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dreamwavesexploringreality · 2 months

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NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY

Niragi Suguru x YN. Pre-Borderlands.

TW: Bullying

This text contains themes of bullying, including physical and verbal abuse, intimidation, and emotional distress.

The sepulchral silence of the late-night university library was the only thing that seemed capable of soothing Niragi on those days when darkness seized his mind.

He had dreamt of the day he could leave for university ever since the first beating. He remembered it well: one of his classmates in high school had demanded he do his math homework during recess. Niragi had always liked math, enjoying the ability to solve problems logically and coherently, without involving his soul or heart in the process, just right or wrong, without half-measures or personalism. That day he focused on doing the homework of the taller boy who had tripped him in the hallways more than once, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't finish the last exercise before the bell signaling the end of recess rang like a sinister omen. With trembling hands, he handed the notebook to the boy who, accompanied by his friends, laughed at Niragi's trembling hands.

"I thought I asked you to finish my homework," the bully began, a sinister look on his face as he carefully reviewed the three handwritten pages.

"I-I... didn't have time to finish, but they're all done except the last one," Niragi said, looking at the ground and nervously adjusting his glasses.

"All done except the last one means it's not finished," the bully pushed Niragi to the ground with a strong shove, then turned to his friends with laughter. "Didn't you guys tell me he was the biggest nerd in the class? He can't even do that right," they laughed in unison.

Niragi still remembered the pain he had felt that day from the multiple punches and kicks they had given him while he writhed on the ground, and that was just the beginning of his hell. From that day on, no matter how hard he tried to avoid his abusers, they seemed to find a sick pleasure in making the boy suffer.

When he finally managed to leave high school, graduating with honors, he enrolled in the university farthest from his hometown to study Computer Science, and he did so without looking back or reconsidering it twice. Still, there were days when the hallways of the faculty seemed longer and narrower than usual, and the few people who might be there felt suffocating and intimidating to him. Niragi spent days looking over his shoulder, on alert, preventing any subtle movement that would make him jump and his breath catch in his throat.

That's why the library at night, mostly empty, was the best option for those days when darkness threatened to take over his mind.

YN's soft steps, contrasting with Niragi's rhythmic typing on his laptop, disturbed the cocoon of peace surrounding Niragi.

"Do you mind if I sit here with you?" the girl whispered, a stack of psychology books in her arms.

Niragi looked her up and down and remained silent for a few seconds. He had met the girl on one of his many nights in the library; they were usually the only ones in the room, and for some reason, the girl had taken this as an invitation to approach and introduce herself to the Computer Science student.

"Sure, it's not like I own the place," the boy said, returning to his work. He didn't intend to sound blunt or rude, but his instinct, honed after years of abuse, warned him that it was best to keep his distance.

If the girl noticed this, she didn't show it. She sat down carefully, dragging the chair and opening one of her books, immediately starting to read.

The constant typing on the computer was all that could be heard in the library until, suddenly, YN lowered the book, closing it softly and looking at Niragi boldly. The student noticed the girl's eyes on him and stopped typing.

"You've been here every night this week," YN began. "You look exhausted. Have you slept at all?"

Niragi didn't answer immediately. His conversations with the girl had never been longer than a brief greeting, sometimes just a nod.

"It's this project. It's demanding a lot from me," Niragi hesitated, torn between the instinct to evade and the fragile thread of trust he felt between himself and YN. He had always been good at hiding his true feelings.

"Mmm," YN hummed, nodding with understanding. "I don't know much about computers, but maybe I can help," she said.

This earned her a subtle laugh from the man.

"If you don't know about computers, what makes you think you can help me?" he said, a hint of mockery in his voice.

"I'm sure I can't help you with your project," YN laughed as if she hadn't noticed the boy's teasing. "But I think I can help you in other ways. I can keep you company and even give you conversation during your free time. There are studies that claim you can be more productive if you work in a good environment... accompanied," she asserted softly, as if reading aloud a passage from one of her books.

YN's unbreakable empathy and genuine interest in his well-being caught Niragi's attention, causing him to open his eyes slightly in surprise.

YN, as a psychology student, had managed to see during the time she had spent with Niragi a vulnerability beyond his reserved behavior, and she had chosen to act as a silent pillar of support in the midst of the internal turmoil threatening to engulf him. She found him a curious character and longed for the day he would trust her enough to open up instead of her pressuring him for details.

After a moment of uncertainty, Niragi managed to articulate the words that wore down his defenses and opened up to a vulnerability he had never shown:

"That sounds good."

YN drew a smile on her face, and a flash of happiness crossed her gaze, squeezing her heart as she understood that her study partner finally seemed to be starting to trust her. In a burst of confidence, she extended her hand to gently take his. Niragi's heart warmed by YN's genuine compassion.

"Coffee. My treat," she said, quickly getting up while still holding her partner's hand, urging him to get up too.

"That sounds good," Niragi repeated, mentally scolding himself for repeating the exact same words as before.

YN laughed softly, and a genuine warmth spread through Niragi's tired body.

The couple left the library, still holding hands, their steps resonating in the quiet of the night and a promise of brighter days floating in the air.

Until that fateful day, of course, when the fireworks lit up the Tokyo sky...

¿Part 2?

#alice in borderland #niragi x reader #niragi suguru #aib x reader #fanfic #aib #ao3 #chishiya shuntaro #aib niragi #niragi alice in borderland

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nowoyas · 1 year

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the past half hour wasn't real - Miguel O'Hara x Reader

M.list - Read on Ao3

A/N: continuing the trend of using tfb lyrics whenever I don't know how to title things. almost didn't post this one and definitely didn't edit this one but it's cheaper than acquiring a therapist <3

Summary: Miguel accidentally startles you in exactly the wrong way. Your behavior may require an explanation.

Warnings: hurt/comfort, panic attacks, past sexual assault

Word count: ~2700

You've been hurt before. Past lovers and your own stupidity mostly, if we're looking at number instances alone. But that's not what I'm talking about.

It isn't something you talk about. Once, you'd gotten fed up with your own self-destructive coping mechanisms, reached out, and booked an appointment with a therapist.

The day came, and you freaked out, canceled, and told yourself you'd never try to speak about what happened again.

And really, that wasn't a problem. You dealt with it how any normal person would: you closed off. You became Only The Employee or Only The Hero and occasionally let work acquaintances talk you into 1-3 dates with a guy who you would inevitably break it off with because you have numbed yourself out to that shit. Once or twice, you managed relationships longer. Those, too, fell apart.

Granted, at first, you tried not to. You tried to be daring and open and honest with partners. You tried to tell them: you had been hurt before. You might be a little cagey from time to time, you might have limits that don't make sense, but it is only because you have been hurt and you will spend the rest of your life navigating it.

That didn't work.

It didn't work because instead they saw you as cracked and damaged, or else extraordinarily fragile, and they would never touch you until, eventually, they moved on, and you would return to being Only the Employee and Only the Hero.

That was until you met Miguel and the others.

Hundreds and hundreds of people—all just like each other and, to a lesser degree, just like you. Spider-mutated heroes from different dimensions, working together to keep the multiverse in one coherent-incoherent piece. And Miguel, at the center of it all, Atlas holding up the world on his shoulders.

Miguel, who re-invigorated your life and, whether he realized it or not, yanked you violently out of depression.

Miguel, who, by taking you back through that portal with him and the others, allowed you to realize that while you were frequently Only The Hero, you were not The Only Hero.

Miguel, who called you in to help with an anomaly and found you emotionally rotting in your suit and didn't force you to drag yourself out anyway.

Miguel, who quietly sent a pair of Spiders to your dimension for a little bit so you could ride the waves of the anniversary of the day That Man Hurt You until they finally left you crashed on the shore long enough to stand again.

It was little wonder that you fell head over heels for him. It was rare that he let others see the humanity in him long enough to be registered, but he let you see enough that there was never any hope for you to begin with.

And that, my friend, is exactly the fucking problem.

Because you have been hurt before.

Maybe you did careen into a relationship of sorts with him—you're pretty sure you're exclusive, at least, given how little capacity either of you seem to have for entertaining the idea where even one person is concerned, and you spend time together and he lets you see himself a way that no one else ever sees him: human, tender, kind. Of course there is kindness in his actions day-to-day, but it's always masked, beneath his unmasked, flat tone and the seemingly cold logic present.

You know he has not been completely vulnerable with you. This is okay, because it's not as if you've been vulnerable with him.

You have pushed yourself through, because you love him. You have let him kiss you, because you love him. You have given him affection until he breaks because he needed it and you love him.

You have not had sex with him.

And oh, you've tried. You've told yourself a million times—he is not Him, he is nothing like Him, he would never hurt you the way He hurt you. These are all true statements. Factually, there is not a single shred of doubt to be had in these points.

Except trauma does not care about what is true now. It is determined to remind you, again and again, that You Have Been Hurt Before. You, conversely, are determined to tell capital-T Trauma to suck your fucking dick about it and fuck off so you can live a normal, well-adjusted life as a superhero dating an alternate-dimension superhero.

So you push yourself. You do not initiate, but you don't run away, because for once in your life you have enough love to stay, and anyways if you ran, he would chase you, and you wouldn't be able to keep it together.

It is late, and there has been a lull in anomalies to contend with lately, and you have just spent a wonderful day with Miguel. You don't track time like normal people do, so you can't say how long you've been together, just that it's been a long enough time that it's not really unfounded when you both crash at your apartment and you invite him to spend the night.

You have unspoken boundaries that he has effortlessly sensed and not once attempted to cross, so tonight, you don't expect him to walk up behind you sitting on the edge of your bed and wrap tender arms around your waist or press a sweet kiss to the back of your neck.

To be fair, he does not expect you to freeze.

He does not expect you to jolt away, to shove him with all your force, for whimpering pleas to pass your lips between breaths that turn to gasps, for you to settle on the floor seven feet away and grab harshly at your hair just to find some way to ground yourself.

The reactions are automatic. They have to be, because it is no longer you in your body in the room with him. It is memories, and it is fear, and if you could bring yourself to do anything beyond pulling your hair and hyperventilating, you'd be halfway out the window by now, whether it was open or not.

He's in front of you in a second, eyes searching, almost wounded, and the little part of you that's still in your head wants to apologize, to tell him it's not his fault, fucking hell this is Miguel he'll never—

But you can't. All you can think of is that night, of pleading nos, of the pain of it all and waking up and just crying for hours.

"Tell me what I did wrong, cariño, and I will never do it again. Please."

His voice is grounding. He is stricken, to see you this way. He is careful not to touch you, not to move too fast until you finally manage to worm a hand out of your hair to find something to claw at, to find a source of pain to bring you back down to Earth (667, in your case), and then he is lightning as he pulls your hands away from yourself.

"[name]. I need you to look at me and see me. Can you do that?"

You can do that.

You meet his eyes, focus as hard as you can on the place where his hands hold yours, the look in his eyes—calculating beyond the hurt. He's trying to figure you out.

He is counting, and it takes little time for you to understand that you are to follow the numbers with your breaths. You've played this game before. You try your best to match him, and he is encouraging and kind even when your attempts to just take a slow breath are interspersed with involuntary inhales and hiccups.

The pads of his thumbs, calloused and rough, smooths over the back of your hands in little circles, and when you struggle to breathe and struggle to listen, they, too, bring you back down. Each pass of his thumb feels like a confession of things you have not yet said, despite the time:

Swipe. I love you. Swipe. I love you. Swipe. I love you.

Time moves weirdly coming down from panic attacks, and so it is impossible to say how long it takes you to come back down enough to speak, how long he spends counting and rubbing his thumbs into your hands, how long you spend expending every effort just to breathe correctly.

When at last you can breathe and his counting stops, he does not let go of your hands. They are a reminder he is here. They are a reminder you are loved.

"I'm sorry" are the first words out of your mouth when you can think to say them, although the Everything took quite a bit out of you and you don't have many more words to give right now. You had been lucky so far; you stayed masked in front of everyone. Not your Spider mask, but the other mask, the one you never let down around others. No one suspected you to be Different before this, and now you're stuck wordless and feeling remarkably alone.

Except, hey, isn't Miguel just like you? Isn't that part of why you love him so?

He asks in low tones if he can carry you somewhere more comfortable than the floor. You nod, and he carries you to the couch, puts on the TV. He lets you be the one to fuck with the remote, seemingly understanding without you telling him that you do not have the words to direct him yourself right now. You put on something non-offensive and easy, and when he gets up with gentle words informing you that he's going to get something from the kitchen, you cling to him wordlessly.

A rumble of a laugh soothes you. "I'm just getting you something to drink."

You shoot him pleading eyes. Stay. Please stay.

"You need to drink water. I can carry you, if you don't want to be alone right now."

You unwind, offer him the tiniest of nods. He lifts you, again with ease, and carries you one-armed into your kitchen so he can get you a glass of water.

It is unbearable, how clingy you've become in such a short time. It is pathetic, how he sets you down with your glass of water and sits beside you and you immediately press into his side. He may have been the danger for a moment in your traitorous mind, but now, direct contact with him is the absolute safest place to be. He is an amazing sport for simply allowing it.

When at last you have it in you to drag words up to the surface, you're immediately apologizing all over again, and he is meeting each one with a gentle refusal.

"I don't need an apology from you. I just need to know what you need from me so that I never set you off that way again."

Your face falls, and you consider the sentence you need to pull out of yourself.

Honesty. That's important.

"You didn't do anything wrong. I'm sorry."

He arches a brow. He does not buy it and does not appreciate your continued apologies.

"...I haven't always been strong enough to take care of myself. Someone I trusted a lot..." The words die in your throat. Even now, after everything, you still can't bring yourself to say them.

As it turns out, you don't need to. It is rare that Miguel emotes in a way others completely understand, beyond angry and stern, but you know heartbreak when you see it. "Oh, cariño..."

“I just got scared,” you whisper finally.

He is holding you, then, gentle and firm all at once. “You should have told me.”

“I don’t want you to be afraid to touch me.”

Now that it’s out, that fear strikes you to your core.

Miguel, who would never want to hurt you.

Who now has reason to fear that he’ll hurt you no matter what he does.

“I won’t ask you to go into detail. But if we ever run into him, I can’t be held accountable for what I’ll do.”

A bitter scoff. You rest your head against his chest, let the sound of his heartbeat soothe you. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Your arms wind around his midsection, and you gradually slide onto his lap. “Please don’t let this change how you think of me.”

“What do I have to do so that you never get the idea I might think less of you over something like this ever again?”

You shudder with the sob that rises at that, but you refuse to let yourself cry more tonight. “It isn’t that I thought you’d see me as less. It’s just… I managed to tell someone once. About what happened to me. And he pulled away. He wouldn’t touch me. Wouldn’t even look at me.”

“You’re afraid I would leave you to keep you safe.”

“Mm.” You’re glad for the position the pair of you have wound up in. You couldn’t stand to see his face right now. “I didn’t—don’t—want to lose you. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that we never had a sex life because I let you see this part of me and you decided it was better for me.”

He is silent. That is the scariest part—he is silent.

“I know you’re always putting others above you. I know you’re trying to protect all of everyone in everything you do. I realize it’s selfish to ask you not to protect me. But it is goddamn torture to be put in a little glass case to be looked at and never loved because everyone’s afraid to hurt me, and it makes it all the worse, and I am so, so tired of letting him haunt the rest of my life. Can I please be selfish?”

“It’ll be difficult,” he replies, and your heart drops. You’re already moving to untangle yourself from him when he continues: “But if you’ll talk to me, and we discuss your boundaries, and you tell me the nanosecond something feels wrong to you…”

He isn’t leaving.

He isn’t pulling away.

You sit, frozen, on his lap, and search his face with wide eyes, but there’s no hint of deception. Not that you were ever the Expressions Reader, but still. You like to think you’re learning his, and you don’t see deception there.

“I love you,” you say, and that’s not the words you intended to say, not for the first time like this. “Please don’t ever sneak up from me behind like that again. Make noise. I don’t care what noise.”

It is his turn to be stunned, and for good reason, because you’re not sure anyone expected you to drop the “I love you” tonight. For a second, you think that will turn out to be the final nail in the coffin, but then he’s peppering your face in kisses, and you flush under the attention.

He isn’t letting you kiss him back or escape the assault, and you find yourself dissolving into laughter when he holds your face still to better aim his affections. At last, when you’re reduced to a giggling mess in his arms, he grants you reprieve so he can speak.

“I promise, that’ll never happen again. I love you, too.”

You are exhausted and drained, but sitting here with him, there is warmth, and light, and hope. Tomorrow, he will return to HQ, and you will remain in this dimension to make your rounds and keep your lights on. Someday, he will tell you about the pains he carries, and on another Someday, you may give him details about yours. But it is tonight, and tonight, you will settle into one another, murmur quietly a conversation about limits and love and how to move forward.

One thing you should know: although he is scared, he will never pull away because of this. You are safe in that.

Tags: @deeplightgarden @idonthaveanameideayet @dusstory @yohoe-hoe

#my fics #miguel o'hara x reader

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onewomancitadel · 22 days

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Major spoilers for Death's End, the final book of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy beneath the cut.

So about that terrarium...

My intial somewhat dismayed reading was that of an uncharacteristic, hackneyed sentimentality: even when the books took such an indulgence, there was always a cynical chaser. You don't get to experience the fantastical sense of romantic love without Luo Ji's understanding of women (or lack thereof) and the belief that people only love imaginations of each other and stay together so long as they don't conflict with reality. (This is probably key to the fact that the star-crossed lovers never meet in Death's End, neither of them being disabused of their fantasies. It's juvenile).

Suffice it to say, I really struggled with the ending. I struggled with Death's End in general; not necessarily the fundamental approach (I don't think undoing the victory was a totally bad idea, since I liked evolving that thesis past what it means to win) but the structure felt less whimsical and more directionless, a series of entries - quite literally - which felt disparate and never quite managed to hit that sense of dispassionate historical observation I think the text was trying to go for.

So the idea that there was this terrarium and message in a bottle left behind in a universe built specially for Cheng Xin was just kind of bizarre tonally. It felt silly.

I get it: the entries about Earth's past is right there in the trilogy title. But it felt very self-important; it didn't cohere with the overwhelming notion that humanity was 1. very irrelevant, 2. very bad at what it does, 2a. its women are very bad at what they do, and its men - if soft and weak - are similarly bad, 3. at every moment anything that isn't about pure survival is cut at the knees. Remembrance seems more like farce. Actually, the entire sequence on Pluto felt out of place, almost like we're meant to laugh at the little bugs trying to save their precious granules of sugar.

I was discussing the ending with my best friend and her family - actually I related all the events of the books to them, somewhat out of chronological order, because I know that they all collectively would fucking hate these books (I personally didn't, glimmers of brilliance make me all the more frustrated) - and she said this amazing thing which was like, well, you say there's all this umming and ahhing over whether the universe might not be able to reboot if there's mass left behind - and it seems alright just to leave something - what if this is Cheng Xin's final fuck-up, finally chosen in an active way?

It's actually her seeming passivity which would allow this final stunt at all. Nobody would dare assume - not her last companions - that she would intentionally do this at all. So far she's damned humanity once, and then effectively twice (at least I think she is implicitly damned), and she is, really sincerely, a complete fuck-up wastrel who never does or thinks anything interesting. Luo Ji gets to be a fuck-up wastrel who thinks interesting things and does interesting things, and fails once, twice, three times, probably more, as a Wallfacer, and has a moment of stunning success because he's a fuck-up wastrel. This is a great idea, which unfortunately suffers in the face of the fact that Liu Cixin is obsessed with strong men.

The idea that Cheng Xin looks at the face of the overwhelming loneliness of her universe, the cruelty and inhumanity of the dark forest thesis, the wars upon wars which ravaged multiple dimensions until they were folded into flatness, and then decides to weaponise a sense of sentimentality to finally damn that universe - to prevent it from being reborn, to escape samsara - when she would never be expected to be capable of such a thing, to finally actively choose this maternality she's passively carried and passively condemned humanity with - is maybe the thing which could redeem that ending for me. It's bleak - and I still don't agree with the overall attitude the books hold - but it is actually a real thesis! It does actually deliver on this threat that's expounded upon and seems like, in any other story, would surely allow for some small space to remember humanity. But how much mass is enough? If enough pocket unvierses all leave behind a few hundred grams, surely it would start to add up.

The alternative interpretation is that Cheng Xin once again fucks everything up but not on purpose, merely through an innocent-intentioned sentimentality. But I think the fact that she acknowledges the threat allows a bit of wiggle room. The argument here would be that Luo Ji's final Wallfacer plan against the Trisolarans is concealed from us until its reveal; this move has been pulled once before. The key difference is that we never see whether the universe reboots. I think this is very meaningful for the argument that it doesn't, and that we wouldn't see the payoff of Cheng Xin's plan, because there is no universe anymore. This really makes it a true twist ending to me which - most meaningfully of all - doesn't go against what the books were trying to do, but actually strengthens it.

But she put the effort into recording humanity's history, and I might go so far as to argue that she did that to explain her motivation to end it all, instead of slipping into it, but actually thinking about it.

The real conflict here, actually with any ending, is the sense of anthropocentrism which it otherwise sought to subvert. But I think reading against that, if we take it seriously that human beings are moral creatures who make moral judgements irrespective of our place in the universe (however small that is), I think that actually pairs better thematically with the idea that a graveyard remembrance of humanity also serves as the final, very small thing - this small living thing - which says 'no more'. The sense of reincarnation and enlightenment here, too, feels fitting, though I'd argue that its overly cynical view of the universe does the argument better.

I wrote all this out and then I went back to reread the last few pages. (I'm using an ebook version, so I don't have page citations). I'm going to see if this interpretation actually holds:

Cheng Xin asks if she can leave five kilograms behind, and then:

As long as the tiny sun inside the sphere continued to give off light, this miniature ecological system would persist. As long as it remained here, Universe 647 would not be a lifeless, dark world. “Of course,” said Guan Yifan. “The great universe isn’t going to fail to collapse because it misses five kilograms.” He had another thought that he did not voice: Perhaps the great universe really would fail to collapse because it lacked a single atom’s mass. [...] Ultimately, the great universe was certain to lose at least a few hundred million tons of matter, or perhaps even a million billion billion tons. Hopefully, the great universe could ignore such a loss.

So the sequence of events is this:

they're going to heed the call of the Returners

Cheng Xin wants to leave behind something to remember humanity by

Guan Yifan says of course she can, so graciously giving her permission

they acknowledge the general fact that others may do the same thing, or maybe even a single atom might be enough to prevent the universe rebooting, so it's a gamble anyway

Holy fuck this is terrible. Anyway, if we go through this with the perspective of the books - that every civilisation is interested first and foremost in survival at any cost, and short of that, to be remembered (survival in memory) - it is near-inevitable that there will be other mass left behind. But the flipside of this is that each individual choice matters; maybe with enough choosing to forego that, the universe could reboot. It's not definite. The ending is left open, the 'science' here is left imprecise. But we are reading between the lines of motivation. I'm not sure that my reading holds as an intended reading - because I do think the thematic compromise of the ending really does feel quite clear - but this is how I would make it more concordant with the series.

I much prefer it for the fact that Cheng Xin uses her contemplation in this lonely, ugly pocket universe to come to a conclusion of leaving mass behind to damn the universe. It would give her something to do. It would improve it tonally - haha, just rereading it, my God, I can't believe this is the ending to these books - and I think I like it just because it subverts that patronising treatment Guan Yifan affords her, like a little child asking for a lolly, concealing the truth of the potential cruelty of nature... which she is actually very well aware of.

I don’t know how much those catastrophes and the final destruction of the Solar System had to do with me. Those are questions that could never be answered definitively. But I’m certain they had something to do with me, with my responsibilities. And now, I’ve climbed to the apex of responsibility: I am responsible for the fate of the universe.

I would like Cheng Xin to abuse the trust in her sweet passivity. This would parallel neatly with Luo Ji's defense against the Trisolarans, the deception within deception within deception, against the ultimate enemy, suffocating it in the cradle.

#three body problem #death's end #remembrance of earth's past #stirring the pot

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sandybrett · 9 months

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Writing Journal: Wednesday, December 20, 2023

What I did: Immediately upon waking, I sat up in bed, turned on my lightbox, and started doing a free write.

Notes: I'd always struggled with the idea of a free write before because I would overthink it. "Do I need to write down literally every word that comes into my mind, even if it's irrelevant and interrupts something more interesting? What if several words come to me while I'm writing one word--do I write the words in the order I thought of them or do I skip ahead to the word I'm thinking when I finish the current word?" Also, I would write so fast to prove that I wasn't trying to censor myself that my brain would be taken over by the motor aspect of writing, leaving little room for my brain to come up with interesting images.

Writing first thing in the morning was a good way around this. When I wake up, I'm capable of forming coherent thoughts, but the signal-to-noise ratio in my inner monologue is frustratingly low for practical tasks such as making breakfast. But it was useful here because I didn't have to actively turn off the part of my brain that gets things to make sense; it hadn't fully turned on yet! I still wrote fast enough that I had trouble reading some of it afterwards, but I wasn't afraid to occasionally pause for a second and let an image or a vague sound-pattern coalesce into a word.

On that note, I was surprised at how often I was translating sounds into words, rather than meanings into words. I would hear the vague outline of a word and come up with two words it might be and write them back to back: "chewing cheating," "demeaning demanding," "plunder thunder." At least two times I was so compelled by a particular sound that I couldn't find a real word to do it justice, so I just wrote "dreep" and moved on. Yes, specifically "dreep," twice.

Highlights:

"word shapes without meanings find closest approximation and wing it like a sarcastic smug cartoon bird eagle"

"small harsh fractals above me"

"Awake my soul stretch my nerves unbundle them find vigor where there is none that meets the eye"

Music: I was not listening to music while I did this, but a few songs drifted into my head and their lyrics seeped into the writing. As far as I can reconstruct from reading it back, these were:

"Am I Awake?" by They Might Be Giants "She's An Angel" by They Might Be Giants "Awake My Soul" by Mumford & Sons "Awake My Soul, Stretch Every Nerve" (hymn, idk the source) "Howlin' Down the Cumberland" by John Hiatt "Gotta Get Up" by the Bottle Rockets

#writing journal #writing advice #i hope you write i hope we both write

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night-garden-fic · 1 year

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Chapter Two: The Pressed Leaf of the Past

(Read on AO3)

"But then again, I was always an awful soldier, wasn't I?"

Chapter Two: The Pressed Leaf of the Past

Russell never really understood why having read every book in the Library should be seen as something so remarkable.

After all, he was a lifelong avid reader, and lived in the building besides. To him, having read everything was a simple inevitability. It was a large number of books, true. But the collection wasn't limitless, and his appetite for words was—or at least felt, to him—approximately so. All things considered, it didn't take him very long to burn through the entire backlog.

Indeed, "burning through" was an apt description for his reading habits in those lonely early days in Kardia.

Russell had arrived in town a stranger and a fugitive; war-battered and disgraced, with little respite for his mind outside the comforting familiarity of ink on paper. Dazed and half-shattered, he found himself falling into the pages harder than ever before, the agonized weeks and months passing by in a hectic, ink-scribbled blur.

It wasn't until he was finally somewhat ready to integrate into village life that Russell realized he really had read everything there was to read, sometimes twice over. And, knowing no other way to live, he kept up the habit even as his mind began to settle; reading every book that came his way, and returning to his old favorites for the third, forth, or fifth time over. It remained a precious escape from past and self when he found he still needed one, and served as the ultimate fulfillment of a dear old dream.

And of course, on a more practical level, it also helped him keep up with the slow, steady trickle of new material. Having at least a broad familiarity with all the books and their contents, Russell figured, was an essential part of the job. And, given his passing interest in nearly everything, it was probably the part of the job that he relished most of all.

But all people have their preferences, and he was no exception.

If one knew Russell well enough, it was probably less surprising to learn that he had read every book in the Library than it was to find out that there were some—indeed, many—that he hadn't particularly enjoyed. It was something of a source of guilt for him, but it was nonetheless true.

The most obvious examples were technical manuals concerning advanced, unfamiliar trades, which he generally found inscrutable, and often merely skimmed.

Then there were the romantic stories written for a juvenile—or perhaps excessively timid—audience; the kind that always conveniently ended before anyone got up to anything interesting, leaving Russell feeling cranky and unsatisfied as he wondered, for the hundredth time, if he should just start skipping these. Each one seemed identical to all the others, and no one but Tori ever seemed all that interested in checking them out.

But, if given a choice, Russell knew he would rather read a thousand carpentry texts and a million treacly chaste romances than a single tome of military history.

In his youth, he'd found it as dry and esoteric as the most complex of those vexing manuals, and could never quite create a picture in his mind of what was supposed to be happening. Surely, there was some coherent story to be found, behind all those far-away dates and names and landmarks. But, try as he might, he could never get it to emerge.

And, if it was bad then, it had somehow become even worse.

Back in those tumultuous early days of indiscriminately reading everything within arm's reach, Russell assumed having a bit of personal experience would help, but it never seemed to properly apply, leaving him more confused than ever. Though he now understood a bit of the jargon, he still found that these texts seemed to talk right past him; telling a story in which, even now, he seemed to have no real part.

It gave him the strange sensation of being flattened to nothing in those pages. Like a dry autumn leaf, carefully pressed and promptly forgotten, the blood-vibrant colors of his life slowly fading away

Still, Russell had read every book in the Library. And, inevitability or no, it had become something of a point of pride.

Just get through it, and you can read that nice big natural history encyclopedia you've been staring at.

A new shipment had arrived the previous week. And—confusing, unsettling, or otherwise—Russell couldn't just not read one of them. So, when he unearthed yet another ponderous volume on Norad's seemingly endless border conflicts, he figured he would just go ahead and read that one first, to get it over and done with.

Unfortunately, this was proving surprisingly difficult, mostly owing to the tome's recent publication.

For one thing, the spine was stiff, and Russell had to make an active effort just to keep it open in front of him. Of course, this got easier upon reaching the halfway point, but by then he was seeing descriptions of locations and practices that he actually recognized, which made his mind wander uncontrollably.

Why can't I put it all together?

(I remember everything.)

Just yesterday, he'd read the description of a certain ambush technique, and lost the better part of an hour staring into space, running through the procedure in his head; surviving, dying, surviving again, and only grudgingly allowing himself to move on once his mind finally stopped letting him live.

If you can't save yourself, have the sense to let it end.

There were several such incidents, and they all made Russell feel as though he'd never get through the damned thing. But still, as in most areas of life, he supposed he was making a stilted kind of progress. He only had a quarter of the book to go, and was back to having to pin it open; a welcome, immediate annoyance.

Having reached the end of another laborious page, Russell carefully flicked to the next, preparing himself for another dense and thorny, but mostly uneventful bramble of words he'd have to hack through.

Not five seconds later, he felt his hair standing on end with the realization that he'd found something else entirely.

This can't be history.

Russell's brain snapped in electric recognition; breath caught in lungs that still held a faint rattle, heart feeling like it could have beat its slick way out of his mouth.

At first, it was just an infantry number and a span of dates, somehow as strangely meaningless as any of the others. But the page also contained one of the volume's few illustrations.

It only took about a second to realize what, exactly, he was looking at.

(Tin cups. Mud puddles.)

(My grave.)

A scratchy woodcut reproduction of a photograph; one that he had never actually seen, though he could remember the day it was taken as though it were just last week. The kind of day that your mind holds onto not because it was particularly important, but more so because no other day had yet bothered to dethrone it.

Far right end of the second row from the bottom. It won't be hard to find. Just take a look.

Russell's eyes tracked across the page. And, sure enough, there he was, right where he'd left him: the vague image of his eighteen-year-old self. He stood at the very edge of the group, spaced slightly too far from the young man at his side and looking almost tacked on as an afterthought.

The expectation was that he would either feel either a deep crushing sorrow, or nothing at all. But, to his surprise, Russell actually found it slightly funny. The photograph had been a formal affair, with everyone standing at attention and holding the camera in a steely gaze. Meanwhile, that distant teenage Russell was, to all appearances, simply trying his best.

Gods, this poor kid.

He wore a round pair of glasses back then, and the glare on the thick lenses must have been such that the artist decided not to bother with his eyes at all, instead rendering the frames opaque. This gave him an unreadable, somewhat hollow look, which made him look even more out of place. And, upon closer inspection, his posture was slightly hunched, shoulders just a tad bit lopsided. That, he supposed, could have been the misery of his new life settling into his young, green bones.

Poor, poor kid.

(You wretched little killer.)

But no, Russell remembered that day well. He'd been assigned to help with digging a trench the day before, managed to tweak something in his back in the process, and simply couldn't handle standing up straight for as long as it took to get everyone in position and process the photograph.

Even now, over a dozen years later, he could feel it—if only vaguely—as he slumped at his desk. The weight of his tired spine worrying at that frayed cord, a reminder of everything else inside him that had been pulled to near-snapping over the years.

Despite it all, he had to laugh. It came out as an awkward, breathy bark, followed by a slight cough, but it was laughter all the same. Of course, the Library was nearly silent, and Russell had spent the last two hours sitting all but motionless, face set in a light scowl, so this drew the attention of the entire room.

Which, thankfully, was just Tori and Cecilia. And Lynette, he supposed, but she was stood against the far wall with a book propped in one hand—as was her way—and quickly decided that this didn't concern her.

(Doesn't it, though?)

His daughter and assistant, however, were a bit more curious. Tori looked up from the card catalog that she had been sorting through, nervously fiddling with the end of one long, yellow braid.

"...S-something funny?"

Russell laughed again, more quietly this time, and shook his head.

"Not really, I guess... Mostly just surprised. I'm... I'm in this book."

Tori tilted her head quizzically, and Cecilia craned her neck over the desk to get a better look. Russell beckoned Tori over, and moved the book aside so Ceclia could settle herself on his desk. He carefully held the pages open with one hand while gesturing at the image with the other.

"See the one on the end here? That's me."

Those two words, spoken aloud, turned to ash on Russell's tongue, drying his mouth and making his throat feel slightly constricted.�� He swallowed painfully, and watched as they took him in; the bad posture, the bad glasses, the daydreamy, serious face.

A face that, he began to realize, hadn't changed much in all these years.

It was starkly recognizable, even in this miniscule, ink-lined state. This was the face that still met him every day in the mirror; though by now it had grown into itself a bit, and there were a few faint lines coming in around the eyes, breaking up the general blankness.

Surprisingly, Tori was the first to speak up.

"You l-look smaller..."

Russell shrugged.

"Well, there's a lot of us in one picture, so I guess we all do. But I wasn't quite done growing until I was twenty, so you're probably right."

Cecilia placed her own small hand next to her father's, leaning in for a better look.

"What were you all doing?"

What, indeed?

"We... Well... I had to fight in a war for a while. It was before you were born. I guess they wanted a picture of everyone, in case someone wrote a book like this someday."

Russell supposed that was technically true enough, and hoped she wouldn't press much farther. Suddenly, it occurred to him—with some mild shock—that this was the first time they'd ever discussed his past. Somehow, it just hadn't come up.

And who made sure of that, hmm?

Cecilia studied the image for a moment more, then tilted her face towards him.

"Were you scared?"

Another hard, painful swallow. Russell had to clear his throat before he could continue.

"Sometimes I was. It could get scary."

Cecilia looked grave for a moment, then smiled.

"You were brave."

That had nothing to do with it.

Russell forced a smile of his own.

"I think I mostly felt tired... I like being here with you a lot more."

Somewhat awkwardly, with his one free arm, he pulled his daughter into a hug. She wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulder for a moment, then hoisted herself off the desk and scampered off to the remainder of her carefree afternoon.

Sweet girl. You're braver.

(You don't even know.)

"...Gods, those uniforms are like street clothes."

Lynette seemed to be curious after all, and had joined Tori in hovering over the desk, regarding the image inquisitively with a single crimson eye. Russell startled slightly when she spoke, gathering himself a bit before he could reply.

"Yeah... They weren't great. We had some other gear to layer on for active combat, but it probably wasn't much better."

He didn't know why he felt the need to explain this to Lynette, of all people, because she certainly already knew. Still, there was a slight disbelieving note in her voice.

"...I frankly don't know how any of you are still alive."

Well, for starters, a lot of us aren't.

Russell readjusted himself in his seat. His clothes were sitting funny across his chest, the friction causing faint pins and needles. Still, he let out another small laugh.

"I got lucky, I guess."

That I did.

By way of reply, his chest ached.

Did you? Really?

~*~

Russell always found it funny how, even when you considered the obvious, the easiest way to tell that Cecilia and himself weren't blood relations would be to watch both of them try to go to sleep.

Specifically, the way Cecilia never had to try.

That night, as was their routine, he'd read her one of her favorite picture books; this time the one about an old tree in an even older forest, and how it gave life to all the birds and insects living in its leaves, wood, and branches, and the worms in the soil at the roots. She kept herself awake just long enough for him to finish that familiar tale, then seemingly turned off her little body and mind like twin lamps as soon as he turned the last page.

"Goodnight, Ceci."

He kissed the crown of her head, then lay there in her small bed for a few moments, legs hanging awkwardly off the mattress, listening to her quiet breathing. In the dim light of the room, he took in all the chaotic flotsam of his daughter's messy, miniature life. The stones on the headboard, the feathers sticking out of an old jam jar on the nightstand, and the colorful crayon drawings that already papered the folding divider they'd installed in their shared room just a day before.

Perhaps Cecilia's restfulness was contagious. Maybe her body contained some naive wisdom that his tense, overgrown form could learn from.

But, of course, there was no such luck. Russell stumbled to bed, crawled under his own covers, and began the nightly waiting game.

On the good nights, an hour or two of reading would be enough to lull him into a shallow but reasonably refreshing sleep. A sleep that, by its very shallowness, would remain dreamless and blank.

Somehow, as soon as he'd extinguished the lamp, Russell knew that this would not be a good night.

I guess I should have figured.

The previous night hadn't been very good, either. And nor—at least when it came to sleep—had the night before that; lying awake and bruised in Lady Ann's soft bed, watching the falling snow through the window. And neither, come to think of it, had the night before that.

If he kept on looking back and back, Russell could follow this span of bad nights for weeks, spooling out beyond the horizon of recent memory.

And now he had a new addition to the torrent of images that flooded his mind the instant he closed his eyes: the younger self, rendered rather carelessly in stark, black ink.

It's not even the real picture.

Russell wondered why the artist—who surely could have taken liberties if they'd wished—had bothered to include his crooked posture. It was subtle enough to ignore, and surely, it would have been easier to just render everyone the same, as that had been the goal in the first place. But no, there it was, the time he injured himself while clumsily shoveling mud in a trench, forever immortalized in print.

Just as it was, he remembered again, in his own body. The subtle ache in the tendon was bothering him, and he shifted again, trying to get comfortable.

It's never going to be over, you know.

It already is. It's literally in a history book. I need to sleep.

Arguing with himself, Russell knew from experience, never got him anywhere good. But what else did he have to do, lying there alone in the dark?

You're okay. It's just been a rough year.

Russell blinked hard, and more pictures rose to the surface to replace that bespectacled boy, frozen in ink.

Cecilia, lost in the volcanic depths of a cave, terrified and alone. Himself, sitting in the dirt at the cave's mouth, mentally brutalizing himself for not being the one to go in and save her, for being such a poor caretaker that this even happened in the first place.

For scooping her up off that battlefield, just to walk her straight into other dangers.

No, she walked there herself.

(She's too brave for her own good, is all.)

Time had already ground a few sharp edges off the whole incident. But, deep down, Russell still blamed himself. Still woke from nightmares of a small girl's keening screams, of walking into pillars of fire.

You've been keeping a better eye on her lately. She'll be okay.

Will I be, though?

As usual, Russell couldn't give himself an honest answer. Especially not from where he was right then, cold and alone in the dead of night.

...Not if you don't sleep.

Then I guess I won't be. Who the hell can sleep like this?

Almost reflexively, He thought of Sabrina.

The warmth of her body next to his own, and the silly conversations she would distract him with when he was too wound up to sleep. Her hands, which never seemed to sense the contamination he could feel coming off himself in waves.

And how almost surreal it seemed when she and Neumann reconciled that spring, seemingly out of the blue.

Russell was happy for her, but had to admit it took the wind out of him.

In truth, he wasn't even sure why. They had only been exclusive for a few months, before which Sabrina and Lady Ann had been content to amicably pass him back and forth, with no hard feelings or jealousy that he could ascertain. Hell, for all he knew, they were messing around with each other in addition to him. But that was one of the many, many things that just seemed to never come up.

No hard feelings or jealousy from me now, either.

They remained close friends, as they had been since not long after Sabrina first arrived in Kardia. And she seemed genuinely happy, which was all Russell could reasonably ask for. But it had been an adjustment, and after the whole mess with Cecilia had taken so much out of him...

(I almost lost my mind.)

...Well, his capacity to adjust was a bit compromised, to say the least. Every empty bed seemed emptier, every lonely night seemed lonelier, and every unspoken fear threatened to physically corrode him from the inside.

And so, when the tanks rolled in with the summer, was it any wonder that Russell felt fully prepared to face them head-on himself?

~*~

It was an unseasonably hot, dusty-bright, uncanny afternoon, when the worst finally happened.

For months, there had been an escalating whisper of siege and invasion that kept Russell steely-spined and frightened; painfully alert by day and restlessly wakeful by night, nerves crackling and ready for danger. At first, it was only hearsay and rumor, which he couldn't fully believe.

Told himself, again and again, that he wouldn't believe.

But even so, whatever was left of the soldier within him still knew it was best to be prepared.

Having spent so long trying to silence that malignant sliver of self for the good of the whole, the only thing Russell had ever been entirely unprepared for was the day when the paranoid whisper in the back of his mind finally spoke the truth.

There were tanks lining up on the edge of town.

And, when he began to hear the distant, familiar grind of heavy treads on gravel, he knew exactly what he had to do.

With that brave young warrior-farmer down in the thick of things, there was no one left but Russell to defend the heart of the village. It was all on him, and he was more ready to die for the cause than he had ever been in his soldiering days. This wasn't some abstract fight for honor and country. This was for his home, his neighbors, his daughter's future.

What was his life, really, in the face of all that?

Once he had made up his mind, Russell moved quickly. He raided Leo's empty shop, borrowing a dull old sword, an ill-fitting iron chestplate, and a dented helmet with a creaky face guard. Having outfitted himself as best he could in other people's damaged gear, he ran down to Raguna's field and grabbed as many fist-sized stones as he could carry.

He knew well that it wasn't enough, but it was what he had. There was nothing left but to station himself under the first arch of the main road, and wait.

Sabrina tried to reason with him, tried to get him to abandon his self-appointed post and shelter in the sturdy stone cellar of the de Sainte-Coquille manor with her and all the others. She reminded him of Cecilia, and Edward, and herself, and all he had to live for. Cool and numb, as though he had just broken through the splintered surface of a frozen lake, Russell could only explain that he was thinking of Cecilia.

"What else do I have to fight for?"

Realizing that reason was getting her nowhere, Sabrina grabbed Russell by the wrist and started pulling; screaming at him that he was insane, that he would die, that there was nothing to prove here. She was surprisingly strong for her size, and definitely the more athletic of the two, but Russell had received a good deal of formal training in how to plant his feet and hold his ground. He wouldn't budge, and eventually Neumann took Sabrina's hand, shouting many of the same words that she had just been shouting at Russell.

And then they were gone; dragging a sobbing Cecilia with them, leaving Russell alone to meet thirty tons of steel with a tarnished sword and a pile of stones.

For a moment, he thought Camus might assist him. The sturdy young farmer ran down the lane with his builder's hammer in hand, clearly filled with adrenaline and ready to see some action. Russell couldn't understand his mindset, but was grateful to have some help.

That is, until Edward realized what was going on and burst out of the Clinic in a fury.

"What the hell are you doing!?"

"I'm not just gonna let them destroy us!"

"You can't fight a tank with a hammer, Camus! You need to go and shelter with the others!"

"You're staying behind!"

"There's a difference! I have to stay at the Clinic in case someone gets hurt! You don't have to fight some machine that can crush you in an instant!"

"Russell's gonna fight!"

"Russell is crazy!"

Not yet crazy enough to begin insisting that he wasn't, Russell simply watched their argument with half-hearted interest.

And then Edward—a strong man in his own right—grabbed his strapping son by the collar and began dragging him towards the manor. For a moment, he looked at Russell as though he wanted to grab and drag him, too. But he must have thought better of it, for he quickly turned and left, with a protesting Camus in tow.

Edward, after all, only had one free hand. Russell was armed, driven, and—yes, perhaps—crazy.

One would have better luck fighting a tank with a hammer.

Or with some stones and a rusty sword.

Alone.

Alone, boiling under the unforgiving summer sun, the borrowed armor hanging loose and crooked around his frame and digging heavily into his shoulders, Russell spent the better part of a day standing at attention in that first archway. With everyone else in hiding, Kardia was deathly still, and he found he could hear nothing but the far-away rumble of tanks and the ringing clatter of his own thoughts.

Mostly, he thought of Cecilia, and wished he had thought to bring a pen and paper, to write her a proper goodbye before he was ground to nothing where he stood. He wondered how it would feel to be broken under those heavy treads, almost grateful that the fate he'd run from had finally found him.

It was a chance to get it right.

Russell wouldn't run. Not this time.

He would stand tall. He would do his best.

And yes, he would be brave.

Then, hopefully, it would all be quick.

Though the plan was to hold his ground until the very last, for Cecilia and everyone else, Russell had—just as he had countless times before, during the fighting years—already accepted the likely outcome.

And, same as before, the end never actually came.

Raguna and Ivan, it turned out, had worked some strange Draconic miracle, and the tanks were stalled in place, held to the Earth with sturdy vines and roots. There would be no invasion. There would be no destruction. Kardia would hold strong, with or without Russell and his pile of stones.

Utterly exhausted, nerves fried from too many hours on the brink, he felt his legs give out beneath him and fell to his knees on the cobbles.

A minute or an hour later, Sabrina and Cecilia returned, embracing him right there in the street.

Russell knew they were speaking to him, a frenetic stream of teary gratitude, but he could hardly hear them over the empty roar of his white-noise mind. They held him tight, but he still felt himself drifting backward, staring at the horizon for so long that he too felt collapsed into a flat, distant line. Eventually, Edward emerged from the Clinic and helped him to his feet. Russell nodded a weak thank-you, then staggered numbly into the Library.

I guess it happened again.

Once more, Russell was left to face the sort of world he could never imagine.

A world where the horror had passed, but he somehow had to keep on living.

~*~

My eyes blink open to the loathsome summer sun, and I realize how ridiculous I'd been, in thinking it had all ended so neatly.

That was no miracle.

It was only a dream.

And I'm an awful soldier, falling asleep on my feet like that.

But then again, I was always an awful soldier, wasn't I?

(All those lives you cut down, and for what?)

I tell myself that I still have time to be better, if only by dying an honorable death. The tanks rumble in the distance. Terrable circles overhead. I wait; though whether it's for a miracle or a catastrophe, I can't be sure.

I wait only, perhaps, to be needed.

I wait, always, for it all to be over, whatever that may mean.

And then a munition whizzes up from behind the distant treetops, knocking the great Native Dragon from the sky. The ground shakes. Trees crack. The world is thrown off-balance.

(It really is on you now, isn't it?)

I adjust the armor to stop its painful digging into my hips, get a better grip on the sword, and take up a stone. I listen as the rumbling grows closer.

I wait.

The sun overheats my brain inside the helmet, and I suddenly remember that something isn't right here. I shouldn't be hot. I should be freezing. But maybe I'm just thinking of my years in the trenches; which, in my mind, seemed to take place in a perpetual winter.

(But surely, even then, it must have been summer at least some of the time?)

(I try not to remember.)

Luckily, I don't have time.

The tanks emerge from the treeline and crash through the farm. I plant my feet wide apart and square my shoulders. I hurl my stone, and my aim is true. It glances off the helmet of the unfortunate helmsman, but the impact still rung his bell pretty good, and I watch him slump forward in his seat, unconscious or dead.

Then the tank keeps on rolling, and I realize the horrible truth.

He was never in control.

Neither was I.

This machine was always going to crush me.

So I drop my sword and let it happen.

(It's only more waiting. You can do this.)

(I'm sorry, Cecilia. I never had a choice.)

Mercifully, I don't have to wait very long.

The steel behemoth barrels toward and over me, making its vile destructive way into the town beyond. I failed. I was always going to fail.

This was how it was supposed to end, and I was a fool for thinking I could ever escape.

(It's okay. Just as long as she can.)

At least the chestpiece isn't hanging on me anymore. The pressure of the treads crumpled it into my body, drove jagged dented metal into my collapsed ribs. I can't take a breath, and I guess that's fine. I don't have much use for air anymore.

(It's over. Finally.)

And that's all I can think: "finally."

Until, that is, I start wondering why I still have an intact head to think with at all.

~*~

Russell woke with a start, hands flying over his ribcage in a panic.

You're all right. It was just another stupid dream. Calm down.

His chest was certainly a site of some genuine distress—lungs heavy with congestion, rib muscles achey from the persistent nighttime cough that had bothered him since autumn, scarred nerves sizzling in the wake of his hasty exam—but it was a far cry from the wreck of twisted metal and pulverized bone his half-dreaming mind had lead him to expect.

Relieved, Russell sat up, coughed heavily, then collapsed back on the pillows. He wasn't ground to a pulp in the street. He was only right here; curled in a ball, blue moonlight, empty bed, daughter drifting peacefully on the other side of their divided room. The dream had exhausted him, but he was too afraid of a repeat performance to chance sleep again.

Not tonight, I guess. I give up.

Russell crawled out of bed and padded downstairs to the Library, where the thick book was still open face-down across his desk. He lit a candle, flipped it over, and stared into his own younger, obscured face. What, he wondered, would he tell him if he could?

First, he tried it Cecilia's way.

You're being so brave.

As before, it rang hollow. So he decided to try something else.

I know what you're going to do. Hell, I know what you've already done. You make me sick.

He tasted bile on the back of his tongue, felt his vision begin to shiver. For a moment, Russell felt as though he was about to pass out from sheer white-hot rage, and was indeed so exhausted that it would have been welcome.

Suddenly, a third thought; another message trying to propel itself across time, to leap into the illustration as through a magic portal.

I know you're tired.

Somewhere—perhaps buried in his own flesh, like a shard of jagged shrapnel—that lost boy must have heard, because Russell was overcome with something that felt too massive to name or express.

He lay his head down on the cool scarred wood of the desk, and silently wept until dawn.

#rune factory #rune factory 1 #rf1 russell

2 notes · View notes

delusion-of-negation · 1 year

Text

there's a letter to an ex-friend under the cut - i know that he won't know about or read it, but i've been told that expressing myself might help me find closure and support. apparently, men don't talk about our emotions enough, or some bullshit - idk, i don't read feminist literature, i'm a shitposter. note: if you do read the letter, please don't take the opportunity to insult or demean my ex-friend in the notes, you know that i'm not a fan of internet gossip culture or bandwagon insult parties, especially not when you've only heard one side, especially not when you think that you deserve more information, especially not just to be a dick.

date posted: 17/08/2023 date last edited: 20/09/2023

this is unrebloggable because i don't want private emotions circulating, but i also made playlists that express how i'm feeling (because i find that putting songs or pictures in nice orders helps me express myself, i'm autistic, and music conveys feelings better than my long-winded explanations of the reasons). initially, one was in the post itself, and another was linked, along with an update post.

the letter:

frankly, i'm not a very succinct person, and when i initially wrote this i had a lot of very complex, not-yet-fully-understood feelings that i was processing with it, and it quickly became disorganised in a flurry. i want to express the points better and have edited it to do so. you callously, knowingly ruined my entire life, on every level you could, for your own amusement. i have no opportunity to even convey to you what you've done to me, and that's why i wrote this, to understand and convey those thoughts to the void. i'm explaining that the reasons for my hurt and my ever-increasing suicidality are nuanced and complicated, historic and current, and they feed into each other, yes, but the part that you played is not to be understated. this was originally more balanced and sympathetic, more mourning and sad, as an anonymous post about a complicated, personal situation that you want to wash your hands of - but you want to wash your hands of fucking me over, not once or twice, but endlessly and cruelly for weeks. you definitely have no room to judge an anonymous post to process feelings (where nobody who knows you would even see, except anyone you sent to send me hate), which doesn't talk about a single personal thing about you, when you air deeply personal info, with god knows how much selective quoting and twisting and demonising of a conversation that happened specifically while i was incapable of an ounce of coherent thought, overdosing and drunk, to people who actually know me.

you and your buddies spew callous bullshit gossiping, twisting my words (for example, when i was talking about struggling with self-loathing and depression and dark thoughts - while i was, as mentioned, drunk, on a massive overdose of various psychotropic meds, and in the midst of a suicide attempt, wherein you decided to bait and lead the conversation, to get things to take out of context later - i said that a couple of events [ie moments of struggle with the aforementioned issues] led to me talking to my previous therapist about things; it seems this may be amongst things taken out of context, put alongside other rumours, past and current, with chronic gossips and people you went to who you knew i didn't trust [who, it should be noted, i dislike and blame more than you tbh, but this isn't to them], to imply "events" meant some kind of behavioural issue, that is not and has never been something that i've done; me having a depressive episode whilst drunk at a later date, expressing that i felt like i was becoming somebody i didn't want to be, seemingly taken to again mean a behavioural issue, not likewise about struggling with my own inner experiences and darker thoughts). even without the twisting, it's so inappropriate and risky to mockingly gossip about somebody's private situation and health issues, which they told you about in a very vulnerable state - to try to expose them to harsh and undue judgement from anyone and everyone. at least one person, possibly more, (who it seems you told about the situation, or more specifically some twisted version of it, amongst other bits of obscure personal information) sent me many awful hate messages and stalked me online. and all this immediately after somebody attempted to murder me in a hate crime, which i had messaged you about from the hospital right after it happened - you are well aware of the sort of danger i was facing generally in life at the time, and the obvious ensuing fears. at first, i thought that you merely didn't understand the risks posed by hospitals and threatening gossip and harassment, but evidence just keeps cropping up that you were always well aware, and simply didn't care.

you disregarded my every boundary and my autonomy by doing what you did that night, i received no respect or consideration at my most vulnerable, and instead it was a means to an end. everything that you said (and the ultimate reveal that any niceness was all just a lie to keep me talking, while the police came to arrest me for being suicidal, or to spin something later) played on repeat in my brain, while i lay in various hospital beds, despite breaking down at mere attempts to re-read it all (i have since, and i could talk endlessly about how nice i tried to be, while you lied and pretended you wouldn't do what you have recently even if i had died). i was listening to music, monitoring my phone battery because we weren't allowed chargers (as insignificant as it sounds in the grand scheme of things, knowing that the whole time you knew that the very next morning, while my kidneys were still failing, you would demonise me and leave; you knew how abusive and distressing hospital would be too, you knew it was dangerous, you say as much in some of the chatlogs). knowing that i had nobody else close by, and that life was about to get a whole lot worse because of you, and that i was still incredibly suicidal, you left forever with a cruel final message - it really just felt like you didn't care if i was alone, hurting, in a highly abusive environment, because of you, and time has only proven this true. and then you demonised me to everyone. and that hurt feeling stewing inside of me as a result is not just losing a friend, it's a plethora of complex feelings, all mushed up together. i obviously don't think that you're obliged to be my friend (the date that this was posted alone should tell you that this is about everything that you've done since), at most i felt that dropping people for minor slights, as you seem to, isn't healthy - but regardless, to do all of this, to make it worse, to simply not care how much it hurts, that was unnecessary and cruel.

an example of the complex interactions with past trauma would be how me and a guardian (along with others) were horrifically abused (throughout my childhood). the abuse gave us c-ptsd (amongst other things) and, as a result of it, during her emotionally abusive depressive episodes, she would say that having his dna meant that i would become an abuser like him, she would tell me to go somewhere out of the way to kill myself, as i've told you before. i was a child, it stuck in my brain and formed how i respond to being thought of as evil. that fed into how much it hurt when you demonised me, when you acted like i was dangerous when i'm not, all over me being ill. on top of that, it felt doubly unfair, considering the mild hypocrisy, considering how i comforted you when you felt demonised, when you cried about how unfair it was to have your innocence and internal experience invalidated by a presumptuous bias others forced upon you - you knew how it would feel. another example, one that conveys an aspect of how and why my life got so much worse because of what you did, would be - because of being abused, tortured, in childhood, the health issues caused by it all, other health issues, the mountains of childhood trauma (from the aforementioned people and others), homelessness, and so forth - i was hospitalised for months as a teenager; i was severely abused while there, which made being thrown back into that exact same hospital (for weeks and weeks this time) because of you an even more agonising experience than it would've otherwise been (which isn't to say that it wouldn't have been agonising and dehumanising either way, it absolutely would've been).

i was sleeping in identical beds and rooms to those that i was sexually abused in (by a staff member coming into my room at night, as reports went ignored), around every corner there was another flashback to the half-a-year of agony that i endured years ago, to incessant and unending daily violence and misery that you physically cannot escape, locked in a room, with isolation, starvation, beatings, electrocution, force feeding, and so on - whatever you didn't endure personally, you were threatened with and/or saw others endure. and while some things had changed this time, others certainly hadn't, it fucking sucked. while i was there this time, i lost almost every friend i still had, i lost every irl friend (any not gone, and any feeling of safety in this godforsaken town, are certainly gone after your gossip and rumours); i couldn't see my dying relative ever again, i never saw her again, i never will see her again, and i was only able to see my bunny, who i loved more than anything, once more, very briefly at the vets, before she died, while staying with an old friend who had decided that she wanted to get rid of her (because of being in that fucking hospital, because of you, all this shit); the local mental health service continued to (and still continues to) refuse therapy or additional meds (because nothing is or will become available); i was sexually harassed by one patient and received bigoted abuse from another, and i could go on and on with more examples of the traumatic and isolating ripple effects. in short, my whole life and any remaining joy was ruined by what you did. you had me locked back there, the worst fear of my entire adult life come true, more afraid and more lonely by the day - like the last time, alone, no support network, no visitors. and any pain, sickness, or noise that caused was twisted to also be weaponised against me.

i reached out to you that night, when i was scared and needed a friend, to ease your potential concerns and to talk to my friend (i only ever wanted my best friend, although i know that you don't believe me on that point at this point, if you ever did, and i know that all innocent intentions and happy memories will have long since been twisted and tarred in your head). i never asked or expected anything of you whatsoever, then or prior. that night, i remember no suggestion of planning to hang out tomorrow, no phone call, nothing concrete, just saying that maybe you'll see me in a year, just lies and pretend understanding and manipulation. i know that it's a complex, difficult situation to navigate, respecting boundaries and choice when you're scared of the outcome that they want, and falsely thinking that handing responsibility to abusive systems will fix it - you didn't even try to help me at all, and you achieved nothing but misery. and now all of this. i know that i spiral and overthink - i don't always trust myself to be correct when i connect the dots that you're trying to hurt me. it made sense - it does track with your consistent disregard for me, with your remarks clearly knowing that there's risks in a psych ward, with your later behaviour. but it's largely interpreting a series of confusing, conflicting events/statements. i know that you spiral too, and that however much you hated me that night, you almost certainly hate me exponentially more now - i know that you'll have talked yourself in circles with whoever you gossiped to, or even alone, until i'm barely even a human being in your mind, if i ever was. i know that, if you were to ever read this, or hear me out to any degree, in any format, every sentence would be met with petty mockery, or at best the inclination to spend more time thinking of a response than hearing how another person feels.

i know that i will never have the chance to soberly explain the things that we talked about (or anything, for that matter, i don't get to correct things, defend myself, clarify things, i don't even get to know any more than vague references in insults what's been falsely claimed, and all i know from that is that whatever it is definitely isn't fucking true), ie what was poorly conveyed or misunderstood or intentionally twisted or only you baiting responses - i was drunk and on a massive overdose of various psychotropic drugs (amongst other things), and i was in a compromised and vulnerable emotional state, i couldn't say anything how i would prefer to, i could barely think at all, i couldn't account for needing careful phraseology or anything, and now i can never clear things up, all because you want to see me in the worst way possible. that said, the more words i say, the more words you have to twist. you've been doing that for a while though - for the latter half of our friendship, so much of what i said was taken in the worst way possible. you embarrassed me around friends more than once, when i was high, over a "that's what she said" level joke that you found distasteful, or something similarly benign. you'd ignore me for weeks on end, but if i wasn't available whenever you wanted for whatever topic you wanted, it'd be an issue (you once contacted friends when i didn't reply for just a day; when i expressed some concerns, it was met with frustration that i hadn't done so earlier, despite the implicit pressure not to do so that had built over the years, despite me actually having expressed concerns in the past and getting shut down with obvious excuses, that you later said were such, and despite all of the eggshells that i was walking on, your unfounded judgements; it felt like i had to fight more and more to be treated like a human being).

it wasn't a healthy dynamic for either of us. and i'm partially (quite largely, in fact) responsible for enabling and cultivating it - for one, i was so desperate to stay friends that i would permit anything, i would ignore every uncomfortable feeling (as i've told you before, i never even wanted your phone number or discord to begin with, and only agreed after repeated pressure and running out of excuses to keep refusing them, and then our level of contact increased, because you were ill and covid was happening, despite my desire to avoid it doing so, as we once somewhat discussed; but then it only grew worse as you made me more and more afraid of your constant judgement; that's not me theorising and reading into things, you admitted that it was happening), i'd limit complaints and disagreement to as mild as possible. bringing this up isn't some "got'cha, you were the asshole all along" - you know i don't think like that, i don't play that stupid heroes and villains game, it's just me trying to explain how and why this has all fucked me up. and now i have two versions of you in my memories that couldn't possibly get along - the deeply unhealthy idealisation that i fed with the scraps that you begrudgingly provided, and the asshole who ruined my entire life on a whim and then left before having to deal with the ramifications, who knowingly sent me to one of the worst places for me, without any sympathy, and who now trots around having a happy, free life, with an occasional interlude to gossip maliciously and dubiously about my personal struggles, without a single thought to how i'm left here in the mud and the rot, having to deal alone with every single consequence of your actions (and all of the shitty things from prior, which haven't been eased, in fact they're much worse), having to deal with the risks and stressors that come with people knowing really personal stuff (or at least some twisted and demonised version of it).

as much as i've bemoaned the inability to clarify myself to you, for a while i more desperately needed you to clarify yourself to me, and yet i had to drag myself kicking and screaming into the unfortunate reality that i'll never have either of those things - all the while not knowing how long i will be forced, by circumstance (my family couldn't afford another funeral at the moment, and i'm nothing if not courteous to a fault) and the few loved ones that i have left, to live in that reality. but you weren't happy to stop making my life worse at that, you weren't happy to let me even try to live my life. everything fucking sucks. and you're responsible for a lot of that suck. and, as i've said, there's far more than i could convey in a single, simple letter. and you will never know the extent of what you did, nor will you ever care about it - i've said it before, but deep down i know that you see me as nothing more than a dodged bullet despite you being the only one who shot (on the rare occasions that you briefly deign to see me at all), and that every time i writhe in frustration, confirmation bias will turn it into further proof of that conclusion, twisting and demonisation will make it feed the narrative. you said once that you simply don't think about me when i'm not around, and i am keenly aware of how little i ever mattered to you. and yet, despite all of that, despite all of this pain, i wanted my friend back, i missed my friend, i missed the person who i thought for a short while that night actually didn't feel disgusted by me, and i missed all of the good times prior. but to you, i'm nothing but a fun thing to bitch about, no matter how much danger and suffering a few minutes of your amusement causes.

i'm stuck here with nobody to talk to, and a million confusing things bouncing around in my head, and even sicker than ever from that fucking place, and you spend moments that you're bored making it worse for your own shits and giggles. nobody is or should be oversimplifying the situation, or arguing that i'm flawless, i've never claimed to be (although i'm starting to realise i need to clarify that by this, and historically anything like it, i mean things like "i word things poorly from time to time", and not whatever horrid ways you'll twist it to imply things i've never done), but i'm a harmless dumbass who got fucked over by you. in an old update, from the day my bunny died, i said "everything fucking hurts. you fucked me over. you screwed me over. you did not save me. you have no idea how much pain you've caused. i am so fucking angry and hurt. i didn't deserve this shit. because of you, what you did, i never saw my relative again and i only saw my bunny once." when i was at her funeral, which i had posted about, you organised a random effort to inform me of how far you'd spread this shit, how much danger i was in, and i said "you're not even trying to hide gossiping and shit while i'm struggling most. you're not even going to feel guilty for any of this. you destroyed me for fucking fun, for nothing but your own entertainment, it's callous. it doesn't benefit you to ruin my life and demonise me to everyone." i spent these few weeks stupidly holding on to the false hope that you would leave me be, telling myself maybe i was overthinking all the signs, working (apparently hopelessly) towards a better life. if there's an ounce of you that ever cared, which i highly doubt, just know that twisting vulnerable moments, to falsely imply that somebody has ever done anything that they haven't or to ruin their life even more and further ongoing isolation and harm that you've already fed into, is sick; someone tried to kill me, i was actively suicidal, and you thought "i know what this calls for, even more fear." you left because it'd be "good for you", but put my health, safety, even life at risk, for fun, for no reason. is that good for me? is that what supposed friends do?

goodbye

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jenroses · 2 years

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Victory/Victoza

So, I've been fighting my insurance company since January to allow me to renew a prescription for Victoza (Liraglutide, a diabetes drug for type 2 diabetes).

Usually the way these things go, my doc argues with them for a while and then they cover whatever it is they don't want to pay for. This time they denied it twice, and so I had to appeal to the state. In preparing for that hearing, I ran into a bunch of roadblocks, first of all that the hearing packet with all of my insurance company's exhibits was supposedly served March 8, but did not get to me until mid-April, postmarked... mid April.

So it was not until I got that packet, 2 weeks before the hearing date, that I got a look at what they were basing their decision on.

Y'all, it was gobbledegook. Someone had apparently transcribed a phone message while high, or possibly helped by a cat, but it was not intelligible. Or it might have been someone who didn't type well trying to take dictation while I was speaking.

You know I pride myself on clear communication. It was embarrassing, and I'm not sure who it was more embarrassing for. Like I had firsthand embarrassment at those "words" being attributed to me, and secondhand embarrassment for whoever wrote it up.

And my doctor had not sent enough medical records, and the records that were sent were... also badly transcribed. And some were upsetting, such as the comments on the usual stuff that gets rudely commented on in type two diabetics' charts. (I have steroid induced diabetes, not typical type 2, but that's another story.)

It took me more than a week to overcome the mental inertia of knowing I had to do a deep dive into my own medical history, which is inherently traumatic, beating two not entirely merged digital charts into something coherent.

When I finally tackled it, my first draft had 1200 words and there was a spreadsheet with multiple sheets.

Here's what I did:

Went back through the chart to note things like dates of care, messages with the doctor about meds, and correlated the vitals stuff to my blood test dates. This all went in a spreadsheet.

Wrote a narrative countering their assessments (such as my diagnosis being "type two diabetes without complications." Excuse you. I'm very complicated) and making it clear what meds were being taken when and how my A1C responded and what my weight was doing and what my RA situation was and how my body responded to treatments.

Read the instructions for submitting exhibits.

Printed (in light mode!) to PDF both supporting doctors' letters that I had, all of my A1C data for 11 years, my vitals for 3 years, my own narrative, and a digital version of the exhibit list.

Emailed all of that to the hearings assistant, the hearings representative and the insurance company.

What happened:

A few hours after I sent the email (6:30 am was when it went out) I got a call from my hearings representative. She told me she was going to make sure the insurance company read the exhibits.

A couple hours after that, she called me to tell me the insurance company itself had reversed its own decision and was entering the approval for the medication into the system immediately.

A few hours after that, I submitted the refill request to my pharmacy, they were out, so we transferred it to a pharmacy that had it in stock.

And tonight? I got my meds.

Zero copay.

So now i get to ease my blood sugar back down from the 160-180 range over the next couple days, and hopefully stabilize back at the 90-120 range I was at before when I was able to take both Victoza and topical metformin (avoids digestive problems! No side effects!)

I know better than to drop it too quickly, that way lies a confused body acting like 110 is the new 50.

It was maddening knowing how hard I've worked to keep it under control and knowing that we had figured out things that worked and not being allowed to DO those things. Like, I cannot afford to pay $1000 OOP every month for one single medication.

(And before you talk about patient assistance, I am in a category where I absolutely positively do not qualify, end of. That was the first place I looked.)

#diabetes management #victoza #medical stuff #end stage capitalism

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sillyrabbit81 · 3 years

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Her Heavy Cross

Summary: Three years after tragedy hits, Lana she decides to start dating again. She meets Will through a dating app and they begin an online romance. After months of constant requests, Lana relents and agrees to meet and go on an irl date with Will. But is Will who he says he is? Lana is quickly pulled into an intense relationship forcing her to confront her tragic past. Will Lana face it or will she close her heart forever?

Pairing: OMC x OFC

Word Count: approx 4k

Warnings: mention of sexual assault, swearing, smoking, implied smut

Authors Note: The story started as a Henry Cavill fanfiction but I changed it to be an original character, but shades of Henry are still there. Hope you enjoy the story and thanks for reading.

Part 18 Part 20

Part 19

It took over two hours to get ready. I don't know how celebrities did this all the time. I enjoy dressing up, but not when I know the pictures will be circulated widely, and every time someone types into google "Liam Cross's girlfriend", images of tonight will come up. It freaked me out.

I trusted Liam when he said the dress was right, and I trusted Jen. She had only just started dating Riza when Andy and I got married, so although she hadn't done my hair and makeup, I had seen her work and the brides always looked good. So when I asked her to do my makeup for the premiere, I didn't think twice. I regretted that when Jen took the pins out of my hair.

"Jen, I look like Orphan Annie," I complained.

She just laughed and said, "trust me." She started to work a brush through my hair while humming Tomorrow. I groaned.

But as she worked the brush, the curls started to join together, and beautiful waves appeared in my hair.

"You're a genius," I said to Jen when I finally worked out what she was doing.

Jen blushed and just kept brushing. "I have always wanted to do this to your hair. You have such a timeless facial structure. I knew it would be perfect for you and for tonight."

She did my makeup in a beautiful smokey eye and deep red lipstick. It was not too dissimilar to what I would do for myself, but she added fake lashes, brushed and plucked my eye-brows and did some light contouring. She even checked my legs and arms for marks and bruises, covering any she could find.

Jen helped me dress and double-checked everything, including any visible panty line. I couldn't see how it would be possible to have a panty line since I had gotten the smallest underwear I could find, which was a string attached to a triangle of lace.

When I was ready, I looked in the dressing room's full-length mirror. I almost cried in relief. I felt like I would fit in and not look like I had a face like a dropped pie. Jen had done a fantastic job with my hair, and I looked like a cross between Rita Hayworth and Jessica Rabbit. I adored the old Hollywood style. I thanked her a million times, and she went downstairs to get Liam and Riza.

I paced the bedroom waiting for them to come back. Being alone in the room had allowed my anxieties to creep back in. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, in through my nose and out through my mouth. The dress was tight, and I couldn't quite breathe deeply enough. But I was not going to ruin this night with my anxiety. I was not. My guts didn't care what my brain was telling itself. They churned and flipped in my belly until I thought I was going to be sick.

"Lana," Liam said from the doorway. He was alone. Riza and Jen must have waited downstairs. I gasped as I took him in. The was wearing a black woollen three-piece suit with a black tie and crisp white cotton shirt with onyx cuff links. He had was clean-shaven and had his hair combed down in little waves. He looked like he had stepped off the movie screen. He looked so perfect.

"You look incredible," I tell him.

He laughed, "No, Sweetheart. Not next to you, I don't." He crossed the space between us and took my hands, spreading them wide to get a good look. "You are a vision."

I blushed and said, "I feel sick."

Liam shook his head, "you're going to do great." Liam lead me to the dressing room and stood behind me in front of the mirror. "Sweetheart, look at yourself. Look at your hair," he touched it cautiously, just above my ear, as if scared his feather-light touch would ruin it.

"Do you know how much money some women would pay to have hair as spectacular as yours? And your body, the way it curves and moves with such grace. Your skin is so delicate and as smooth as silk." Liam ran his finger down my neck until I shivered and smiled. "And that smile, my Sweetheart, You don't know what lengths I will go to for that smile. It would make Helen of Troy hang her head in despair."

"Thank you," I said. "I needed that."

"It's true." Liam kissed my forehead tenderly, his lips just barely brushing my skin. "I want to kiss you. But I'm under very strict instructions from Jen not to. But be prepared for an attack after the red carpet." He kissed my neck with as much care as before and sighed. Then he seemed to shake himself off and asked, "are you ready to go?"

I nodded. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"Ok, let's go downstairs. Apparently, we have some pictures to take."

The drive to the cinema was short, but the limousines' line was long. I barely remember anything until our car was the next in line. Liam had been going through a last-minute rundown of what should happen.

"Remember, I will get out first and wave a bit. Just wait until I turn around, and I will help you out of the car." I nod, and he continues. "Then we will both stand in front of the car. I might wave again, but you don't have to. Just smile. Once we get past the initial photographers, there will be fans, and then there may be some interviews. Do you remember what will happen there?"

"You will sign some autographs and take some pictures. I'm to follow you. You're going to hold my hand the whole time through that part, right?" I asked.

Liam took my hand and lifted it to his lips, pressing a kiss into my palm. "Nothing could make me let it go." He said sincerely. "If there are interviews, they are usually very short, only a few questions. They may ask you who you are, and I'll introduce you, and you smile and say hi. I doubt they will ask you anything other than how you're enjoying the night, but if they do, I'll handle it."

"Ok," I murmured. "I wish I had a ciggie."

Liam smiled, "If you still want one when we're done, I'll find you one. The last part is where the main paparazzi photos will be taken. They will want photos of both of us, but they will also want ones of just me. Usually, they will call out something like "fashion", and that means you can walk to the cinema and some publicists or assistants will take you into the foyer, and you can wait for me there. Ok?"

I nodded and felt bile rise in my throat. I swallowed hard, but it wouldn't go away. My mouth filled with saliva, and I kept trying to swallow it.

"Lana?"

"Air." I gasped. "I need air,"

I put down my window just as Liam shouted, "no, Lana! Don't!"

The roar I heard was like being at a footie Grand Final. I was confronted with hundreds of screaming faces lining the road opposite the cinema. Their eyes were wild. Their bodies bounced and writhed in joy and excitement. They lifted posters and toys, screaming for Liam Cross.

Liam leaned over me and, waving at the crowd, quickly pressed the button to put the window up.

"What the fuck was that?" I yelled.

"Fans."

"You didn't tell me they would be on both sides!"

"I didn't think you would put your window down."

"Your life..." I started.

"Isn't normal." We both finished.

Liam laughed, "on the plus side Lana, you have your colour back. Do you still feel sick?"

I shook my head. "No. Now I'm just terrified." The limo started moving.

I gripped Liam's hand as if we were nearing the top of a roller coaster. He ran his thumb over my knuckles and said, "We can still go home if you want." He cupped my cheek and looked at me. The car stopped.

I shook my head. "Just don't leave me."

He smiled and kissed my neck. His skin felt different, having shaved, but his kiss was still the same. "Never." He whispered.

The door was opened, and Liam got out.

I breathed deeply, trying to calm. The dress was bloody tight. Then Liam's hand was there, and I took it.

His eyes found mine, and I fell into them. He smiled his most beautiful smile, the one where his cheeks and eyes crinkled and his teeth flashed. I found myself unable to stop my smile. How could I not smile when he looked so happy.

As I stood up, his hand came around my waist, and he pulled me tight. He leaned into my ear and said loud enough to be heard over the roar of the crowd and the shouts from the photographers, "Thank-you for doing this, Lana." He kissed my ear so swiftly I thought I had imagined it.

The procession down the red carpet went as he said it would. The fans were electric and not as frightening as I thought they would be. Some even tried to talk to me, which was awkward because I had no idea what to say. I just tried to be polite and smiled.

Liam was amazing. He never let go of my hand. One-handed, he signed autographs, shook hands, gave hugs and took selfies. He was so charming, looked the fans in the eye, seemed genuinely happy and interested to hear what they had to say. He even blushed when some of the fans oohed after he had run his fingers through his hair. Just watching how much he seemed to love this part of his job made me forget a lot of my own anxieties.

Liam was a bit different with the interviewers, more alert and guarded. But his charm and wit were still there. A few interviewers, mostly the more gossipy outlets, asked about me. The film focussed ones largely ignored me. I hoped I gave coherent responses, and Liam was as good as his word and stepped in when he needed to and took control of the interviews. I couldn't believe how many times he had to answer the same questions, and he answered each with as much enthusiasm as he had the first time he was asked.

Quicker than I thought, we stopped for the last row of photographers. They shouted for Liam's attention and were almost as loud as the fans. When the time came for Liam to do photos on his own, he brushed his lips against my neck and said in my ear, "Lana, you were perfect. Go on. I'll be with you in a minute."

I went to the end and was greeted by the publicists who ushered me into the crowded cinema foyer. I found a quiet corner and waited for about five minutes before I saw Liam practically barge his way through the crowd, his eyes searching until he saw me.

He grabbed my hips and kissed my mouth so hard I thought they would bruise.

"Lana, that was perfect. Thank you for doing that with me."

I smiled a genuine, relaxed smile for the first time in hours and asked, "so it's over?"

"It's over," Liam confirmed.

I exhaled with relief and said, "you'd have to be the only person in the world I would ever go through that for."

Liam kissed me again, softer this time, lips playing against mine, "you don't know how much that means to me." He hugged me tightly before staring at me and smiling at his goofy grin. Then he said, "come on, Sweetheart. I have a few people I'd like to introduce you to. If you are up for it, that is. Do you need more time?" I shook my head, and he led me into the crowd.

Liam grabbed my hand and moved fast through the crowd, briefly saying hi to some people on the way.

I saw Myra come in from the red carpet, and I pointed her out to Liam. Liam waved her over, and she waved back then held her hand up in a 'give me a second' gesture. She went to the corner I had been hiding in and kissed a man I assumed was her boyfriend and brought him over.

I liked her instantly. She was bubbly and happy. It was like she was famous enough to be bored by the goings-on around her, but still new enough that she hadn't developed the jaded 'here we go again' attitude that you would expect.

"Phew! That was crazy tonight. I'd say that's your fault, Liam. No one else here is big enough to pull a crowd that big." She leaned over and kissed his cheeks in the European style. "Thanks for doing it, mate. I mean, it'll be good for Stones but still, it'll help with this movie too."

Liam smiled, "Don't mention it." Liam pulled me closer and introduced me.

Myra smiled widely and pulled me into a hug. She was a few years younger than me, and she was beautiful. She had gorgeous thick dark hair, cheekbones to die for under radiant umber skin, which appeared to be without a blemish and striking sea-green eyes. She was very tall, almost as tall as Liam, but very thin. She felt so delicate when I hugged her back, but it was evident from her speech and body language; she wasn't a shrinking violet.

"Hey babes, so good to meet you. I've heard so much. You look so good. That's from Maticevski, right? Great choice. I love him." I usually cringe when I hear the word 'babes'. I think of Married at First Sight for some reason. However, coming from Myra, it just sounded sweet.

"Thanks. Liam has spoken about you too."

"Yeah, Pop has been good to me," Myra said, throwing a look at Liam that made his eyes roll.

"It's twelve years, Myra, hardly Grandfather territory."

"It's not your age. It's your attitude." She said in a snarky but playful way. "Anyway, this is my Damo. Well, Damien, but nobody calls him that." Damo smiled awkwardly and shook our hands.

Myra wrapped her arms around his waist and said teasingly, "Aww, he's shy." From the look Damo gave Myra, I'd say smitten was a better way to describe him. He's tall like Liam, and though muscular, you could tell it came from physical labour, not a gym. He had a surfie look about him with his sun-bleached shoulder long hair and tanned skin.

"I'm going for a smoke before the movie starts," Damo said to Myra.

"Can Lana have one?" Liam asks. "She has quit, but she said she would like one." I looked at Liam with gratitude, and Damo and I went behind the theatre where a smoking area was set up.

We could still hear a lot of activity going on out the front, but it appeared most of the excitement was over. Damo lit our cigarettes, and I leaned against the wall, relishing the nicotine flowing through me.

Damo laughed, "you look how I feel. Over it."

"Yeah, it's full-on, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's bullshit crazy."

"So, where do you live? How did you meet Myra and get wrapped up in this bullshit?" I asked with genuine interest. He seemed even more out of place here than I did.

Damo told me he was from the Northern Beaches and was in the year above Myra at school. He had asked her to his Year 12 formal, and she accepted, but she had cancelled to go to Melbourne for her first major acting role. "So, I don't hear from her for years, but she finds me on Instagram through old mates from school, and she tells me that I owe her a date."

"That's kinda cute."

"Yeah, surprised the fuck out of me, though. Like, why'd ya wanna go out with a sparky from the Northern Beaches."

I smiled at him, knowing the feeling. "Maybe all this bullshit gets to them, and they want someone real? Someone who doesn't want anything from them except their time and affection."

Damo smiles and nods his head. "I reckon you're onto something. So what's your story?"

I don't tell him all the details but that we met online and I didn't know who he was until I met him. "It was a complete shock when I found out who I'd been talking to."

"Fair dinkum? You met him three weeks ago?" I nodded, "It took Myra five months to convince me to go to one of these things."

I laughed, "Yeah, well, I just thought better get it over with. The sooner people can get over that Liam has a new girlfriend, the quicker I can get back to normal and not worry about it."

Damo nodded and said, "yeah, I hope so too. Myra's life can get pretty crazy."

We finished our cigarettes and went back inside. We had hardly gotten through the door when we were whisked away by our partners because the movie was about to start.

After the movie, there was a small after-party for industry people only. The people who had won tickets or were friends of friends weren't invited. Liam, of course, was invited and had planned not to go. Myra pleaded with him to stay, so when he looked at me asking the silent question, I nodded, already getting the feeling not many people could say no to Myra. Myra bounced around and hugged us both.

Liam introduced me to a few other people, including Boyd, who turned out to be an outrageous flirt and a shit-stirrer. He seemed harmless and just enjoyed taking the piss out of people. He also told me something interesting about Liam that I planned to bring up with him later.

Liam also introduced me to the showrunner Arianna, who was essentially his boss. Finally, I was introduced to Naomi, who was to play Boyd's love interest, and she was also in the movie we had just watched. The Australian film industry is pretty small.

Naomi was the opposite of Myra, friendly on the outside but was one of those people who always seemed to be looking around when you talked to them to see if there was someone more interesting or more advantageous she should be speaking to. She had icy blue eyes, bombshell blonde hair, amazing breasts and a nose that was so perfect it had to have been a nose job.

She flirted hard with Liam, touching his arm, letting it linger that little bit too long. She ignored me mostly, except when she threw me some side-eye. Liam seemed to take it in his stride, polite but not friendly, until she 'accidentally' brushed her breasts against his arm.

Liam seemed to have enough, and his eyes went dark. He put his hand to my back and practically pushed me out, saying we were leaving. His tone didn't leave much room for argument, but I wanted to know why he left so suddenly when things had been going well, and I actually enjoyed the party. I was also feeling bad that I didn't say goodbye to Myra and the others.

Liam's limo was waiting outside, and he ushered me in quickly. Liam texted Myra to say goodbye and to let the others we left. "Myra won't mind. She knows how I feel about Naomi."

I said hi to our driver before turning to Liam. "Is there a history there?" I ask. My voice was small.

Liam scoffed, "she wishes." He sighed and stretched his neck. He took his jacket off, opened his vest and loosed his tie. I looked at him expectantly. He taps the driver on the shoulder and apologises, but he's going to put the screen up.

When the screen was in place, Liam started to roll his sleeves up. It seemed like he was stalling. Eventually, he said, "I suppose I had better tell you. Naomi was cast a couple of weeks ago. The original actress playing her part fell pregnant and didn't want to commit to a series. She comes in for a table read, and I felt bad for her coming in late because the rest of the main cast had a couple of months together already. Myra knew her and said to avoid her, but I thought, well, I have to work with her should get to know her. We had a chat after the read, then she follows me back to my dressing room and long story short, she takes her shirt off and grabs my cock."

"What did you do?" My green-headed monster was in full battle mode. He better have a good and believable answer.

"I threw her out ." He shrugged. "Shit like that happens all the time. What she doesn't know is that word gets around, and soon she will be seen as toxic and won't get hired. Although I think she aims to bag a guy with money and never work again."

I believed him. I was going to have to get this jealousy thing under control. It was new to me. I don't think I had ever been jealous before, even with Andy. I looked out of the window, letting the night beauty of Sydney calm me down.

Liam put his arm around me and rested his chin on my shoulder. "So was it so terrible?" Liam asked dramatically. "The premiere, I mean."

I looked at him, his blue eyes bright again. "Not all of it," I smiled at him.

"What were the good parts?"

I ran my finger across his jaw, his skin was so smooth. I missed the three-day-growth, but he looked just as amazing without it. "I liked meeting Myra."

He smiled, "I knew you'd like her."

"And the movie was good."

"Anything else?" Liam ran a finger across my collarbone

"The free popcorn and drinks."

Liam chuckled, and his finger ran up my neck. "Anything else?"

"They have great chairs in the theatre," he was turning me on. I heard it in my voice. My heart started to beat louder.

"Is that all?" He asked with his rough, horny voice. He lifted my chin.

"The bathrooms were good too."

He traced my lips with his finger. "Is that all that was good about tonight?"

"Tonight's not over. Ask me again in the morning." He slipped his finger into my mouth, and my body was on fire. Even after all I had been through, the stress and panic, my body still responded to his touch. I sucked his finger gently, and his eyes widened.

"You're very naughty, Lana." He said as he withdrew his finger and shuffled in his seat.

"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way," I said in my best Jessica Rabbit imitation.

Liam's eyes widened then narrowed. "What did Boyd tell you?"

"Tell me? Nothing?" I tried to look innocent, but I'm not an actress.

"Never mind." Liam blushed.

"Hang on, who is your favourite Disney Princess?"

"I'm not a child, Lana." He looked a little uncomfortable.

I pouted. "Come on. Everyone has one."

"Who is yours?"

"Moana, although I don't know if she counts as a Princess cause she's a chief's daughter. My second is Belle. Tell me yours."

"Ariel." Liam looked out the window.

"Favourite spice girl?"

"I don't like pop music. " I raised my eyebrow at Liam. He paused a long time before answering. "Geri."

"Which one of John Snow's girlfriends was hotter with Ygritte or Daenerys?" I was having fun with it. I don't think I'd ever seen him squirm so much.

"Ygritte, Lana, do you mind?"

"No, no, just one more." I was trying not to burst out laughing. I knew I must have had a huge smirk on my face, "Mary-Anne or Ginger?"

"For fucks sake, yes, ok, I have always had a thing for redheads."

I couldn't hold it any longer, and I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard, Liam eventually had to join in. "I'm sorry." I said, "What are you going to do to Boyd?"

"Unfortunately, Lana, it looks like I will be busy for the next 25 years because I will have to kill him."

Part 20

#original character #original story #original fiction #romantic story #happy ever after

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