#has become more of a true thing and less of a coping mechanism

[potatoesandsunshine]

origins has a hold on me...

[triannel]

Unexpected Movie Night

Bill Cipher x Reader | Oneshot

Warnings: Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Bill Cipher, Unhealthy Attachment to Reader

Today just wasn't the same as the million other days he's had. Stinging feelings has suddenly started to rise inside of him and it is unbearable. However, just as always, he does what he's always done to cope when these feelings resurface, he forces himself to resume acting like nothing's happening, trying to ignore the sudden weight on his unregulated emotions and already diminishing mental state.

Frustrated he tries everything to drown out these feelings, he just can't deal with this right now. Wine, partying, loud music, activities that will either excite or overwhelm him, he's tried it all today, and not even a single one helped. Least to say he's growing quite desperate for an escape...

So as his last attempt for the day, he hesitantly teleports to a place he considers comfortable. In a drunken and dizzy state, he leaves the party.

"HellOO yOu..." Startled, you look to your side and see a drunken triangle overlord, holding the forbidden drink on his right hand as he floated unsteadily in the air.

"Bill?" Furrowing your eyebrows, you slowly approach him, the awful stench of alcohol making you slightly gag.

"Yeah, IT'S Me! BILLYYY!" He responded, swinging his arms slightly in delight.

Raising his arm, he drinks a mouth...eye..ful? amount of alcohol before losing balance once more, this time nearly falling flat to the ground.

Quickly though, you manage to catch him right before he could hit the cold hard floor.

"Okay...I think that's enough drinking for you today..." You spoke, concerned for his well being.

Slowly, you held a part of the bottle and surprisingly, you successfully take the drink from his hand and place it on a nearby table.

Right after you placed the bottle down, you then felt fuzzy hands on your cheeks. He soon forced you to look down at him for a second before pulling your head even lower so that one of your eyes can nearly meet his. "I just wanted TO see YOU todayyy yknoww..." He mutters under his breath, as he continues to hold you close.

Flustered, you chuckle nervously, "What's gotten into you today..?" You question silently.

As if on cue, he releases his hold and let's himself deflate on your arms like a balloon. You've never seen him like this before. Vulnerable and intoxicated, his body seemed to be made out of rubber at the moment, his expression looked so tired and troubled. What was he doing the whole day? Did he actually not plan to teleport here? Well, drunk people do say and do things that are true to their nature...so perhaps it wasn't a mistake.

You can tell him to go back to his place, but looking back at him now, maybe it's for the best you keep him here instead. Placing Bill down the sofa, you then hand him some water. "Here, you should probably stay here for tonight.." you comment, sitting down beside him.

"WHOA there toots! Don't cha think you're moving too fast? Take me to dinner first wIll ya?" He spoke, while drinking water.

You chuckle slightly, "Well, if you want, I can call your henc-".

"Upupup shhhhhh," he suddenly interrupts you, placing his finger to your lips.

"Can't take back your word noww." He spoke, clasping his hands together in a cute manner as he leans closer to you.

You laugh and nod your head, "Ok ok, well if you say so."

Opening your TV, you both start to watch some sort of film, all the while as you try to keep him hydrated to help lessen the hangover he might get in the morning.

When you both did start to watch, he never really kept a distance between you. Once he leaned on you, he seemed to only want to get closer than ever as his sitting position slowly transitioned to him using your thighs as his pillow.

Throughout your unplanned marathon with him, he also did gradually become less energetic, his expression taking on a much more serene look the longer he was with you. Maybe you're delusional, but you swore you could have catched him gazing at you multiple times.

As a few hours seemed to have gone by in a flash, the clock suddenly striked 12.

Hearing something beep out loud, you supposed it's time to put this triangle to bed. Well, you could just leave him here by the sofa to sleep, but deciding to be a good host, you decided to let him sleep on your bed, accepting the sofa as your bed for tonight instead.

"Well, it's getting late so we should hit the hay hm?" You spoke, pointing at your watch.

"Nooo," He responded as he closed his eye in weak defiance.

Soon though, to his dismay, you stand up, letting him fall on his side.

"Come on, get up." You spoke in a lighthearted manner.

He groans once more in dissapproval, refusing to get off the couch for a moment before gravity forces him to fall. When he did fall to his side, he then fell to his front, but most of his body did not land on the sofa, so he then slowly started to slide off the sofa. Fortunately though, you catch him once more before he hit the floor.

So, with a triangular demon between your arms, you head to your bedroom and tucked him beneath the sheets.

Pulling up the bedsheets, to his annoyance, you start bidding him goodnight, "Well, I think my work here is done," however, once you do start to leave, his mind instantly ignited. 'Please...don't leave me.'

Suddenly, you felt him grab your wrist. "Hm?" You hum in confusion. A few seconds pass and he didn't respond as all he did was gaze up at you in silence.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" You ask in a gentle tone, trying to gently pry him open for the truth to spill out.

Nothing, he didn't respond, however he did slightly tighten his grip. A few seconds pass and no one spoke. The serene look on his face now mangled to a slightly panicked state. Almost as if to convince you to stay.

Letting out a sigh, you smile back at him once more as you hoped you deciphered his body language correctly.

Stepping back to your bed, you finally broke the silence, "Alright... Scoot over there and make room for us to fit."

Pulling the bed sheets up once more, you let the warmth between both of you embrace your being. Letting him snuggle close, you watch him return to a serene state before deciding to let yourself rest as well. He'll probably regret this in the morning.

[grandlinedreams]

Hey, um I love your works, especially the angsty-themed 😭. Anyway, here's the prompt :

We know that Law is a very private person, and he just doesn't want people to see any type of affection between him and the reader. So imagine like things get hectic, or like he's too focused on his long-term planning. He becomes cold and indifferent, and the reader is not an exception even if the reader is simply willing to help. Yes, he's a private person, but everyone already knows that the reader is his partner. His crew, or maybe the og member that is older than him, are getting uncomfortable and reminding (or rather scolding) him for his behaviour to the reader. Maybe the reader overheard their argument and gets sad because the reader has tried not to take his reaction personally, but it's not a good sign when others have enough. This ends with Law's realization that his crews support their relationship and wish the best for them, showing affection in front of them won't get him teased or even annoy his crew.

Thank you, Love 🫶

Hiya papaya!! Sorry that it's taken me so long to get to this, but I hope I can do this justice for you!!

[Heads up!: Law being a tiiny bit of a red flag, unhealthy coping mechanisms, hefty touch of angst, established relationship, hurt/comfort]

"Is that for captain?"

Looking up from where you're setting things on the tray to carry, you find Penguin watching you and you nod.

"How is he? We haven't seen much of him lately."

You hesitate. Penguin knows Law even better than you do, as do Shachi and Bepo ㅡ they're from a chapter of his life you've only ever gotten brief comments about.

"You know how he gets when he's figuring out a plan," you sigh, and Penguin nods. "I'm going to take this to him."

"You're the best at cheering him up," your crewmate calls after you as you walk away, and your fingers curl around the tray.

You wish that was true, that you had an innate knack for easing Law's burdens the way the others seem to think you do. And maybe you did, at one time ㅡ but not lately.

You can't even tell anyone that it's been days since Law even talked to you. It's been a cycle of going to bed without him, waking up alone, and swapping out plates of barely touched food and drink for new.

You know that this is what happens when he gets focused on something, have seen it before ㅡ but it hurt a little less when you weren't his partner. You know you can't expect him to immediately tell you everything, but telling you nothing isn't fair, either.

You knock, then nudge the door open with your hip. Law hasn't moved from where he'd been when you woke up, nor does he look up when you approach.

"I made grilled salmon this time," you say quietly, glancing at the carefully shaped onigiri. "And tea."

Steam curls off the top, but Law doesn't so much as glance your way. This too has not been unusual, but again, it digs the blade further into your chest.

Have you done something wrong? Surely there's more to it than just being busy for him to shut you out so completely.

You turn to leave, stilling when there's finally, finally a murmur of your name from your boyfriend. Your heart leaps, and you turn, small smile on your lips. "Yes?"

He still isn't looking at you. "Stay in the crew bunkhouse tonight. I can't afford to be distracted right now."

Maybe it'd be better if he yelled at you. If he'd be angry with you, be something with you ㅡ because the flat tone and way he still won't actually look at you hurts far worse than anything else.

"Oh," you say softly, "...of course."

You shut the door behind you, back pressed against it as you take a few steadying breaths, willing yourself not to cry. You won't, not when it will get you scolded if he finds out ㅡ so you close your eyes and count to ten, then pull away from the door.

You can do this for him, give him his space, support him from the edges of that barrier he's made around himself.

You can, and you will.

ㅡ

"Not that we aren't happy to have you here [Name], but..." Clione squints at you. "What are you doing here?"

You look up from where you're pulling back the blankets of your bed ㅡ a bed you haven't slept in for months, as your mind is so gleefully cruel in reminding you. "What do you mean?"

"He means that you're usually with captain," Ikkaku says, watching you with a look of gentle concern.

You're not sure how to answer that and you fumble, fighting hard against the flush of your cheeks. "How do youㅡ"

"You're not as subtle as you think," Hakugan chimes in. "I know captain won't say it, but we've all pretty much figured it out already. Not much you can hide on the 'Tang."

He has a point. Ikkaku is still watching you, her head tilting.

"So...is everything okay?"

You blink, fingers curling against your blanket. "Everything is fine," you say, even though it's far from it. Though they may know about your relationship, you highly doubt that Law would be pleased if they knew about any issues. "I just felt like sleeping in here, that's all."

It's clear none of them believe you, sharing a brief look as you slip underneath your blanket and roll onto your side. It's strange now, going from the comfort of a bed shared with someone to alone ㅡ but if Law needs you to do this, you can do this.

You don't sleep well, not at all ㅡ and when you've finally had enough of tossing and turning, you slip out of bed as quietly as you can, mindful not to disturb your crewmates.

Machinery hums beneath your feet as you pad down the narrow hallway, turning the corner ㅡ and nearly bumping into a firm chest.

You stumble back, balance corrected by the hand that reaches out to grip your shoulder ㅡ familiar warmth, tanned fingers stamped by familiar tattoos.

Law.

It's the first time he's touched you in the better part of a week and a half, and you almost hate yourself for how badly you want to beg for more. He doesn't even have to kiss you ㅡ just a hug would do.

You miss him.

Law's lips part like he's going to say something, but the creak of a door opening makes him tense ㅡ and reality washes over you like an icy bucket of water.

So you do what you have to ㅡ you dhrug his hand off of your shoulder, curve your lips into a smile you don't feel, and take a step back.

"Good morning, captain," you tell him, ignore how it rips your chest open to be so formal with him and slip around him to begin your own day.

ㅡ

"Did something happen between you and [Name]?"

The question makes Law tense from where he's putting away medical supplies from the latest supply run, glancing at Shachi who'd volunteered to help him. That, he supposes, should have been his first clue. Not that Shachi isn't helpful ㅡ but that he has an agenda of his own.

Law looks away. "I don't know what you mean."

Shachi huffs. "Don't play dumb, captain." He knows he's treading the line of insubordination, but there's only so much he and the others can take of this. "We know you're together."

Law stills.

"[Name] didn't tell us anything," Shachi continues. "We figured it out. So don't be mad at them."

Law is quiet, trying to process the other man's words before he says slowly, "How long have you and the others known?"

Shachi shrugs. "Couple of months." His tone softens, though it still carries an edge of scolding. "You can't just shut everyone out like that, captain. Especially not if you're in a relationship with someone."

Law wants to argue, say that he didn't ㅡ but he did. Pushed you as far as he could, made you keep your distance. He'd backtracked on months of progress, of affection and trust ㅡ and called you distracting.

Ans you'd taken it all in stride. You hadn't gotten angry, hadn't fought with him ㅡ simply nodded, smiled, and let him treat you as he pleased.

You'd let him hurt you, something he'd promised he'd never do ㅡ

"Finish putting this away for me," he tells Shachi, who watches as Law leaves the storage room without looking back, and he grins.

"About time."

���

You stir to the feeling of being carried. That's funny, you don't even remember falling asleep ㅡ but you must've, curled up on the couch with a book.

You squirm, and the arms around you tighten as your eyelids flutter. "Waking up?"

Your eyes snap open. "Law," you say, staring up at your boyfriend ㅡ or at least, who you hope is still your boyfriend. "What are you doing?"

"You fell asleep on the couch," he says, "and I'm taking you to bed before you end up with a crick in your neck from sleeping like that."

"Oh." You study the curve of black ink on his chest. "To the bunkhouse?"

"No, to myㅡ" He stops, corrects himself. "Our room."

That gives you a glimmer of hope, allows for you to snuggle further against him, which relieves him in turn. You aren't angry with him ㅡ both a blessing and a little bit of a curse, brcause you have every right to be.

As if sensing his thoughts, you sigh softly. "I'm not mad at you."

"You should be." He nudges his door open, shuts it behind him before continuing towards the bed. The bed that's been far too cold over the last couple of days without your presence.

You cling to him, even after he sets you down, coaxing him to lay next to you. "I'm not," you insist again. "Just wish you'd trust me a little more. I want to help, Law."

Your fingers brush his cheek, and he reaches to grasp them, presses soft kisses to your fingertips. "I know. I need to work on that. I shouldn't have shut you out like that, it wasn't fair to you."

You press closer. "We can work on it together," you say, lips against his collarbone, sweet kisses that make him shiver. "Right?"

"Right," he agrees softly, pulls you to him as close as he can, wraps himself around you. "Together."

[emmyrosee]

okay so, this evening has not been fun for me, so ofc I’m gonna try coping via escapism 🤩

and as always you are absolutely NOT obligated to write it. I’m so serious, if you don’t want to there’s absolutely zero pressure emmy, I’d completely understand one hundred percent.

very long story short, I got my grades back for this semester and despite doing soooo much better overall this year than my first year and not failing a single class this time around, unless I get a miracle it’s looking like I’m going to have to be asked to withdraw from my university for a whole year ☹️

and as someone who got straight As from elementary til my last year of high school/made school my whole life, this is just an enormous blow to any self confidence I had finally built back up. I was doing better mentally and finally feeling a bit like myself again and I’ve just felt so sick with anxiety all evening because I don’t even know what to do anymore. If they decide to ask me to leave, it’ll make my chances of medical school even slimmer than they already were and I can’t help but feel like a bit of a failure and like I’ve just ruined my future despite knowing it’s not all true and I still have options :(

it’s so hyper specific and I’m so so so sorry abt that, but would it be possible for some comfort + tons of fluff with kuroo possibly? I just want to be babied a bit by this fictional man LOL. I feel like he’d know exactly what to do and how to get my mind off of it until I inevitably get that email :(

anon <3

My love, I am so sorry you’re having to go through this, and I am here, to PERSONALLY, tell you that you are far from a failure, and you should still be proud of yourself for getting so far. It’s okay to have bumps like this that halt your dreams, and it doesn’t make you any less deserving of continuing to chase those dreams. And hey! Use me as an example! I went from being a mechanic for four years and being fired for being so terrible (yes that is an actual thing that happened) then I went to college for writing; and now I’m a licensed esthetician with a focus in makeup artistry! There is no such thing as a dead end, no such thing as a closed room, just keep treating yourself gently and reminding yourself that this is far from over, your dream is still more than obtainable with some time and it is more than okay.

Ahem. Let me get off my soapbox PFFFF-

——-

Last night, you refreshed your emails who knows how many times, staring at your computer screen on the verge of hyperventilating for what felt like hours- and it might have been; your brain can’t process how long it was right now.

Your bottom lip was tight between your teeth, the hand on the mouse pad trembling, waiting in anticipation, tight with nerves. Your other rested a fist on your lap, waiting for the results and occasionally wiping a rogue tear that falls.

There’s a soft rapping on the door, but you don’t turn to face it. You merely keep refreshing.

“Hey,” tetsuro whispers, and you hear his feet padding into the room, and when he gets next to you, he crouches down. Once again, you can’t spare him a glance. “Any updates?”

You stay silent. He winces, “I’ll take that at a no…” he lays a warm hand on your back and gently rubs it in circles, “it’s okay baby. We’ll figure it out, we always do.”

“Tetsuro, please,” you whimper, not quite in the mood for a pep talk. “I’m going to puke right now, my life is in flames and crumbling around me, I’m so nervous, please. Save the pep talk, I can’t handle it right now.”

“I'm sorry,” he soothes. He doesn’t say anything further, just rubbing your back in slow, firm circles with his palm, blinking his golden eyes up at you warmly, lovingly.

You feel your body cramp from being under his loving touch, suddenly dawning on you just how long you've been sitting in the chair, inert and unwilling to peel your eyes from the email inbox. You suddenly become hyperaware of how your legs feel numb, your fingers are cramped and your eyes are burning. It's the first time in hours you've taken a break from your refreshing to scrub at your eyes, breeding a wetness to try and soothe the sting.

You hear Tetsuro sigh, "why... don't we go to bed, angel?"

"No."

"But-"

"I can't," you whimper. "Not now. Not yet-" your breathing picks up as you look at him in despair, chest fluttering and heart pounding as you try to breathe. He furrows his brows and shushes you softly, big hands moving to cradle your cheeks and force you to look at him.

"Baby," he says softly, but firm enough to ground you. "It's late. They're not going to send it this late at night. And if they do, we'll deal with it when we wake up tomorrow. But I'm almost certain they're not going to send it to you this late. I promise, okay?"

You let out a shaky sigh and look at the time: 22:43. It's far too late to be thinking, to be worrying, and you'd much rather breakdown in the comfort of your own bed, than alone in this wooden chair.

But you do know that, no matter what, Tetsuro is going to be right next to you, rubbing your back and cradling you close.

When you say nothing, Tetsuro slowly stands up and scoops you in his big, strong arms, "come on, angel face. Let's get some rest." You thunk your head against his chest and fist your fingers into the collar of his shirt, letting him carry you to the bathroom where he plops you down on the countertop.

He grabs your toothbrush and some toothpaste, and gently tells you to open, which you sleepily do. He's extra careful, making sure to get every tooth he can, scrubbing softly as to not make you uncomfortable. Silence, save for the bristles on the toothbrush, fills the room, the corner of Tetsuro's tongue sticking out in focus.

"Okay. Spit," he says, moving so you can comfortably turn your head and spit the froth out. Skincare comes next, and his touch is even softer as he massages in every product you use.

"Good girl," he whispers, picking you back up to carry you to bed. "My good girl. Good, brave girl..."

You drift off in his arms at his praise, not even feeling the way he gets you into pajamas or gets you under the covers, the exhaustion of the constant high of anxiety weighing you down.

Waking up this morning, your bones feel like bricks under the wall of your muscles, barely able to move under the force of it all. Your skin feels like paper, so hyper aware of it now that you’ve had the time to come down from your anxious state. You blink up at your ceiling, eyelids tight as you do, and you continue to stare and let your body wake up molecule by molecule, inch by inch. You feel it coming to life, and you slowly bring your hands up to press the heels of your palms into your eyesockets to force the rest of the sleep out of your eyes.

When your hand then drops next to you, you feel yourself grow saddened at the lack of warmth. Tetsuro’s been out of bed long enough to let his side cool down, and it makes you want to cry at the idea of being alone right now.

You never should’ve shut him down last night. All he wanted to do was help, and you shut him up and made him feel bad, now he’s not even in bed with you anymore, and you feel tears sting at your eyes again, this time out of anxiety of making him upset, and-

“Ah, you’re up.”

Your guilty, howling mind shuts up as soon as tetsuro’s body makes its way into the doorway, smiling and stirring his tea with a spoon. “Good morning, babygirl.” He takes a step into the bedroom and before you know it, he’s at your side, sitting on the bed next to you. He uses his free arm to wrap around you, but not pull you to his chest. “Did you sleep okay?”

“No,” you whimper, voice croaky. He nods and lets his thumb rub up and down the curve of your shoulder. “I’m sorry I yelled at you last night.”

His brow cocks in confusion, “huh?”

Now, finally, you turn to face him, “I snapped at you… I told you to-“

“You told me you didn’t want a pep talk,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “That’s okay. You’re allowed to tell me that my words might not be the most helpful. I’m not going to get mad at you for that. It’s not like you told me to shut my ugly ass up- you’d never do that, I’m too pretty.”

This, for the first time in what feels like days, has you crack a smile. You let out a small laugh, breathy and barely there, but he smiles proudly all the same, pulling you in for a hug now. “You’re a goof,” you murmur.

“And you, need to eat something,” he whispers against your head, and you deflate in his arms again. “Don’t you protest me, you know you have to eat something.”

“‘M not hungry,” you say.

“I know, but you didn’t eat last night, and I let you sleep in-“ at his words, your eyes flick to the clock on your nightstand, red numbers flicked onto 10:24. “You have to have something.”

“But-“

“I know,” he says. “Do you want something sweet, or savory?”

20 questions. It’s something he does after a fit of your anxiety to try and make your life just a hair easier, decisions quicker, and your day just a bit brighter because you’re getting exactly what you want. He claims he used to do it with kenma, hence why he’s so good at it.

“Uhm…” you shrug, “why not both?”

“Both?” He echos. “Okay. Do you want fruit?” You nod. He nods with you. “Okay. How about a bagel?” You nod again. “Okay. With some cream cheese?” You shake your head and he clicks his tongue, “butter?” You shake your head again, “okay. Uhmmmm-“

“I want to do it,” you mumble, and he presses a kiss to your head.

“You sure? Because I can whip something up-“

“I have to do it. I have to put the toppings on my bagel.”

He nods a final time and squeezes you close, “okay. If you need any help deciding, I’m right here, okay? I’ll be cutting your fruit.”

You hum and slowly swing your legs out of the bed, stretching and mewling from the force. When your hand instinctively darts for your phone, he clicks his tongue, "leave it. You don't need it right now."

"But-"

"I told your family to text me if they need you. Your phone is on do not disturb. Leave it there, babe." He swings his own long legs over and extends a hand out to you, wiggling his fingers enticingly for you to hold. When you grab three of them, he smiles and slowly leads you into the kitchen.

The news is playing on tv at a low volume, there’s a discarded blanket on the couch, and you quirk a brow in intrigue, “tetsu, how did you know I was awake?”

He shrugs, “my life shifts when you wake up for the day. I feel it in my soul.”

“Ew.”

“Shaddup.”

You laugh again, smiling a weak smile as you plop down at the table. He makes his way to begin cooking your bagel, popping it in the toaster before making his way to cut up your fruit. You sigh and play with your fingers, wondering if you should make conversation, or let silence rule, and you sigh shakily before opening your mouth to speak. “What’re you going to have?”

“I, my love, already ate some toast with some apple jelly and butter.”

“Oh.”

“But I’m going to pick at some fruit with you, because I don’t want you eating alone.”

“You don’t have to do that-“

“I know,” he hums. Then, he turns to face you with a smile. “I want to.”

Your heart flutters as you smile at him, looking down at your fingers to distract yourself. Usually, you’d be scrolling through your social media, checking apps and emails, but since he forbade it, you’re left to listen to him sing softly and the newscaster drone on and on. After a few short minutes, your bagel pops, and he plates it with some sliced fruit and places it in front of you, before kissing your head and grabbing various toppings for it.

Breakfast drags, but in a comforting way, where it drips by so slow like honey, syrupy sweet as Tetsuro talks. He talks about everything and anything, about the game Kenma's going to stream for charity, and the funny meme he sent the streamer- or funny to Tetsuro at least, as allegedly Kenma left him on read. You find yourself eating at his company, and before you know it, your bagel, juice, and fruit is gone. You look down at your plate in surprise, and he wiggles his brows at you, "feel better, angel?"

"Uhm... yeah," you say, almost confused. "I didn't think I was that hungry."

"I don't care how you thought, I'm glad you ate." He stands out of his chair with a stretch, "you still hungry? I can make you another-"

"No," you sigh. "I... I really should check my email-"

"Not until I give you a bath and a massage."

You quirk your brow, "you're going to give me a bath and a massage?"

"Of course," he chuckles, "If you're too anxious to give yourself some self care, that's plenty fine, but that means I'm going to give you self care." He shrugs, "those are just the rules."

"Do you even know how to give a massage?"

"Bokuto and I used to massage each other after practice all the time." Your brow quirks higher, and he holds his hand up, "don't ask. Just trust me."

"Can Bokuto give me a massage?" You tease, giggling at the way he gives you a fake smile and a high pitched "no," to tease you.

He presses a kiss to your head, "I'm going to go run the bath, why don't you get changed and meet me in there?"

"Okay," you hum. He nudges your nose with a finger before stalking down the hall to the bathroom. When your hear the tub running, you make a dash towards the small office room for your laptop, nervous to check your email, and-

"I took it out!" He calls, followed by a cackle.

"You're an ass!"

"It's your favorite ass, though!"

You grumble and make your way to the bedroom to get undressed per his request, stealing one of his oversized shirt to conceal yourself until the tub is filled. You stalk into the bathroom and blush under the way his eyes glaze up and down you, "fuck, I love you in my clothes."

"Back off, I'm about to bathe," you snort.

"Yeah, but I can still find you hot." As the tub fills, he adds a scoop of epsom salt, and a splash of bathing bubbles, large bubbles brewing on the surface of the water. You smile and watch them shape and form, the sweet smell filling the air around you. You feel excitement brewing inside of you as you watch him turn off the water and push himself up and off the floor with the edge of the tub, "should do it, baby. I'm gonna let you soak, I'll set up for a little massage after, make you nice and comfortable.

"Okay," you mewl. He presses a kiss to your lips and makes his way to the door. "Hey, Tetsu?" You say, reaching for his hand, which he takes happily. "Thank you."

"Anything for you, babygirl," he whispers. "You know that." He pinches your cheek and leaves the bathroom for you to relax.

The bath water is warm as you soak in the epsom salt, feeling your muscles loosen and relish in the combination. You bury your face in the bubbles and close your sleepy eyes, letting the smells lull you into a state of relaxation. Your head is still heavy with anxiety, but your heart is full of love and warmth for your boyfriend.

You're not sure how long you were floating in silence, lost in the bubbles and oils, but he gently knocks on the door, "you okay? Haven't heard you for a bit."

"Yes," you mewl, stretching. The water is now chilly and the bubbles are mostly gone and you rub your hands over the surface of the water. "Is the massage stuff ready?" You tease, looking at your hands and wincing at how pruny they are.

"It's been ready, I didn't want to bother you," he snickers. “Come out when you’re ready, just wanted to make sure you were alive.”

“I’m alive, I’m coming,” you call, getting out of the tub to dry yourself. You take your time drying off, trying to enjoy the last little bit of warmth clinging to your skin. You leave the bathroom to get dressed into some clean pajamas, smiling as tetsuro busies himself with the whole massage set up. “Candles? You spoil me.”

“There’s a lot of smells going on,” he says with a face.

“I know I can tell,” you hum. Getting dressed, you slip on a pair of his boxers and a shirt, and you make your way to the bed to wait for him.

“Alright-“ he pats the bed for you to crawl on top of. “C’mere, let me pamper you.”

You giggle, “you have been pampering me!” Regardless, you swing your legs onto the bed and lay on your stomach, squeaking as he straddles you and cracks his knuckles.

He lays a massive paw on each of your shoulders, using his thumb to splay and press the muscle under his force, and your eyes cross in the middle and flutter in relaxation. They work in circles to press into the muscles, before laying flat on your back to dig his heel into before his fingers press and roll back up to your shoulders.

Thick fingers roll over the knot in your right shoulder, no doubt from the refreshing of the page for hours on end last night. You whine and bury your face in the bed, and he hums, "I know beautiful, I almost got it."

"Feels good," you murmur.

"Told you it would," he says softly. “You need to trust me.”

“I think I trust you too much,” you snicker. Tetsuro says nothing, merely offering you a laugh through his nose as he continues with the massage.

Your body twitches as the tips of his fingers dig into your side as part of the massage, but your snicker doesn’t go unnoticed by your boyfriend. “Something wrong?” He hums, doing it again.

"Tetsu!" You giggle, reaching behind you to try and stop his wrists, "that tickles!"

"That's crazy, I'm not tickling you," he snickers, and it's hard to tell if he's lying or not. "I mean, I can tickle you, if you want-"

"No!" You squeal, and your laughter turns choppy as he uses the sides of his hands to playfully chop up and down your back, making your body instinctively let out bumpy noises from your mouth.

“Quite an attitude on ya today,” he taunts, before hooking his fingers up under your arms, making you shriek, “okay, now I’m tickling you.”

Your mind spins from the sensory change, the signals in your brain cross, but one thing is for certain:

The email is far from the front of your mind.

And it feels good to laugh.

[cupcakeslushie]

Hello,

HOLLY SH*T (about the last update)

When Leo gets his memories back does he also remember those (f*cking)400 days?

How would Leo have grown up to be like, if his memories weren't taken from him? (would he have become kind of like Donnie?)

will he ever open up to someone about this?

Does he have some kind of triggers left from the experience, even though his memories wee taken from it?

I adore your work and Have a great week 😁

1. 🤗

2. So, Leo’s issues are like a leak in a dam constantly trying to be held back. Kitsune’s magic can suppress or manipulate his memories, but a lot still manage to get through. Hence the need for the repeated sessions, and then later the Empyrean, to act as a booster to her magic—as Leo has built up a tolerance over the years, making it less and less effective. Leo does remember some things. Unfortunately, every time he starts to ask questions, he’s been so conditioned to seek out Kitsune to ‘fix’ his mind and suppress his emotions. But some of his memories were impossible to erase completely. They followed him around like little shadows, haunting him, and his choices. Leo is not stupid. He more discerning than he let’s on, and like Saki said, fear can be a powerful motivator. By the time Leo’s managed to claw his way up to a better position, he’s been fed so many lies that he doesn’t even trust his own reasoning. It’s just easier, and less painful to follow orders, no matter what his brain is constantly trying to tell him.

3. Tbh Leo probably wouldn’t have been very different from how he is. Shredder is a lot more…calculating in his abuse of Leo, than Draxum was for Donnie. Draxum was so unpredictable and volatile in his abuse. Everything that Donnie tried to do better, never seemed to help lessen his torture. It was just pain for the sake of pain. Shredder may be a monster, but his abuse had a goal—to make a warrior he could puppet into killing Yoshi. Saki didn’t just provide constant trauma, he gave positive reinforcement when Leo did something right, and used careful manipulation to bend Leo over to his side. All Kitsune’s spell did was make it easier and faster. If Shredder hadn’t had magic at his disposal, then it would’ve just taken more time and effort to break Leo and remold him, or Shredder might’ve just cut his losses and killed him.

4. Leo doesn’t want to burden his brothers with things that have already passed, and that feeling only gets stronger after he’s been saved from the Dark Armor. He’s constantly insisting that he doesn’t feel one way or the other from those days. It happened, but he says he feels so disconnected from it all. Leo’s earlier return to his family had already been filled with so much fighting, thanks to his withdrawals when he was first brought home causing him to act so erratic. Leo thinks as long as he’s not shouting at his brothers, or trying to attack Splinter, that he’s dealing with everything pretty well. Obviously that’s bullshit. But he’s gonna do a lot of healing during his trip with Usagi.

5. Leo’s worst triggers are when his family is in danger. Those times are when he falls back into either total bloodlust, or a more ruthless mentality, in order to protect them. Leo getting recaptured and thrown back into a cell will be like a wave of memories and trauma hitting him at full force. Like I’ve mention in point 1. He never totally forgot certain things, but the months spent free of Kitsune’s influence makes his second capture so much worse. He’ll be feeling all that fear and panic unfiltered, for the first time in years, and he’ll be able to recall the true horror of it—not the watered down, warped simulacrum Shredder wanted him to remember. Which loops back to point 4 about Leo’s lack of admitting his feelings being a coping mechanism. Once he gets rescued, unconsciously, he’s trying to mimic the dampening effect of Kitsune’s spell, by insisting through sheer force of will, that everything is fine. He can only convince himself that he’s unaffected by everything he’s experienced for so long.

6. Thank you!!! I hope you have an amazing week as well!

I’m sorry if this is kinda rambling, all these ideas be more clearly implemented in the comic, (at least I hope lol).

I also can’t remember how long ago I’ve even talked about Leo’s memory problems in one of these replies. I might be totally backtracking cause I think I’ve said before his memory was wiped completely, but I’ve been thinking it would give more complexity to his choices, if it was revealed his memory was actually more intact than Mikey’s this whole time. Mikey brain just needed a little boost from Raph, because his issue came more from him being so young that things faded over time. With Leo, it’s like a battle where his brain is trying to latch on to what it can to fight the effects of Kitsune’s spell. So his memory may be full of holes and beaten with a stick over and over, but it’s still knocking around in Leo’s head.

[super-paper]

"Thank you for such wonderful comedy."

I've been wanting to talk about how MHA plays with the concepts of "fiction vs reality, the characters vs the actor, the world vs the stage" for awhile now, bc I believe understanding how MHA utilizes these concepts is pretty crucial to understanding our Big Bad (and Tomura!) (...and Izuku!) (.. etc!) (y-yeah...!!!) (wooo.....!!!!!)

If this post is more incoherent than usual, I apologize-- I'm just really enthusiastic about stories that play with the fact that they're stories and characters who throw themselves into a fictionalized role as a means of coping. I love the way MHA handles these concepts in particular, so I lost all sense of restraint as usual.

Hori: "I'm Like Dropping Hints That Hero/Villain Personas Are Actually Coping Mechanisms Lol"

"As Tomura Shigaraki and Tenko Shimura, I've got just one wish: the total destruction of everything that created that house." "If my origin as Touya and Dabi was such a simple thing, then... No, there are still things I want to say. Arguments I want to have."

I've seen a few ppl saying that it sounds awkward/strange to have the characters repeatedly asserting themselves in the third person, but imo, the emphasis on real names versus hero/villain names during these particular scenes plays into the idea of the villain/hero identities being "alter egos" that might not actually have the same core desires as the """"actors"""" that are behind these personas.

Tomura and Touya invoke both their real and villain names while asserting their respective wishes. Himiko also invokes her villain name, though it's less obvious to english speakers because she uses her real name as her villain name (in the raws, "HIMIKO TOGA" as a villain name is written using katakana-- and this is what she uses when asserting her wish). MHA plays with the idea of "fiction"/"Alter Egos" as a form of escapism and as a coping method, and at this point in time, the Dabi/Tomura/"Himiko" identities are still being utilized as a crutch/mask by these three very hurt individuals.

*loud, terrifying chanting* PEAK FICTION PEAK FICTION PE--

Ochako's fight being like the second most thematically important fight in the whole series still makes me unreasonably giddy btw.

To contrast, Ochako uses her civilian name alone when asserting her wish-- and imo we're meant to read this as Ochako wanting to save Himiko as herself, not as Uravity. Saving Himiko is not something she can accomplish as her alter-ego-- Ochako is able to save Himiko by stepping off the stage and becoming a "real" person, while also acknowledging the person behind "Toga Himiko (villain name)".

Izuku hasn't had his "I'm Izuku Midoriya"/"I'm-saving-you-as-Izuku-not-as-Deku" moment yet-- instead, we see Tomura intentionally making that distinction between the-hero-and-the-true-self by constantly referring to Izuku by his real, full name. And I'm pr sure Izuku is also the only one he does this to-- we see him referring to all the other heroes he encounters by their hero names alone, or by insulting nicknames (l-lol). Correct me if I'm wrong, tho!

(side note: Tomura switching to calling Izuku just "Hero" in the aftermath of Bakugate is actually a big step backwards imo-- it reads as Tomura trying to push Izuku away by shoving them both back in the hero/villain box and doubling down on enforcing their respective "roles." Not that I ever expected mister doomdere to make things easy, but, woof. Good Fuckin' Luck, Izuku ( ´･ω･) )

TL;DR The final arc has mostly been about tearing off the hero/villain masks to reveal who is hiding underneath— MHA's careful use of names and monikers plays heavily into that and its distinction between "alter-ego"/"true self" a lot. Which is... probably one of the many reasons why All For One still doesn't have a given name, as someone who has all but completely lost himself in his character.

Anyway! That brings us to the meat of this post: how does MHA take the concepts of "reality vs fiction" and "the character vs. the actor" and apply it to All For One (...and Tomura) (and Izuku--)?

"Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain!"

"If you refuse to submit, then I'll just rewrite the story." - it's amazing how all of this coulda been avoided if someone had just introduced AFO to Demon Lord x Reader fanfiction. (/j)

AFO fancies himself as the author of MHA's greatest tragedy (the desecration of Shimura Nana's legacy via the sacrifice of Shimura Tenko), while simultaneously inserting himself into its overarching narrative and treating himself as the leading villain of the story-- it's self-indulgent and intentionally invasive in the way that most self-insert fanfiction tends to be invasive, with him going to extremes to make it seem as though the whole story revolves around him. AFO wants to be both the author and the leading character and the leading antagonist. This greed is typical of him, but it also establishes him as a character who's more caught up in (read: trapped by) his relationship to "fiction" than anyone else. Again, MHA explores the use of fiction and alter-egos as an escape from a painful reality-- so, it's entirely reasonable to assume that this applies to AFO as well.

To me, so much about AFO reads as an escapist fantasy of someone who is utterly terrified of being put in a position where he is truly seen. The idea of being vulnerable, of being naked, of being "human," is intolerable to him. But by not allowing himself to feel and "be a human," he has effectively cut himself off from what he wants most. The character of “Shigaraki Tomura” is as much an escapist fantasy for AFO as it is Tenko-- It's just another (younger, prettier) layer of skin he can hide his true self in.

"so basically you're saying that AFO is a never nude" yes, actually :)

AFO dehumanizes Tomura through his attempts to turn the boy into his personal comic book character, but he also dehumanizes himself by desperately trying to insert himself into that “character." It's only fitting that Tomura’s innate humanity and capacity for feeling ends up rendering AFO himself painfully, painfully human-- and ultimately causes AFO's carefully constructed character to start crumbling.

If All the World’s a Stage, Then Let’s Destroy the Stage

"That stage is gone now. The theater's knocked down. How much longer can we afford to be spectators on the sideline?" "Once upon a time, a man named All Might showed all of us how to be a hero. But somewhere along the way, people forgot about the heart and soul that made the man." -MHA, Chapter 325

Tomura is attempting to destroy the stage, because without the stage there can be no "Shigaraki Tomura" (Or "All Might," or "All For One," or "Endeavor," etc etc etc). Without the stage, there are no more "characters" and no more tragedies. But-- without the stage, there are no more stories period. There are no more tragedies, but there are no more happy endings either. The world never recognizes the actor behind "Shigaraki Tomura" without the stage. The stage is not inherently a bad thing, so long as people can remember that the actors on the stage still exist outside of it.

But Tomura himself cannot imagine what happens after the curtains fall, and all that's left is Shimura Tenko. He is stuck in a role that was written entirely for someone else, but remains convinced that the role was always his and that the role defines him.

Tomura rebels against the story the only way he knows how--against an "author" who *LITERALLY* views him as a spicier self insert, and against a "setting" that treats his death as a happy ending-- but even so, Tomura still can't picture an ending that doesn't end in tragedy. His rebellion is not about him trying to wring a happy ending out of a miserable, mean-spirited book-- it's about burning the whole damn library down so he never feels let down or hurt by a story again.

Basically: Tomura cannot act outside the confines of his "character" in a way that will truly save him. Even as he rebels, he's rebelling in a way that is painfully consistent with the way his "character" is written-- and that's why AFO (the author) still poses such an enormous threat to him. Destruction cannot save him from this story when he was explicitly penned to destroy.

The only way to break this narrative is to act in a way "the author" doesn't expect, and to tap into all the traits that AFO desperately attempted to "write out" of him-- Shimura Tenko is someone who has always rebelled against his writing, his author, and the unfairness of this story with his kindness and his willingness to accept those that no one else will.

AFO cuts off Tenko's own power at the root by reinforcing Tomura's belief that the world will always inherently reject him, without fail, always and forever-- so he should just reject the world, too (and I've talked at length about this before, but this is why a story that ends with Tomura dying or locked away from society is an ending that fails in its goal to save Tomura). The more Shigaraki Tomura rejects everything and the more Shigaraki Tomura is rejected by everything, the more he distances himself from his root and the source of his power-- and the more Shimura Tenko gets lost in this character.

While AFO is terrified of someone seeing behind his mask, Tomura longs for it. Tenko has been there since the beginning and has been begging for someone to finally see and acknowledge him (both in-universe and out of universe).

"I’ll Be There, Changing Fate by Your Side."

AFO: "Blah Blah Blah Do you still believe myths can save you? Foolish creature. Let me be clear: every version of the story ends with you being slaughtered yadda yadda yadda :) :) :)" ENTER, MIDORIYA IZUKU WITH A STEEL CHAIR.

Izuku's role is that of a completely average boy who gets pulled into a narrative ''that wasn't for him"-- he has no heroic lineage, no hidden powers, and no connection to the centuries old conflict that drives the plot. He's just a boy who did the right thing at the right time and was rewarded for it. Izuku is someone who was "never supposed to be a hero" the same way Tenko was "never supposed to be a villain" per the "rules" of their world-- and Izuku, like Tomura, is someone who exists to destroy those rules and the expectations of their narrative, completely changing the ending.

But rather than burning the book and ending the story forever (like Tomura wants to do), Izuku believes that the story and characters can still be salvaged. There's always something worth saving. It doesn't have to be a tragedy, they can still change the ending. They can talk specifics after Tomura's crazy ass puts the lighter down.

Izuku, like Tomura and so many other characters, throws himself into an alter-ego in an attempt to redefine himself and escape from pain ("Nobody's been saved yet. Don't be the worthless old Deku who can't save anyone" 😬). He almost loses himself in the role of "OFA's torch bearer" the way All Might did-- but just as Izuku managed to find Toshinori Yagi and helped in convincing him that his life as Toshinori has meaning, Izuku ends up getting saved by his friends who couldn't care less about OFA's ~protagonist power~ and know that Izuku is just a goofy, awkward, human boy who needs help.

Like.... If we explore quirklessness as like... a narrative stand-in for characters that the story typically views or dismisses as irrelevant extras/npcs, then AFO's barely restrained anger at Izuku and Toshi (and possibly Yoichi if we're being honest) for daring to ''act beyond their roles'' becomes even funnier. AFO can't stand the idea of his power/the protagonist role being passed on to someone who seems so utterly unworthy, unremarkable, and plain. He can't stand the idea of someone without a quirk/"role" standing up to him, the leading character. Dude really is a toxic comic book fan to the core.

afo really said "I didn't like how things were going so I stopped reading and just wrote a better ending to the story :^)" like...... @mhareddit that's u buddy...........................;

Anyway...........!!!!! AFO is someone who cherry picks what he likes about a story while ignoring the actual intent/message of the work (#theabsolutestateofthemhafandom), but he has no intention of breaking down the dichotomy between heroes/villains and instead actively enforces it (.............#theabsolutestateofthemhafan--). He just wants to flip what side wins in the end.

Tomura wants to break the narrative because he sees that as the only way to escape from his pain (but in doing so, he permanently cuts himself off from being a part of a story with a happy ending). He wants to destroy the dichotomy between heroes and villains because heroes and villains "will never understand each other and never stop creating each other" (lol. lmao, even).

Izuku wants to break the narrative because he's realized that there's something more to this story than your standard "Hero versus Villain," "good vs evil" affair and that he cannot explore what lies behind those masks and labels without tearing them down, first.

These three work together well as a narrative set of Fucking Nerds, and AFO works well as both Tomura and Izuku's villain for all of the above reasons (& also bc he's the only one who is actually benefitting from their current society) ((which basically offers him an endless buffet of hurt and angry children he can exploit on a silver platter)).

Anyway! Kick his ass, Izuku.

[abyssalzones]

C-PTSD as a diagnosis makes so much sense for Ford because he really does fit almost all of the criteria, ESPECIALLY if you take the stuff in J3 into account in conjunction with his traumatic childhood (bullying, bad dad, etc.). It just makes sense in regards to his motivations and his issues with interpersonal relationships (like with Stan). Also buring yourself in your work (like he does) is a very common 'flight' coping mechanism to trauma in adults

I'm smiling like this right now

ford's whole.... mental health deal is extremely interesting to examine because Oh my god this man is the textbook image for "reacting to ongoing, continuous trauma". intentional or otherwise (I'm inclined to believe it's both).

like. okay hang on I'm about to get very in depth with it

I feel like there's no way this entire guy's life and in some ways his lasting identity haven't been defined by and constructed around various forms of trauma, maybe the most obvious and true-to-canon-intent being peer abuse/bullying from childhood. a lot of people downplay the impact of this type of abuse but it's... responsible for a lot of social ills in shocking ways. (if you're more interested in this topic here is an article my friend mer linked me a while back, it gets into it very deeply)

(a lot of this is going to be sourced from the wikipedia page for CPTSD [and my own experience Living with it] which I realize isn't very professional of me but Whatever this is tumblr)

one of the core tenets of ford's personality is that he's Different. he owns it, sure- his six fingers become a point of pride rather than something to be ashamed of- but they make it extremely clear that from a young age he associated being different with being a social pariah. ford's generation was characterized by notoriously cruel bullying, and anything that remotely made you stand out rendered you a target. ford could've been bullied for being nerdy and jewish (and failing to perform socially, ie dating) alone, having such an obvious mutation definitely was not winning him any points.

so it's honestly no surprise, when from childhood ford feels like he has One person in the world to trust and confide in, that he would go on to form very unhealthy attachment patterns typical of CPTSD. as you elaborated on regarding AvPD (which I know far less about but seems to have comorbidity with CPTSD): if you're hard-wired to believe socializing with others results in failure or betrayal, then you're not going to make an effort. but what does end up happening is that you're going to pour all of your trust and dependency into one person at a time, one person who is "safe".

previously, that was his brother. and it's not really hard to draw the conclusion from there that fiddleford was a subject of ford's attachment style, considering he was his One friend from college, and... one of Maybe two people ford is friends with at all who he isn't related to. he cites him as the only person he can possibly trust to work on the portal project alongside him, and he still can't bring himself to tell him the full truth, because he's terrified of losing him. I love their dynamic (I do think they were mutual best friends, and there was no small amount of trust reciprocated between them. "fiddleford was weird as hell too" is something I keep coming back to) and I don't think it's built on entirely unhealthy terms, but that kind of pressure is... setting things up to crash and burn.

enter bill stage left. back to "continuous yearning to be liked and accepted"- this guy knew that and made every effort to prey on ford's insecurities to reel him in as close as possible. this is what really pisses me off about the idea that bill was just "inflating ford's ego", because it's way, way more insidious than that. throughout the entirety of journal 3 we see ford reintroduce someone to his life he has a very positive relationship with (fiddleford) and how that trust gets gradually broken down by bill's influence "winning out" over their friendship. I think it's safe to say ford was already vulnerable: from the start, he'd been isolated in his research for six years (and it's unclear for how long he'd known bill by 1982), and bill proved time and time again to be someone who wouldn't judge him, someone who would praise him for his hard work, and perhaps most critically, make him feel like being different was something special.

like that's... that's really not good!!!! and that kind of thing works wonders on someone who has already settled with the idea that they're inclined to be alone just by design.

trying to put a cap on this. in relationships like the one he's had with his brother or fiddleford it doesn't even necessarily have to be ""toxic"" (vague term anyway) or outwardly bad to be built on unhealthy attachment patterns, and considering for a good chunk of ford's life his attachment to others can be characterized as "I can only trust ONE person at a time" it feels essential to any discussion of his CPTSD or canon trust issues. That is something that happens a lot in Real cases of CPTSD (hi) and only further snowballs into More trauma by leaving you vulnerable to manipulation and abuse (see: bill.)

I've been going on for way too long now and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of the thing I wanted to elaborate on sorry. that post traumatic stress disorder can complex

[hiwelcometothemonstersancturary]

What’s it like for the older toys to have a drink for the first time?

OKAY, SO!

Angel doesn't allow anyone to drink until they have a precise confirmation of everyone's ages and medical exams come out detailing if there's anything the toys absolutely cannot eat. Everyone is fine and dandy, thankfully, so one day Angel comes back from the grocery store with a few thinks for the older toys to taste.

Poppy likes wine, and is way too knowledgeable on it since day 1. Angel asks her how she knows all of that, she shrugs it off and says she picked up from a book in Elliot Ludwig's office (which is true). She's always VERY excited to try new wines, and was 100÷ sure she couldnt get drunk until she got tipsy. Lots of "I told you"s happened that day.

Mommy Long Legs is also on the wine team, but with the addition of caipirinha and any drink that also has fruits added to it. She and Poppy act like they know everything about wine, and in the household they kinda do. MLL absolutely HATES getting even a bit tipsy, though. She's there for taste only and if she drinks too much she can and will get grumpy. She fears she'll be an aggressive kind of drunk and never tries to see if her theory is true or not, and things stay like this.

Catnap and Dogday both like it, even tho it feels like a very mature thing to do. They dont drink close to any of the younger toys unless Angel is around, though.

Crafty likes the taste and almost drinks too much. She gets instantly tipsy and that's how she finds out she cant handle much.

Kickin feels like he's a big Adult, but he's a biiiit dissapointed. All the adults he knew pre-HoJ always hyped drinking so much, and for what? He however is very excited about mixing things. Whenever they're allowed to drink he tries making something new, and he, Long Legs and Poppy have lots of talk about taste.

Miss Delight drinks one (1) cup and goes "okay thank you a lot!" and the turns starts mixing things up. She doesn't even partake on drinking, girl literally does not care, she just loves mixing things and seeing what works. She and Kickin come up with some cursed combinations for everyone to try out.

Bubba and Picky are excited at the idea of feeling like a normal-ish adult until they drink for the first time and hates it. -9999/10 who thought this was good. Why.

Hoppy is HYPED. Drinks a bit, likes it, is still SUPER HYPED. Angel has to stop her from drinking too much, and some time later on they find out it's VERY hard for her to get drunk.

Bobby finds that it's... Okay! She likes wine more than the other options, but not to the extent Poppy does. Angel makes some caipirinha later and it becomes her favorite, but again, she doesn't mind not having it. It's all just a big "oh okay!" to her.

Angel does keep some drinks in one of the fridges, but the toys hardly drink unless it's a weekend. However...

Prototype does let Catnap drink a bit more from time to time. They usually just sit outside Proto's hut and talk while drinking a bit before stopping. Catnap liked doing this because being a bit drunk would make him feel less guilty from everything.

Dogday would also drink alone sometimes in order to cope with Everything he went through. Then one day he catches Catnap leaving Proto's hut smelling like alcohol and the two stare at each other like "uh oh this doesn't feel like a good way to deal with Everything", and work together to have better coping mechanisms. After some months they completely drop the habit before it could run out of control, and are only able to do that because they're in a safe and healthy environment.

... Prototype still lets Catnap drink though. He trusts him enough.

[apparitionism]

Asleep 2

For the anniversary this year, I have the second “half” of my @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange story for @kla1991 : an involuntary bed-sharing situation that turns not sexy but disastrous. The first part took on Myka’s perspective; this conclusion is written from the other side of the bed. A confession: I find in-universe Helena’s head voice a somewhat difficult register to compose—because while she can’t be fully insane, she needs to teeter or list, sometimes more than a little (but without falling into histrionics). Which is to say that if you don’t entirely buy the turns of thought and/or coping mechanisms I’ve given her here, your skepticism is well-placed. Ultimately I hope it’s the case that a person can be broken but still want in a way that’s... pure? Justified? Sweet? Reciprocatable? Maybe just “vaguely recognizably human”?

Anyway, this is long, first because it extends well beyond the point at which the first part ended, but also because when a Bering and a Wells get to talking (as they at last do!), they need to work things out at their own pace...

Asleep 2

My arm is asleep.

Under normal circumstances, a person would, upon becoming aware of this, shift position so as to restore blood flow.

Under normal circumstances.

But very little is normal about the circumstances under which Helena’s arm is asleep.

She is in a hotel-room bed, in the dark of night, lying on her left side, with her left arm, her now-asleep arm, pinned beneath her. So ends the disturbingly limited “normal” portion of the situation.

Here begins the larger portion: she absolutely must not move.

Irony guts at her with that, a shiv-and-twist remembrance of bronze restriction—but that prohibition had involved a significantly different auxiliary verb: “cannot” rather than “must not.”

Grammatical particulars aside, her immobility now is barely less a torment. This is because her other arm, her alive right, terminates in an even-more alive sensate hand, one that now rests—but is in no way at rest—on Myka’s right hip.

Myka, too, is lying on her left side, a small distance in front of Helena, lying in this hotel-room bed. Such proximity in such a space might, under other circumstances, signify the fulfillment of a long-held dream... but here, now, it seems a nightmare. For Myka is Helena’s colleague and no more; they are in this bed for sleep and no more; and Myka is playing her part correctly while Helena is not, in contravention of what she has sworn to herself she would do no more.

Such drowsy sense the placing of that hand had seemed to make, when she had found herself facing Myka’s back. She had in the past regarded that length covetously, relishing the idea of touch both salacious and tender.

For all her coveting, however, she had in fact only once laid hands on that back, both hands with intention on the clothed blades of Myka’s shoulders: a terrifying embrace, one that was in the most basic physical manner right but overall searingly wrong, screaming bodily truth but surrounded by words that said nothing they should. A perversion of promise, like so much else that had happened in Boone.

Yet Helena had clung to its memory all the same.

She’d thought, here in this unexpected proximity, to supersede that, to touch once again, once again but brief, once again though brief. To erase and replace.

First she touched the right blade, light; yet her hand wanted stillness, more connection than a mere pat against cotton-clad bone. And there was Myka’s hip, a beckoning promontory jut... a place to rest. Rest, however brief.

Once placed, however, her hand had proved reluctant to retreat.

Brief, she reminded it.

No, the hand had responded. I belong here.

Helena knows this is true. She knows also that it cannot be true.

But she is no stranger to holding contradictory thoughts in her head. This has been essential to establishing and maintaining, in these new Warehouse days, a functional equilibrium. Functional. Indeed her goal, in this “reboot,” has been to function, which she has lately defined as something on the order of “to move through time nondestructively.”

This definition had come about due to her realization, pre-reboot, that her difference from others, her inability to fully perform a modern self—her arrogance about that inability, even as she attempted to hide both the inability and the arrogance—chipped at, chipped from, the good (the good nature, the good will, the goodness) of those around her. Over time, such chips accrued as wounds.

Nate. (Adelaide.) Giselle.

She had as a result finally understood that coming back to the Warehouse would mean, at the very least, that those with whom she interacted had already made a bargain, perhaps even a peace, with the inevitable violence of history: with the way the forces of the past could—would—affect, even infect, the present. Helena herself was, at her simplest, merely one more of those forces.

She did consider requesting that she be re-Bronzed, now absent any pretension of traveling through time, but rather as a way of neutralizing a dangerous, and demonstrably unstable, artifact. But then an image had come to her, possibly as an omen, possibly as only a desperate wish: Myka’s devastated face upon hearing such news.

Boone all over again.

Thus the reboot. Because the most significant entry under “function,” with additional emphasis on the “nondestructive” portion of that definition, was her resolution to spare Myka pain. In the past, Helena had been both careless and careful—surgically so—in her infliction of damage on Myka above all others. But she had sworn to herself that those days were done.

Done, but Helena knew she had not paid anything near a sufficient price.

So. To maintain distance, no matter how troublesomely ardent her wish to close it, was—had to be—part of her penance. And to do so decorously was—had to be—the gentlest approach. That was what Helena told herself in her more rational moments.

This moment, in this bed, is not one of those. If it were, she would simply remove her hand. Simply remove it, then roll over.

But her mind races, finding complication: She doesn’t know what sort of sleeper Myka is. Had Helena’s placing of hand awakened her? If she had awakened, has she now fallen asleep again? If she has, would she then be reawakened by the hand’s removal? Or would she, if still awake, draw some negative inference about the entire situation based on removal?

Ideally, Helena would maintain a facsimile of entirely blameless sleep while engaging in that removal, but can she make such a performance believable?

Never in her life has Helena been so concerned about her ability to mislead convincingly as when she has attempted to deceive Myka. That was the case in the past, even at her most nefarious, and now she worries day-to-day that her strictly disciplined disguise of near-constant wishing ache will slip and fail. A simple I am asleep should be... well... simple. But it is not, and Helena is reminded of Claudia’s tendency to observe, in situations both dire and banal, “Here we are.”

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to the idea of sharing a bed with Helena.

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to history.

Here we are, and that latter indifference is a surpassing irony, due to the fullness of—

Helena sees that she needs to divert her train of thought, as descending into unjustified anger will help absolutely nothing.

First, she entertains a fantasy of sitting up, turning on a light, and explaining to Myka that this entire situation is untenable, and that if they are going to share a bed, they should share a bed. But it’s true that Myka did not seem even to consider that as a possibility, which seems ludicrous, given the past... no, that’s back to unjustified anger, for who is Helena to resent what Myka wishes not to consider? And indeed, who is she to interpret the past in such a way as to believe she understands what Myka would have considered?

Focus on the facts, she tells herself. What actually happened in that nefarious past. And do so dispassionately.

Regrettably, the word “dispassionately” brings to mind another word: “passionately.”

Again. For she had thought that word not long after she and Myka had first entered this room, first entered it to find, as Helena’s unrestrained fantasies might have conjured, only one bed. That they were clearly intended to share. Thus her mind’s unruly leap to... an adverbial manner in which they might do so.

But Myka had said not one word about the accommodations, so Helena had held her tongue as well. She nevertheless couldn’t help but feel it an elaborate lack of remark on both their parts, the silence practically baroque in its fullness.

Baroque too had been the courtesy with which they jointly prepared for bed, a you-first-no-you stutter-choreography of politeness that ensured privacy, yes, but also reinforced the barrier between their past and their present.

Which Helena understood was necessary. It did nothing, however, to mitigate the breath-hold of preparing to lie down beside Myka.

Once she had managed that lying down, however (with a relative aplomb for which self-congratulation was not, she felt, unjustified), she hoped her torment might ease. A bit. If she could manage the additional task of pretending the body beside her was no more significant than any other human. Some flesh, recumbent.

But when they were situated thus beside, Myka spoke. “You seem a little upset,” she said.

Helena had barely been able to restrain a snort. Now Myka saw fit to comment? As if allowing this portion of the play to pass without remark would create some undue strain upon collegiality? As if their incongruous bonhomie might buckle under the weight of that silence? Oh, that was rich.

Bottling her pique, Helena questioned: “With?” To make Myka say it. Mere saying wouldn’t hurt. Would it?

“You haven’t been yourself since you put that camera in the static bag. Was it a problem, seeing it again?”

Helena held herself rigid so as to keep her body from betraying neither her disappointment at the question nor, contradictorily, her relief...

It was a reasonable question. A good question. Not one on which Helena particularly wanted to focus (although it indicated a certain attention on Myka’s part, an attention on which Helena suspected she should not dwell), but it did deserve an answer. “It closes a door, doesn’t it,” she told the ceiling, for turning her head to address the other body directly seemed an invitation to peril. “That one I opened so nefariously, long ago.”

“Or—and—maybe it closes a loop,” Myka said.

Unexpected. “A loop?”

“Right after college, I went through a self-help phase,” Myka said. She paused, and Helena found herself on relative tenterhooks regarding the applicability of this (new!) information to the current situation. Which reminded her how much she had missed talking with Myka... because of the very sound of her voice, yes, but also because her conversation could range so unanticipatedly. So rewardingly unanticipatedly. Helena had known few people who could lead her on such unpredictable, yet productive, journeys.

Was Myka’s apparent willingness to begin such a journey now indicative of... anything? A softening, perhaps, of relations between them? Not a rebooting of their once-burgeoning intimacy, for that had to remain taboo, but could it be that some restoration of their previous intellectual engagement might be, at the very least, neutral rather than harmful?

Helena had moved a tentative pawn in that direction during their conversation on the airplane. Perhaps this was Myka’s answering move?

With an exhale that seemed like resignation at what she was about to say—to reveal?—Myka said, “I felt like I needed to be someone different—someone better.”

Another pause. Helena considered that such a feeling seemed very Myka (and she heard that phrase in Claudia’s voice), but also very misguided. Of course she was not at all placed to make such judgments, and even less so to convey them to Myka. Thus she said a simple, “Did you,” to encourage without prejudice.

“So I read a lot of books,” Myka said, to which Helena had responded internally, Of course you did. “One was about how to get things done.”

“All things?” Helena asked.

“Sort of.” That was followed by yet another pause. Yet another puzzle.

All these pauses. Was Myka on the verge of sleep? Helena said, soft, thinking she might go unheard, “Perhaps I should read that book. As a help to myself.”

At that, Myka had laughed, more delay, but also soft. “I don’t think it’s any kind of help you need. The guy who wrote it had a big system, all these rules, and I love rules, but these... I admit I didn’t stick with most of them. Honestly, any. But an idea that did stick was actually a pretty minor part: open loops. Stuff you track subconsciously, all the time, because it’s incomplete. How troubling that is. And what a difference it makes when you close a loop, when you each a resolution. I mean, he was talking about stuff like answering emails.”

“Emails,” Helena echoed. So far from artifacts.

“Which this is so much bigger than,” Myka said, exhibiting, not for the first time, an uncanny ability to scoop from Helena’s thoughts. “But maybe the principle holds. You don’t have to tell me. But I hope you have fewer open loops now than you did. Before.”

“Yes. The number. Fewer,” Helena said, factually.

She of course couldn’t say out loud (but it was equally factual) that Myka herself was the loop most capaciously open. The one that gaped, superseding, never mind the number of lesser.

Indeed, however, that number was now minus-one. Oscar. Oscar and his ballad... that loop closed.

Helena had in fact, while handling the camera, begun to ideate a wish that someone (Steve? Claudia?) might be persuaded to use the camera to capture her image... for it had occurred to her that a spark of art, some production on which to concentrate, might animate this reboot... something to pursue, rather than to be pursued by...

But. Lying abed, still and strangely hopeful—a state she should have known would not endure—a realization had struck her, as an open hand to the face, a realization of why Myka had brought up loops and the closing thereof: she had somehow discerned Helena’s wish, via that scooping of thought, and was discouraging her from pursuing it.

So much for any softening. This was instead a warning: Helena should not open a loop that Myka might be obligated to close. And Helena had no trouble grasping that the warning was in no way limited to the use of a single artifact... no, it doubtless applied to any burdensome loops Helena might be thinking of opening, any new incompletions that might come to trouble Myka.

“I understand,” Helena had said, regretting that pawns could not be moved backwards.

At the same instant, Myka said, “I’m glad.”

That collision had canceled communication entirely; in its wake, Myka had turned out her light and turned away from Helena.

Leaving Helena to her thoughts.

Well, fine, had been the first of those.

Next had come an equally mulish sniff of And I will have no difficulty directing any subsequent away from this shared bed.

Whereupon she had proven herself both wrong and right, thinking about history, about the fact that, whatever Myka’s commentary or lack thereof had or hadn’t signified, the fact of Warehouse agents lodging together, sharing beds completely platonically, was certainly nothing new.

This line of thinking had enabled Helena to distract herself by recalling a mission with Steve and Claudia, one in which Steve had announced, after checking in at their hotel, “Bad news. Just a king room left, but they said they’d bring up a cot.”

He had then immediately assigned Claudia to said cot, prompting her to protest, “No way! This situation screams rock-paper-scissors tournament! Loser gets the crappy night’s sleep!”

“No way,” Steve protested back, far more mildly. “The father of science fiction gets first dibs on the lumbar support, and my back’s got a decade on yours, so I call second. If that father agrees.”

Helena had. Sharing with Steve had been fine.

Sharing with Myka should of course have been no different.

Should of course have been...

But now, here in the impossible present, as Helena’s left arm slumbers and her right hand sparks, what should have been? Isn’t isn’t isn’t.

She needs further distraction, so she casts her mind again to Claudia and Steve, to the compensations they have offered her during this strange and estranging reboot: at first Claudia, who had welcomed Helena back so unreservedly and continues to offer wholehearted allyship; and then Steve, who had quickly become an unanticipated boon companion, a partner upon whom Helena has felt increasingly, and increasingly exceptionally, lucky to be able to rely.

And yet these compensations, though Helena hopes she conveys all appropriate gratitude for them, are never sufficient, for Myka—necessary yet unreachable—is always present.

She’d been so, even during that cot-delineated retrieval. Its aftermath had (so much for distraction) involved a significantly Myka-related incident, for Helena had dared, as she, Steve, and Claudia were relaxing in the hotel lounge prior to retiring, to broach Myka as a topic of conversation. As one might do, she’d thought: speaking about a colleague.

“I have an inquiry,” she’d phrased it. To make the ensuing question sound... scientific?

Dispassionate, she jeers at her recalled self.

She jeers also at what she’d said next: a too-bald, “How is Myka?”

She had known, even at the time, that what she had truly wanted was to say that blessed name, to speak about that blessed person. She could not speak to Myka in any meaningful way, and she was starving.

Steve and Claudia had then shared what seemed an extremely charged glance, so Helena hastened to dissemble, making sure to use questions so as to prevent Steve from finding her immediately untruthful: “Given that her liaison with Pete ended? They’ve... recovered, as it were? Both faring well?”

But her tone had struck her own ears as too bright; a desperation rippled behind it, and Helena knew from experience that behind that tiptoed a still deeper threat of rupture, which required work to be kept at bay. As Helena had been instructed by her most successful therapist to do when such awareness overtook her, she began to breathe with attention.

Neither Steve nor Claudia spoke as she did so.

When the danger passed, she smiled, as best she could, to signal to them her appreciation—and to herself, her success.

Steve then said, “You’re not asking about Pete.”

Helena valued—as a personality trait—Steve’s discerning willingness to push. She did not in that moment value how he thus so easily revealed a glaring flaw in her initial approach: she should have asked about Pete; with that as her entrée, the talk might organically have turned to Myka. Foolish of her to think so unstrategically... or was her failure to do so a paradoxically positive sign?

“Give it time,” Steve said, and Helena knew he was making no reference to Myka and Pete’s recovery.

“My relationship to time,” she said, with contempt. Time: she’d taken it. Now she had to give it? A forfeit. Well, that was fair.

Claudia said to Steve, “Speaking of, we’re wasting it. Are we gonna do the thing?”

“Only if H.G.’s on board,” Steve told her. It was an unexpectedly mind-your-manners utterance.

“What is the thing?” Helena asked.

“Claudia’s trying out alcohols,” Steve said. “We can’t do it around Pete, obviously, which means retrievals are our—”

“So many questions to answer, right?” Claudia interrupted, her avidity increasing. “You know, am I über-suave James Bond with the martinis? Or a fights-against-my-general-cool-geek-vibe Carrie Bradshaw with a cosmo?”

Helena had had no idea what she was referring to, but the investigation seemed entirely fit for someone her age. “What have you determined thus far?”

“Turns out cosmos don’t work for me,” she said, “as the prophecy foretold, and Bond-wise, I like a martini all vodka, no gin; sorry, Vesper.”

“Is that all?” Helena asked.

Further avidity: “Oh god no. Vodka drinks aren’t perfect: white Russians are way too sweet. Also in the white family, the wine category pretty much bores me. Also there was this one time Steve ordered a gin drink called a white lady that I couldn’t even think about because it had an egg white in it and one look made me retch.”

“Quite the wide-ranging experiment,” Helena said, hoping to forestall further off-putting description. “Not conducted with inappropriate... ah... intensity, one hopes?”

Steve patted Claudia’s shoulder, at which she rolled her eyes. “I’m supervising,” he said. “No more than a few tries in one sitting, and we’re doing it mindfully.”

Claudia abandoned her attitude and nodded. “Paying attention to what I’m tasting. How to find, you know, notes and stuff. Except for the disgusting egg-white thing, it’s honestly been fun.”

“I’m not opposed to fun,” Helena said, and she was a bit surprised—but pleased, and pleased to be pleased—that Steve didn’t squint in response. “So, Mr. Supervisor, what’s next?”

“I’ve been pushing for the wide and wonderful world of beer, but—”

“Seems too jocktastic,” Claudia said. “You know, ‘Beer me, bro.’”

“I don’t know,” Helena said.

“Anyway that’s really not me,” Claudia continued, as if Helena hadn’t spoken. She did have a tendency to ignore Helena’s ignorance, a tendency that Helena enjoyed and found frustrating in equal measure.

“Her beer perspective is severely limited,” Steve lamented.

“I myself have always found a strong stout ale quite enjoyable,” Helena said: her contribution to Steve’s cause. It was also true, the fact of which he seemed pleased to affirm with a quirk of lip and a quiet “so you have.”

Claudia’s expression remained skeptical, but she shrugged weakly and said, “I guess I could give it a shot?”

“Oh, because H.G. says so,” Steve twitted.

To that, Claudia squared her shoulders. “Yeah. Don’t you know who she is?” she demanded.

“Who I was,” Helena hurried to emphasize, “and given that Steve assigned me the bed on that basis, he—”

“Who you are,” Claudia corrected, throwing the emphasis back.

“And who is that?” Helena asked. What distinction did Claudia imagine was relevant?

“The person who told me my destiny was glorious. You’re still that guy, right?”

Relevant indeed. Helena was taken aback, indeed taken back to that extremity, back in a novel way. She had been so mired in the Myka of it all in the intervening time, that she had lost her view of the bright salience of Claudia’s presence. Wrongly. “I am,” she said. She hoped Claudia believed her.

“Okay,” Claudia said. “So I’ve got this big-as-Pete’s-biceps incentive to hope the stuff you say is true. And by the way, one of you has to casually drop in front of him how I said that, because I want the points.”

Steve snickered and said, “I know my job. But in the meantime, I think I’d like to toast to all these sentiments, and to the agents offering them. With a strong stout ale.”

They tasted the three strongest the hotel bar had on offer, and Claudia pronounced that her favorite, one purporting to convey roasted notes of coffee, chocolate, and other darkness, was “way too complicated for your average broseph.” Which Steve seemed pleased by, as a judgment, so the overall experience scored a success.

There was no further talk of Myka, however, the avoidance of which topic seemed quite deliberate... as if Steve and Claudia had determined that Helena would not benefit from it.

Or that she did not deserve it.

For the best, Helena had concluded. Either way.

Now, in a similar “for the best either way” sense, she makes to raise her hand, with that intended overlay of feigned sleep, so as to shift away and at last regain equilibrium, restoring feeling to her sleeping arm and calming that oversensitive hand. But instead—in what she can interpret only as a stupidly id-driven attempt to bank some never-to-be-repeated sensation, to the memory of which that desperate id might cling in a touch-deprived future—she moves her hand, not away from Myka, but further down her leg.

And her worst fears are instantly realized: Myka’s body reacts violently, as if in revulsion at the very idea of Helena touching her.

It was only a hand at rest, Helena begs, with no conception of why or to whom she is rendering that supplication. That was all.

Alas, that was—is—not all, for in the next split second Myka is falling from the bed and crying out in pain.

Helena, at a loss, attempts a faux-innocent inquiry, which Myka answers unintelligibly. In trepidation, Helena ventures to the mattress-edge, then lowers herself to the floor next to Myka—and she is appalled, for the situation that confronts her is all debility, even more so than the absurd “my arm is asleep” with which this farce began: Myka’s shoulder is dislocated.

Further, Myka is now unconscious.

Spare Myka pain. How utterly unsurprising Helena finds her inability to obey such a dictum in even this most basic physical sense.

Unsurprising... worse, dispiriting, and it brings her low, such that again the incipient rupture asserts its subterranean power, urging Helena to give up, to run away and leave this broken Myka to someone else to bind up and save.

You’ve done it before.

That resounds in her head as both accusation and affirmation, and the voice pronouncing it might be Myka’s, or some deity’s, or that of any of the other personages who jockey audibly for primacy in that space, including Helena’s own.

She initiates breathing with care, even as an eddying undertow tempts her to entertain the notion that escape, too, might be rebooted, tempts her to entertain and revel in its ostentation as a response to Myka’s indifference, her rejection of history, even her revulsion.

Here is my answer to all that, a departure would declare.

Helena labors to breathe herself away from such perfidy, but the scenario creeps along, with an undertone of sinful relish, as she imagines leaving Myka to awaken alone and in pain.

But then—because her labor leads her there—she further imagines the various permutations of “someone else” who might be called upon to save the day in her absence. Whereupon the thought strikes her that moving through time nondestructively requires her to think seriously of, and to think seriously out, such knock-ons... how, for example, would Steve and Claudia respond to having to clean up this mess, knowing that Helena had made it?

Moving through time nondestructively. Interesting, here, the overlap with moving through time selfishly: selfishly, she does not want to destroy Claudia’s image of her as someone whose opinion matters. She does not want to destroy Steve’s image of her either, for it seems to have at least some positive components. Further, she does not want to destroy the fellowship they three are building.

If for no other reasons than those, she concludes that having caused this quite specific damage, she must fix it.

Because she can.

The fact of the matter is, Helena cannot fix most things. She has tried mightily to maintain the pretense that she can... but she has been forced over and over to confront the absurdity of that bravado. This very specific fix-it, however, she can perform. And while that performance—inconveniently, in the present circumstance—requires touch, here it can be functional. Perhaps in success she might in some way efface her earlier invasiveness...

Yet she can do nothing without two functional arms. She thumps her still-insensate left against the bed, hard—too hard, for Myka’s eyes open. She mumbles out something Helena decodes as “whatareyoudoing.”

“Preparing to remedy a situation,” Helena says.

“Okay.” Myka murmurs. She seems oddly comforted by the answer, to such an extent that she relaxes, losing consciousness again.

That’s fortunate, given the required manipulation.

Helena prepares herself to do it quickly, efficiently, as she has done in the past... rather dramatically on one occasion, as she recalls, for an agonized Wolcott... but she should not think of Wolcott. For the regret.

She sets that aside, preoccupying herself instead with the necessary activity. Her manipulation, determined and strong, is rewarded: what begins as a sluggish resistance resolves into a slip-pop of relocation, one that shudders a familiar path through her own bones. She then cushions Myka’s arm with a fresh towel and uses a pillowcase to fashion around it a tight sling.

Levering Myka up onto the bed would most likely cause further injury, so Helena sits beside her on the floor, ensuring periodically that she continues to breathe. The wait is calming, cleansing, its peace a renewal of a soothing activity of which Helena has been long deprived: observing Myka closely, at actual leisure. At no point since her return—so at no point in, literally, years—has she had such an opportunity.

She’s reminded, in that observation, of the true fundament: this precious person. Who could never be merely some flesh.

After a lengthy time, during which Helena is pressed to consider, to remember, to value Myka’s singularity, that precious person’s eyes flutter open.

That person tests her bound arm, a tentative physical investigation that approaches elegance in its delicacy.

But Myka’s delicacy and elegance, too, Helena should not think of. For the regret.

“I’m not in the hospital,” Myka burrs.

Reasonable, practical. This is what Helena should think of. “Not yet,” she says. “But we’ll go if necessary. If you’re in pain.”

Myka’s face contorts. “Not if. I am. Some. More than some. I’m sorry.”

“For being in pain?”

“That. But also, for changing this whole thing.”

Helena leaves the latter alone, for she cannot begin to interpret it. Focusing on functionality, she asks, “Can you dress yourself?”

Myka nods, but she winces far too much with even that motion, so Helena screws her courage to it and says, “I’ll change and then help you.”

Herself, fast, then Myka: Functional, she snarls internally as she addresses the situation, and even faster. She’s relieved to find that Myka’s trousers and boots are less complicated than she’d feared, and as it happens, preventing Myka suffering additional physical pain—even while undressing and redressing her!—is, paradoxically or not, far easier than navigating emotional shoals, or even hand-on-hip physical shoals. Focusing on Myka’s face for twists, listening for labors in breath, adjusting accordingly... it’s distractingly, satisfyingly concrete. Only the present moment matters.

Only the present moment matters. This is the mantra Helena iterates internally as they proceed to the nearest urgent care facility.

Yet as they wait there for attention, Helena finds herself increasingly unable to ignore why they are waiting there for attention. In the present moment, which matters. She begins—or does she intend it as an ending?—with, “I’m assuming you flung yourself to the floor in an attempt to escape a circumstance.”

Myka hiccups a laugh that makes her cringe in protection of the shoulder. “That’s weirdly accurate. As an assumption.”

Helena recoils at the confirmation, but she must acknowledge it. “A circumstance in which I touched you in a way that was unwelcome,” she agrees, with gloom.

“Unwelcome,” Myka echoes.

It’s so... definitive. It was one thing for Helena herself to think it, believe it, say it aloud. Quite another—though it shouldn’t have been—to hear it from Myka.

A punctuating end to what never truly began between them: there is some consolation, if only philosophical, in the idea that after so many starts that were false, they may at least enjoy a finish that is true.

“Of course it was,” Helena says, following with, “and how could it have been otherwise.” She puts the final period upon it by adding a bare, spare dig: “Given history.”

Myka closes her eyes... in acceptance of the cut? When she opens them, they are glistening. Tears? Helena is egotistically gratified by such a response, never mind that it means she has yet again failed to hold to her resolution.

“Helena,” Myka says, and now Helena is gratified simply by Myka’s low utterance of her name. Myka does not always use that deeper voice, and Helena does love (yes, love) the rare pleasure of hearing her name in it. “I’m so tired,” Myka says next.

That is less gratifying. It’s yet another utterance Helena should leave alone; of course Myka is tired. But in what she is sure is a mistake, Helena says, “Of?”

“Everything. But particularly, you.”

A dagger, that was. A cut back. Testimony to Helena’s concatenating mistakes.

“This you,” Myka adds.

The additional twist of blade leaves Helena unclear on the devastation Myka intends. “Of course” is all she can think to say.

Myka closes her eyes and exhales heavy, a near-sob. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” she intones, but what need has she to apologize? “That was the pain talking—or, no, I still know you well enough to know you’ll hear that wrong. What I mean is, I’m saying something I could keep holding back if the pain wasn’t cracking me open.”

The pain. Cracking her open. Which would never have happened in the absence of Helena’s stupid, thoughtless touch. Which in turn makes abundantly clear that the stupid, thoughtless person who applied that touch is the “this you” Myka means.

If Helena is to remain in this situation she must take measures, so she lengthens her inhales and exhales, entirely ashamed both at needing such a crutch and at having to exhibit that need.

After a moment of silence, Myka asks, “Are you breathing differently than you were just a second ago?”

Myka isn’t Steve. Helena could at least attempt to lie about this, to cloak her shame... but it’s effort, either way. “Yes,” she says, choosing the unpredictability of Myka’s interpretation over the unpredictability of her own performance.

“Is that good or bad?” Myka asks. “Or both?”

The questions stop Helena, stop her in the same way her at-leisure observation of Myka had. I still know you well enough, Myka had said, and it is true. This is why, Helena would say if she could. Your knowing to ask that.

But she can’t say it, and, worse, she doesn’t know what she should say. What should come next.

Apparently Myka doesn’t either. That not-knowing persists, hanging, until “next” arrives, as an intrusion from outside their suspension: medical attention is at last directed Myka’s way; she is escorted out of the waiting area and taken elsewhere.

“We’ll call you when you can see her,” Helena is told.

Alone in the waiting area—for no other human seems to have suffered damage this night—and uncomfortably situated on a hard plastic chair, she tilts her head back against a similarly unforgiving plaster wall.

She closes her eyes. She’s had no rest, no rest for so long. She is drained. Physically empty.

Philosophically as well.

She imagines trying to sleep... or rather, she imagines not trying to remain awake.

Doubtless futile, either way.

She next imagines constructing an airtight argument that could not help but persuade all who hear it—Myka in particular, but all others as well—that this entire situation is Artie’s fault.

Also futile.

This despite its being the fact of the matter, for indeed he did bring the situation about. Perhaps not in a proximate sense, but in the ultimate... the idea of which, after a moment, strikes her as both comic and tragic: Artie as the ultimate cause? Of anything, from the universe on down? Though he would doubtless like to imagine himself so... even at the Warehouse, however, he must be not even penultimate, given the bureaucracy that sits over the entire concern...

Helena thus spends the bulk of her time in the waiting area stewing about—stewing over? stewing under?—the relative positions of god, Mrs. Frederic, and various Regents in the universe. None of it, however, requires her to alter her breathing; rather, she composes in her head the opening paragraphs of several publishable monographs on these and related topics. It isn’t restful. But is evidence of something other than emptiness.

When someone does at last call her to see Myka, everything has changed.

Well. Not everything. Helena herself hasn’t, as her bureaucracy-pantheon thought may have been philosophically valid but made no difference.

Myka, however, has changed entirely: her arm is now professionally dressed, but more importantly, the knit of pain has left her face. “They medicated me,” she says, giving the word “medicated” a rapturous cast. “The X-rays said I didn’t break anything, so we’re waiting on results of a scan to see if I need surgery but in the meantime I feel better than I maybe ever have in my life and I am so happy to see you. All these doctors were like ‘why did she think she could fix you’ but I knew why and it was because it’s you. and that scan? It’ll shout out how Helena Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder so she didn’t need surgery, and they don’t know this, but actually H.G. Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder, which is even more amazing. Wait, that’s not more amazing. You’re the most amazing when you’re you than when you’re that guy. Even though I guess you are that guy. Sort of. Wait, Claudia’s been saying ‘that guy’ a lot now. And I cut and paste from her so much, but I don’t like it. The way things are.” She heaves an enormous sigh and blinks at Helena, as if she’s just re-understood that another person is present.

Is there some ideal way to answer this flood? Helena settles for an antiseptic “I’m pleased to see you out of pain.”

Myka gasps and flails wildly with her uninjured arm, which gesture eventually resolves into an index finger directed at Helena. “That’s it exactly. I’m out of pain. All out. No more pain to give. Particularly not to you. So saying I’m tired of you? I regret it, and I apologize for it, and I promise that’s the end of it. I was wishing to get something back, and you don’t want it back, and so I have to be fine. Without it. Without you.”

Without you. Helena supposes she should be impressed by how concisely Myka can foreshadow disaster. “Should I not... be here?” She braces herself for the answer.

“Of course you should. I have to be fine without how you were,” Myka says, very quietly. The collapse of her volubility gives Helena pause.

She knows it would be better not to probe; she ought to, as Claudia says, “take the win.” But “Of course you should” is only facially a win... “How was I?” she asks. To wound herself by making Myka clarify what has been lost.

“Oh, how you were...” Myka says, her words dragging. How much—any, all?—of this might be due to the varying effects of the medication? “Putting me into this story,” she continues. “It was so big, and I didn’t understand what it was, really or at all, but it felt so big. Yearning and tragedy, and there I was, still me, but in it, so in it, all in it, next to you. Bigger than life, and I... loved it? Needed it? Something to take me over. But my wishing for any of it back, when of course you don’t?” She raises that free arm, then lets it fall. Futility, it says. “So small. Only somebody little and desperate would want to make you revisit any of that.”

Medication effect or not, Helena can’t let Myka keep on with this. “Make me revisit it? Yearning and tragedy? I’m the one who inflicted that, and with malign intent; I damaged you. And I cannot imagine a scenario in which that debt is discharged.”

Myka squints. “Debt,” she says, as if articulating a new noun, but not one that names an abstraction; no, this thing is big and blunt, a dumb object that takes up space. Unfunctional furniture. That I carry on my back, Helena moods.

“Oh!” Myka then yelps, her tone shifting to excitement. “But I just damaged myself. So now we’re even!” She delivers that last bit big and broad, for all the world as if she’s the comic lead in a panto.

Helena has not spared a thought for panto in years. “That makes no sense at all,” she says, because it’s the case, but also to scorn the memory. This is no time for that past.

“Would you like me to dislocate your shoulder?” Myka asks, as if it were a reasonable proffer. Still comic, but now strangely sincere.

Helena meets this bizarrely compelling, ridiculous combination with as much severity as she can muster. “Honestly no. I would not.”

“I see,” Myka says, and she points again, this time without preambling flail. “Some prices you aren’t willing to pay.”

Helena can at the very least be honest about this. How nice it would be if Steve were here to verify. “Willing to... in the sense of volunteering to? No. In the sense of understanding that I deserve to? Certainly. So do me damage if you must. In particular, do me damage if you think it could even the score between us. It won’t, but if you think it could? Please do.”

“That’s pretty twisted,” pronounces the only arbiter who matters.

“You sound like Claudia again,” Helena observes. To push the judgment away? Yes, and she tries to make certain of it with, “Is that another cut and paste?”

“Maybe. But now that I think about it, she sees things pretty clearly a lot of the time. Don’t you think?”

“I would like to think,” Helena is compelled to admit. Hoist by her own petard.

At this point—suspending any resolution—a doctor reenters the curtained area. “Good news: no surgery,” she tells Myka.

“See, I told you she fixed it,” Myka preens.

“You did,” says the doctor. “Several times,” she adds, dry.

Helena says “I’m so sorry,” only to hear Myka say, at the same time, “Sorry not sorry!” Another echo of Claudia... this one, however, clearly heartfelt.

The doctor turns to Helena. “Don’t try anything like this again. You got ridiculously lucky.”

“That’s kind of her M.O.,” Myka says. “Except when it isn’t.”

The doctor sighs. “I’m pretty sure that’s my point. And listen, make sure to follow up with your local doc. They’ll prescribe a ton of PT, so brace yourself.”

Myka snorts. “Brace myself? Sure, but not for the PT; my boss is going to flay me alive.”

The doctor barely reacts. “Oh, maybe this one can fix that too,” she deadpans, directing an eyeroll at Helena, accompanied by a murmured, “not a suggestion.”

“Oh, she’s in for the flaying,” Myka says, with more than a little cheer. “If not for this, then for something. Eventually.”

The doctor shakes her head, eyes unfocused. “Good news for me: I don’t have to care.” She points at Myka: “You go to PT.” Now at Helena: “You don’t try to practice medicine.” At both of them, her eyes flicking back and forth with purpose: “Got it?” Helena nods; she senses Myka doing the same. “Excellent,” the doctor says. “Or whatever. I’m done with you now.”

She conveys with her rapid exit that interacting with both of them has been a most exasperating experience.

While Helena does not appreciate being chastised—and especially not for attempting to care for Myka—she does appreciate expertise. Especially when it contributes to Myka’s well-being. It’s a conundrum. “I find your doctor’s aspect strangely appealing,” she says. “Speaking of bracing.”

Myka grins. “I was totally thinking the same thing.”

“And yet I would practice that medicine again.”

“For me that’s good news.”

As they prepare to depart, Helena says, “I confess I’m curious as to what you intend to tell Artie.”

Myka offers a slight stretch of her right shoulder in the direction of her ear: the only version of a shrug available to her, bound as she is. “Maybe I should leave that to you. You’re the writer.” Forestalling Helena’s reflexive objection, she adds, “I know, I know. The research. The ideas.”

“And yet I don’t have any. I certainly don’t see a path to inventing anything that would—”

“How about I take your photo with that camera? Think that’d help?” This is accompanied by a different grin: sly.

Whither the warning? Or is this a test? Myka isn’t Steve, yet Helena goes with truth: “It might. With any number of things.”

“If only,” Myka says, inscrutably. “Anyway I intend to tell Artie that this is all his fault, because he sent us on this retrieval in the first place. Obviously I won’t say what really happened.”

While Myka bestowing such grace is not surprising, it moves Helena all the same. “Thank you,” she says.

Myka opens her mouth, then closes it. She does it again. This wait... it’s grace too. “You’re welcome,” she eventually says. “I mean I’m tempted to tell him how you saved the day—the arm—but I know I shouldn’t, because I don’t want to draw attention to the hotel charging us extra.” To Helena’s quizzical eyebrow, she says, “For the missing towels and pillowcase. Which I tried to talk the nurses into giving back to me, but they’d already tossed them as hazardous waste. Or something. Or maybe I’m just not very persuasive? Or clear in what I’m asking for?”

Helena would very much like to explain that her own answers to those questions are negative and affirmative, respectively: no, you are persuasive; but yes, you are unclear.

“On the other hand, they did medicate me,” Myka says, perking up. “I keep thinking it’ll wear off, but not yet!”

The consolations of intoxication. “To the delight of your shoulder I’m sure,” Helena says. To my delight as well, she wishes she were free to say.

Their return to the hotel room offers another “everything has changed” hinge: no longer a stage for new and awkward performances of politesse, the space is now familiar, a place they have reentered. For the next act of the play?

Myka, who has preceded Helena in, stops and sways—just a bit, but Helena instinctively steps close, taking her by the elbow of her uninjured arm with one hand, stationing the other around the curve of her waist.

She feels Myka’s breath catch at the contact; immediately, she curses herself, loosens her hold, and says a terse, “I’m sure you want to lie down.”

“More than maybe anything. Or, wait, no, not anything.” Myka turns and catches Helena’s eyes with hers, but Helena cannot use that gaze as the basis for any inference.

She backs away as Myka lowers herself onto the bed; eventually, she backs her way into the room’s one armchair. It lacks give. It also lacks arms at a height that might provide anything resembling support. Helena slumps down, trying to be grateful that it exists at all.

Long minutes pass. As in the hospital’s waiting area, Helena imagines trying not to remain awake.

Similarly futile.

She chances a glance at Myka, who meets her eyes again and says, “That looks uncomfortable. Or what I mean is, you look uncomfortable. Which honestly is pointless, unless you’re doing some hair-shirt thing, because we’ve got this big bed. Not a lot of hours before we have to leave it, but we’ve got it for now.”

“That went poorly before.”

“I think circumstances have changed. Don’t you?” Weighted.

Circumstances are always changing, Helena could say. Usually for the worse. Instead she ventures, “You’d let me lie down with you?”

“I never wouldn’t.” Myka squints. “Wait. Did that come out right? Anyway, yes.”

Medication: not yet worn off. “You’re sure?” Helena asks.

“I’m pretty sure this bed is almost as big as a field where Pete’s favorite sport happens. It’s at least as big as an ice rink anyway, and those aren’t small.”

Helena refrains from pointing out that that was no help in the previous disaster. She doesn’t, however, appreciate being able to recline. For the first while, the fact of being beside Myka is less relevant than the slow loosening of her lower back and hips.

 “Can you sleep?” Helena asks, as they are both evidently lying with eyes open to the ceiling.

“Not now,” Myka answers, and the sentiment seems clear: not after all of this. All of this with which we must deal.

The bed first, perhaps.

She turns to look at Myka, if minimally. “Did you request a cot?” she asks, because she doesn’t know. Because the answer might reveal... something?

Myka’s eyes widen. “Oh my god I should have,” she says. Stricken.

“Why didn’t you?”

“It didn’t even cross my mind.” She’s talking more to herself—or perhaps to the room at large?—than to Helena. Is this continued evidence of the medication?

“And do you know why that is?” Helena asks, hoping for that revelation, even if drug-induced.

“Honestly I think I thought I was being given an ultimatum. Like it was something I had to be fine with or else.”

“Fine with ‘or else.’” Helena means the echo as rueful agreement.

But: “Sharing a bed with you. Platonically,” Myka says, taking it instead as a request for explanation.

“Platonically,” Helena scoffs, unable to avoid the idea that agreeing to accept that adverb would, paradoxically, usher in others. (Passionately.) (Speaking of paradoxically.) “That word is so often misused.” It’s a push-off. A push-away.

“But I’m using it correctly.” Myka sounds not offended, but rather self-satisfied.

Fine. Harden the position. “You are not referring to our consciousness rising from physical to spiritual matters.”

“Well... but how about love for the idea of good? As a path to virtue?”

Myka is well-read. In this moment, that fact is not entirely pleasing. “I suppose we were both attempting to be courtly,” Helena concedes.

“I mean I’ll grant you that nobody ended up transcending the body,” Myka says. Helena is about to agree, to snap away from churlishness, to express regret and apologies, when Myka exclaims, “Hey! I just had the best idea for a joke. So you’re not a hologram anymore, right? So you know what you were trying to be? Last night, in bed?”

Jokes. They confound Helena nearly as completely as metaphors do Steve. “I have no idea.”

“A Platonic solid,” Myka declares, triumphant.

Helena is mortified to find that in this case, she “gets it.” “Myka,” she sighs.

“Too soon? But come on, it’s not bad!”

“Alas, it is.” This quality, Helena can recognize.

“Right, but the good kind.”

Helena is not made of stone. Or bronze. How much easier everything had been then, sans choice and sans reason... and most importantly, sans the near-irresistibility of this one human. “I did always enjoy the word ‘icosahedron,’” she tenders.

“See,” Myka says, now in indulgence rather than triumph. “Pretty sure you have more than twenty faces though.”

“You do as well. Some revealed only under the influence of opioids.”

“Here’s one I don’t think I’d have the guts to use otherwise: my explain-it-to-you-using-words face.”

“Explain what to me?” Helena asks. It’s a surrender. She should better have said she did not wish that face revealed, but that would never have stopped a determined Myka.

“Why I flung myself to the floor.”

“I thought that had been explained? You were attempting to escape a circumstance.”

“First, the flinging was more involuntary than an attempt. And second: your hand.”

“Perhaps you don’t remember”—a strange thing to say to Myka—“but we had this conversation previously.” Helena does not want to have it again.

“Not this conversation. In that one, you drew the wrong conclusion. Or relied on an invalid assumption. Actually both of those. Anyway, your hand.”

“Please stop saying that,” Helena requests. Begs.

“Fine, I’ll finish the sentence: Woke up every nerve in my body,” Myka says, causing Helena to cringe and wish she could this very instant construct a truly useful time machine so she could fly backward, overleaping this latest passage so as to muzzle Myka before she could say that, because she believes it but knows it leads nowhere functional. To her continued mortification, Myka carries on, “Woke them all right up.” This, she says rhapsodic. Helena feels that tone in her gut, a hot twist of something she deserves as pain, but that manifests, shamefully, as pleasure. “Then your hand moved, and it shorted out the system—my system—and I fell out of bed, and the rest is history.”

“On the contrary, the rest is quite present.” Helena tries pushing all of it away, striving for detachment. For function.

“So, your hand,” Myka says again.

Helena raises the offender. “Also present.” Detachment. Humor, even; pushing, pushing, pushing. Trying to maintain.

“No, I mean why,” Myka pushes in turn.

Helena bats back, in faux innocence, “Why is it present?”

“Why was it present. On me.” Low now, her voice, just as compelling as, and even more commanding than, when she uses it to utter Helena’s name.

“I have no excuse,” Helena says.

“I don’t need an excuse. I need a reason. Do you have one?”

“It isn’t exculpatory.”

“As long as it’s explanatory.”

No escape now. No excuse, and no escape. “Here is my reason: I wanted to touch you. So against all better judgment, I did. Intending only that, nothing more.” Myka’s response to these words is an exhale. Loud. Unlike the hospital sob, however, this is slow and controlled. Helena allows a decorous pause, but no words ensue, so she goes on. Myka deserves an explanation that is complete. “But then I found myself unable to... un-touch you. Competently. And the rest will at some point be history, upon which I will never cease to look back and berate myself.”

Waiting for whatever may come next, Helena feels exhaustion inch through her, infiltrating her eyes, limbs, brain, sapping every vestige of energy... her surrender to the creeping leach is imminent when Myka says, “I like that reason.”

All right then. Awake and aware. “You do?”

“You really can be impossible to talk to. Listen to me: if I did that—touched you—I would find myself the same. Unable to un-touch. Do you understand?”

What would be the cost of abandoning her resistance? “I don’t know...” she begins, then reverses course and begins again. Truth, never mind the cost. “Yes. I do understand. But I don’t know what to do about that.”

Myka turns her head full toward Helena, twisting her long neck. Helena turns her own head, but that isn’t enough, so she shifts onto her side—her left side, punitively aware that it will be weeks before Myka can turn in such a way.

They look at each other, Helena both knowing and fearing how her guilt must freight her gaze. Regarding Myka so close, looking now into eyes that are open, is a boon she does not deserve.

After a time, Myka says, “I know what I want to do.”

Her intent is abundantly clear. The entirely of Helena’s being balks, stranding her again in Boone: if she makes a move for the momentary better, it will most likely end worse. She cannot find the... courage? or is it foolish disregard for consequences?... to reach for that moment of joy. Neither, however, can she find the discipline to dismiss its possibility.

“But I also know I shouldn’t,” Myka says, breaking with clarity into Helena’s indecision.

Well. Helena can certainly see the wisdom of that, so perhaps at last they are approaching a real accord that will render all hopes and wishes moot, so that neither courage nor discipline features in the—

“I can tell the meds are messing with my head,” Myka says, “and if there’s one thing I want to remember in picture-perfect detail, it’s this.” She moves her right index finger near to Helena’s lips, then withdraws it.

Unable to un-touch. That withdrawal reaffirms that Myka believes what she says. “This,” Helena echoes, mesmerized.

“So I’m going to wait till tomorrow to—listen to me saying it out loud—kiss you. For the first time. I want to be all there when it happens.”

There is a practicality to Myka’s thinking, and to Myka, that Helena worships. She tries to match it with a bit of her own: “If it happens.”

Myka’s jaw drops. “Come on! I said it out loud! It’s real now!”

“It’s been real for some time, hasn’t it? But I’m being realistic about the circumstance. You might not remember that you wanted to.”

“Seriously? I’ve remembered it since we met.”

Helena has remembered it just as long. She has. Denying it is pointless. But she has a larger concern, and though this is the wrong time to address it, perhaps medicated Myka will afford an unfiltered read...

“Or you might think better of it.”

“Of kissing you? I don’t think so.”

“Of what could ensue. The possibility of a... relationship. Between us. What if it doesn’t work?”

“Relationship.” After she says the word, Myka’s lips part and close, as if the very word is savory. “What if it does?”

It is savory. However. “I’m asking as a practical matter, not philosophically. I’m constrained: I can’t leave again. That’s why I came back.” The thin strand to which she is clinging... refraining from attempting to rekindle an intimacy hasn’t been only to keep Myka safe. It has also been to keep the Warehouse safe for Helena herself to inhabit.

“Then don’t leave again.”

“But what if that means you do?” This is not philosophy either. This, too, is history.

“If I do, then I do, but I’d like to think I won’t. We’ve both had our walkaway crises, and they didn’t take. So if it doesn’t work, we put it behind us like adults. If Pete and I could, then so can you and I. But I’d rather not have to. So let’s be careful.” She pauses. “Breathe however you need to.”

The words are an embrace. A physical clasp might be more galvanizing, but right now, Myka is managing just fine with words. “If this works, it will be because you say things like that.”

“Good news, because I mean things like that. And I intend to keep saying them. Hey, speaking of saying, do me a favor and write down what I said just now, about the adults and the careful, because I want to remember it.”

Sluggishly, Helena ideates rising, going to the room’s desk, finding logo-bearing paper and pen, writing...

****

Helena and Oscar are in a salon. They are engaged in a dispute regarding choices and consequences. Helena is standing at a lectern, and Oscar is reclining on a lavishly upholstered chaise longue, kicking his right leg such that its calf bounces in a languid little rhythm against the low cushioned edge.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“The choices that create a circumstance will not, repeated, resolve it satisfactorily,” Helena says. Is she reading from a monograph? “As we see in the case of your own Ballad of Reading Gaol, do we not? And yet injury need not lead inevitably to future debility, so clearly some choice in the matter is—”

“Helena,” Oscar says, interrupting her monologue. “Helena,” he repeats. He sounds nothing like himself, but rather someone else, and Helena is straining to connect the voice to the correct person.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“Time to wake up,” Oscar-as-someone-else admonishes. Encourages?

“I know,” she tells him, hugely frustrated, fighting. “I’m trying.”

His impassive mien is no help. It never was.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

Trust Oscar to cast some part of himself as the pendulum of a particularly annoying clock—

“Seriously, wake up,” Helena hears, and consciousness jolts at her: Myka’s voice.

Oscar dissolves. Into laughter or tears, no doubt, as he was wont to do...

Helena’s eyes open, meeting Myka’s, and she is brought back to it all: the hotel, the bed; the shoulder, the hospital... then hotel again, bed again... and finally words, as if for the first time.

Myka is lying on her right side, facing Helena. Her eyes are bright, her gaze intense.

“Are you in pain?” Helena asks.

Myka leans forward, as if that were a signal. The signal: for Helena is the astonished, grateful, transported recipient of a kiss, a first kiss—the first kiss—one that is swift but soft, gentle, genuine. Like morning... “Better now,” Myka says when she pulls back. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Stay there.”

Better now. Not lost on Helena are all the ways that signifies, including: better that this happened now than at some point in the desperate past. Then, such a kiss would have been a tragic wish for all they would never have. Now, instead, it can stand as a reward for having survived all of that, as well as, universe willing, a mark of embarkation.

By the time Myka returns, Helena has sat up, stationing herself on the edge of the bed. She has also realized that she must apologize—for they should not embark on this new voyage with yet another of her many faults unaddressed. “You charged me with writing down part of our conversation. I didn’t. I fell asleep instead.”

Myka hesitates before joining her on the bed’s edge, clearly considering which arm should be next to Helena. She chooses the functional right. “It’s okay. Even if I don’t remember exactly what we said, I remembered what we needed to do.”

“Needed to,” Helena reprises. She could supply words of her own, but why? Myka is saying the ones that matter...

“Needed to,” Myka affirms. “So where were we?” She raises her useful hand to Helena’s cheek, cradling. Helena leans into it, saying nothing, because silence now says everything.

This is a longer kiss, more wandering, more suggestive of possibility, more likely to lead to such possibility... Helena is the one to this time pull away. “A place quite new,” she says.

“And yet I’m pretty sure we’ve been headed here all along.”

“It wasn’t inevitable,” Helena says. She is thinking now of dream-Oscar, who is slipping from her mind, dropping, like a poorly initiated painting, but he must have obstreperously been maintaining something about inevitability. He always did.

“No,” Myka agrees. “And it still isn’t. So let’s be careful.”

“You remember that part? Despite my stenographic failure?”

“Even if I didn’t—but I do—I’d know it’s important.”

Helena turns and touches her right hand to Myka’s right hip. She would certainly not be able to do this now if she had not done so in the night... the night’s ontogeny recapitulating the phylogeny of their shared history. Myka covers Helena’s hand with hers, and there is healing in the simple fact of their sitting. But eventually that is not enough, and another kiss ensues, longer still, and lips outweigh quiet hands—or no, lips add to quiet hands, but hands are not content to remain so calm, and so this continues and might continue—

Myka makes a noise that is clearly not of pleasure; she moves entirely away, her right hand pressing protectively at her left shoulder. “We’re going to need to be careful about this stupid shoulder too. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who can’t keep my hands to myself.” Ontogeny, phylogeny.

“It’s not like I’m some paragon of self-control... and I am sorry, because I’d like to be able to participate fully. But also I’d like to not have to hurry on account of catching a plane. In good news, eventually my shoulder will heal. I know we can’t stay here till then, but...”

“It would help,” Helena supplies.

“If only because we have to come up with how this supposedly happened. I still think maybe I should take your picture. Or you could take mine? Because by the way, here’s a funny thing: I was trying to write a novel.”

“You were?” More that is new... “Speaking of icosahedra,” Helena notes.

“I want to tell you about it.”

“You do?” Trying to convey her incredulity. That Myka would allow her such... access.

“I want to tell you everything. But in the meantime we have to tell Artie something... I guess we’ve got both flights plus the layover in Denver to get our story straight.”

Stories. Narrative. Novels? “But we’ll tell Steve the truth. Won’t we?”

“Of course we will. And Claudia, right?”

“Also necessary. Although most likely mockery-inducing.”

Myka smiles. It’s a sunrise. “Stress testing. If we can take it from her, we’ll be fine. Then again we might need the time on the planes to rest up for that.”

“Weren’t you able to sleep, this past while?”

Myka shakes her head, and just as Helena opens her mouth to express regret and apologize again for her own sleep, Myka silences her with a kiss, one that lingers, lingers, lingers... still half against Helena’s lips, she says, “The un-touching part really is difficult. But don’t worry about my not sleeping: for the first time in a long time, I was happy to be awake.”

END

[mageknight14]

Nagi and Beat: What it Means to be Empathetic

One thing I really appreciate about Nagi and Beat's characterizations and dynamic in NEO TWEWY is how the game portrays them as the two of the most emotionally mature and empathetic party members in the game and how they express that maturity in distinct but equally important ways.

Let's start this analysis off with Nagi. The game makes a point to show off multiple times that she’s in-tune when it comes to others’ emotions. Take the side quest with Buddy Rapids on Week 2 Day 4, for example.

When he flips out over not receiving a glass of water from Ken Doi and everyone is flabbergasted by how he reacted, Nagi actually takes the time to empathize with and explain why he would feel that way, that he probably felt unwelcome or deliberately provoked.  She literally absorbs emotions of others like a sponge, to her own detriment. She has this ability, knows it, knows how to work with it, but she can’t exactly turn it off. It gets to the point that an overwhelming burst of negative emotion from the people around her can cause her to emotionally break down, as we see from when she reacts to how the citizens are suffering from Shibuya Syndrome.

She analyses people and feels them whether she wants it or not, and due to being a combination of simultaneously open minded and very direct, those not true to themselves strike her as very wrong, in the wrong, or plain bizarre, as we can see from how coldly she treats Motoi and Fret at first. She’s true to herself, and to others, and someone not reciprocating on the same level is a bad thing in her book.

She suffers from hyperempathy and easily 'taps in' to what people are feeling, but she can struggle with finding the appropriate channel through which to express her feelings, such as her initial coldness towards Fret. Because of this, besides her infatuation with Sho, she’s fairly passive towards the group dynamic and synergy at first, instead to either gush about her beloved Lord Tomononami, EleStra, or both. This is especially notable when tensions start to rise between Rindo and Fret at the beginning of Week 2 and she can do nothing but weakly comment at the tense atmosphere in the air. 

However, as we get to see throughout the game, she begins to lighten up towards Fret and if you look closely at how she interacts with him, she progressively becomes less outright insulting towards him and more distant and hesitant once she puts together than he might actually have a reason to be putting up a front. By the time week 3 rolls around she's not insulting him at all, actually engaging in convos with him because she's realized that Fret is a genuinely good person who acts fake as a coping mechanism. Most of this realization starts showing up during week 2 because Fret gets stressed enough by the situation they're in to let the "mask" slip on multiple occasions— you can see that Nagi's expression changes when her portrait is present during these instances because she starts to put it together. 

While her arc isn’t as pronounced as the others, it’s still there nonetheless and revolves around her learning that she does not need to dismiss people right away and look past the surface, exploring in learning how to nuance so to speak. To cap it off, by the time week 3 comes around, she actively steps up to the plate more than once to help the others sort out their issues and integrates more into the group, truly embracing her role as the team mom, as seen as when she helps the other characters cope with their own issues on Week 3 Day 5. 

Now, let’s contrast this with Beat. While he isn’t as academically intelligent as Nagi, can be slow on the uptake, and not really keen on using his head, he still gets a few good hits in and has a cutting-the-knot way of problem solving that is as much a positive as a negative quality. 

In the first game, he calls out Konishi, who is presented as very smart, on her "unforeseen circumstances", and for someone mixing words a lot, he used those surprisingly straight and deliberately angers her so that she can focus on him while Neku snags Rhyme underneath her notice. He feels that the game is "whack" in NEO and is the first to call out Kubo against it and be suspicious of him while the others just found him sleazy and hatable ("might ask gramps some questions"), fairly quickly discerns that Fret and Rindo were at odds concerning the decision of trusting Kanon or not and that they needed to sort it out, and even recognizes Fret’s grief concerning Kanon herself and opts to let him have one last moment of hope and get some closure on the whole thing rather than just letting him bottle up these feelings in a negative manner forever.

I’d say that while Beat may not be academically smart, can often takes things at face value and can be considered dense at times, he is emotionally incredibly intelligent, even if not in the same way as Nagi: both are highly receptive to others’ moods and feelings, but while Nagi processes them with her heart and brains, Beat processes them with his heart and guts. 

Conversely, while Nagi suffers from her hyperempathy and can struggle with finding the appropriate channel through which to express her feelings, Beat intuitively 'taps in' to what people are feeling and also intuitively 'taps in' to what he can say to cheer people up or to motivate them to keep moving forward, as shown when he inspires the group to keep going forward even when things get dire at the beginning of Week 3 Day 4. 

Nagi stumbles butt-over-head into people’s psyches and while she has a good grasp on the information and psychology, being excellent at reading people, she doesn’t have the means of transforming that into a pleasant interaction if things are at odds. Beat, however meets people partway, at middle ground, or if he senses that he needs to, goes all the way to drag them out of their shell. He doesn’t embarrass himself with the unnecessary, as he doesn’t like to beat around the bush but also seems to think that people do have their own reasons of acting the way they do. To solve the problem, you address the problem, politeness and other fioritures can wait (which, again, is as much a positive quality as a negative one). Nagi has more tact with it because she can sense when things will go on the fritz, and because she’s more actively trying to get along with people than Beat. Even when giving the cold shoulder, she still has restrains (it takes a breaking point to call someone a "degenerate ape") and at worst ignores what bothers her, or makes it clear. Beat, on the other hand, would directly hop to 'I don’t like you, yo' and show scathing hostility, as he does with Sho and Coco who, in contrast to Kariya, Uzuki, and Shoka, are not at all apologetic when it comes to their actions and still antagonize him, in which he responds back in kind. You wrong him or his friends, you’re on his shit list, period.

This difference is seen most predominantly when the Wicked Twisters meet up with Sho again. Beat is immediately hostile thanks to his previous encounters with Sho in the first game and is ready to assume the worst of him, unaware of the shared history Rindo, Nagi, and Fret have with Sho at this point. And when Sho seemingly validates his concerns by attacking him and his friends, he's ready to write him off entirely. And it's not like Sho even cares about what Beat thinks of him to try and correct him afterwards.

Nagi, on the other hand, immediately notices that something is off about Sho compared to when he allied with the team in the first week and picks up that it may be Noise-related. And sure enough, she turns out to be correct. Sho had been absorbing Rindo's Dissonance Noise while he was away and when he absorbs a whole bunch at once, his mind gets overwhelmed and he goes berserk, attacking the Wicked Twisters in the process. Sure enough, when Neku quite literally beats some sense into him after he was already worn down by the team, Sho doesn't antagonize them at all whatsoever. and even gives them cryptic advice concerning the storm that's coming their way later.

To put it into perspective, Nagi is receiving all channels 100% of the time and as such had to define herself strongly against them to hear her own, affirming her personality and being very direct. It’s a radio always on that she can just tune out somewhat, but not turning it off. And if things get too overwhelming, she can take too much of that negative energy into herself and become severely affected herself if she doesn't have an immediate outlet. It's why she flips out at Rindo when she first meets as she was already unintentionally channeling the emotions of others and was being harassed by the DRS team beforehand and her missing the special EleStra pin was essentially the straw that broke the camel's back.

Beat, in contrast can hop from channel to channel and tune in on people, but only a few of his choosing at a time. Hence why he’s more receptive of a variety of different people, if they are amicable to him. He instantly hits it off with Fret, wholesomely accepts Nagi, even reaches out to Rindo who’s more unsure and shy (seen in the day after recruiting him as he’s the first to come up to him to see if things are okay), wholeheartedly accepts Shoka in the team and develops quite the protective streak for her among the rest (seen when he warns Susukichi about taking her after Ayano’s passing). He’s the big brother all the way. Compare this to how he reacted to Neku and Shiki in TWEWY, where he welcomes the latter at first after apologizing to the duo for mistaking them as Reapers but immediately takes a justified dislike to the former because Neku was kind of being a huge prick at the time. 

I think all of this is incredibly interesting in how the writers go about in portraying that nuances of what it means to be empathetic and emotionally mature and it just goes to show how much the TWEWY team cared about detailing the psychology and mindset of each character in a way that makes them all the more real.

And as a side note, I really appreciate Nagi and Beat’s dynamic. Rather than have them conflict as they could have so easily done (the athletic, skateboarding musclehead and the nerdy educated woman) the game has them genuinely enjoying one another's maturity and working to support the rest of the team, with Nagi even patiently translating anything she needed to of her dialogue for Beat's sake, as well as draw comparisons between the way Nagi treats Beat and Fret to foreshadow her issues with the latter and I think that's just neat.

[gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan]

Terrible and Lovely to Behold

Author's Note: More of Catius in Living Waters AU. Thank you to @sleepyfan-blog for letting me borrow Cedric.

Summary: Catius is not handling not rescuing his brother well.

Warnings: Poor coping mechanisms. Growing an Ultradepression beard tm. Let me know if you need me to add anything.

Past =-= Next

Tagged: @barn-anon, @bleedingichorhearts, @c-u-c-koo-4-40k, @egrets-not-regrets, @kit-williams,

Tagged continued: @sleepyfan-blog, @whorety-k, @ms--lobotomy @bispecsual @thevoidscreams

Tagged continued: @i-am-a-dragon34, @gra93fruit-blog

“I really, really don’t think it’s a good idea for me to meet Brother Arnault and Brother Roland,” Catius says fretfully, “Sons of Dorn and Sons of Guilliman have had some… bad blood and poor, at least on the side of the Sons of Dorn, reaction to Sons of The Imperial Regent.”

“... Yeah, historically, that’s true,” Ramiel says with a reluctant nod.

“But they didn’t charge, hurt, or yell at Jophie,” Cedric points out hopefully, “and they know he’s a Librarian. You are a normal battle brother of our age range. And we’ve talked about all of you to the both of them, and to Angela and Becky a lot. They want to meet all  of you.”

“They know that you are an Ultramarine,” Ramiel says, “and with Angela and Becky there to help smooth things over, it should go well.”

“... If you sure it’s a good idea,” Catius says still uncomfortable with the idea. 

They are tag teaming him to meet with Roland and Arnault. Just like how Jophiel and Claude are tag teaming him to meet with Lenora and Erriox. The four of them are concerned that he’s not been as social as he usually is.

He’s been doing alright, he scratches at one of his cheeks, as he ignores some of the whiskers that are starting to grow on his face. Catius knows that growing beards isn’t really done for Sons of the Imperial Regent, he’s going to have to shave soon.

It’s just getting the energy to do so has been harder and harder to do so. Which, for some reason, has upset the rest of his brother-cousins. He’s usually quite tidy and almost fussy as they tease him about his appearance.

“... Give me a few more days to think on it.” Catius says with a shrug, his scales are still healthy- he eats enough, mostly because Cedric and Ramiel in particular would fuss if he didn’t. He scratches at one of his elbows and some of his scales shed and he flicks the scale away. It’s duller and less lustrous, but that makes sense for  the shed scales.

Really- his colorations are so fucking flashy. So what if his colorations become less vibrant the longer he’s been staying on Ancient Terra? It happens sometimes, color shifting and changes happen, due to a change from Battle Brother to Specialist. Among other reasons, he still grooms, both in private and socially with his brothers.

His brother-cousins have been a bit clingier and watching him more as of late. Especially after… after he failed to rescue Atlas. Jophiel had brought up that Erriox- as an Iron Warrior, and one who’s very good with crafting- might … be able to help Catius with his vox issue. But in order for that to happen, he has to meet Erriox.

He looks at the jars that contain… What's left of him, gently touching one of his hands to the jar, Catius ignores the tears that trickle down his face. Perhaps he should let Cedric take the organs with him to visit Erriox and Lenora when they are at the Iron Warriors base so he can add them to the collection of other organs to be implanted in Aspirants, when or if they find people who can become them.

It would be selfish of him to want to keep the last remaining parts at Atlas here, where they can’t be of use. But he just can’t… can’t bring himself to say those words to Cedric, or Ramiel, or Jophiel, or Claude, not yet at least.

 His scales are slowly graying from sustained grief, not that he cares all that much- but it’s worrying his brother-cousins terribly. It’s barely noticeable, like the facial hair that is trying to grow on his face, all patchy and bristles. 

Mostly because if he doesn’t Jophiel will follow after him and wail dramatically at him that Catius doesn’t care about them and love them any more. Woe is them. Until he lightly smacks his most irritating baby brother with his tail and drags the brat by his ear to groom his wings.

Which has the Jophiel shutting up for a bit of time while the other cackles that Catius fell for his Trap, which is hilarious because he’s the one that’s wrapped Jophiel in his powerful tail to groom the little idiot.

And his grumbling allows Jophiel to help take care of his scales- with Claude conveniently there to help with his back scales that are difficult to reach. And then Cedric and Ramiel show up and it’s a group session of taking care of each other's scales.

“When are you going to shave again?” Jophiel asks in that obnoxious tone of voice that has Catius scowling at him.

“When I feel like it,” He replies, “What’s wrong with me growing a beard?”

Jophiel lets out a cackle, “That is not a beard. It’s peach fuzz.”

“I- how dare you!” Catius huffs angrily, “it’s still growing, so of course it’s not particularly good to look at yet.”

“I don’t think you are old enough to properly grow a beard,” Jophiel continues, making a face at him, “So just shave it off already!”

“Or what?” Catius asks scowling at his most annoying brother-cousin, at the moment.

“Or I’ll shave it off myself!” Jophiel says.

Catius glares at him again- although he sees some concern and worry at the edges of his taunting smirk. The way the others are watching them. He groans and sighs, “I’m just … tired right now. I’ll do it later.”

Jophiel’s face twists a little at that, “I…”

“Leave him alone for now, Jophiel,” Ramiel pipes up suddenly, Jophiel gives him a look, which Ramiel returns, the Primaris Black Templar using a bit of his Chaplain Voice, “I said, leave him alone for now.”

“Yes Rami,” Jophiel says with a huff as he swims off, with a backwards glance before he pounces on an unwary Claude who lets out a startled, “oomph.” noise.

“... Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” Ramiel asks, his voice gentle-interrogating, like a Chaplain about to poke at festering emotional wounds.

‘Oh no,’ Catius thinks, ‘not this.’

“I… will be fine, I just haven’t been able to sleep recently,” Catius says, “Don’t you and Cedric have to go speak with Roland and Arnault about something? They said it was something important. You should go do that now. I need to take inventory.”

With that Catius deliberately swims off to the back of the cave, turning his back on Ramiel and Cedric. He pretends he doesn’t hear the sighs they make or the expressions filled with meaning and emotions behind him.

[fryandleelasbigfling]

i think leela deserves more appreciation than she gets.

i mean obviously there’s the people who just kind of degrade her into a pinup girl, we can all agree that’s lousy. but i think even a lot of good natured fans will write her off as the no-nonsense straight man to fry and bender, the “one with the braincell,” the one who has everything together and isn’t really willing to get silly like the boys. 

and yeah that can be true, especially in earlier seasons. but i think people underappreciate leela’s development and the fact she really is a messed-up, complicated, weird woman. 

for one thing, her kickass fighting abilities are well understood, but her kung-fu skill emerged as a way to work out her anger from being bullied, so she often resorts to violence as a defense mechanism even when it isn’t necessarily needed. in “hell is other robots” she gets freaked out by the mosh pit and beats up the other concertgoers, “bender’s game” is about how her anger can overtake her and even being punished for violence won’t faze her, and in “lethal inspection” she outright admits violent outbursts are how she copes with mortality. “anthology of interest 1″ shows that she will descend into a murderous rampage at the slightest provocation if she had just a bit worse impulse control. 

she’s also really stubborn! like, she will have a full-on mental breakdown if someone insists she can’t do something, because she has such an issue with being treated as unwanted and “worthless” that she needs to prove herself as highly capable of anything. "the sting," “mobius dick” and “bender’s game” are both great examples, as is the back half of “bender’s big score” -- note the sharp turn from “happy, calm, in love, willing to let other people handle the situation” to “insists on taking charge, kicking ass, and self-isolating” after lars leaves her at the altar. 

also as great as it is that she’s more organized than fry, this veers into some weird habits like freezing all her dinners a month in advance and having a very minimalist apartment for a while. this plays into how anxious she gets about taking risks. she is very pedantic about grammar and can get ridiculously overzealous about keeping her crew safe and healthy. however she gets bored and frustrated when she doesn’t have excitement in her life. 

she is very bad at organizing papers, preferring to just hide things away even when they become too big to ignore (symbolic!), completely failing when she steps in for hermes in “lethal inspection.” she also forgot to vote despite preaching about it all episode in “a head in the polls.” she is not as infallible as she wants people to believe! she just tries harder to justify it to herself than others, because she also has a severe guilt complex -- if she admits to herself that she did something wrong, she feels she needs to be punished.

she has a lonely, mundane home life. she can struggle with creativity and settle on an unexciting option (i.e. wanting to use superpowers for “humdrum activities” in “less than hero”), which is where fry’s tendency to blurt out any idea that comes to mind comes in handy. 

despite being fairly fashionable, she sometimes struggles with traditional femininity. not just bc of her attitude and mutations but also her feet and breath stink lmao. she also has a bit of a potty mouth and has said “fuck” (bleeped out) in at least three episodes. she's a terrible singer (despite katey herself being a great singer).

she is implied to have a “hedonistic” past and used to drive around in a mausoleum as a teenager. she went to her prom alone with a dress made of carpet remains. she dropped out and “bummed around india for a while” after college. 

she has a massive soft spot for animals, including “gross” ones like leeches, and despite all her violence, she usually backs down if it means a (perceived) innocent animal will be hurt. this can sometimes backfire on her (i.e. “into the wild green yonder”). she is very protective and empathetic towards living creatures, probably cuz she never had anybody looking out for her. she likes to read books about animals to relax. 

she regularly visits the orphanarium and is very concerned with being a good role model for those kids, emphasizing especially with sally. it is repeatedly implied in the (admittedly semi-canon) comics that she wants to be a mother. 

she plays with her hair when she’s nervous or flirty. she had an anxiety attack and physically froze up when she thought a mutant was stalking her. she had a bedwetting problem as a child and even her warden still holds it over her head. 

she has repressed mental illness related to her lack of family growing up  and has a desperate need for companionship, but sets high standards so she won’t get her heart broken first. whenever she’s single, she is very cynical about love and doesn’t do well seeing happy couples. 

she seems very obsessed with normality and stability which is why she often seeks men of high status to date, even if they turn out to be jerks. however, she outgrows this after meeting her family, as she becomes extremely attached to them despite their low status and embraces her mutant culture quickly. 

her mutations are not limited to her eye. she not only has a whole episode about her now-cured genetic mutant disease, but she occasionally lays an egg and has talons on her elbows. depending on the episode, she can be quite disabled by her single eye due to her lack of depth perception. there’s also the singing boil but that episode sucks lol

she also can get really horny lol. once she’s dating fry steadily, she tends to initiate things a lot more, even in public. i think it’s sometimes more of a fanservice thing but it’s always funny to see her so down bad, especially in the comedy central era

she likes bender because of his “in your face attitude” and often has a playful dynamic with him despite disapproving of his lack of morals. she doesn’t like amy a lot of the time but they can get along and comfort each other when the time is needed. i’m not even getting into her and fry because that’s its own post.

overall i just love leela a lot, she’s such a weird, complicated, fascinating character and i could go on about her All Day. 

[tobiasdrake]

So. Himiko. Let's talk for a moment about her journey.

3-2 introduces... not so much a love triangle as a dependency triangle between these three characters.

This lays the groundwork for what will be the central conflict of 3-3. Uh, before it disappears up its own ass and does something completely different instead but we'll get to that.

Himiko is in a bad place emotionally. The stress of the Killing Game is quite reasonably getting to her. She doesn't emote very strongly so it's easy to miss how she's feeling at times. She doesn't broadcast it the way that Ryoma does. Nonetheless, she's so freaked out that she's outright suicidal.

Himiko is in dire need of a coping mechanism. As is often the case with vulnerable people, this quality of hers immediately attracts attention from people hungry for an opportunity to fill that void with themselves.

What Angie and Tenko want from Himiko are not mutually exclusive. Angie wants to be her pastor and Tenko wants to be her girlfriend. These two things do not contradict each other. And yet they become rivals for Himiko's attention all the same, because in their pursuit of that goal, each of them wishes to isolate her from the other.

They both have a selfish interest in Himiko; Not seeking to help her, but rather to capitalize on her vulnerability to fabricate an emotional dependency. Tenko's been more or less stalking Himiko from the moment they met, while Angie's... Well. Doing this.

Thus, while romance and religion are not mutually exclusive, they nonetheless end up competing for the position of "Himiko's One and Only Coping Mechanism".

A competition that Angie wins quite handily, I should note. Cultists (both religious and personality) prey on the scared, vulnerable, and disenfranchised. They offer a sense of stability and purpose in times where none can be found. This is why Junko always targeted vulnerable people like the Remnants or Warriors of Hope.

Under the circumstances of the Killing Game, Angie might as well be sitting at a buffet table. She is a cat among mice.

Like. The sheer charisma of this woman cannot be understated.

"The reason everyone's suffering is because you are all trying to leave. If we just stopped trying to leave and accepted our lives in this place then nobody would have to die!" is. Not. Wrong? Like. That's been the case since the first Killing Game. It's even an optional ending in DR1.

"Let's just live here forever then" has always been an option on the table for the Killing Game victims. Hell, that's basically what the DR2 cast ultimately wound up doing, in a roundabout way. Angie makes true statements but packages them with her faith, smoothly conflating "the truth" and "the belief" with one another.

It's not hard to see why Himiko fell for her. It's not hard to see why others like Gonta will fall for her in the future. This is how cultists operate and it is effective; They sell their rhetoric as the cost-of-admission to something more valuable, such as friendship or a support group for personal trauma. In this time of immense vulnerability, Himiko never stood a chance against her.

[sokkastyles]

Another thing I've been seeing more and more of that just isn't supported by the actual show is the idea that Zuko needs to "realize" that Azula worked hard to get where she is, and not only is this victim blaming because it ignores how both Ozai and Azula treated Zuko as a scapegoat, it's also simply not true.

Zuko is the one in the text who believes in working hard, while Azula believes in superiority through inherent ability.

I often see people quoting Zuko's line about how everything came easy to Azula and their father said she was born lucky as evidence of Zuko's "jealousy" of Azula's hard work and skill, and how he needs to realize how much pressure she was under, but those people are forgetting what Zuko says right after that.

I don't need luck, though. I don't want it. I've always had to struggle and fight, and that's made me strong. That's made me who I am.

Zuko rejects the belief Ozai tried to enforce about being born lucky. He of course still struggles with it, because he's a kid and being told repeatedly by adults that you are inherently worthless is a hard thing to combat without internalizing. Zuko struggles with assuming that he can't generate lightning because it blows up in his face, "like everything always does." Throughout his journey, he learns to embrace working hard, learning and growing to overcome those mental blocks.

But to say that Azula, in comparison, has a better understanding of hard work is just wrong. What Zuko says about struggling and fighting actually is similar to what Azula says about Long Feng.

I can see your whole history in your eyes. You were born with nothing, so you've had to struggle, and connive, and claw your way to power. But true power, the divine right to rule, is something you're born with.

Azula ultimately disdains the idea of having to struggle to achieve things, and says that true power is something you are born with.

This isn't just an Azula vs Zuko thing, this is a major theme of the story and part of what leads to Azula's ultimate downfall. While Zuko works hard and grows not just in ability but his worldview, adapting and becoming a better person in the process, Azula's worldview narrows in her need to prove her own inherent perfection, which causes her to become more myopic and end up alone.

From the beginning of the story, we see Azula trying to get others to bend to her, even trying to argue against the very tides themselves because of her unwillingness to believe in anything less than her own inherent right. This is also similar to the way other Fire Nation characters show a myopic view of the world that leads them towards megalomania, like Zhao attempting to destroy the moon in pursuit of his own greatness. Both he and Azula think they can defy nature because of their own need to prove themselves powerful. Zuko tries this, too, in "The Storm," and learns one of many lessons about humility and working with others. Azula fails to learn these lessons.

So it's not Zuko who needs to learn this by the end of the series, and especially not from Azula.

I think it's also telling that these people never talk about how much pressure Zuko was under to try and prove he wasn't worthless, and I think that's because by the end, Zuko has realized his own worth, but Azula is still desperately trying to cling to the belief in her own superiority. She's the only one who can relieve that pressure she's putting on herself because she can't let go of the idea that she's not better than other people, and it is not on the people she hurt to try and make her feel better about herself, when she still thinks she's superior to them.

Moreover, I find it very hard to believe that post series Azula would even accept any offer of sympathy from Zuko. This is another example of something Zuko learned in the series that Azula did not, as Iroh says. Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. Azula's belief in her own superiority is, of course, a coping mechanism as a result of very low self-esteem, but she needs to figure out how to deal with that in a way that isn't hurting others. What she doesn't need is constant validation from people she victimized and reinforcement of the same toxic beliefs.

[rox-reads]

as wormblr's certified democratically elected alec vasil scientist i MUST ask. what are your thoughts on his characterization after his interlude.

the interlude really had a lot going on, so there's a bunch of stuff to think about. i'm gonna try and list some of my thoughts

this ended up getting kinda long so i'm putting it under the cut

first of all, it looks like alec's lack of emotions (or maybe more accurately emotional capacity?) is being attributed to this event where his dad sort of "burned him out". obviously the terror he made him feel would be traumatizing, but i'm not sure something like this can be attributed to any one singular event. this might've been one of the biggest or earliest incidents, but growing up in an environment where feelings are things that can be manipulated and exploited at will at a moment's notice, i'm sure getting rid of any that you have control over would be an understandable coping mechanism.

another thing is that while he's clearly incredibly callous, he will still be frustrated at himself for not feeling what he's "supposed" to feel. i think that's something about him worth keeping in mind, and maybe a bit of a driving force behind the reason why he's going so far for his team. he knows it's what he's supposed to do: he's supposed to have their backs. he won't feel the emotional impulse to do so but he's aware, maybe more than most, of the motions he's supposed to follow. he wants to feel bad for taylor, but he can't. still, he cares about her enough to get retribution for her, though maybe he wouldn't recognize it as "caring".

on that note, considering it's true he doesn't seem particularly close to anyone else on the team (as he himself remarked) i wonder why he feels the need to go this far for them. i was thinking maybe he sees them as a sort of family, considering the team he used to be on was his Literal Family. and you're supposed to care for family, right? no matter how close you may actually be, you're still bound together. maybe he just traded one family for another.

anyway, he's still unfortunately a rapist who hijacks people's bodies for funsies and doesn't and likely won't ever feel any remorse about it. i think he's a very fun character, and i very much enjoy the perspective this interlude gave me on his character and what goes on in his mind. i even think he has the potential to become a better person, but i don't exactly get the vibe this is where we're going with him. or maybe it is? i wouldn't know. maybe if he sacrificed himself for the rest of the gang or something like that? not an actual drawn out arc where he learns to actually be a person (which is what i think he would deserve but don't see happening. worm seems like it's much more about people slowly Getting Worse lol)

either way, he still had some agency when it came to the bad shit he did, and i don't intend to take it away from him just because his upbringing was extremely messed up, especially since he proved he could walk away from it. i think he would be less interesting a character if i did that anyway. he's not a poor little meow meow, he's a messed up kid with the power to play puppetmaster with other people's bodies and no qualms about doing so

[chounaifu]

I’m really glad that those asks I sent out are being well-received. There’s still a few more that I need to write up, but, I’m pacing myself. :’)

Thoughts about my own current state beneath the cut, since my therapist always encourages me to open up to the people in my space. Some of it can be potentially triggering, so, please do not open if the discussion of trauma, stalking and abuse is harmful to you:

I’ve been vocal about the horrifying, traumatic stuff that caused me to leave the RPC in 2017, to a few of you before. Without going into deep detail, between the years of 2017-2021, I was trapped in an extremely, extremely abusive relationship with a member of the RPC who is no longer here, thank fuck. Because of my poor coping skills and extremely fragile mental health at the time, he managed to keep me in a social isolation until I finally left him in 2021. And I mean true social isolation; I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody but him. (I literally had to lie and pretend like I was having internet troubles if I even wanted to open up another chat box on Discord to talk to somebody, because he would literally point out the amount of minutes it took for me to respond to him.) He tracked my location in real time with GPS. He controlled what I ate when we spent time together irl. He forced me to quit one of my jobs before, because he wasn’t pleased with how busy I was. Any free time I had, had to be given to him. I had no identity, no autonomy, no sense of self.

Since I left him in 2021, I’ve been in a long process of learning how to be a human being again, how to exist around multiple people, and how to monitor my energy levels. It’s been hard, and, there’s a lot of times where I have to learn that I am adapting to an entirely new way of life. I used to be able to write a lot of thread replies, ask replies, and drabbles in a short period of time, but, my brain just does not do that anymore. And it makes me sad, but, I know that my RP partners understand my situation.

I cannot emphasis how much going from *one* person to— well, a lot of good friends has been good for me, but also a difficult experience in itself, because I’m still fighting with my own hypersensitivity and paranoia.

Choosing to come back here was one of the scariest decisions I have ever made. And, even though I don’t vocalize it, I actively fight trauma responses every single time I open Tumblr— not because anybody is doing anything to me, but because the experience I went through was so deep.

That’s why I’ve been trying to take a minute to sit down, and send some nice words to everybody. You never know what somebody is going through. *Nobody* knew what I was going through, because I hid it so well— because I was forced to. We’re all human beings, on this rock, and we all chose to sit here and write, whether because it is a coping mechanism, something we’re passionate about, or because it’s simply fun. And I think that’s really, really beautiful.

I don’t think I’m ever going to be the same, energetic Rex that I once was. And I wish I could be. But that is okay.

So, for the people who welcomed me back, and remembered me: thank you for accepting my return, and accepting my apology.

And for the people who didn’t know me, who have become my friend lately: thank you for giving me a chance.

I’ve lost a lot of people, both friends and family, in the past decade or so. Nobody can fill those gaps, but, you guys make me feel a lot less lonely. Believe it or not, I don’t have many friends irl, and I really don’t know what I would be doing with myself right now if I hadn’t chosen to come back to Tumblr.

I wish there was more I could do to help uplift everybody who has been having a difficult time lately, I really, really do. But, at the end of the day, I cannot; what I can do, is point out that there’s at least *one* person out there who wants to see the best happen for you.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I just want to be a good person, despite of the horrible things I was called by my abuser, and I hope I am doing that.