. The Sergeant I would have liked to have sat down and had a drink with and gotten to know, just for pure raw opportunistic curiosity.

I didn’t even have the luxury of closing his eyes for him, because as soon as Erica had retrieved the PDA and browbeat Elena into showing her how to work it – oh, how my blood boiled as she called Elena a bitch and a cunt and worst of all fucking stupid just because she kept fumbling with the login screen and getting her account on the PDA to track the crystal as well – we were off and marching, leaving the Sergeant sprawled there, staring up dead and empty at the cold metal-capped ceiling.

I don’t have it in me to feel angry, I don’t have it in me to hate. That will come later. Right now I’m too tired. I am too damn sour at myself for reading Erica wrong. I thought I could cow her, I thought that even though she had the gun she’d back down. At the very least we wouldn’t be tied up, even if we were marching all the way back down to the barrows on a pointless errand that might get us killed.

Once we’re down at our stop on the Cord and out and walking down the long, damp path down to the barrows, Elena turns around, fixes Erica with a glare. I can still see a cold light of hatred burning somewhere deep down inside of her cool grey eyes and for a moment I feel frightened for her, I feel momentarily terrified that she’s going to try something and get herself shot and I – I –

“What’s this crystal to you?” she asks Erica, and I swallow hard and glance back at Erica as well, waiting to see what she’ll say, if she’ll even give us a straight answer. I look at her and those dark eyes stare back at us. She is – I will give her this, she’s determined. She has set her mind to doing this, whatever the hell this is, and she’s going to be willing to throw us all away if she has to. You can see it in the set of her jaw, in the way her eyes rake us like an eagle’s claws. “What’s the point of all this?” Elena continues. Erica’s nose wrinkles lightly. I wonder if she’ll even bother trying to win us over, whether she’ll figure that her having shot the Sergeant will have turned us against her permanently.

Erica nods to Marcus and he unties us and we all huddle there for a while against the side of the corridor, sit down in the sopping squelch of it, too tired to care. Erica leans against the ribbed wall of the vent and looks down along its depths towards the barrows. She’s still holding the revolver but at least it isn’t pointed at us.

Elena leans in to me and rests her head on my shoulder and I kiss the top of her head, and I feel her smile faintly, but it vanishes fast. This isn’t going how I wanted at all. I want to say something to her, I want to kiss her and tell her it’s going to be okay. She’s so tough but she’s so scared, I can tell she’s scared, and I want to show her that I can be tough too. That I am more than an anchor. But doing that in front of Erica and Marcus would feel ��� dirty, somehow. Uncomfortable. I itch at the thought of it. So instead I sit there very still and let her rest her head on me and let that be enough.

“My husband was there four years ago,” Erica says, and we both look up at her. Marcus doesn’t look interested, clearly he knows this story, he’s heard it before. “At the disaster,” Erica clarifies.

She waits for a moment, maybe to see whether or not we’ve got any response. Elena and I stay quiet, no ‘oh really’ or ‘no way.’ If she wants us to be buddy-buddy with her she’s straight out of luck.

“You know what that crystal is, don’t you?” she asks, and Elena snorts. I would as well but the welt on my cheek from where she got me with the butt of the revolver hurts too much whenever I move my nose.

“I do,” Elena says. “Do you?”

Erica laughs. There isn’t much humor in it. “I don’t think you do. I think I know much better than you do.”

“Explain it to us, then,” Elena tells her, and I nod in agreement. The longer we can keep her talking, hopefully, the longer we’ll be able to rest.

“My husband Burt,” Erica says, “was a ranger here at the park. And he was here in 2007. But he wasn’t the ordinary type of ranger, he worked at the one place in this park that required a security clearance.”

Elena frowns. “I don’t know what –“

“You see,” Erica continues, “when they found the Pit back in the 70s, they found ritual grounds too. Old places, places that the indigenous tribes had been using for centuries to commune with the Pit. This place,” Erica gestures widely, “is alive. It feels and reacts. It thinks.”

Elena snorts again, a little softer this time. “In the ritual grounds there were crystals exactly like the one you were sent down to find, only carved and shaped so that if someone who knew what they were doing hit them with a strike in just the right way, they’d resonate. And that resonance could influence the Pit. Make it calm down if it were starting to wake up, make it wake if it were sleeping. Calm the wildlife, make it possible to live down here without any danger. Or send them into a frenzy.”

“Sounds like magic,” I murmur, but without much conviction. Makado, in that hurried briefing after Slate had died, had said something a little similar. I look at Erica, meet her eyes. “Did your husband work on the – the contingency plan?”

That catches Erica up for a moment, but she nods, glancing over at me. Her eyes, I notice, linger for a moment on the swollen mark on my cheek. “Yes,” she says finally. “Yes, he did. And he was there when they broke the crystals. See, I figure someone, Veret probably, told you about the crystal and why they want it. But nobody would have told you about what exactly the crystal did when it was broken.”

“Well, it – it put the Pit to sleep.”

“Yes,” Erica nods. “Yes, it did. But did they tell you what it did to the people there? Some of them, at least.”

Elena frowns. She starts to say something but I nod. “Peter told me,” I say. Elena is giving me a very confused look. “Not all of it,” I add, “but enough to piece together the parts. I hadn’t known it was breaking the crystal that had done it, but I could guess.”

“What - ?” Elena starts.

“It’s a – when they shattered the crystals it caused something like a contagious psychic plague,” I tell her, glancing at Erica. “From what Peter told me it sounded like it would gradually erode your self-control and make you want to come to the Pit, to come down into the Pit and, well, I don’t know what happened to them once they got in. I don’t think Peter did either. And if you weren’t able to get to the Pit you’d get to a point where you’d be spreading it to everybody you were near just – just mentally, I guess. I know it sounds like bullshit but it’s true, I swear it’s true.”

“But if that’s true why was Peter smuggling people in? It must have been people with that – with that disease,” Elena says. “Why didn’t he try to help them? I mean, Christ, people without any preparation, sick people, down here in the Pit, they wouldn’t last a fucking day. That’s –“

“Because the cure,” I tell her, “has a good chance of completely wiping out your personality,” I tell her, and she quiets. She believes me, I think, she has to believe me. Or if she doesn’t believe me she trusts me, at least. I don’t give myself time to feel warm and fuzzy about it. “That’s what Peter told me, anyway. He was one of the lucky ones.”

“He had this disease?” she asks, glancing over at me.

“Yes,” Erica says. “He did. Roan’s pretty much right about the details. Peter was lucky.”

“So he and Makado decided it would be better to just smuggle people in? Let them go down there to die?”

I can tell by the look on her face that Elena thinks this would be just as bad. I shrug. I can feel the exhaustion in the weight of my shoulders. “Peter told me that there’s a point where it becomes contagious, right before you die of it. But if you’re in the Pit, that doesn’t happen, there’s no contagiousness. That’s why they were letting them in.”

“That seems awfully convenient,” Elena remarks, and I shrug.

“I don’t know if it’s true,” I say, “that’s just what Peter told me.”

“Surely there would have been a better way -“

“Peace,” Erica says quietly. “All that’s over now, now that Peter’s – well, is he dead?”

I think about it. “I didn’t see him die,” I tell her. “But he must have. I don’t know how anybody else could have lived down there. It was awful.”

“It was stupid,” she says, “going down to the barrows to try and get it.”

“Makado was desperate,” Elena says. “She was afraid that the Pit was going to wake up sometime soon and without another crystal to break to send it back to sleep, they wouldn’t be able to contain it.”

“Well,” Erica says, running a hand through her hair, “you can see the logic in it, can’t you? But I think she’s being played. And in turn she’s playing you, all the rangers in the team that went down. How many were there?”

“Eight,” I say. “Plus me and one other.”

Erica nods. “See, the problem with breaking the crystals is that, yeah, it’s an immediate solution. But did you ever think why they found those thousand-year-old crystals carved and perfect and intact? Not cracked to pieces?”

“Why?” Elena asks. She still has an ugly sullen undertone to her voice but she’s listening, she’s evaluating. I don’t think Erica is necessarily going to lie to us but I think whatever information she’s operating off of must be flawed if she’s come down here herself.

“Because,” Erica says, giving us a little mirthless smile, “cracking one of those crystals is like knocking the Pit out, rather than easing it into a natural sleep like you supposedly can do if you strike it the right way. It’ll wake up sooner and angrier and hungrier than it would otherwise. I don’t think they meant to crack it but I don’t think they’ve done their research, they haven’t even tried to reach out to some of the native communities around here that might still have had a little knowledge about how these things work. They fucked everything up in the 70s, made a lot of people very mad at them. I don’t think they know how bad they’ve made things. If they get their hands on that crystal and end up cracking it again, it’ll –“

“Alright,” Elena says. “I get the picture.”

“What happened to Burt?” I ask, and Erica sighs.

“Well,” she says, “they told me he was dead. Wasn’t true for a couple months after, though. They shipped him off to a lab somewhere, I have no idea where, and used him and a bunch of other people from the park who were suffering the worst to try and develop some kind of treatment. I only found out because he was able to sneak out and call me from a pay phone someplace outside wherever they were keeping him. He told me everything and ever since then –“

She can’t go on, her voice cuts off in a sudden choke.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, and Elena looks at me sharply. I meet her gaze evenly, then turn back to Erica. “I’m sorry that that happened, because you nor him deserved it. But coming down here, killing the Sergeant, with no plan, not even the –“

“If I don’t at least try to do something to stop everything from happening all over again,” Erica tells me, “I’d never forgive myself.” She pauses for a moment, starts to say something, then thinks better of it. Her voice is like broken glass. “Maybe I’m making a mistake but I’m going to do the right thing.”

There is a brief, brief silence that passes between us. Elena reaches over and hugs me, but while her lips are pressed close to my ear, she hisses to me that this isn’t our fucking fight and to follow her lead when she makes us get moving again, and as she says it I feel a looming terror break over me like a riptide and I look at her as she pulls away and want so terribly to tell her not to, whatever she’s thinking about doing to just not, don’t do anything stupid, if I lost her I – I –

And then Erica is gesturing at us with the gun to get up, saying that it’s time to get a move on, and as Marcus comes over, his slim little automatic clutched loosely in his hand, aimed at us but from the hip, and offers Elena a hand, she takes it wordlessly and pulls herself up, her hand leaving mine with only a tight, brief squeeze. Then once she’s up she shoves Marcus off-balance and before he can even think to do anything other than reach out reflexively to catch himself she’s got both hands on the gun and is struggling with him for it. “Elena!” I croak, starting to rise, just as Erica screams at her to stop, legs spread wide in a shooter’s stance, trying to get a clear shot at her. Marcus’s gun is pointing straight at me and I scream and throw myself to the side just a moment before it goes off and a bullet shrieks past and buries itself in the fleshy wall of the corridor behind me, just where I had been standing. While I try to scramble to my feet amid the dirt and muck on the floor I hear another gunshot, and then a body falls next to me face-down and starts writhing, and when I see Marcus staggering to his feet and realize who has fallen heavily, a string of curses bubbling from her blood-flecked lips, I scream Elena’s name over and over again, pressing my hands over the streaming hole in her side with desperation born of utter futility.

Continue with Part 24

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[heysawbones]

Congratulations, Me; You’re Slow

Surprise, me! You’re literally slow. As in, your processing speed - the rate at which your brain takes in stimuli and makes sense of it - is below average. Quantitatively. The average is 100. Yours is 94. 

Three years ago, I was given a cognitive battery. I’ve had an unusually high number of these in my life. Most people will never have even one. I’ve had four; one to assess for the Gifted and Talented program in kindergarten, one to reassess for the same when I changed school districts, one to assess for ADHD, and yet another, the latest, to assess for the same, as the prior records were lost. ADHD runs in my family, but I seem to have been one of those kids who compensated really, really well. Was I organized? Not even a little. Lose things? Constantly. I procrastinated like a motherfucker, too, but it was usually easy to make up the work in class before it was due. I would drive hard to complete the GT project-based assignments at the last minute, and always did fine. Better than fine, even. Sure, I used to obsessively braid yarn or draw in class, but nobody had any reason to suspect I would have issues with things like maintaining attention or executive function later on. If they did, I never heard about it. Even today, it’s not obvious; people associate a certain flightiness with ADHD and that isn’t me. People associate a lot of things with ADHD that aren’t me. This has been so much of an issue, in fact, that despite meeting diagnostic criteria over and over, as admitted by clinicians, people have been hesitant to give me the diagnosis. The argument deployed tends to be: you have all the symptoms, but you also have chronic depression, which has the same symptoms, so we’ll just go with that one. The underlying rationale, the unspoken answer to “why can’t it be both? they often co-occur” seems to be: you are too articulate and self-aware to have ADHD. It boils down to you’re too smart to be slow. 

This is unfair to me, and demonstrably untrue, besides. I recognized this long ago. I am the one who has to figure out some way to compensate for the symptoms. Yes, the symptoms of depression and ADHD overlap (especially if you are depressed for a long time), but the treatment of those symptoms is not the same. I have been in treatment for depression for over ten years. Am I better than I was? Unquestionably so. 

Do I function at a level sustainable for an adult not on disability? Can I get places on time? Can I catch a plane without showing up 14 hours early, lest I show up 14 hours late, or at the wrong airport entirely, instead? Do I remember things people told me yesterday? Can I go to Target without the possibility of getting caught up in a weird cognitive trap where I want bananas, but am too guilty to buy them unless I do the rest of my grocery shopping, which I don’t have the mental energy for? Do I remember enough of my meds when I go on trips? Can I stop persistently putting things in places that make no sense, and then having no idea that I’ve done it 15 seconds later? Can I manage an adult’s schedule? Can I remember to pay bills on time? Can I remember what I’ve spent money on in the last week? Can I remember what I ate this morning? Can I hold down a job that is, honestly, below my abilities in many ways?

The answer is, of course, sometimes yes. Distressingly frequently, it is no. Where travel is concerned, it is always no, and somehow, I have managed to show up at the wrong airport entirely more than once. 

Yes, I recognize that these are problems all people have, to some degree, at some time in their lives. If people are willing to act on the belief that I am too smart to be slow, why is it that when I account for my concerns and attempt to articulate the impact they have on my life, I am suddenly not self-aware anymore, and am only overreacting to what obviously MUST be the same degree of these problems that other reasonable adults experience? Why am I credible in other areas, but not this one? If I am so smart, why is it assumed that I’ve failed to account for my own emotional bias when gauging the difficulty I am experiencing? Why is it more satisfying to assume that I am not trying hard enough, then it is to accept that a smart, self-aware person may, in fact, have some kind of Brain Problem that, really, there is no logical contraindication to, and much evidence, for? When I do the responsible thing and insistently pursue all reasonable options to address my mental and neurological health, with the goal of being a functional contributor to society, why is this so persistently reduced to a fetish specifically for an ADHD diagnosis? I’m smart when it’s convenient for others, but not when it comes to the ability to draw cause and effect relationships from my own behavior, and make comparisons between those and the behavior of others? If I got treatment that worked, I wouldn’t care what the diagnosis was. Come the fuck on. I’m tired of this.

-----

Anyway. I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery. I’ve read the summary before; it’s peppered with lines like

“There is also considerable other evidence in this testing consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD”

“In my experience, some individuals who are very bright are able to compensate for some of their disability”

“this distribution of index scores is very typical of individuals with ADHD”

“Many of the behaviors she describes are certainly typical of individuals who suffer from ADHD. Unfortunately, the coexisting history of chronic major depression and PTSD make that differential diagnosis based on history alone difficult” 

When I first read that last year, I was shocked because the therapist who requested the cognitive battery, only expressed surprise that I was “very smart” and said that my “scores were fine.” When I later confronted him after having read the summary myself, he merely admitted that some of my scores were “lower than others”. He never entertained the possibility that I had ADHD, which in an of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d been willing to just try the treatments for it, since clearly the two industrial-strength doses of antidepressants I was already on, were not cutting it. Alas, he was not, and it wasn’t until after he retired that the issue was addressed again.

Surprisingly, I was not the person who addressed it. When my therapist-MD retired, I needed at least a primary care provider to manage my medications. Since the appointment was for psych med management, I had to fill out a bunch of related intake forms - you likely know the kind. While looking them over, my new doctor peered up at me and asked, “Has anybody ever suggested that you might have ADHD?” I was taken aback by the question and wasn’t sure where to start. Them? Asking me? if I have ADHD? She asked me? 

I told her that I’d had two full cognitive batteries done, and that both of them concluded roughly the same thing: yes, all the symptoms are there, no, we do not know if it’s ADHD because there’s too much background noise from other psych issues. Without skipping a beat, she said the most amazing thing to me: 

Well, whatever it is, you have the symptoms, so let’s treat them.

God. Why didn’t someone say that years ago? Diagnoses are human constructs; we use them to group symptoms that tend to occur together, when they’re thought to have the same causes. Depression and ADHD have many (but not all) of the same symptoms, but the overlap doesn’t qualify as a diagnosis because the causes are assumed to be different. I think we often forget that diagnoses are containers for commonalities that we use to make talking about medicine easier, not necessarily biological phenomena unto themselves. If you remember that they are containers - a sort of conceptual shorthand - then it follows that if one treatment for a set of symptoms isn’t solving the problem, you ought to try a different treatment often used for the same symptoms, even if the minutiae of diagnosis means you aren’t sure you can apply the diagnosis typically associated with that second treatment*.

I am now on Vyvanse. Does it magically solve my problems? No. Does it help? Yes. I am in a much better position to actually address the bad habits and coping mechanisms someone like me builds up over the years. The notable insomnia should wear off over time, and besides, as a person with an existing sleep disorder, having fucked up sleep isn’t new. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.

-----

Anyway. So I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery, because I had to dig them up for my new therapist. Instead of reading the summary, I dug into the raw numbers: the related tests are the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV), and the Weschler Memory Scale III (WMS-III). I couldn’t find sufficient guidance on interpreting the WMS-III, so I’ll stick with the WAIS-IV scores:

At first inspection, these scores do look “fine”. Anything within 10 points of 100 in either direction qualifies as “average”, even if 100 is “the average”. But on further reading, both in the summary and out: 

-Examination of these results reveals considerable significant variability between various functional capacities, with VCI of 141 a full 3 standard deviations above PSI of 94.** Problems with both working memory and processing speed impacted her overall IQ considerably, bringing her Full Scale IQ down to 120 (from 133). 

-A significant difference among subtest scores can suggest a problem in the particular skill being tested; this might underlie a learning disability. A significant difference among standard Index Scores might also indicate a learning disability, ADHD

-when I see a difference in IQ scores such that the verbal and nonverbal scores are far superior to the processing speed score, I try to discern what could be causing the discrepancy.

-LD diagnoses are also reliant on score discrepancies. On the WAIS, a gifted individual with ADHD may look like this.

Verbal comprehension - 132

Perceptual Reasoning - 129

Processing Speed - 97

Working memory - 101

Absolute scores aren’t the only diagnostic tool. Relative scores are also important. For example, average scores across the board wouldn’t be indicative of a working memory or processing speed issue, whereas great discrepancies between those parameters and others, is - even if the working memory and processing speed scores themselves are the same in both examples. What I’m saying is, it’s right there. It’s in the numbers. There’s no wiggle room. My old therapist saw these numbers, and not only did he choose not to act on the information, he pointedly refused to do so. If he hadn’t retired, I’d look into suing for malpractice. It’s in the god damn numbers, my dude. I don’t care what you want to call it, the deficit is right. there.

What did I ever do to him? Did he just... not believe ADHD is real? More to the point, did he think I somehow, without knowing the ins and outs of the WAIS-IV, faked the deficits or something? Really, guy, what the hell?

-----

Do I feel bad about being slow? Honestly, no. I might have if I found this out 10 years ago, or in circumstances wherein that reality didn’t perfectly explain aspects of my experience that other people have been prone to downplay, or dismiss entirely. Instead, it’s the closest I can get to scientific verification that I’m not just losing my shit over nothing over here; that something has, in fact, gone awry, and may always have been awry. I couldn’t compensate forever (though the ways I’ve done it are many, and in retrospect, interesting) and now I’m on the other end of it, trying to rebuild. I am, as I like to say, building an exoskeleton - something that will hold me up when my brain insists on faceplanting. I’m just grateful there’s someone out there who isn’t too caught up in the semantic navel-gazing of diagnosis, to help.

*There are obvious exceptions here, such as when the two diagnoses have causes whose treatment is contraindicated in the other diagnosis. This is not the case with depression and ADHD.

** You see that Percentile Rank of 34? That means I performed better than 34 percent of people my age, at least according to the test sample. That’s. Not great.

[lavenderek]

What happened after Stiles left with Derek after Derek got rid of Chad?

oh, after chad left? it is not worth reading.

they walk to derek’s apartment. it’s only a block down and across the street, maybe a five minutes walk counting riding the elevator up. hence derek’s eligibility for the position of fake boyfriend (see linked post).

they do have a brief argument, but it’s primarily companionable silence. a little anticipatory, because stiles isn’t sure what’s going to happen. you can never be sure if your fake boyfriend is being serious or not when he tells you in a public space that two o’clock isn’t soon enough to take you to bed. and stiles isn’t sure if he was being serious when he agreed to it. he’s genuinely never thought about it before, and here it is.

derek’s in the same boat, but he has a lot less indecision around it. (1) derek doesn’t really spend a lot of emotional energy waffling on decisions, particularly with regards to sleeping with somebody. that’s just his nature. (2) he is totally okay with it if stiles wasn’t being serious. stiles was 100% serious about derek getting him away from that guy, and derek got him away from that guy, so, either way there’s been a net gain tonight.

they both realize it’s happening as they walk in the door, and that is that. they make out, they do that thing where you kind of navigate your way down a short hallway trying to make out at the same time? they don’t bother turning on any lights, there’s the trail of discarded clothing, the whole stupid thing. derek has a big bed and he settles between stiles’ thighs and kisses him, and derek has a big dick, too. you know. if you’ve read my fic before you know the schedule.

derek has lube and condoms, and he looks at stiles in the dim room and says, “okay?” and stiles is breathless and squirming and yes it’s okay, is derek kidding? is he within this plane of existence? has stiles heretoforth been broadcasting waves of unokayness? he severely cuts down on the talking once derek gets his fingers up in him. everything gets subverbal for a while, and stiles can feel his heart beating in his ears as he watches derek put the condom on, like, he knows cognitively that this is happening? but he can’t process it, he’s so horny that the entire situation is just sort of standing around looking at its watch and waiting for him to acknowledge it. “come on,” he urges, teeth grit. he can’t believe how needy he is.

because listen. the thing about his relationship with chad was, stiles wouldn’t let chad fuck him. that was the major, overarching theme of their entire thing. stiles just didn’t want to. he told chad he would do other stuff, told him he’d let him know if he changed his mind, but chad solidified that decision by being super uncool about it. that was about when he started getting mean. it was chad’s least favorite thing about stiles, and stiles knew it, but he just didn’t fucking want to. it was the only thing he wouldn’t budge on, the only thing. chad left stiles having never fucked him, and stiles is pretty relieved about it. it’s just not his thing, he decided, because the idea of it never really appealed to him.

derek doesn’t know this about stiles because contrary to some people’s perceptions of stiles, he doesn’t really go around sharing super intimate details about his sex life with people. derek offers to fuck stiles because he likes to and he wants to do it to stiles. if stiles wasn’t into it, derek would have been okay with it. but stiles is viscerally into it, to the point where he’s telling derek almost repeatedly to fuck him, as derek is already fucking him. it’s pretty stupid. it’s pretty intense. it’s like a porno. stiles didn’t think people said shit like this in real life. he is going to be super embarrassed after he comes. he is embarrassed after he comes, but he wouldn’t say super. there are more pressing issues on his mind.

he lays there in derek hale’s bed, a naked, sticky mess, and stares blankly at the ceiling. then he looks over and - yep, that’s still derek. “uhhhh,” he says eventually when he’s caught his breath. “we just had sex.”

“uh huh,” says derek. he is not in shock and he guesses he’s not sure why he’s surprised stiles is.

“you and - and me,” stiles elaborates.

derek says, “yeah, stiles, i was there.”

“we,” stiles laughs a little incredulously, “did that!”

“can we stop memorizing flash cards about it,” asks derek, annoyed.

stiles can’t believe he got fucked, and he can’t believe who did it, and he can’t believe how fucking incredible it was, and he can’t believe he did this. “jesus. oh, jesus,” he sits up and buries his face in his hands, an action derek was not anticipating. “i said i’d stop doing this. i said i wouldn’t do this again,” he’s saying into his palms.

derek sits up also, stung. he’s not sure what to say. he had no expectations about this night given the lack of forethought, so he figures it’s just how the night’s going; but he’ll admit it sucks.

“look,” says stiles, which is without fail, always a precursor to things derek doesn’t have the desire or the emotional energy to hear. “i can’t - do casual sex,” stiles tells him. see? derek has no energy. he is completely perplexed and he just came, like, five minutes ago, so he thinks he lacks the brain cells necessary to handle this level of confusion. “you came to my job,” stiles goes on, “and you - you rescued me from my ex or something, and i realized i - six months,” he looks at derek in the dark. “six months! and i never saw it.” he doesn’t mean he’s been, like, obliviously in love with derek or whatever; he means that the possibility was there, and he hadn’t even seen it. that if the opportunity had presented itself anywhere between now and last winter, he would have taken it and ended up right exactly here, and if derek is fake-boyfriending him, stiles is going to have to take a sadness bath.

stiles takes sadness baths when he gets dumped, so what? he’s man enough to admit it. grow up.

derek finally catches up, and sighs for eleventy-forty years. “i told you a year,” he said. “remember? you don’t remember, do you. you were too busy trying to give me shitty craft beer - “

“it’s so good. it’s like, summery,” stiles tells him desperately. “you’d like it. you have to try new things sometimes! i just did!”

“you - what? no. stiles - “

“i get attached,” stiles interrupts, routing back to his original point. or no, actually his second point, because the first point was some bullshit about telling derek they just had sex, as if derek hadn’t noticed or something. “i’m very possessive, and i - i know myself well enough to - “

“stiles.”

“ - able to say this with complete surety, that i - “

“stiles.”

“ - enter into a - what?”

derek just looks at him. stiles looks back. derek raises his eyebrows a little: expectant.

“oh,” stiles says, dropping his hands. “really?” derek waits. “me?”

“yes, stiles,” says derek irritably, “you.”

“are you sure?”

derek rolls his eyes. “no, i’m talking to halle berry, she’s right behind you.”

“halle berry?” stiles pokes his head forward in disbelief. “what year is it?”

“are you trying to get me to change my mind?” asks derek, narrowing his eyes. because stiles is certainly testing his patience, but if that’s his game, it’s not working. 

stiles says, “i am trying to, A, clarify your intentions because they came out of nowhere and make no sense,” derek glares in a new direction, beseeching whatever divine being exists for patience, “and B, ask you to reassess, in case this is the sex pheromones talking, hi pheromones, can i please speak to derek now - “ jesus christ, derek says, “ - and C, remind you what i’m like because you look like your entire soul just packed its bags and moved away, which is par for the course. okay? this is reasonable reasoning, i’m reasoning with you for reason.”

“shut up,” says derek.

“i think reason just stopped being a word,” stiles adds, looking away, into that part of his mind where all the stupid shit lives.

“shut up,” says derek again. “stiles, i’m trying to date you, you get that, right?” stiles returns to the present and stares at derek. “yes or no,” derek says flatly.

“why?” asks stiles. in the same tone of voice and with the same facial expression as if derek just told him he was trying to mail himself a unicycle.

“stiles,” derek sighs, helpless and annoyed, “i don’t know, why does anybody date anybody? you’ve finished A, B, and C and i’m still trying to date you, so i guess i’m not seeing why you’re fighting me on this. either date me or don’t.”

“um, first option,” says stiles, “please.”

this is the most pissed off derek has ever entered into a relationship. for real. and it’s not the most confused stiles has ever entered into a relationship at all. doesn’t diminish his confusion.

“i think condoms sort of make dicks taste a little weird?” stiles suddenly volunteers, which - derek doesn’t care that he’s lost anymore. he thinks he just deliberately entered into an indefinite period of being frustrated and lost and he just looks at stiles and waits a little pessimistically to be not lost anymore. “but,” stiles goes on, “i think i like you enough to want to suck yours anyway.”

okay, that was a little worth it. it was stupid, and derek hates him, but it was worth it all the same. “you know i can wash my dick, right?” derek asks him, which is the rudest and best question anyone has ever asked stiles. the rudest and best question anyone has ever asked, ever.

“if you just fucking tried it,” says stiles desperately, “one sip. one! it’s really good! it’s got peaches in it!”

“if i wanted your shitty beer, i would ask for it,” derek snaps.

“one sip,” stiles says, and he drags out the words for about a full second each. they’re lucky derek owns the building and uses the penthouse, because wow, they’re the worst. “please let me suck your dick,” he says.

“god, stiles,” says derek.

he washes his dick first. stiles is the biggest moron on the planet, and derek has just selected him out of the two-point-whatever billion other people on the planet, so, that’s where derek’s at. in his domespace. etcetera. you get it. whatever.

he explains the chad thing later, after the shower and the blowjob (excellent for both parties), when they’re too tired to argue about whether or not they want to date each other (they do, they’re just the worst). he tells derek what he’s figured out in the last three hours, which is that it wasn’t that he was uninterested in getting fucked, it was that he didn’t trust chad. his brain didn’t even let him unlock that desire until he was with somebody he trusted, someone he thought would make it good for him, would listen to him - the first instinct of self-preservation he thinks he’s ever shown. he curls into derek and thinks to himself that he hasn’t felt, like, unequivocally safe since he was a little kid, since he thought his dad both knew everything and was capable of stopping any bad guy. but he is, here. there is actually nothing that can hurt him right here. except derek, and derek won’t.

well, he’ll hurt his train of thought. and he keeps threatening to yank stiles’ head off his body. but. well. you know.

derek spoons him and thinks about how he really hates chad. he’s offered permission to shove chad down a storm drain or something if he ever sees him again. derek says nothing, but clings to that “or something.”

[fullofleaves]

Hi! I've been a huge fan of your work for years now. :) I think you're one of the authors who understand the depth and complexity of Loki's character the most, and you have such an amazing way of portraying both his strong and vulnerable aspects in your stories. I was just wondering if you've seen Ragnarok and if you have some time, would you be willing to share with us your honest thoughts about it? (Particularly about Loki's character development from the first two Thor films to this one?)

Yoooo sorry for taking forever to answer this, but the true fact is I had to go see Ragarok again to formulate a proper answer.  But, wow, thank you so much!  I really love Loki’s character, and spend probably Way Too Much Time thinking about him, so this is a great question.

Anyway.  HAVE I SEEN RAGNAROK.  Short answer: YES.  Longer answer: YES I HAVE SEEN IT THREE TIMES NOW AND NEED TO GO AGAIN AT SOME POINT.  It’s a very important movie to me, given my love of A) Loki, B) Loki being stuck in absolutely stupid situations, and C) Thor throwing stuff at Loki’s head.  That said, it had a couple details didn’t love so much, but overall it was exactly the kind of shit I’m in to.  I mean like… you’ve read the crap I write so you could have probably guessed that already.  I live for Loki’s suspicious relationship with the Grandmaster and the orgy ship and everyone saying the word anus a few too many times and Bruce complaining about Tony’s tight pants.  And the play.  Sweet Jesus, the play.  A+ material.  A+.

But Loki’s character.  There’s so much that could be said here, and I’ve seen a lot of really good meta floating around already, so I’m going to stick to a couple key points.

I really like this version of Loki?  And I think it’s a good direction for his character to go.  In the first Thor movie you had him starting off as a mischievous character but not really “evil”, until everything in his world went to hell and he kind of lost his shit.  In Avengers, well, he’s Full Evil, killing people for funzies and generally fucking everything up.  In Dark world, I don’t think he actually repented at all sitting locked away in prison… until Frigga’s death.  This is the first time his actions have had a real consequence for him, and you can see the change it makes when he fights alongside Thor.  And now here I feel like he has, in some ways, almost come back to who he was in the beginning.

He’s not Evil.  He didn’t kill Odin when he easily could have.  As “Odin”, he didn’t kill Thor or have him banished or send him off on a death sentence of a quest, or even try to do anything like that.  It’s implied he just kept encouraging Thor to stay away from Asgard, giving him space to build ridiculous statues of himself and commission bad theater.  He’s Loki of Asgard again, but like… a more confident, evolved version.  He’s been through actual hell with the Chitauri, did the whole supervillain thing, and now he’s just hanging around pulling the greatest con Asgard has ever seen by pretending to be king.  He didn’t even kill Heimdall, who probably saw right through his illusion.  Just discredited him and sent him on his way.  The point is: no more killing (at least of anybody more important than a random alien lackey or undead soldier) and his leadership of Asgard is more IDGAF than villainous.  Like if anybody noticed anything weird, they probably attributed it to Odin going off the deep end after Frigga’s death, not “we’re obviously being conned by an evil mastermind”.

Side note: this whole Odin charade would have been going on for several years by the time Thor finally outed him.  I think it’s possible that by this time, on some level, he was almost relieved to be caught.  It looks like he’d been pushing things further and further to see how much dumb shit he could get away with, tempting fate.  He doesn’t seem that upset at the big reveal, so obviously kingship of Asgard wasn’t a critical position for him.  He was just doing it for the lulz and basking in his own successful scheme.

And then they go to Earth to pick up Odin, and I think this is really Loki’s first wake-up call in the movie.  He had to have been expecting either Odin to still be under his enchantment (and Thor will kick his ass), or for Odin to retaliate in some way (as Odin is famous for doing).  In either case, he would have been mentally preparing himself for a confrontation.  That doesn’t happen.  Odin accepts and forgives him, which throws his whole balance completely off.  Is he reassessing all of his life choices that led up to this moment and rethinking his entire worldview?  Probably not.  But he has to, at the very least, feel kind of shitty.  You can see that in how he stays absolutely silent throughout the entire scene.  Not even a single word of argument or a weak attempt to explain himself. It’s Loki’s special brand of remorse.  You know: the kind where you don’t have to apologize (and probably get mad when somebody tries to talk to you about it.)

Now for the next wake-up call, let’s consider that Loki landed on Sakaar weeks before Thor did.  And because he was kicked out of the Bifrost beam first, he had no idea how the fight between Thor and Hela ended.  Did Thor win?  Who knows?  From his vantage point, it looked like Hela was pretty savage and had a good chance at coming out ahead.  He had to consider the very real possibility that Thor was dead or otherwise out of the way.  And you’d think that somebody who professed to have such a desire to sit on the throne would do anything to find his way back to Asgard to see WTF was going on, but… he didn’t.  He stayed where he landed. I’m still trying to figure out his motivation behind this choice.  Waiting for the right opportunity?  Maybe.  But if he’d already stolen the security codes, what was stopping him from leaving?  I think it’s more likely that he’d given up (at least for the time being) and decided this was is life now.  It was his fault Odin died and Hela was released.  His fault Thor could very well be dead and Asgard destroyed.  Add Frigga’s death on top of that and I’m thinking he’s decided at this point that Asgard is better off without him.  

And you can see this in the infamous elevator scene.  Loki mentions wanting to stay on Sakaar, in what’s pretty obviously a setup for Thor to say “oh no brother you are way too important to me, we must stay together”.  And then he’d grudgingly agree.  Instead, Thor’s like “YEP, THIS HELLHOLE SURE IS PERFECT FOR A SACK OF DICKS LIKE YOU, LMAO.”  He asks if Thor really thinks so little of him, when he has to think so little of himself.  It’s kind of a crushing blow to hear that Thor agrees.

My opinion?  Loki wouldn’t have tried to betray Thor in the following scene if Thor had given him the answer and brotherly love he was looking for.  Like, he would’ve betrayed Thor eventually, because that’s what he does, but it’d probably be more like “Hey Thor now that we’ve saved Asgard, how about you go off and restore peace to the realms while I stay behind and definitely do nothing to undermine your authority and usurp power again”.  He knows Thor’s the only one who has a chance at defeating Hela, so it’s in his best interest to stay on that side of the equation.  It’s only when Thor turns him down that his Lokiness gets the better of him and decides to turn Thor in for the bounty and go his own way.

So why does he go back to Asgard?  Spite, probably.  I don’t think he ever specifically wants to be GOOD, per se.  He’ll always have a massive chip on his shoulder that’s giving him an excuse to be a stupid shit and ruin stuff for everyone, especially himself.  But I do think, at certain points, he has wanted to ACT good.  He wants to step up and do what’s right, either to prove something to himself (ie, killing Laufey) or to prove something to Thor (ie, showing up out of the mist with a giant spaceship to save the day).  That struck me as a real “you betrayed me but now I’m helping you, don’t you feel bad?” move.

Okay.  So.  Where does Loki’s character end up after all this?  Well there’s this really great post I’ve seen going around about how the existence of Hela helps him realize that, shit, maybe he’s not a Bad Guy.  Because if Odin’s own blood daughter can turn out that spectacularly fucked up, his own problems and hangups and crimes seem kind of paltry in comparison.  And I agree with this 100%.  Compared to Hela, he’s small potatoes.  Hela is now officially the Worst Child Ever and this has to make him feel better about himself.  It has to.  Before, Thor would probably complain to his friends about how terrible Loki was (in fact, he does just this when telling the snake story), but now?  Now Thor can complain to Loki about how terrible Hela is.  And Loki can be like, “Wow, yeah, she’s just off the fucking charts with Evilness.”  And then they bond with a fistbump, or whatever.

ANYWAY, the point of all this is…?  Loki goes through a lot in this movie, but I think he ends up in the right place.  I mean, obviously not geographically, because they’re about to be screwed up the ass by Thanos (I assume).  But he’s had a four-movie arc now, bouncing all over the place in terms of motivation and emotion, and it seems like he’s kind of… settled now?  He’s back where he started, at Thor’s side, but after all he’s been through I think he now has a better handle on what he wants for himself and where he thinks he belongs, as opposed to what others tell him he wants and where they say he belongs.  Maybe it’s just me wanting to see what I want to see, but he comes across as a character who’s more comfortable with himself.  Especially compared to the Loki who was lashing out so much in earlier movies.  He’s had his rebellious phase.  Now it’s time to start over rebuilding his relationship with his brother.

[thehikingviking]

Mt Rainier (14,411 ft) via Emmons-Winthrop Route

What more is there to say about Mt Rainier that hasn’t already been said? While guide services charge an arm and a leg to drag clients to the top, there is a certain level of pride earned from climbing the peak independently. I had waited many years to climb this peak, but my procrastination was well founded. Finding the right team members was the most important aspect of the climb. Each team member would need to have a certain level of fitness and some degree of high altitude glacial mountaineering experience. Since every route is heavily glaciated, each team member would also need to have the skills and fortitude to pull me out of a crevasse if necessary. The climbers would need to have the flexibility and wherewithal to adapt to the unstable weather of Washington State. Last but not least, a certain level of trust between team members needed to be earned. I had worked my way up the Pacific Northwest ladder, climbing Mt Adams, Glacier Peak, Mt Olympus and Mt Hood in subsequent years, and I had met a solid core of climbers willing to join from those previous trips, captained by Tynan Ramm-Granberg. We initially targeted June of 2018 for the Emmons-Winthrop Route, however a storm stopped the trip before it even got started. Our back up weekend was in July of 2018, but by that time the glaciers had started to break up, so we bailed and instead climbed Mt Jefferson on the fly. Mt Jefferson is considered to be a step up in difficulty when compared to Mt Rainier, and we learned that during our epic which I documented in the link below.

https://thehikingviking.tumblr.com/JeffersonOR

Another year passed and while the core of the team had remained the same, some members changed. We had Tynan, Jared and Jake from the Pacific Northwest. Tynan is the commander of all PNW expeditions due to his calm and amiable demeanor, high regard for safety and general mountaineering knowledge. Jared is one of the strongest and most fit outdoor climbers I know, in addition to an all around good guy. Jake was a collegiate all american wrestler, and is still a genetic specimen to this day. Then there was me, a guy from the Silicon Valley with some decent peak bagging experience and a boat load of heart. My fiance Asaka wanted to join, and while I wanted her to stay at home for this potentially dangerous outing, she eventually got her way after a series of arguments. Tynan hesitantly agreed, saying that she could come so long as she could pull him out of a crevasse. He required us to take crevasse rescue training, which we did in the spring of 2018 just outside of Lee Vining, California. As we were about to lock down the group and settle on a weekend, my friend Guillermo reached out to me asking if we could climb Mt Rainier that upcoming summer. We did have one more spot to make two, three person rope teams, so I ran it by Tynan. I explained that we met on Pico de Orizaba in Mexico and we hiked together throughout Nevada. While there is a glacier on Pico de Orizaba, it is nothing like the glaciers on Mt Rainier, so I truthfully explained that he had very limited glacier experience. Tynan’s response was the same as for Asaka, however I could sense that he was becoming uncomfortable with the recent unproven additions. To reassure him, I proposed that I would lead my own rope team of Guillermo and Asaka, while Tynan could manage his own rope team with Jake and Jared. This ensured that the new additions wouldn’t compromise Tynan’s summit bid or safety if things went awry. We still planned to hike alongside and assist each other if needed. Tynan took well to this proposal and we had our trip planned for June 21st-23rd.

Now I had to make sure my team was ready. Asaka and I spent a lot of time purchasing the right gear. I was mostly concerned about the cold, and worried about sleeping on the snow, which was something that neither Asaka nor I had done before. My two most important purchases were a brand new down jacket with a hood and a pair of La Sportiva Nepal Evo GTX mountaineering boots. Asaka planned to rent a pair of double plastic boots. The second thing I had to do was make Guillermo take a crevasse rescue course, and since I had already started to forget what I was taught a year ago, I also wanted Asaka and me to take a refresher course. To my pleasant surprise, the California Mountaineering Club offered a crevasse rescue training on San Gorgonio Mountain in March, so all three of us joined free of charge. I also learned that Guillermo took a similar training while in the Army, so with two courses under each of our belts, I felt confident that our team could extract one another if needed.

The day before our flight, the forecast projected a weather window for the 3 days we planned to be on the mountain. We landed in Seattle where Guillermo picked us up in his rental car. We drove to Enumclaw where I had a nice motel reserved for us. The next morning we drove to White River Ranger Station where we met the others at 7:30am. We grabbed our permit and continued to the White River Campground parking lot where we sorted gear. Helmet, harness, crampons, ice ax, 30m rope, pickets, carabiners, pulleys, prussiks, webbing and ice tools were needed JUST for the glacier travel. Adding this to the rest of our gear made for a heavy pack. There had been some debate on how many boots to bring. I decided to carry my mountaineering boots and hike in my trail runners to the snow, where I planned to stash them under a tree. This ended up being the right choice. We left up the trail around 9am, following the Inter Fork up the canyon beneath Goat Island Mountain.

The summit of Mt Rainier was hidden by clouds for the majority of the morning approach. The Inter Fork below was a milky white color from all the sediment in the water.

After 3.5 miles of forested walking we reached Glacier Basin. There was a campground with a bathroom and behind that an open meadow.

We sat next to the trail and switched our trail runners for our mountaineering boots. I picked a tree off the trail and stowed our shoes underneath its limbs.

I immediately felt the extra weight from my heavier boots when attached to my feet. The trail continued atop The Wedge, which was a dirt moraine at the base of the Inter Glacier.

We reached the toe of the Inter Glacier where we decided to rope up for practice. While there are crevasses on this glacier, I think most teams treat it like a standard snow field. Since we planned to go through the same routine the following morning on the frigid glacier in the midnight darkness, I welcomed this refresher as a chance to go over everything carefully. Tynan’s team, which I will refer to as Team 1, got set up much quicker than my team, which I will refer to as Team 2, but they patiently waited. Once we were set, we followed Team 1 up the initially gentle slopes of the Inter Glacier.

The Inter Glacier was very deceiving in appearance, and it took us much longer than I expected to reach the spur near the top. We saw our first crevasses about two thirds of the way up the glacier.

As we continued to climb, Guillermo started to drag. I found myself constantly feeling resistance from the rope. Every time I looked back, Guillermo was standing still sucking wind.

Team 1 started to open up a big gap between our two teams. Other teams started to pass us, which was an unwelcome feeling for me. Guillermo was feeling nauseous, and I started to worry about his chances of reaching the summit. We were still below 10,000 ft, and symptoms of AMS tend to worsen the higher you go. I also became concerned about reaching camp at an appropriate time. I really wanted to set up the tent early and get some rest. Guillermo’s condition was impacting the chances of success for the rest of Team 2.

We finally reached the spur a few hundred feet below and to the east of Steamboat Prow. It was already after 4pm. Where had the day gone? Little Tahoma Peak was an impressive sight across the Emmons Glacier.

Mt Rainier and the start of our ascent route on the Emmons Glacier was also visible. Hopes of climbing Steamboat Prow vanished as I now became focused solely on reaching camp. We first had to descend a few hundred feet down loose volcanic dirt to the Emmons Glacier, where we had to rope up again and climb several hundred feet to the camp.

I looked below and watched the parties ahead of us crawl like ants around a gaping crevasse.

We took a long rest here, which all of Team 2 needed. The cold wind was biting but we found rocks to hide behind to make it bearable. I was tired from all the rope drag and Guillermo’s situation seemed to be getting worse. I mentioned to Tynan that I was about to give Guillermo “the talk”, but Tynan mentioned that Guillermo had a back pack that appeared heavier than everyone else’s. I decided to reassess the situation at camp. Before we continued Guillermo let out a big burp and said he felt better. I was skeptical one burp would change his entire condition, but he was adamant that his nausea had dissipated.

We left our crampons on and climbed down the dirt to the side of the Emmons Glacier below, trying to avoid kicking down loose rocks as much as possible. We then tied in and began up the last few hundred feet before camp. We followed the boot track as we circumvented the giant crack in the ice. The thunderous roar of a chopper make its way over Little Tahoma Peak, most likely dropping off supplies at the ranger station below Steamboat Prow.

Team 1 opened another large gap between us even though the remaining distance was short. The pace of Team 2 remained slow, but we kept moving forward.

We finally reached Camp Schurman after 5pm, much later than I hoped for.

The first thing I did was scout places to put my tent. I chose a spot that was partially dug out, and since we only had one shovel between both teams, I went to work with my ice ax. Progress was very slow until another party kindly offered to lend me their shovel. I gladly accepted and went to work for the next hour. I directed Asaka go sit with Tynan and melt snow.

I put a lot of pride into my work, making the hole deep with a flat surface. I used all the dug out snow to make a wind break. Asaka kept telling me that I had dug enough, but I wanted to make a bomber shelter that was as wind proof as possible. I brought some small stuff bags and made snow anchors which I buried into the ice. Tynan and Jake shared a tent, while Jared and Guillermo shared another. Jared accidentally brought the wrong tent poles, but was somehow able to make the tent stand. Once all was set up, I tried to hydrate and mellow out. It had been a high stress day up to that point. Guillermo was in high spirits, and his altitude sickness symptoms had truly subsided after his big burp. Team 1 and 2 were both set for the climb. I visited the toilet at camp several times which was extremely clean. It was a funny set up, which I called the Winchester Mystery House of toilets. What a luxury to have in such a barren and desolate place. 

We ate dinner as we watched the clouds drift beneath us. We planned for a midnight start, hoping to reap the benefits of a more frozen glacier. I left the rope uncoiled next to our tent rested upon our ice axes. Needless to say, we went to bed early that evening.

The alarm went off prior to midnight. I didn’t sleep well, but I at least slept. We were the first group out of the tents. We all walked to our starting position, but Guillermo was having issues getting himself together. We patiently watched as he unpacked and repacked his bag, untied and retied his knots and ran to and from his tent to get some remaining items. At least 30 minutes passed as we stood idly on the ice. Internally, I began to get upset with the whole situation, but the rest of our group’s demeanor was calm, so I followed suit. It helped that no other group was up yet. The weather wasn’t unbearably cold and my new boots kept my feet warm. Once Guillermo finally tied in, we began our march up the Emmons Glacier. The route was pretty well established that weekend and the boot track was easy to follow. We quickly passed by a higher camp where another group was up and about. The first mile essentially had us climb straight up for 2,000 vertical feet. We made good time up this section and there was only one party of headlamps moving beneath us, giving us a sense that if anyone was going to make it, it would be us. This section of the Emmons Glacier had few open crevasses. At around 11,400 ft, we began to contour to climber’s right as we transitioned onto the Winthrop Glacier. Where one glacier ends and another begins is up to interpretation, however now the crevasses became more apparent. Light began to fill the air around 4am, much earlier than I expected, due to the northern latitude. Glacier Peak, which we mistakenly thought was Mt Baker at the time, was barely visible along the horizon.

We soon started to pass by some intimidating crevasses. Some sections were very icy and I don’t think self arresting could stop a fall. We took these sections very slowly.

After running parallel to several crevasses, we had our first visible crossing. While the gap was only 6 inches wide, I felt unsure about trusting the possibly overhanging snow at the lip of the crevasse. I peered down into the hole as I stepped across, and it was over 100 feet deep. Once we were all safely across, Guillermo pulled out his secret weapon; a bottle of Coca-cola. After a few sips the bottle slipped out of his hands and fell into the depths of the crevasse. At least it wasn’t one of us.

Guillermo realized that his crampon had come partially undone after jumping the crevasse. It took a long time, but Guillermo finally got his crampon back together and we continued following Team 1.

As the morning went on, Team 1 would wait longer and longer for us to catch up. I didn’t want to impact Team 1′s summit chances, so I told Tynan to continue on. I felt in control, and if a catastrophe was to happen, there were now other climbers on route that could assist us. Tynan was okay with splitting up, but we kept them in our field of vision for a while. We also let the group from the high camp pass us. They were full of energy and happy to be on the mountain. To me this was starting to feel like an endless chore.

We continued traversing until around 12,300 ft, where we took a long rest and had a split break. Guillermo’s other crampon had now come undone, so we waited again for him to iron out his mechanical issues. The lack of a good sleep had made me very grouchy, and these little delays slowly added to my grumpiness. Above us was Russell Cliff and the top of Curtis Ridge.

We were now clearly on the Winthrop Glacier. There were much fewer crevasses. Team 1 was now pretty much out of sight. The boot track formed a relentless series of switchbacks. I tried my best to set a pace that kept us relatively close to the group of three ahead of us.

The monotony of this section started to get to me. Gusts of winds were progressively increasing in strength. Each gust sent tiny shards of ice that stung my face. I had to stop hiking and brace for the larger gusts that I would see sweeping across the glacier. As we switchbacked higher and higher, I began to feel more and more resistance from the rope. Asaka began to feel the onset of altitude sickness. Our pace slowed considerably. Asaka resorted to her own secret weapon of Coca-cola.

Each rest became longer and each distance between rests became shorter. I urged Asaka to maintain a faster pace, but as time progressed she became more listless. My grumpy demeanor made it hard to encouragingly motivate Asaka, and I mostly spoke with negativity towards her. Asaka wanted to take an extended break, but we were in a barren zone completely exposed to the wind and flying shards of ice. I explained to Asaka that we couldn’t rest in such an inhospitable place, and after that it was like a light switch went on. She overcame her pain and we pushed on continuously to 13,600 feet where the boot track turned to climber’s right once again right below a giant bergschrund. The group which passed us earlier tried to climb direct from here but failed. They instructed us to head west, which I already planned on doing. I wanted to continue to the saddle between Mt Rainier and Liberty Cap, but Asaka wanted her rest. The wind here was still pretty bad, but it was a little better than what we had been subject to for the last thousand feet. We sat below a giant serac, as Guillermo and I nervously waited for Asaka’s energy levels to rise.

Once ready, we hiked parallel to the bergschrund for a quarter mile before climbing once more to the saddle between Mt Rainier and Liberty Cap. The final climb now appeared in front of us, and we knew the summit was less than a thousand feet above us. I wanted to take it in and enjoy the final climb but the wind kept pounding us. We made our way to the giant moguls on the northern face of Mt Rainier.

Progress was slow, but I was starting to feel confidence which I was lacking over the past thousand feet. It was later in the morning than I had planned for, but we were still early enough. The majority of the other summit parties were still behind us. I picked my own track as we inched our way up the last of the snow. We approached a barren pile of rocks and soon after met with Team 1 again. They assured us we were very close to the summit, and all we had to do was climb to the top of the dirt. At the edge of the snow we untied and walked up the trail along the crater rim.

I was beginning to feel the effects of the altitude at this point. I really struggled to make it up those last hundred feet. I walked to the top of a big pile of snow which my GPS listed as the summit. Guillermo was stoked.

To the northwest was Liberty Cap.

To the northeast was Asaka hiking along the crater rim.

To the southeast was the crater.

To the south was Mt Adams.

To the southwest was Mt St Helens.

I then walked to the barren piece of rock 400 feet south along the crater rim just in case it was higher, which was no easy task in my withered condition. I could barely make out Mt Hood between Mt Adams and Mt Saint Helens.

I then walked back to the others. I thought about all the climbers who claim Mt Rainier after only making it to the summit crater and not visiting the true summit. I sat down on the snow out of the wind and had a snack. I didn’t feel as accomplished as I expected. My feeling was more of relief. I didn’t fail a mountain that thousands of people climb. Pride came a few days afterwards.

Guillermo was really insistent on taking a summit selfie, to which I obliged. I felt miserable, but put on my smiley face.

I followed suit with Asaka, who also felt miserable. She also put on her smiley face for at least two seconds, which was enough time for our photo.

Team 2 was now ready to get down. There aren’t much worse feelings than being cold and tired. As we walked back to our rope, I noticed fumaroles seeping out of the crust.

Other groups began to emerge as we walked down. I dismissed at the idea of climbing Liberty Cap, which I so wanted to do before the trip.

We tied back into the rope and began the march down. At first I wanted Guillermo to take the lead on the descent, however he didn’t feel comfortable with the route finding, so I stayed in front. We moved quickly past the serac, taking a couple quick photos before clearing the danger zone.

We were just as slow climbing down as we were climbing up. At one point Asaka stumbled and Guillermo and I instinctively dropped to the self arrest position. She didn’t end up going anywhere, but I was glad Guillermo and I were able to stay mentally focused so late into the hike.

Guillermo’s crampon problems continued and after stopping several times to readjust, one of the crampons finally broke for good. Descending with one crampons seemed dangerous, so I parked my butt on the ice and waited for Guillermo to come up with a solution. Several parties began to pass us and I became even more grouchy. A guide leading some clients had some spare zip ties on him and gave them to Guillermo. This missing ingredient allowed Guillermo to fashion a temporary fix for his crampon.

By this time we had fallen behind most of the remaining parties on the mountain. I wasn’t that worried about falling into a hidden crevasse with the higher afternoon temperatures. The route was well defined and the snow conditions were solid.

The sketchiest part of the descent was an icy section above a crevasse. We took our time and made it across without incident.

Once back on the Emmons Glacier, we took off our crampons and plunged stepped down towards camp. This was a new technique for Guillermo, and something that he will pick up with more experience. Guillermo commented that he couldn’t believe people with no mountaineering experience climb this peak. I responded saying, “Like yourself?” He did not like that comment, but he had it coming after all the equipment stops he made us take. My grumpiness would not subside without a nap, so the longer we stayed out on the mountain, the more impatient and callous I would become.

I stared in awe at the endless Emmons Glacier, the largest in the lower 48.

It was temping to unrope and jog down to camp, however there was still crevasse danger. There were several skiers enjoying the good corn. I would be afraid to ski into a gaping crevasse.

We made it back to camp safe and sound. I undressed and climbed into my sleeping bag. It was time for a well deserved nap. I wondered how much faster we would have been if Guillermo didn’t have so many mechanical problems, however all that is in the past. I woke up later that afternoon and touched base with Team 2, whom I hadn’t seen since early that morning. Jake tried to convince everyone to head out that night, but my legs were too shot to hike down 5,000 ft. If he would have reminded me that most of that could have been a glissade down the Inter Glacier then I might have agreed, however that’s the fault of the seller for not mentioning it.

The next morning we were up at first light. I was more inclined to sleep in but the group understandably wanted to get back to comfort. I could not dig up and untie the dead man anchors for the life of me, which lead to anger, hate and suffering. Jared was smart and dug out his anchors the night before. Guillermo and Jared were able to help get my ass out of the jackpot, and we were off.

We decided not to rope up for the last segment of the Emmons Glacier and our crossing went by without incident.

We climbed up the dirt to the top of the spur, which was the last uphill segment of the trip.

Rather than glissade, we decided to carefully walk down the Inter Glacier until passing the crevasses we noticed on our ascent.

We were moving at a decent pace until Guillermo realized he dropped his jacket with his phone in his pocket. I waited for him to climb up and get it, making sure to point out the crevasses to him on his walk down.

It was a bit icy, but once we got low enough, Asaka and I glissaded down most of the Inter Glacier.

We waited for Guillermo but he didn’t want to glissade for some reason. We watched him drop his crampons, then his helmet, until we got tired of waiting. Rather than hike to the trail, we opted to stay on the snow field as long as we could.

We crossed back over the creek to Glacier Basin where I retrieved our boots and waited on a rock. We found ourselves waiting for Guillermo once again until I spotted him wandering through the forest. He was looking for his boots in the wrong place, but I got his attention and Team 2 was reunited once more. Jared and Tynan were waiting for us at the Glacier Basin Camp just inside the forest, while Jake had went ahead to the car. It felt amazing to walk in my train runners once again.

We passed by other groups of climbers who would have worse weather than we did over the next few days. I was glad to be on the way out.

We celebrated with some beer and snacks at the vehicles. I was relieved that everything came together, and happy that I have such a great group of people to hike with.

Photo Credit to Tynan Ramm-Granberg and Jared Bowman.

[veronicatheslayer]

I Have Snow Idea Why We’re At The Beach || Ricky and Veronica

Ricky and Veronica go to the beach.

Veronica slammed her foot on the accelerator as the snowmen started to surround their car outside of the church. Ricky and Father Duffy had safely dropped the food off and made it within the confines of the Sanctorum spell, then Ricky had sprinted back and was buckling himself in besides her. But the snowmen didn't stop, they just swarmed around the car until Veronica crushed them into powdered snow. The picture of Sister Gretchin being torn apart by them lay fresh in her mind, a reminder that if she made a mistake these creatures would punish her. "It is the next left right?" Veronica asked, finally breaking the uneasy silence that had settled over the car. She knew exactly what Ricky was thinking, he was thinking about Gretchin and he was beating himself up for not saving her. "It wasn't your fault," she said after another extended period of silence, "Gretchin wouldn't have wanted you to come back for her and even though she isn't here now, she is in a better place."

Ricky leaned back, his head resting against the cool upholstery of his car as Veronica sped through the streets towards his home "Next left then the third right. Poplar Ridge." The silence spread in the chilly air as they kept driving until veronica broke it with her statement about the slaughtered nun "I know. But. Still..." he let his words trail off as the took a corner at a ridiculous speed. There wasn't really anything to say about it. She was dead and Ricky would remember the last look of panic and terror in her eyes for as long as he lived.

Sighing gently to herself, ​Veronica​ changed gear and took the next left and the third right, turning right onto Poplar Ridge just as Ricky instructed. Right now wasn't the time to be dwelling on the death of Sister Gretchin. After the storm cleared they would bury her and then they could think about it, but for now Veronica was more concerned with getting Ricky's skin and getting to a body of water. She didn't want to see her friend go mad, that would be the worst cherry on an already shitty cake. Pulling up outside Ricky's home, Veronica leaped out of the Jeep. For the moment, the streets were deserted. Covered in snow but deserted. No people and no snowmen in sight. "Come on, lets get inside before more snowmen turn up."

As they pulled into his apartment complex Veronica jumped out of the Jeep but before she could plow ahead Ricky stopped her, "Stay with the car. Keep it running I'll be out in a minute tops. I just gotta unlock the safe." He took the stairs up to his third floor apartment four at a time. Unlocking his door he quickly ran to his bedroom and slithered under the bed, pulling up the floorboard and pulling up the small safe that was hidden in his floor. He hugged the sleek gray and brown skin to his chest and ran back out of the apartment. When he hopped back into the passenger seat he folded the skin neatly on his lap "ocean's closer than the UMAC pool. S'why I took this apartment. I'll only need thirty minutes tops. Just enough to feed and swim." He paused for a moment. "Thanks again for this."

Veronica nodded as Ricky sprinted off. She understood why he wouldn't want her coming with him and to be quiet honest she couldn't say that she blamed him. It would be weird if Veronica insisted on coming so she kept the car running, driving around the block once to check for snowmen that might try to eat them. For some reason something had drawn them all away, or they just hadn't built any around here. Whichever it was, Veronica was glad for the fact that there was no one here for them to deal with. Hopefully they could get in and out as fast as they can. Pulling back around, she put the brakes on and shrugged. "What else are friends for?" she asked, "besides, it wasn't like I could let you go insane when there was something that I could do to stop it."

As he sped towards the beach Ricky slowed his breathing as much as he could, focusing on starting his body's production of the mucus that made the transformation easier for him "Still. You have a church full of people you're responsible for and you're here with me. I appreciate it." As they arrived at the beach Ricky started to strip, entirely unabashed at the thought of Veronica seeing him naked. That had been how they'd met after all. As his body started to secrete the helpful slim he slung the skin over his shoulders, drawing it tightly around him as it compressed and altered his body structure to turn him into the form he'd been missing so terribly. The relief his body felt at the finished transformation made him shiver in joy and he let out several loud barks of happiness. Flopping over to Veronica he rested his head briefly on her knee before raising a flipper to her watch, his way of telling her he'd hurry up, before he scampered into the cold surf and sped under the waves into the black in search of something to eat.

Veronica had to admit that having watched Ricky transform once before, it was still really amazing to her to see it again. It didn't bother her when he stripped off, she was far too fascinated by the mucus that seemed to seeping out of his pores. As he transformed she couldn't help but smile gently, scratching behind his ears affectionately before going back to the hood of the car and sitting on it. Sighing gently, she sat back against the Jeep and watched Ricky head into the ocean. For now she wasn't too concerned. The beach hadn't really been covered in snow and most people wouldn't have bothered coming to the beach. So she wasn't worried about being attacked now. But she was worried about getting back. Night was falling and that made everything all the more dangerous. But they had a little time to spare.

"It's easy to get back into peak form when I don't have to feel guilty about eating a limited food supply and taking shit away from kids." Ricky pushed damp hair out of his eyes and looked over at Veronica. The week had taken a toll on both of them and she looked tired "you can sleep some when we get back to the church. I'll stand guard over everyone but you've been running yourself ragged through this storm." He looked down at his backpack and nodded. He'd seen a secret compartment into it so the skin was hidden "yeah. I'm sure. Let's get you back to a cot and some rest. Don't make me worry."

Veronica nodded gently as she slipped into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Subduing her arguments against Ricky, she simply accepted her fate. Buckling her seat, she pulled her coat closer around her and sighed gently. "There should be more than enough food that you won't have to worry about not eating," she said with a shrug. "I feel like I could sleep for a week," she said with a frown, rubbing her eyes as they headed back to the church. "But now we should be able to just wait it all out, the Church will be safe and we have enough food to last us at least a week, I'm sure that we'll have been thawed out by then."

Ricky hummed softly as they drove, a lullaby his mother had sung to him in easier halcyon days. He took the corners gently and kept the jeep moving slowly enough where Veronica could start to drift off to sleep as they drove. "Kids come first. I can last. They shouldn't have to." Pulling into the church parking lot he cut the engine and slung his backpack over his shoulder "I wasn't really signing up for a church sleepover when I said I'd hang out with you. But if I had to be snowed in with anyone I'm really glad it's you."

Veronica had considered going somewhere else. Back to her apartment, back to Ricky's apartment, anything like that would've been more ideal. But the idea of potentially leaving those families vulnerable didn't sit right with her. There was something called a Sanctorum spell over the church apparently, but Veronica wasn't confident in her understanding of the fundamentals of magic to guarantee that it would be safe, so she was determined to wait until they had managed to get most people home. "We'll crash here for tonight, and tomorrow we'll reassess the situation and try to make sure that everyone and everything is as safe as can be, then I think we both need to go home and have a shower and reassess." She yawned as the Jeep shuddered to a halt. "But yeah, not to get sappy, but this hasn't been half bad all things considered and I've had a good time with you Ricky."

Ricky wrapped an arm around Veronica's waist as they wandered back into the church, meeting Father Duffy's eyes for a moment of shared sorrow before steering her towards one of the cots that had been set up when it was clear nobody was leaving the church for a couple days. "Hopefully the storm breaks and I can start ferrying people back to their homes in the jeep. But your plan is a good one. You sleep. I'll stand watch. Tomorrow we'll go back to our homes and take a deep breath and figure out next steps." He adjusted the straps of his backpack a little before giving her a soft smile "you're my favorite near death buddy, V. And the best Buffy there is."

Yawning as they wandered back through the church to where makeshift cots had been set up, ​Veronica​ collapsed backwards into one of the few spare ones and smiled up at Ricky. "Thanks Ricky," she said with a bright smile, "I never thought that I'd make a friend that was as good as you," she said smiling happily as she slipped into a deep sleep.