#i struggle with sleep depravation pretty often for days on end | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starconsumer444 · 4 years

Text

“When Things Fall In Place” (18+)

Creepy Roommate!Kenma

(A/N: This is...about 3.1k of pure degeneracy, which I actually had no intention on writing, finishing, or publishing and just thought out as I went... There was no planning, no actual ideas prior to this {actually its based off this guy I met recently because im always stuck with the creeps}...I just started it late at night [basically the early hours of the morning] and finished it this afternoon. I haveeee to stop writing for haikyuu... But I’m probably gonna fall off, comeback and write one or two request with a bunch of other random bs, and then disappear again after this, but thats just how it is. I get bored of writing every three days then come back to write my heart out. I really have to write my requests soon or they’ll hate me...)

(Cw/Tw: Fem!Reader, Stalking, Somno, Rape/Noncon, Virgin!Kenma, Theft, Crying, Poor Writing, Kenma is a sweaty, friendless, looser in this one guys, I’m bad at tagging these but you get the idea... this is bad and nasty. 3.1k!!!! THIS IS LONG AS HELL)

You don’t know much about him, Kenma— your roommate. You’ve been living together for almost a year at this point and that can’t be normal. He stays in his room playing video games, doesn’t seem to have friends, leaves for work in the morning, and keeps to himself for the most part. Honestly, if you didn’t greet each other in passing you would’ve forgotten the sound of his voice by now. It’s low, unaffected, and monotone for the most part. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be bothered?

But see, Kenma knows everything about you. You went to middle and high school together, but he was just as standoffish in those days too. He doesn’t expect you to remember him, you clearly don’t, but it still weighs on his heart. Was he that forgettable? It’s okay, because one day he’ll tell you. One day he’ll tell you everything.

He’s been obsessed with you since middle school, you were the pretty girl that sat in the front of the class and smelled so good. You would talk to give answers in class and he would be all ears, because to him your voice was his only source of happiness. To hear you speak and smell your perfume as you walked past him was a reason to live. Sure, it was weird, but so were a lot of things about him. He had no friends, could you blame him? Would you? So maybe, then, in middle school it was an innocent harmless crush, not an obsession, but in high school he was definitely obsessed.

He overheard you say it to your friends— where you were going to high school, and he told his parents thats where he wanted to enroll. The entire time he never spoke to you, much like middle school, he was off in a corner playing a game alone, inconspicuously keeping an eye on you. He used to trail you and your friends around the school and he always wondered how you were so perfect? How you were so good at making friends? How you stood out like that? Maybe that’s why you were so unapproachable...

He remembers you were class president for three consecutive years up until graduation. You were so damn intimidating, but everyone loved you, especially Kenma and you were blind to it. You never ONCE noticed him or gave a damn about him and you were class president. He wanted to talk to you so bad, but he just couldn't. He would steal things from you with the intent to say he found them and maybe start a conversation, but he ended up hoarding them in his room at home. The biggest thing he’d stolen was a sweater because you hadn’t seemed to notice the erasers or pencils.

He vividly remembers the sheer panic and urgency he stuffed that damned pink sweater into his backpack with, so scared he’d get caught and called a creep. He really did plan on returning it but he just— it smelled so good back then...he remembers. He took it home and hid it under his bed, only opting to take it out and hold it to his face and just smell it on special occasions when he felt up to it and guilt wasn't taking over his mind, body, and soul. He knew it was wrong but he felt the most alive in moments where he didn’t care. He’d tried to resist the urge, but at some point he started to pleasure himself with it too. It started happening so often that he’d get hard at the smell of you even when you walked by him in class. He still has that sweater.

At some point during that time, he’d picked up the strange hobby of following you home from school. You walked alone all the time so he’d lie to himself and say it was for your safety as he stalked around corners and made sure you never saw him. He’d always watch you enter your home from down the block, far enough so he wouldn't catch your attention. Those times he didn’t want you to notice him, he felt sick doing it, but it was something akin to an addiction and he just couldn't stop himself. This was a short lived addiction though...about a month or so.

His mom started to pick up on his staying out later than usual and by then he’d actually started to go up in front of your house and just stare at it. He prayed to god that you didn’t see him being a creep like this, but sometimes he wished you did because at the very least you would recognize his existence. Still, you never saw him. He went back to being locked up in his room, playing video games until the early hours of the morning, rubbing himself raw against your sweater, and being consumed by you in private. All he wanted was for you to acknowledge him. Tell him that he exists to you, because he’s sure his existence is for you.

Those days were hell on earth, he struggled to shower and his only motivation for getting up and doing anything was to see you, who didn't know he existed. It was a depraved cycle.

Now he’s here with you, and the first time he talked to you was to respond to a “roommate wanted” ad. Isn’t it wonderful how things come full circle?

Still, he struggles to actually hold face to face conversations with you. How could he? He fantasizes about you so much...it feels wrong.

These days he finds himself rutting into your sheets when you're out praying that you don’t catch him, stealing your panties just to hold them to his nose and eventually soak them in his cum, and even worse having disgustingly sadistic fantasies about you belonging to him. He pushes those fantasies to the back of his mind, though. He doesn't want to be fucked up, but then again, it can't be that bad to want to own your source of happiness.

His infatuation reaches a peak one night when he finds himself groggily trudging his way to your room in the dead of night with his fleshlight in hand. He tried everything, he didn't want to jack off so he played his video games like usual, but even that didn’t take his mind off of you. Typically, he’d jack off with his fleshlight alone in his room to depraved and deluded fantasies of you, but tonight he needs to be near you; to see you, to smell you, and to know you’re there.

Upon entering your room he flips the light on, and it’s actually really dim— not that he hoped to wake you up or anything. He tip-toes over to the side of your bed and stands over your sleeping figure. You look so beautiful when you’re asleep, a shame he’s never thought about seeing you like this before or rather...a shame he’s violating you like this. He wants himself to stop because he knows it’s wrong, but he’s wanted something like this for so long and right now it’s in the palm of his hand. He’s sick and he knows it.

Still, he pulls his sweats and underwear down just enough to where they’re right under his balls. The cold air of your ceiling fan hits his painfully hard shaft and it feels so good it makes him sick. He slowly sheaths himself inside the faithfully used toy imagining it was you. That’s even easier to do now that you’re right here in front of him.

His heart is racing, and he feels sick to his stomach...

“Gotta make this quick,” That’s what he says under his breath, but he want’s you to wake up and see him, he want’s you to call him a pervert and make him leave you alone forever. He wants to see you horrified by the sight of him pleasuring himself to your sleeping body. Is that so wrong?

Yeah, he knows it is. He can’t bring himself to care, though. He pumps himself in and out with hurried movements. He feels so gross and so good like this. Even with the fan on above him he’s sweating bullets like a madman, but he just can’t stop himself, he swears this isn’t his fault. His rational mind would never permit this, but when has he ever gone with that side of himself?

He starts to lose himself in pleasure, moaning out your name in his typical low voice rather than a whisper. He doesn't catch himself, and his moans start to get louder and louder. You start to stir and he can’t bring himself to shut up. You can’t be that light a sleeper, right?

Wrong.

Your eye’s flutter open and then meet his and he cums unreasonably hard and his moan is gross and loud. His bottom lip is caught between his teeth and he doubles over from the pleasure. His hand grabbing on to your mattress is the only thing keeping him from hitting the floor.

His heart pounds in his chest and his breathing is erratic, but that’s not why the look in your eye’s is nothing but terror. He's sweating so much, he wants to apologize, but he doesn't.

“Don’t look at me like that.” He says sliding the toy off of himself. He thinks you look even more beautiful when you’re awake and scared out of your mind.

You lie there, staring up at him, still trying to process how your aloof roommate could—

He climbs on your bed, fleshlight in hand, and straddles your waist and all you can bring yourself to do is shake your head.

“Kenma-” He presses his index finger to your lips and you freeze again.

Suddenly, he’s bringing the fleshlights opening to your mouth and you still can’t bring yourself to fight him.

“Please go away,” You ask like this is just some nightmare. You know it’s not, you can feel his weight on top of you and it feels too real. He’s so warm and so heavy.

“Lick.” He commands. He swears to himself that he’ll go away forever after this, the final piece to his happiness puzzle.

Tears start to fall down your face but he’s still insistent on having you eat his cum out of his gross plaything. When you don’t move, he leans over and presses it to your face.

“Lick.”

This time, out of fear, you do. His cum tastes rancid, like battery acid. Disgusting would be more than an understatement. That doesn’t stop you from cleaning the toy with your tongue like your like depends on it, because right now...it might.

His eyes are tired when he smiles, almost dead, he looks sick. His hairs greasy, skin is pale, and he’s fisting his half hard dick while he watches you take his seed into your pretty mouth. You’ve never been this close to him before.

He strokes himself back to hardness like a delinquent. He knows he wants to leave you alone, but now he just can’t. When he tosses the fleshlight aside you’re shaking and crying begging him to go away.

“Kenma, please-” As much as he likes when you say his name, he can’t help but stifle your desperate begging with a kiss.

It’s gross, wet, and all over the place, but Kenma doesn’t notice that. He’s never kissed anyone before and he’s beyond ecstatic that it’s you. You don’t bother with kissing him back, you just lie there, eyes open and crying.

He savors this kiss, his first kiss. His lips are softer than expected, but he’s not— violence plagues his movements. His heart races even faster now, and when you try to turn your lips away from his he just grabs your jaw and holds you still. He gets drool all over both of your faces, and you can barely breathe. You can still feel him jacking himself off between your bodies and you feel nauseous. This “kiss” is so unpracticed and unrefined, he’s basically licking the inside of your mouth and breathing in your face.

Why is he doing this?

You feel him finally moving from your lips and pulling your shirt up to let cold air hit your tits. For a second, he pauses to catch his breath, chest heaving and spit covered mouth hanging open. He stares down at your chest in awe. You turn away in embarrassment, he doesn’t mind it; you must be terrified.

With one hand holding your shirt up, he brings the other from his dick to squeeze at your chest. You wince and struggle against him because he’s so fucking rough and it hurts. Then he gives one of your breasts a hard slap, and you start to writhe up under him.

It brings a smile to his face, but he doesn’t do it anymore. He wants to try something different.

He carefully slides down off of you and between your legs. He grossly presses his face against your clothed cunt and smells you even licking you through your pajama bottoms.

He sees the shock on your face when you sit up to look at him and he simply brushes it off, too far gone to be considerate at this point.

When his hands pull down your pajama bottoms-

“No no no no nononono Kenma please stop it.” You whine and kick at him uselessly. You sit up to try to push his hands away but its all useless, he’s so unreasonably strong for someone his size. When he finally slides your pajama bottoms and underwear off of you and on to the floor he buries his face between your folds.

It’s like when he was kissing you, gross, wet, and unpracticed. He’s just haphazardly lapping at your labia and vulva. You push at his shoulders trying to get him off of you while crying your eyes out. It doesn’t seem to effect him though, he just locks his arms around your thighs, sliding you down onto your back.

At some point his tongue washes clean over your clit and he feels your body jolt from the pleasure. He finds it again and your body stiffens. He looks up at your crying face and squeezes the meat of your thighs between his fingers as he abuses your clit to no end.

You’re sobbing at this point because to you this all feels without reason. For the first time in your life you are scared of Kenma. From what you remember of him, he was always voiceless and sweet, even during school when he decided to show up. He was a kid who always greeted the teacher, even if it was wordless, he got his work done on time when he could, and he minded his business. You never talked to him, but you did hold his understated presence in the back of your mind— for the longest you pegged him as a boy who could be pleasant if you got to know him. So, why was he doing this? Why is he hurting you?

You made him your roommate because you thought that he of all people wouldn’t do this. You wanted to be friends. What did you do?

Now he’s violating you after a year of little to no interaction and him being barely there. He knows it’s wrong and you're not fighting him anymore, you’re just laying there, chest heaving and silent.

He lifts his head to plant a wet kiss on your inner thigh and drags his tongue against the soft skin momentarily. He looks at your scared face and gives a crooked smile. He’s sorry, he really is but this feels like a dream to him. You're too good not to take.

He finds himself positioning his dick right between your folds and rutting against you. You really must’ve given up, your fight is long gone as he holds you down by your pelvic bones—uncut nails breach your soft skin.

Excitement fills his body as your wetness begins to coat his length as he rocks himself back and forth. He’s careful and his breathing is labored.

“I-” He tries and fails. “You never noticed me, but I’ve loved you forever.” He’s shy. Kenma looks down at your stomach, too embarrassed to meet your crying eyes.

“We went to school together for years...” He trails off, still staring down. He doesn’t have the guts to look at the mess he’s made of you. “I wanted to talk to you, but you wouldn’t like- no. I was scared.” He shakes his head softly and finally meets your eyes. You're still crying. He feels his throat tighten and he doesn't want to talk anymore.

“Don’t look at me like that!” He stops his movements to reach over and pull the pillow from behind you. He puts it over your face and thinks to hold it there, maybe to suffocate you for a second, but he doesn't. He’s already done enough bad. He just lets it sit there, you’re the one to grab it and hold it there.

You hold it against your face like your life depends on it. You can't breathe very well, but what does it matter? You want him to go away.You want this to end. So, you cling onto that pillow and pretend like you’re anywhere but here.

It’s an illusion that fails quickly. You feel him press his length into you. It’s rushed, it hurts, and he doesn't know what he’s doing. You squeeze the pillow, and his sweaty hands play with your tits. You can feel the tears well up in your eyes. You don’t want this, it’s a nightmare.

He’s not that big, rather small actually, but he has girth. He hopes you can feel it. He moves slowly dragging every inch of himself against your walls. He mouths at your nipples and it feels yucky. At some point you’re sure you feel him lay a wet kiss on your stomach.

You don’t know. It’s over quickly, but it feels like forever.

His thrusts were sloppy and unseasoned just like everything else he’s done. He’d never had sex before, but he hoped he was good. When he came his body seized and his fingers dug into your sides. He was glad you weren't watching because the embarrassment from coming so fast a second time was much easier to handle.

You two sit in silence for a while after that, the only audible sound is you sniveling. He watches silently as your body shakes and tucks himself back in, to at least feel decent. It’s like that for five whole minutes until he finally decides to go back to his room.

In the silence of his own dark room the water works start in full force as he comes to terms with what he’s done. He’s a degenerate who will struggle to sleep tonight.

#tw: noncon #kenma smut #yandere kenma #kenma x reader #yandere haikyuu #haikyuu x reader #I still don't write fics #but I do enjoy giving things titles #I think this is my worst writing on this blog so far #it may be longer but...outside of that...

498 notes · View notes

obeyme-kaidii-writes · 4 years

Text

Panties

Mammon x gn!MC

Words - 1963

Content Warnings - lots of fluff, just a brief smidge of angst, my attempt at humor, relationships with the boys are open to interpretation

Prompt/Inspiration - none

Summary - You return home to the House of Lamentation one day to find an absolute shit show waiting for you.

AO3

As soon as you opened the door to the House of Lamentation, you could tell something wasn’t quite right. Raised voices could be heard filling the halls, but you were unable to quite make out what they were saying.

You followed the sound of the commotion to its source and were soon standing in the doorway to the library. All the brothers had gathered there and were too busy arguing to notice you.

There didn’t seem to be any sort of emergency. No one was bleeding at least.

But as your eyes scanned the room, they finally landed on a brightly colored bunch of fabric in Asmo’s hand that he was holding up for all to see.

You recognized it immediately.

It was your underwear.

You could feel the heat rising to your cheeks. You were mortified. What the hell could they possibly be discussing that involves your underwear in the middle of the afternoon?! Just as you were about to start tearing into them, you managed to catch some snippets of the conversation.

“OMG Mammon! You’re a panty snatcher! This is like a scene from an anime. I can’t believe this happens IRL.”

“I knew you were a pervert, but this is just depraved. Even for you.”

“Such a scumbag. Isn’t it enough to try and steal their things? Do you have to take their underwear too? Really?”

You shifted your attention to Mammon, who was standing at the front of the group, desperately trying to defend himself. His face was flushed, all the way down his neck. So intense was his blush, that even his tanned skin couldn’t conceal it. You don’t think you had possibly ever seen him so embarrassed as he stumbled over his words, and stuttered out excuses.

Well, this wasn’t going to do.

You took a deep breath to calm yourself, and plastered a wide smile on your face. As you made your approach, Mammon was the first to notice you. He snapped his mouth shut as all the color drained from his face. It was bad enough having his brothers yell at him. But now you were here. And he was utterly screwed. His mind started racing, struggling to figure out a way to explain this to you and still maintain your relationship. Before he could say anything though, Asmo spoke up.

“Oh! There you are dear. You’ll never guess what our pervert of a brother was up to.”

“What’s up?”, you asked, playing innocent.

“We caught him with your underwear! In his pocket!”, Levi explained.

“Oh. That.”

You reached for the underwear that Asmo was holding, and unfolded it to get a good look at it, making a show out of confirming it was yours.

“I gave those to him. So what’s the problem?”

You turned to Mammon and returned the clothing to his own hand, and he quickly shoved it back into his pocket. He gaped at you, completely bewildered by what he was witnessing and unable to form a single coherent thought. You looked into his eyes and gave him a soft smile, completely different from the fake one you had on earlier. He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but he felt his body relax. For now, he was just going to go with it.

When you returned your attention to the rest of the group, they were completely silent, staring at you in shock. Satan, you could tell was quickly figuring out what was going on, and had realized how badly he and his brothers had fucked up.

“It’s not like y’all haven’t taken any pairs yourself,” you said as one by one, you made eye contact with each of them before they looked away. Only Lucifer attempted to hold your gaze, and you knew that was just his pride refusing to let him look away since a light blush dusted his cheeks.

“HUH?!” Mammon sputtered out. He looked at his brothers and all of them were in various states of embarrassment, now refusing to look anywhere near him or you. He couldn’t believe this. He was used to them picking on him, but for them to be such blatant hypocrites? What. The. Hell.

Levi attempted to defend himself, “wh wh what are you talking about?”

You snapped your head in his direction, eyes laser focused on him, “Do I need to go into detail? Really Levi? Think carefully.” Your tone of voice had turned icy. Playtime was over now, and you were not in the mood to put up with their shit. If they were still going to deny it, you were going to add to their humiliation by revealing the details that you were certain they were unaware you knew.

Levi flinched and decided to keep quiet, shrinking in on himself and trying to hide behind Beel as subtly as possible. He didn’t know why or how, but he had the feeling you knew a lot more than you had said so far and he wasn’t eager to find out exactly how much that was.

“Y’all might think you’re pretty sneaky, but when 6 demons start periodically swiping individual pairs of your underwear it adds up pretty fast. At least Asmo had the decency to take me shopping occasionally, the same can’t be said for the rest of you.”

The brothers continued to stand there in silence. Satisfied that you had put an end to the shit show you had walked in on, you turned to Mammon once again, tugging at his hand, “C’mon we had stuff to do, remember?”

“Uh. Yeah. Right.” He had no idea what you were talking about honestly, but now didn’t seem like a good time to point that out to you. You continued holding his hand as you led him to your bedroom in silence. Frankly he was too scared to speak. And really, really confused. His brothers had been stealing your underwear? And you knew…? He couldn’t wrap his mind around it.

Once safely inside your room, with the door closed behind you and your book bag discarded on the floor, you flopped down onto your bed, and let out a groan. Mammon remained by the doorway, frozen in place as his thoughts started to catch up with him. Even if his brothers were a bunch of lying hypocrites, he still had stolen your underwear. That was a fact. He had been caught red handed and there was no denying it. Not that he was even tempted to try at this point after watching you and how you handled his brothers just now.

What were you going to say to him? Should he just start begging for forgiveness now? Or should he wait for you to speak first? Would you even accept his apology? He was so disgusted with himself. I really am a scumbag, aren’t I? he thought. He was certain you were not going to want anything to do with him after this. He had violated your trust. Never before had he felt guilty about stealing something, but he honestly would have given anything to go back in time and not make the same mistake twice.

“....mmon. Mammon? You okay?”

He looked up to find you right next to him, calling his name and peering into his face with concern. Why were you still so worried about him? Even after knowing what he had done?

“S’rry,” was all he could manage, looking away again.

“Sorry? Oh about the underwear?”, you laughed and took one of his hands in your own, lacing your fingers together, “It’s fine, honest. I don’t care.”

“You don’t?” He looked at you, lost and confused. Why had you been so mad then?

“No, I don’t. I only got pissed earlier because everyone was ganging up on you when they were just as guilty themselves. Well, guiltier, if I’m being honest.”

You were smiling at him, with such a gentle look in your eyes. There was no trace of the anger from earlier on your face. You were telling the truth. And as he stared at you, a thought occurred to him.

“Guiltier? Whaddya mean?”

You laughed loudly at his question, before smirking and asking him, “Do you really want to know?”

He gave you an eager nod and you pulled him to your bed, before crawling in and curling up next to him as he joined you. Usually he was the one holding you when you cuddled during movie nights, or whenever else. But today you wrapped your arm around his shoulder, and he rested his head on your chest as you ran your fingers through his hair. With your free hand you once again reached for his and laced your fingers together.

“Well, Asmo I know has taken several pair. But like I said downstairs, he takes me shopping often and replaces them regularly. He’s probably the only reason I still have any underwear left at all.

Belphie has a couple different pairs that he keeps stashed under the pillows on his bed and in the attic. I try not to think about what he does with them while sleeping.

Beel actually doesn’t have any in his possession...but he has eaten them once or twice. To his credit, I’m pretty sure those were accidents.

Levi, poor guy, actually has a small shrine hidden in his closet behind his one for Ruri-chan. Now that was fun to discover. I’m pretty sure he’d spontaneously combust if I ever mentioned it to him directly,” you laughed at the thought of your precious otaku realizing you knew about his little homage to you. I should probably go check on him later, you thought, he was almost as sensitive as Mammon when it came to being embarrassed.

You felt Mammon laughing as well, and planted a small kiss to the top of his head before continuing.

“So that leaves Satan and Lucifer.

Satan only has one pair that he keeps hidden in a book that he stores under his mattress. I guess he figured I’d never find it there, but the hard lump is pretty obvious when you sit on his bed.

And finally, Lucifer. Dear, sweet Lucifer,” you couldn’t help but laugh as you thought about all the things he had done, unbeknownst to you as far as he was concerned, “Lucifer is the worst offender of them all. There’s a reason he hardly lets anyone into his private study.”

Mammon lifted his head to look at you, and his eyes were sparkling like he had just discovered the best kept secret, “Really? Lucy? He did that?”

You laughed again and continued, “Yeah, I made the mistake of browsing through his books in there while waiting for him once. Never again. I only bring my own books to read now.”

You resumed playing with Manmon’s hair as he settled back down, chuckling at the thought of his brother having a secret panty stash hidden within the bookshelves in his study. He’d have to check this out for himself one day. Just to verify it, ya know. Not because he wanted to steal another pair for himself or anything.

“Anyways, that’s why I’m not mad at you. You were actually the last one to take something from me, and judging by what I saw earlier, it only happened yesterday,” Mammon froze. He had forgotten about what had gotten him into this situation in the first place. And he certainly didn’t expect you to be able to tell what day he had taken them. Though, it shouldn’t have surprised him since the underwear featured a pretty distinct pattern.

“Can you do me a favor though?”

“Hmm?” Mammon hummed in response. He would do anything for you.

“Take me shopping later and help me pick out some new ones?”

#gn!mc #platonic mammon #platonic relationships #obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me mammon #mammon x mc #obey me fanfic #mammon fanfic #obey me fluff #mammon fluff

340 notes · View notes

dolphin-enthusiast · 4 years

Note

Hcs for Abba, Bruno, Fugo, and Ocean Man with a depressed s/o who has self destructive habits, ie chewing their lips until they bleed and picking at any abnormalities on their skin.

Obvs trigger warning for unhealthy behaviors

Ngl I felt this request-

Abbacchio:

- Oh he k n o w s how it feels. Abbacchio himself has quite a few tics and unhealthy coping behaviors especially when put under stress. I can totally see him either picking at his nails or straight up chewing on them whilst thinking over all sorts of ideas and plans when faced with a problem, not to mention the endless dooming thoughts that often take over this poor man’s brain making him fucking s p i r a l.

- That being said, Abba would be quite sad to see that you too are struggling with your own issues. Ngl he’s not too good with words but you’d be able to see that he cares by his caring and attentitve behavior towards you, Abba quickly taking a gentle yet sure hold of your hands whenever he’d see you stressing again in order to stop you from hurting yourself. The man would look you in the eye as he’d gently call out your name, gingerly holding your face in his big calloused hands as he’d tell you to focus on him and calm down for everything is fine and he’s there for you.

- Honestly I feel like the both of you would end up subconsciously helping eachother cope somehow. Not only would Abbachio make efforts to distract/help you calm down and keep your habits under control, but he’d also start restraining his own as he’d see you getting better and better which would ALSO cause you to push through. Basically, it would be a win-win situation and Abba couldn’t be more happy that he managed to helped you at least tone your habits down a little, the man smiling fondly whenever he’d lovingly squeeze you into his arms and kiss your hair as you’d fully relax in his warm embrace.

Bruno:

- CEO of goddamn self care. Watch his motherly instincts kick in the second he sees you picking at your skin, this man is going to go absolutely b o n k e r s. Bruno is the type to immediately remove your hands from your mouth as he’d ask you what’s wrong in a concerned yet gentle tone as to not cause you any further distress, the man immediately dropping whatever papers he was working on in order to focus his full attention onto you and your well being.

- Watch him whip out the breathing exercises, relaxing baths, home cooked meals and calming tea as he’d work his ass off in order to take your mind off things. Bruno is immediately going to take some days off in order to spend time with you in an attempt to cheer you up even if he knows damn well that depression ain’t going away just like that, but he’ll do anything that he can do at least help you get through it easier. From taking you out to cafes and parks to marathoning your favorite shows/movies with you all evening, Bruno is going to make sure that you’re feeling just a tiny bit better by the end of the day.

- Hell, he’s even going to get you professional help if you so desired, he just wants you to be mentally and phyisically ok. He’s a very loyal, caring and attentive person who will be constantly reassuring and hyping you up, reminding you of how strong you are and of how much he loves you on a daily basis. Bruno is going to oh so gently envelop you into his arms and hold you right there whenever he’d see your anxieties kicking in again and you can be hella sure that you can call him regardless of hour for he will be right fucking there to calm you down and cheer you up. And God forbid if anyone ever dares to trigger your habits on purpose. It would be the last mistake they’ll ever make.

Fugo:

- Tbh the worst out of them all because he has an endless list of unhealthy coping behaviors ranging from beating walls/people up to picking and even scratching at his own skin. He’s 100% the type to fuss over you and focus his entire attention on trying to help you which is pretty ironic since he n e v e r follows his own advice.

- Like in Abba’s case, you two would end up mutually helping eachother go through stuff which would turn out to be hella beneficial. Fugo himself would be constantly holding you into his arms or just grabbing your hands in order to stop you from hurting yourself and you’d always be there to whisper out comforting and reassuring words whenever he’d start spiraling again. In fact, his anger would significantly tone down overtime simply due to you being present in his life!

- As for the actual coping, Fugo is quite good at distracting you since he knows that even merely starting up a lame convo can be a good distraction. Not only would he be constantly distracting you from your own thoughts but he’d also drag you out of the house quite often even if he’s VERY introverted, because as long as you feel happy and content nothing else matters. Depression is quite the familiar ground for him and he’s actually surprisingly empathetic with the ones he cares about, not to mention that he’s a hella good listener that would make you feel completely at ease whenever you’d pour your heart out at him. All in all, a very supportive bf who would move mountains if that meant you were happy and healthy.

Jotaro:

- Doesn’t have actual physical self destructive habits (unless you count the constant overworking and sleep depravation) but he 100% understands how you feel which is why he’d be immediately preoccupied by the matter. First time he saw you embedding red marks onto your skin one late evening due to stress he nearly dropped whatever he was carried as he hurriedly made his way to your side, his rough hands instantly shooting up in order to cup your face as he erraticaly asked you what was wrong. That night he held you just a little tighter against his chest as he made sure that you didn’t try hurting yourself again.

- Even if his ways can come across as blunt due to him constantly telling you not to do it again, he really means well and you know it too. He’s not the best with words but you bet your ass that Jotaro is going to drop his work the next day just to spend some time with you and figure out exactly what is the matter. He’s a surprisingly good listener (and also has quality advice in store) who will pepper kisses all over your face whilst holding you into his big warm arms as you’d be spilling everything that was bothering you.

- And Jotaro really understands which is why you’re glad that you met him. He’s the type to wordlessly reassure you on a daily basis, his soft gaze and gentle actions speaking louder than thousands of unsaid sentences. He’ll completely focus on distracting/helping you and will even contact a professional if it meant that your health would improve. Although he’s not the most outgoing person, Jotaro will make efforts to get you out of the house as often as possible and will be doing your chores and cooking for you whenever you weren’t feeling able to do anything. He’s patient and understanding and will do his best to stop your bad habits from kicking in, most of the times his mere embrace and soft words being just enough from making things just a little more bearable.

#JoJo's Bizarre Adventure #Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken #Leone Abbachio #Bruno Bucciarati #panacotta fugo #Jotaro Kujo #jojo headcanons #headcanons #anon

55 notes · View notes

connan-l · 4 years

Text

Skeletal Doll

Fandom: The House in Fata Morgana

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warning: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationship: Michel Bollinger & Morgana, slight Michel/Giselle in the background

Summary: Michel had met her as a soulless skeleton, hated her as a witch, saved her as a girl — so of course he would do his possible to keep helping her even a thousand years later.

Content Warnings: Death mention and depiction of a corpse, slight trauma, vague allusions to child abuse and Michel and Morgana’s pasts.

______________________________________________________________

Link on Archive of Our Own

______________________________________________________________

Notes: Michel and Morgana’s friendship means the world to me.

Takes place post-canon/Reincarnation, so spoilers for all the games.

______________________________________________________________

That place always smelled like death.

Whenever he would cross over the chapel, climb up those long, interminable stairs and open the door leading to the room on top of the tower, a suffocating odor of dust and mold and dried blood would flare up his nostrils.

To be honest, he didn’t really know what “death” smelt like, but if it had a smell it certainly would be this one.

This should be repelling — something that would make anyone run away with a grimace, but for some reason, it had the exact opposite on him. It drew him in.

The skeleton — the corpse — that rested there, immobile, at the bottom of the room had an unusual alluring attraction to it. An attraction that couldn’t help but makes him comes here regularly, once every few days.

He knew there was something deeply unhealthy about this routine he had created. Climbing a tower to spend time with a skeleton was deranged, creepy. Mad. In his darkest hours, he thought with irony that maybe his family had been right about his lack of sanity, after all.

Whenever he would go down the stairs and stir away from the tower, his stomach would turn and an urge to threw up would overwhelm him. He felt disgusting and unsightly. Taking comfort in the corpse of an abandoned mansion, how depraved was that?

And it was not a positive kind of comfort, either.

Even so, he still stepped forward towards the dead body. He stared at it in silence for a long time, then after some hesitation slowly sat next to it.

When he was a child, his mother would often gift him dolls. Pretty, girly little things, that were certainly made by skilled artisans and must’ve been quite expansive. He had played a bit with them when he was really young, but once he started growing up he began to actively hate them and to hid them away in their house, to his mother’s chagrin. He couldn’t help but think she seemed to love these dolls a lot more than he ever did.

At some point, he started to wonder what girls even found alluring to these — if he were to be honest, they looked more creepy than pretty to him. Those were miniature little girls who stared at you with glassy, vacant eyes without moving, without flinching no matter what happened to them. They were just like dead bodies.

He had came to hate dolls over the years, and yet, now almost an adult, he found himself playing with one, except the difference was that this one was a real dead body.

The skeleton wasn’t really all that different from a doll to him, he thought cynically. It wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, wouldn’t flinch no matter what he would do to it. He played make believe with it, talking to it as if it could answer, embracing it as if it could understand his pain and loneliness.

He could pretend pitying the poor thing, look down on it for being more pitiful than him, and found some kind of sick comfort in it.

It was both his plaything and his companion, and the only thing in this manor that could bring him some sort of peace and solace.

Slowly, he extended his arm and brushed the dirty bones with his fingertips. They looked so frail, so feeble, that he thought he could break them just by doing so. Yet, when he reached out to the fleshless hand and hold it in his tightly, the bone stayed solid and firm.

It was cold, and lifeless, and rough. The doll didn’t flinch at his contact, like always.

He knew this was miserable and pitiful and creepy and insane.

But at this point he was just as broken and dead as this skeleton, and in the end it did not matter.

So he kept holding the bony hand in silence.

______________________________________________________________

Michel woke up with a start. Beads of sweat ran down his face, his messy hair clung to his skin disagreeably, and his chest struggled to get back a normal breathing.

In his upset, half-asleep state, his first reflex was to look around him, his eyes searching for Giselle — but she was just next to him, sound asleep, just like she had been when he first went to bed.

In the past year they had been together, he had noticed Giselle was a pretty heavy sleeper, unlike him. She never seemed to wake up in the middle of the night, or to have nightmares, for that matter. A part of him wondered if she slept so much to get back at all those centuries she had spent without experiencing tiredness.

Either way, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep now. He looked at the clock on his bedside, which indicated ‘02:17’ of a faint red light, and sighed. He gently kissed his fiancée on the forehead, then got out of the bed as silently as he could so as to not wake her up.

His legs were still trembling when he stumbled into the kitchen, the emotions of his nightmare fresh in his mind. Now that he was awake, he couldn’t really remember what the dream had been about — his past life, definitely, but which part of it precisely was unclear… Usually it was those miserable months he spent suffering Aimée’s abuse, or his brothers’ betrayal, or the way his corpse had been crucified. Sometimes all of those blended in together and he couldn’t make any difference between the events anymore.

Having memories of his past life was odd — sometimes they felt like fibers of his imagination, something so far away he made it up himself and could almost forget it at any moment, and at other times it felt so vivid that it was almost like he was back there again. Dreams were when he had the most palpable experiences, almost as if he revived those moments in real time, but nowadays they weren’t all that frequent and happened rarely. He wondered if Giselle or Morgana felt the same too, though he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

His mind still a fuzzy mess, he grabbed a mug and turned on the machine coffee, which purred softly as it started to work. The sound felt reassuring somehow, grounding him in reality and reminding him he was in the 21 th century and not lost in a cursed mansion in the middle ages. When his coffee was finally ready, he felt the need to get some fresh air, so he snatched a vest and his mug and headed towards the door.

Michel stepped into the building’s courtyard and breathed the cold air of the night. The sky was still dark outside, but he couldn’t distinguish any stars, as per usual in Paris. That was something he missed from the mansion — being able to see a beautiful, black starry sky, which was impossible here in such a big, polluted city. He hadn’t cared at all about the sky or the stars during the ten years he’d been locked inside the cursed house, but when Giselle arrived this changed, and from times to times she would drag him outside in the middle of the night so they could watch the stars together. Michel had found this annoying at first, but little by little he’d started to secretly enjoy it, though he never admitted as such to her. So he was sad this was a habit they couldn’t reproduce here in their new home.

As a sad smile rose up on his lips, he was about to take a sip of his hot coffee when suddenly he caught sight of something moving. His first thought was that it must be a stray cat or a dog, but quickly his imagination began working and he got worried. What if it was a thief? Or worse, what if the building was actually haunted and it was a ghost? Honestly, among the worst parts of having his past memories returned to him was that now he knew that stuff like ghosts and curses were real, and so sometimes he couldn’t help but be a little paranoid. He certainly had his fair share of bad spirits for the next hundreds of centuries.

Michel quickly surveyed the area, then tried to look for something to defend himself with — unfortunately the only tool he could find was an old broom Giselle must’ve forgotten here the day before. It certainly wouldn’t be very effective against an actual threat, but it was better than nothing, so he grabbed it tightly, slowly advanced towards where he heard the noise while brandishing his made-up weapon… and then a scream resounded.

There, he didn’t see a criminal or some supernatural creature… but just a young girl who looked at him with two wide golden eyes.

“M-Morgana?”

“Oh my God! Were you going to hit me with this thing?”

The girl stared at him with disbelieved eyes which quickly morphed into a glare, as Michel stood there with the broom still up in the air.

“I-I thought you were a thief!” Or a ghost — but that, he wasn’t going to tell her. He shook his head and quickly put down the broom. “A-Anyway, what are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” the girl replied dryly.

“Morgana. You’re pacing in the courtyard at two A.M.”

“So what? Is that illegal now or something?”

“No, but most people don’t do that. Most people sleep at two A.M.”

“Well, clearly, you’re not sleeping either.”

Well, she had a point, he supposed. But he wasn’t that much of an obtuse fool to not notice this was a way to try to deflect the conversation and put the matter on him.

“Did you have a bad dream?”

“Why is that the conclusion you’re jumping to?” Morgana replied defensively, but somehow, Michel instantly knew he was right.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked gently.

“I did not have a bad dream. Good grief, do you even listen to people when they talk?”

She sighed in an annoyed way, then began to play with one of her long red lock with her finger. Her hair was let down and she was still in her nightgown — a strange sight to Michel, as he wasn’t used to see her without her braids like that. It made her seems a bit more vulnerable than usual somehow, an understanding he had caught her at a bad time he chooses to be considerate enough to not press the topic any further — he knew well enough that trying to make her talk would only close her off even more, anyway.

“Well, I had a bad dream.”

Morgana arched an eyebrow. “I’d guessed as much. And?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle at Morgana’s cold indifference. “Usually when people tell you they had a nightmare, you ask if they’re all right and what the bad dream was about, you know.”

The girl eyed him from head to toe, then crossed her arms. “You seems fine. And I am not interested in knowing what your dream was about.”

Michel smiled wryly. “As expected of you.”

“I have always thought it was stupid to ask someone what their bad dream is about. They said ‘talking about it make you feel better,’ but it’s a lie, I have never felt better after talking about a nightmare. It is not going to erase it not matter what, so why bother?”

“Is that why you don’t want to talk about yours?”

Morgana narrowed her eyes, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to though, Michel already knew what she was thinking.

“It’s not the first time you wake up in the middle of the night because of one either, right?”

“And how would you know that? Are you stalking me?”

“No, I have ears, and I do notice you seem to make quite some noise while the sun isn’t up yet.”

Morgana seemed a little surprised at that. She probably didn’t know Michel was aware of her nocturnal walks — and to be fair, it did took him a lot of time before noticing them, given she was as discreet as a cat. It was only when he himself had sleep troubles he would remark that his neighbor wasn’t as asleep as she should be.

“Well,” the girl said after regaining her composure. “Again, I’m not the only one, am I?”

“That’s true, but I am not trying to hide it.”

“Me neither. That’s just none of your business to start with. Also, are you really not trying to hide it? I wonder if Giselle knows about these, hmm?”

Michel frowned, as the provocative voice tone of the teenager in front of him started to get under his skin. “She does know, actually.”

“Oh really? Then you don’t mind me asking her tomorrow?”

His frown deepened and he had to muster all he could to not glare at her. Most of the time, the three of them were getting along perfectly fine, but if Michel were to push Morgana a little too much about a topic she didn’t like, she would resort to some of her manipulative tactics from when she was a witch. Michel wondered sometimes if she did it in purpose or if it was just a habit hard to kill for her. Either way, he still didn’t appreciate her doing this, at all.

“In case you weren’t aware, after everything that happened I swore to not keep any secrets to Giselle anymore. You can ask her if you want, but I already told her all about my nightmares, so I’d rather you’d stop threatening this kind of underhanded blackmail, would you?”

“Then stop putting your nose in my business, and when I told you I have no bad dreams then that mean I have no bad dreams.”

She glared at him coldly, then turned around and disappeared inside the building, before almost slapping the door behind her.

Michel winced and let himself fall on the bench in front of the house, before staring at the sky with exhaustion. Morgana could be so annoying, but still he hadn’t meant to anger her — he genuinely was worried about her, and had thought that there was maybe a way he could soothe her nightmares. That certainly wasn’t healthy to wake up in the middle of the night so often.

He took a sip of his coffee — which was now lukewarm — and kept gazing at the pure black sky, trying to find any glimpses of some stars or of the moon.

But he couldn’t find any.

______________________________________________________________

“—and then she told me I didn’t need it! Can you believe that? How on earth does that makes any sense?”

“Hmm.”

Giselle was spacing around in the living room agitatedly while Michel stared outside the window and nodded vaguely to every sentences she uttered without actually understanding their meanings. He wasn’t sure what his fiancée was upset about — and he knew that he should listen to her, but somehow her words couldn’t manage to pierce through his thick skull that was currently engulfed by other worries.

“I mean, I like to think I’m a rather patient person, but there are still some limits, you know? What am I supposed to do now?”

“Hmm.”

“Hey, Michel. Are you listening to me?”

“Mmhmm…”

“Michel, this morning I went out and killed your father so that we could eat him for dinner. Does that sounds good enough to you?”

“Hmm, perfect.”

Giselle suddenly placarded her hands on the table brusquely, almost knocking over the water pitcher and glasses that were on it. Michel jumped and practically fell off from his chair, before blinking with incredulity at the frustrated woman in front of him.

“I’ve been talking to you for at least half an hour!” She exclaimed, offended. “Did you even realize I was here at all?”

“Y-Yeah, of course… Sorry, I was… lost in thoughts.”

“Well, obviously,” Giselle said dryly before crossing her arms. “May I ask what’s worrying you so much that you’d dare to ignore your beautiful, lovely future wife?”

Michel smiled a little in an apologetic way, but thankfully Giselle didn’t seem all that angry. Maybe screaming in the void about what had frustrated her had been enough to soothe her mind, even with her partner not paying attention to her at all.

“Really, I’m sorry,” he added. “I was just… well, I didn’t sleep well last night, you know, so…”

Giselle hummed pensively, then took a seat at the table and sat in front of Michel, her face now serious.

“Another bad dream?”

Michel sighed and nodded vaguely, his gaze falling once again outside the window next to him.

“What was it about?” Giselle continued gently.

“I don’t really remember it… It felt too blurry and far away… I just know it wasn’t a good one. But that’s not actually the thing that’s bothering me right now, not really.”

Giselle arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It’s Morgana.”

She narrowed her eyes at this, and her expression became unreadable. Michel wondered if that meant she had been expecting it, or if that was something else entirely.

For all the time they’d known each other, Giselle still felt like a mystery to him sometimes.

What he had told Morgana yesterday had been the truth — in the past year they’d been together, he had always tried his best to be as open with her as possible, even with things he’d rather keep to himself.

He just didn’t feel like Giselle tried her best to do the same in return. In fact, it felt like she would often actively shut him down and tried to hide things from him.

But that wasn’t an issue that mattered right now.

“I came across her last night after I woke up from my nightmare. You know how I told you I noticed she often wandered around in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. Well, her having nightmares wouldn’t be a surprise.”

“I tried to talk to her then, but she just ended up getting angry at me.”

“Not surprising here either. Is that what’s bothering you?”

Michel sighed. “It might not be surprising, but that’s still worrying me. I wish she could be… more open about her problems, at least with me.”

“She might have said she wanted to move on with her life, but you can’t expect her to suddenly act like a whole new person. It’s only natural for her to want to keep some things to herself.”

Giselle’s jade eyes shined of an odd glow as she said this, and her mouth formed a tight line. Michel couldn’t help but vaguely wonder if she was talking about herself more than Morgana, but quickly chased the thought away.

“I’m aware, but still…”

“Well, if it bothers you that much, just go apologize to her the next time you see her and try asking her more subtly. Just don’t pressure her, or she’ll shut down completely again. She trusts you more than anyone, Michel, so I’m sure she’ll talk to you when she feels like it.”

Giselle smiled at him — the same kind smile that always managed to make his heart beat a little faster — and he slowly felt the knot in his stomach untangle itself. It was amazing how just a simple chat with her managed to instantly make him feel better.

“You’re right, I’ll do that,” he said while returning her smile. “Thank you for listening to me.”

“You’re welcome. Maybe next time do the same thing with me when I’m angrily complaining about clients.”

Michel grimaced. “Uh, right… Sorry about that.”

Giselle giggled and winked at him. “I forgive you. I still feel better now that I got to yell in to the void, even if you didn’t listen to a single word!”

Michel smiled again as he watched her head towards the kitchen, then heaved a sigh. He might also feel a bit better now, but Morgana still preoccupied his thoughts. He felt that he’d be unable to accomplish anything until he was able to see her again, so he decided to go talk to her as soon as possible.

Morgana was still at school at this hour, but her classes should end in two or three few hours. Michel didn’t know her exact schedule, but she generally came back around four or five in the afternoon. He could just wait for her here, but somehow he felt unable to stay put while doing nothing, so he had the strange impulse to go get her to her high school directly.

He didn’t realize how bad of an idea it was until he reached the building and saw the groups of teens hanging out all around. Michel had pretty much only bad memories of his high school years. He had been an awkward, introverted and solitary kid uncomfortable in his own skin — and this added to his growing body and newfound gender identity had created a lot of issues both at home and at school. His parents were thankfully decent people in this era, so there was no abuse, disownment or forced confinement involved, but it didn’t mean it had been easy for them to understand and adapt themselves to the situation. And that was without even including the weird dreams and flashback that sometimes plagued him from his past life, which at the time, without his full memories, he had no idea what this had been all about and was quite disturbing. Yeah, it had not been a fun period at all for him.

So somehow, setting foot once again near a high school and hearing some teenagers’ laughters and teasing revived some dreadful recollections and anxieties he hadn’t felt in about a decade, and it instantly made him feel like wanting to turn around and run away.

Don’t be ridiculous, he started to tell himself. You’re a twenty-eight year old grown ass man, why would you feel anxious approaching a bunch of high school kids?

He took a big inspiration, then got closer to the school’s gate with firm steps. He felt some the kids’ eyes fell on him questioningly, probably wondering what this weird, tall white-haired dude they’d never seen before was doing at a high school, and Michel couldn’t really blame them. Still, he tried his best to ignore them and his gaze darted left and right, desperately looking for some familiar red braids that would pop up at a corner. He kind of had the sensation of being like a father waiting to pick up his kid at the school’s gates, except Morgana wasn’t his kid and she wasn’t an elementary school child so it just felt doubly ridiculous and embarrassing.

He waited patiently for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. After twenty and still seeing no trace of the girl he was looking for, he started to question whether Morgana was actually finishing much later today. Or worst, maybe she had finished earlier and had already left. Michel bit his lip, and looked around at the group of high schoolers. At this point, he really couldn’t feel dumber than he already was, so he decided he might as well try to ask.

Trying to bury his nervousness about having to talk to some teenagers — except for Morgana, he hadn’t talked to one in years — he slowly approached the nearest group, constituted of two girls and three boys. The kids stopped chatting as soon as they realized the weird white-haired man wanted to talk to them, and they exchanged a confused glance with each others.

“Um, sorry to bother you,” Michel started, and he hated how awkward he sounded. “Would you happen to know a girl named Morgana? She’s short, with long red braided hair, and she kind of always have a glare that make her seems like she wants to kill you.”

At first, the kids’ faces scrunched up in bafflement, but one of the girls’ face lit up in understanding.

“Oh yeah. She’s in my class.”

Michel sighed in relief, then continued: “So are your classes finished already? Do you know where she is?”

The girl, Morgana’s classmate, tugged at one of her blonde locks while staring at Michel suspiciously. “We finished an hour ago, yeah… but, uh, who are you?”

“I’m—”

Michel opened his mouth, then realized suddenly he wasn’t sure what to answer. Her friend? He certainly was, but it sounded off to answer this somehow. Her landlord? True, but here again it didn’t sound like a good answer. The poor guy who found himself dragged into her thousand years revenge scheme against his will? Yeah, right.

“—her uncle,” he finally concluded. Right, that’ll do it for now. “I was supposed to meet her after she was finished, but…”

“Uncle?” One of the boys repeated in a joking tone. “Wow, so that weirdo isn’t some kind of cursed ghost and has an actual family? Ow!”

“Shut up, you’re not funny,” the blonde girl curtly replied while elbowing him in the ribs.

Michel looked at them and arched an eyebrow. “Are you friends with her?”

The boy chuckled. “Friends? No, we just see her from time to time.”

“She’s alone most of the time,” Morgana’s classmate added, shrugging. “I’ve never seen her hang out with anyone here. It’s not like we didn’t try to include her when she first came here, but… she either refused or ignored us. So, well, we left her alone.”

She added this in an annoyed tone, which meant Morgana’s cold behavior had slightly peeved her. Michel smiled wryly at this. It wasn’t really a surprise, as this was something he had kind of suspected already. Morgana never told them anything about her school life, but knowing her it wasn’t hard to guess she wasn’t especially looking for friends at her school. Still, a part of him couldn’t help but be a bit sad about this. As someone who had also been pretty much friendless during high school, he hoped Morgana would’ve been able to get at least a normal teenage life this time around.

“Either way, if you’re looking for her you won’t find her here. She left a while ago already,” the blonde girl continued.

“I see… Would you know where she went?”

The classmate winced. “Well, I’m not really sure, but… if I have to give it a guess, she’s probably at the graveyard again."

Michel kind of felt his brain shut down. "G-Graveyard...?"

He heard some of the boys snickering again, but they didn’t add anything when their friend shot them a glare.

“Yeah. There’s a small cemetery not far from here. From what I’ve seen, she goes there regularly, at least once a week.” She shrugged. “Gotta admit, it’s not a very common hobby. I think she gets along well with the graveyard caretaker too.”

Michel felt too stunned to say anything. Why on earth would Morgana go to the cemetery? And regularly, on top of that?

The only reason for that would be if someone she used to know was buried there… but Michel knew that both her mother and stepfather were still alive, and that she knew nothing about her birth father. So, her grandparents, maybe? She never talked about them. It was possible, but even so, it seemed a bit off for her to go visit them so frequently given how… distant she had seemed to be with her family.

“Well, uh… I see,” he finally added once more. “Thank you.”

He asked the teens where said graveyard was, and after they gave him directions he waved them good bye and finally left the high school. The place was indeed quite close from here, only about fifteen minutes of walk, right after a little church. Most of Paris’ cemeteries were quite big and carefully taken care of, but this one seemed to be the opposite of this; it was small, appeared badly maintained and almost abandoned, really. Michel stepped inside, and while looking for any trace of red he couldn’t help a shudder to spread through his body. It was desert and quiet, and almost felt like penetrating into some kind of eerie parallel world.

When he walked through the forest of large, gloomy tombs, a wind of nostalgia submerged him. He had only been to a graveyard a rare few times in his life, and the last was probably at least five or so years ago, when he went there with his mother to take care of his grandparents’ tombs. He had already lost all four of them — the last one was when he was three years old, and he had only brief, vague memories of the funerals. Even in his previous life, he had never known any of them either, as they all died long before he was even born — even before Georges was born, actually. Only Didier had known them, but even then he had been so young he had no recollections of them, according to what he had told him.

Lost in his own thoughts, it took him some time before realizing there was something off in his field of view. The place was completely empty, not a soul seemed to breath around, but then a few meters away from there he spotted what looked like a silhouette squatting on the ground. It was shaking and breathing heavily, as if hyperventilating, and curled up very tightly as if they tried to disappear. It would’ve been worrying and Michel would’ve intervened regardless of who this person was, but once he noticed the long burgundy braids falling behind the trembling shoulders his concern went up a notch and he ran towards the curled up girl.

“Morgana!” He exclaimed, his voice filled with panic as he kneeled down next to her and grabbed her shoulder. “Morgana, are you okay?”

However, the girl didn’t react at all to his questions, didn’t even glance at him. It was as if he wasn’t even here. Michel hesitated a moment, then tried to shake her gently and call her name once again — but nothing managed to get a response out of her. Her golden eyes were vacantly staring into the void, as if her soul itself had left her body, and an unpleasant feeling ran down Michel’s spine as the horrifying memory of that instant he had found the young girl dying on top of the tower flashed back into his mind. The sensation of her livid body in his arms felt as vivid as it had back then, and it unconsciously made him tighten his grip on her shoulder.

“Morgana!”

Finally, the girl tensed, and then she turned her head towards him. Her eyes very slowly regained some life and shine.

“You…” She uttered. “Ah…”

Michel wanted to feel relieved he’d managed to get her back, but… something felt off. The way she stared at him — it was like she was seeing a ghost or something. She didn’t seem to be here, even now.

“Morgana? Can you— Are you okay?”

“Um… I— Yes. Yes.”

All while talking, she eyed Michel from head to toe, then drifted her gaze on his hand on her shoulder, as if trying to analyze the situation bit by bit. Then she slowly started to get up, but her legs were trembling and she was clearly struggling to gather her strength, so he grabbed her arm firmly and helped her stand up. He didn’t let go until he was sure she stood steadily on her own two feet. She turned her head towards him, and then Michel thought he was the one hallucinating this time. Because she offered him a small smile, and gently uttered “Thank you,” as if it was the most natural thing in the world and not the most abnormal reaction he had ever seen. Since when Morgana could smile so sweetly and thanked people in such a genuine way?

“Morgana…? Are you okay?” He repeated once again, really doubting his eyes and mental health.

The girl tiled her eyes and looked up curiously at him.

“Yes? I am fine now. Thank you for asking.”

Once again, Michel felt a deep sensation of wrongness overwhelm him, but before he could open his mouth Morgana squinted her eyes and brought her hands to her head, as if her skull was suddenly aching. She stayed that way for a few long seconds, then rubbed her temples and shook her head. Finally she narrowed her eyes at him, and frowned.

“Michel…? What… What are you doing here?”

“What?” He replied, dumbfounded, because he really didn’t see what he could say much more.

“Since when are you here?”

“Since when…? Are you serious?”

Her frown deepened, and she stared at him as he was the one being unreasonable here.

“Of course I am. Have I never been anything but serious?” She asked coldly, and at least Michel was relieved to get back the normal Morgana he was used to. “So what are you doing here? Are you really stalking me after all?”

“Ah… no, um, I was… I wanted to talk to you, and some classmates of yours told me I could find you here… M-More importantly, are you okay? Did something happen?”

“I’m fine,” she said annoyingly, in a tone of voice that clearly showed that she wasn’t, in fact, fine at all.

But Michel felt he couldn’t press any further the topic without her snapping at him, and angering her was the last thing he wanted to do. She turned around and started to walk slowly among the tombstones, her feet steady despite the fact she was still trembling a little.

“You wanted to talk to me?” She brutally cut off the silence.

“Yes… I wanted to apologize for yesterday. Um… you were right, it was none of my business, and I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable—”

“You didn’t. No need to apologize.”

Silence fell back between them again as Michel just kept on following her silently. Morgana didn’t seem to have a destination in mind, she just crossed the graveyards while her eyes wandered aimlessly among the silent, motionless tombs, and he wondered why she might be thinking about.

“Can I ask you a question?” Michel finally asked.

“Since when do you need permission?”

“What… What are you doing here? Did you come to… visit someone?”

“No. I don’t know anyone buried here,” she answered. “In fact, I’ve come to this cemetery for the first time when I moved in at your building.”

“What…? Then… why are you coming here regularly then…?”

Morgana heaved a long sigh, then finally came to a stop. They were in front of a particularly tall, elegant tombstone, which Michel guessed must belong to an old and wealthy family. But it also seemed to not have been maintained for quite some years, which made it seems lonely.

“Maybe that’s going to sound odd,” she finally said after some time. “But I… love graveyards.”

Michel blinked and looked curiously at the young girl next to him. She was staring at the old tombstone in front of them, but no expression crossed her face and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“I’ve loved them ever since I was a child. There was one not far away from my old home, and for as long as I can remember, I would sneak out of the house and go there, take care of the tombs and stuff.” She snorted. “Of course Mother hated it when I was doing that. She thought it was creepy and scolded me about it a lot of times, but I never listened when it came to this.”

Her eyes fell on the ground, and she mindlessly put one of her red locks behind her ear.

“That’s also where I went whenever things got too tough at home. Guess it’s a bit like my secret base. I always feel at peace and safe when I’m here. Dead people are easier to deal with than the living. At least I felt like I was doing something useful for once, by taking care of them. It felt… comfortable.”

She marked a pause, and then added, in a much smaller voice, almost a whisper:

“To be honest… I’ve always felt more at home in cemeteries than in my actual house.”

Michel stayed quiet. It was a very rare moment for Morgana to talk so freely about herself, and he felt that if he were to say something back to her, it would break the instant and make her shut down all over again. Furthermore, it wasn’t like he really know what to answer to what she was confessing to him right now.

“Of course, back then I wasn’t sure why, but now that I remember my past life it makes sense. You know it, don’t you? That when I was still living at the brothel as a child, I made that… makeshift graveyard for all the nameless corpses we found in the slums.”

He didn’t answer, but yes, he was aware of that. He hadn’t witnessed a lot of Morgana’s past, admittedly, but he could still remember that moment when he saw Jacopo’s memories — of that disfigured little girl crouched down in front of those rough graves, taking care of them meticulously.

“Back then, I started doing that because… well, I felt it was my duty, as a saint. These people had no one else, so I couldn’t bear the idea of their souls not being able to reach purgatory. I couldn’t use my blood anymore, so I felt like I had to do something, at least. But, when I think back on it now… this wasn’t really out of selflessness. It’s just it made me feel… better about myself — it made me feel not so useless. In a way, maybe it was really pretty egoistical of me.” She smiled bitterly. “I was pretty pathetic, wasn’t I?”

“You were just a little girl, Morgana,” Michel replied gently. “A severely traumatized little girl, at that. And even if you doing that wasn’t absolutely out of selflessness, I don’t think it is something pathetic at all. In the end you still gave those people a proper burial and took care of them every day, right? I think it is more than worthy of respect.”

Morgana sighed. Michel knew his words probably wouldn’t do much to change her mind, but he still felt the need to say it.

“In any case, doing this became a comforting routine to me,” she said. “I guess it just stayed with me even all those centuries later. And I like doing that.”

Michel took a deep breath, and nodded. “Somehow, that does sound like you,” he simply added with a slight smile. “If you feel comfortable doing so, then that’s good.”

Morgana didn’t reply. Her eyes fell back once again on the tombstone erected in front of them, standing solemnly.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? A lot of things changed in a millennium, but cemeteries are always the same. They’re constant.”

This was certainly true. No matter the time period or culture, humans were always faced with death and grief, and had the need to honor their lost loved ones and gather around a place to think about them.

That was, unless they were bestowed with a particularly cruel fate where no one would bother to give them a proper burial, like it had happened with Morgana a thousand years ago.

Her body and soul had been left abandoned, and that entire cursed mansion had become her graveyard and prison.

None of them uttered a single word, but Michel instinctively got closer to Morgana and gently wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close to him.

For a long time, the girl didn’t react, before finally slowly let her head fall on his shoulder.

And for what seemed like an eternity, none of them moved, lulled by the sound of the wind and the company of the dead.

______________________________________________________________

Things went relatively back to normal after this. In the following days, Michel got really busy at work and came back home pretty late, so he didn’t get the time to see Morgana much or have any more conversation with her. He also didn’t get any nightmares, which meant there was no secret night meeting with her either. In fact, the only time he got to really see her was the tomorrow of their graveyard encounter, when she burst out into their apartment angrily and wanted to know why on earth her classmates were now questioning her about her “weird, tall, white-haired uncle.” He tried to justify himself that this was the less odd explanation he could come up with, but then she retorted he should not have come to her high school to begin with — and, well, she actually had a point here. Giselle watched their argument from afar while giggling quietly, and then she teased him about being “Morgana’s weird uncle” for the next few days.

In any case, despite the heartfelt conversation they managed to have at the cemetery the other day, Michel’s worries about her still hadn’t decreased at all, at the contrary. From time to time, he thought about maybe visiting Morgana to her graveyard, but in the end could never bring himself to do so. After all, she had told him herself that this place was like a ‘secret base’ to her, so it felt wrong, somehow, to trespass this place without her consent.

However, these peaceful days came to an end about two weeks later when the phone suddenly rang one afternoon.

Michel was completely focused on writing an important email about an upcoming project to his superior, so it took him some time to realize the ringing, and when he did he caught sight of Giselle heading towards the phone before he could even get up. As her hands were already occupied with what seemed to be a big cardboard — maybe something from the café? — she hurriedly put on the loudspeaker and wedged the receiver between her ear and her shoulder in an elegant movement. Michel had always been in awe by the way she was able to take care of multiple things like that as if it was the most natural thing in the world, whereas in her place he would’ve just let the box fall on the ground.

“Hello?” Giselle asked, her voice politely playful.

“Hello, sorry to bother you,” a courteous, feminine voice resounded faintly from the phone. “Um, I would like to speak to Mr. Michel Bollinger… Are you Mrs. Bollinger?”

Michel frowned slightly upon hearing his name — the person’s informal and serious tone made him wonder if it was something work-related — but Giselle seemed unconcerned and only giggled.

“Um, well, not yet! Why?”

“You are the guardian of a seventeen-year-old girl named Morgana, aren’t you?”

Giselle blinked curiously, a little confused this time.

“Um, well, we do live with a girl like that but we’re not… Wait, what is this about?”

For a short moment, there seemed to be a bit of hesitation, before the person finally answered by saying something that made Giselle’s smile fell from her face.

“This is the police. We got her in custody. Could you please come pick her up at the station?”

______________________________________________________________

Michel had only went to a police station maybe two or three times in his life, always for trivial, unimportant things like retrieve lost objects, so that was why, when he stepped inside the big building and was greeted by a bunch of solemn-looking officers in uniforms, that he couldn’t help but feel a little anxious.

The woman on the phone hadn’t told them much about what had happened, just that apparently Morgana had gotten into trouble and that she had told them he was her legal guardian, so he was the one who had to come to get her. To be honest, Michel felt a bit annoyed by this and didn’t understand why Morgana had claimed such a thing given he was far from being her guardian, but he certainly couldn’t refuse to help his friend if she had problems.

So he headed towards the reception, trying to make himself as discreet as possible but as usual it wasn’t very effective, as his appearance always attracted looks wherever he went. When he presented himself, the woman at the desk sighed, and with tired eyes she lead him to a nearby room. The moment he opened the door, he heard angry yells fly out at him, and distinguished three persons: a police officer, a middle-aged man, and Morgana.

“Do you realize that this is all your fault to begin with, right?” The man shouted exasperatedly. “You’re the one who assaulted me! Stop playing the victim here!”

“I’m not playing the victim,” Morgana replied coldly with annoyance, before rolling her eyes. “And ‘assaulted’… No need to use such words. You’re oversensitive.”

“Oversensitive?” The man screamed in disbelief. “Are you saying that this—” He showed up his hand that was wrapped up in bandages. “—is me being oversensitive?”

Morgana eyed him, then shrugged. “Well, you still have your hand and it still moves, right? Not sure why you’re making such a big deal about it.”

The man’s face became completely red, and Michel honestly thought he was going to strangle the girl here and there if the cop hadn’t instantly stepped in, putting a strong hand on the guy’s shoulder and separating the two of them.

“All right, please keep your calm, sir… I see that her guardian has finally arrived, so let’s settle this peacefully.”

While saying this, the officer looked up at Michel, and suddenly all the attention was reported on him. A look of relief spread on Morgana’s face upon seeing him, while the middle-aged man’s face hardened and glared at him.

“You certainly took your sweet time! I swear, what kind of father are you, raising such a brat and letting her hang out in a police station for hours?”

“Um… that’s—”

“Well he’s not my father,” Morgana cut in annoyingly, and when she saw the questioning gazes of the two other men she quickly added: “He is my guardian, but we’re not blood related.”

“Well, fine, in any case could you all please sit down?” The cop asked, his voice straining and Michel could tell he had been taking care of this issue for a while now and was starting to get quite frustrated at it.

“Uh, I’m sorry but, we still didn’t explain to me what had happened? What did Morgana do?”

“Why would you instantly assume I’m the one who did something?” Morgana retorted while glaring at Michel.

“Because you are!” The man shouted yet again. “That kid, I swear…! Here’s what happened: your girl stabbed me in the hand!”

Michel had to admit, he was expecting a lot of things when he heard Morgana was at a police station, but this he still wasn’t prepared for that. He frowned in confusion, and threw a questioning glance at the concerned girl, who just sighed as if this was none of her business.

“So, wait,” Michel started, massaging his temples. “She… stabbed you? With a knife? Do you just walk around transporting a knife, Morgana?”

“Okay, first of all, it wasn’t a knife, it was a cutter,” she argued, as if this was a very important detail.

It doesn’t make it any better! Michel almost burst out, but did his best to control his temperament.

“It doesn’t matter what it was!” The man resumed. “I was just walking in the street when I saw she dropped her wallet, so I tried to tell her, but then when I grabbed her arm she suddenly pulled out that thing and stabbed me with it!”

“I thought it was a thief or something, so I panicked.”

“And when you panic you stab people?” Michel interfered.

“Well, that was just a reflex. Seriously, you should not accost young girls like that without warning. It’s your fault this ended up like this, really.”

The man seemed so taken aback by Morgana’s flippancy that he couldn’t even seem to be able to yell at her anymore. He just stared at the girl, eyes and mouth wide open, until Michel let out a sigh.

“Okay, I think I got the situation. I am genuinely sorry for what Morgana did to you. It wasn’t her intention, she’s just a very cautious person—”

“It was absolutely my intention,” Morgana cut him off. “And you don’t need to apologize to that man. I certainly won’t. He’s the one overreacting over nothing.”

“You’re not helping me here!”

The man stared at the both of them, then shook his head as if giving up protesting. “I don’t care about apologies at this point. “But I certainly won’t stand for that. She stabbed me. I want to file a claim and you owes me at the very least the treatment fees.”

“File a claim? Treatment fees? As if I would—”

“That’s understandable,” Michel interrupted in a serious voice. “I’ll make sure to see through that.”

“What? Michel—”

“Just let me take care of this and try not to make matters worse, please.”

Michel’s voice was not severe, but still firm enough to make the girl understand it was best to let him handle the situation from now on. Morgana sighed, then finally after a few moments of hesitation, she nodded, although she clearly wasn’t satisfied with this.

What followed was a very egregious, long hour of trying to salvage the situation somewhat despite Morgana’s icy jabs and the man’s punctual anger. Michel felt much more exhausted at the end of this than at the end of a heavy week full of work. When they finally managed to get out of the police station, his head was still full about the future appointment with his lawyer he’ll have to make and the treatment fees he’ll have to pay.

“You really didn’t need to do that,” Morgana said, and Michel really hoped this was her way of saying ‘thank you’ because he didn’t feel like dealing with any more jaded cynical retorts.

“You’re the one who told them to call me to start with. Actually, why did you say I was your guardian?”

“Well, I didn’t want to at first… but I’m not yet eighteen, and I didn’t want them to call my parents. If my stepfather had showed up, it would have gotten ugly.”

Michel suddenly felt a bit stupid for not having realized this by himself, and softening a little, he sighed. Morgana was pretty secretive about her family situation, but he knew she had a bad relationship with them — so it wasn’t hard to imagine that if her stepfather had been called because she was at a police station it would’ve indeed not ended well.

It truly was a cursed fate that this girl had ended up again with bad, uncaring parents in this era. She deserved to have an actual loving family… In a way, although he still felt a bit annoyed with her for this, he also was kind of happy she had not hesitated to rely on him when she was in trouble.

“All right, fine… Still, what a mess… Now I’ll have to talk to Giselle about all of this and organize our finances, huh…”

“Like I said, you don’t need to do this. I’ll take care of it.”

“And how, exactly? If you don’t want to contact your parents, then I fail to see how you’ll be able to deal with this… Is the association you’re in contact would really take care of something like this?”

“Oh, no, I would never ask them that even if they could help me. I’ll just call Jacopo.”

Michel stopped walking.

“Uh, what?”

“I’ll ask Jacopo to pay and handle this for me.”

“But, you… I thought you hadn’t talked to him since you came back from your trip in Italy?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“And you’re going to call him now just to ask him for money?”

“Yes.”

“Did you… Did you keep in contact with him just to extort him?”

“Is that a problem? He has to be useful for something, at least. Furthermore, he’s pretty rich, you know.”

Michel sighed deeply and put his face in his hands. “You’re impossible… Are you really serious?”

Morgana stopped in her trail brusquely. She turned around to face him, and her eyes suddenly turned cold.

“In case you forgot, I shall remind you it is the man who killed me we are talking about. So no, I have no problem at all in taking some of his money. I believe it is actually a pretty low price to pay for ruining my life. He owes me at least that much, don’t you think? Plus, he’s also the man who indirectly ruined your life too, so I’d say he really do not deserve your pity.”

“I wasn’t pitying him…”

And you had more of a hand in ruining my life than he did, is what he restrained himself from adding. Certainly, Jacopo was basically the cause of the whole mess that had happened in the cursed mansion, but Morgana had still been the one who spent all those years tormenting Michel. She’d been the one who had enslaved Giselle in the mansion until she broke her and destroy her very identity. Even if Morgana had been a victim and that some of her actions were rooted in rightful pain and anger, no one had forced her to do those things.

Michel had forgiven her and had a lot of deep affection for her now, but he still didn’t like the way she sometimes glossed over the very real harm she had done to instead push all the blame on her killers — and specifically on Jacopo.

Still, he didn’t want to have that peculiar argument with her right now, and on top of that… Even if Morgana had never been at the mansion, even if the place had never been cursed, unfortunately Michel’s life would have still likely ended in tragedy… This thought made him pause, though.

He wondered… what would have happened if he had never met Morgana?

If there had been no cursed witch at the mansion? No skeleton to hug and makes him feel better about himself — about his pain and loneliness? No mean spirit to abuse and drain him? How would he have spent those ten years completely alone? How would he have reacted to Iméon and to Giselle without a witch to whispers in his ears?

Things would have been… a bit different, maybe, but in the end it would still have ended up with him being pierced by his brother’s spears.

The biggest difference would have been… that Giselle wouldn’t have become the Maid. They never would have reunited centuries later as lost ghosts in this dark haunted mansion, and maybe they wouldn’t even have reincarnated together in this era at all… But that also meant Giselle wouldn’t have had to suffer during all of those centuries, so wouldn’t have been better…?

Or maybe there would have been no mansion at all, and he would have been sent in exile elsewhere. Maybe he wouldn’t even have met Giselle at all. He had no idea.

What he did know was that if none of that had happened, he wouldn’t be walking next to this young girl right now.

______________________________________________________________

The wind was raspy and the sky gray when he finally reached the cemetery, which made it looks even more gloomy and eerie than last time.

It looked the exact same as it did before, as if he was back a few weeks prior in time. The place was just as abandoned as ever, and it made Michel wonder if anyone even ever bothered to come here. Except for Morgana, that is.

He wouldn’t have bothered to come either, usually, but as strange as it may sound, it was actually Morgana herself who had asked him. He had tried to talk to her yesterday, but she evaded him before slipping “I’ll be at the graveyard again tomorrow after class,” and promptly disappeared. Implying, “You can come to me there to talk to me.” Well, that was how Michel had interpreted it at least, but with Morgana he was never sure of the exact meaning of her words.

“Oh, you’re here.”

He brusquely turned around, and Morgana was there, holding a pretty big watering can in her arms.

“Right in time,” she said. “See this tombstone? I’d need you to water the flowers next to it. I still have to clean those two others in the meantime.”

Michel arched an eyebrow, but didn’t have the time to ask anything that Morgana pushed the heavy can in his hands and headed towards another grave.

“What— Wait, what do you mean?”

“I don’t think I’ve said anything all that complicated?”

“No, what I mean is— why are you doing this?”

The girl narrowed her eyes at him.

“What? Did you think I just spent all my afternoon looking melancholically at those gravestones? Sorry to disappoint, but generally I actually take care of the place.”

“You… take care of the place?”

“Yes. You know, I clean up, arrange the plants, all that. That’s a small graveyard, but it still actually takes a lot of time.”

Michel felt more and more confused. Indeed, now that he thought about it, it seemed a bit weird that Morgana would spent hours hanging out in a cemetery just walking around the tombstones despite knowing no one buried here. But the idea of her cleaning up the place was even weirder.

“What are you, the graveyard caretaker?”

“No, though I talk to him from time to time.”

“He’s okay with you doing that?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

Well, Michel supposed it did remove some work for him, so of course he wouldn’t complain. “But why would you do this?”

She shrugged. “It relaxes me.”

“Taking care of a graveyard relaxes you?”

Morgana turned around without answering and kneeled down in front of a tomb a little further away. Michel sighed, looked at the water can in his hands — which was starting to feel pretty heavy — and decided to do as she said for now. While watering the daffodils and begonias that littered the ground, he threw slight glances at the girl behind him, who was very meticulously concentrated on her task, and that’s when their talk from a few weeks ago came back to him.

Right, Morgana had spend a good chunk of her time as a child taking care of a graveyard in her past life. With this in mind, then her behavior did makes sense. Maybe it’d seems odd from any other person, but Morgana loving to take care of such place wasn’t weird at all.

“You’re holding the can badly. You’re not used to gardening, are you?”

Michel got startled as the girl appeared by his side and grabbed the can, carefully bending it with expert hands.

“I don’t have much occasions to do this,” he admitted.

“Don’t Giselle loves gardening? At least she did back then.”

“She does, but… we’ve never done it together. Plus her family lives in an apartment…”

“Is that so…”

“I didn’t know you loved gardening, though?”

“I don’t really like it. But it’s necessary when taking care of a graveyard.”

Morgana kept arranging the flowers, and Michel’s mind wandered back to the roses Giselle had grown in the mansion, centuries ago. They didn’t have a garden in their current house, only a courtyard, but maybe he could arrange himself to make one… It would surely make her happy.

“Ugh, stop that.”

“S-Stop what?”

“Thinking about doing something ridiculously cheesy for Giselle. I hate when you do that.”

“How do you even know what I was thinking about?”

“Because you always make that stupid, disgusting face whenever you think about her.”

Michel sighed. “Well, do forgive me for being happy while thinking about the woman I love. I’ll try to do it discretely from now on.”

“Thank you.”

He rolled his eyes, and almost retorted another jaded reply before he just remembered that he had a reason, actually, for coming all the way here today, and it wasn’t just to bicker with Morgana.

“Did you call Jacopo?”

“Yes. He was kinda annoyed, but he’ll pay. I don’t have any worries about it.”

Michel grimaced, guessing she probably did her best to remind him all the horrible things he had done to her to make him feel as guilty as possible. Then again, a part of him couldn’t entirely reprehend her for that, because, like she had said before, it wasn’t much compared to what he had actually did to her. He couldn’t reproach her anger, but at the same time he didn’t like at all this unhealthy relationship she had started in this era with Jacopo. Maybe he’ll have to talk about it with her. Later.

“So, um…” Michel started, then hesitated.

He did come all the way here to talk to her, but now that he was actually there he couldn’t bring himself to find the right words. He was afraid of setting her off if he brought this in the wrong way. As if reading his thoughts, Morgana brusquely stood away from the flowers and turned towards him, brow burrowed.

“Yes?” She pressed on. “Stop beating around the bush and tell me already.”

Michel took a deep breath in, and nodded.

“All right. All right, um… So, I talked with Giselle about this for a bit, and I was wondering…” He paused, and eyed Morgana cautiously. “What would you think about going to see a therapist?”

Ar first, it seemed as if she didn’t understand the question. Then, as it sunk, her shoulders slumped, her mouth formed a tight line and she uttered the following with so much disdain it almost made Michel choke:

“What?”

“I, er… To tell you the truth, that’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while… but the recent events decided me it was, probably, really necessary.”

“What recent events?”

“Do you I really need to remind you your visit at the police station?”

“That has nothing to do with this, and it’s already solved.”

“That’s not the issue. And it’s not the first time something like this happen, either.”

There was the episode that happened the first time he came at this graveyard, and the frequent nightmares, but those weren’t just isolated incidents either. There were moments where Morgana would just stare off into the distance and didn’t seem to… respond to anything. As if she was just cut off from reality. And even without all of this, Michel thought it’d do her a lot of good to see a specialist, even just to talk. However, Morgana visibly thought very differently.

“I’m not crazy,” she dryly cut out, her eyes shooting daggers.

“It’s not about being ‘crazy’,” Michel replied patiently. “It’s about talking to someone about your problems, which you obviously really, really need.”

Her reaction was pretty ironic, Michel thought, given how many times she had tempted him to “just go insane” or to “join her in her madness” during their time at the mansion. But maybe she just didn’t remember that.

“No way,” she continued, her tone sharp. “I’m not going to see a shrink.”

She spat out the last word with so much vitriol Michel actually wondered if a ‘shrink’ had done something to her in the past or something.

“I’m not saying this to piss you off, Morgana,” Michel resumed in a more concerned, serious tone. “It’s because I’m worried about you. A therapist could actually help you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Like hell they could. What would I even tell them, anyway? ‘Oh yeah I remember by entire past life where my life was a miserable hell and where I was killed horribly which turned me into a witch and made me curse my killers for centuries.’ How good they’d take that, you think?”

“Obviously, I’m not saying you need to tell every single details… You could start with your modern life, I believe there’s already enough things to work with here.”

“And with what money would I pay that? I certainly can’t ask my parents, and the association already do enough for me.”

“I could take care of that if you want. That’s not a problem.” Or you could extort Jacopo again, he almost said, but he thought it wasn’t a good idea to encourage her in this kind of behavior, even for a joke.

“Oh please, stop acting like you’re my father or something, it’s extremely annoying.”

Michel groaned. Of course he had expected her to react this way, but it didn’t mean it was any less annoying that she just completely refused to listen to him.

“Morgana. You are not okay. You realize that, right?”

“How am I not okay?”

“Oh, I don’t know, to me stabbing some guy’s hand in the street because you ‘freaked out’ is not something a person who’s perfectly okay would do.”

“It was just an accident. It never happened before, and it won’t happen again.”

“But how can you know? Do you really realize how serious what you did is? You’re lucky you ended getting away with it this time, but maybe the next you’ll get in trouble with a much more dangerous person. What would you do then?”

Morgana lifted her head and grinned at him. “I’ll kill them and dispose of their body, obviously. See? That way, no problem.”

Michel stared at her blankly. Morgana stared back.

“I’m joking! Oh my God, you didn’t actually think I’d do that, right?”

“I mean… With you, I can never tell for sure.”

Morgana snorted. “Then what about you? Are you seeing a shrink?”

“Yes, I do, actually.”

Manifestly, Morgana wasn’t expecting this answer at all, because she just stared at him with her eyes wide and her mouth open.

“W-Wait, really?”

“Yeah. I’ve been in therapy since I was around fourteen, I think.” As Morgana was still staring at him with a confused look, Michel added, “Ever since I came out as a boy to my parents. They insisted because they… weren’t sure how to deal with this.”

“Oh.”

“And you know what? I thought like you at first, but I think it really helped me in the end. It still does.”

“Well, I’m not you. And again, you’re not my father, you can’t force me to do anything, so the conversation stop there.”

And as if giving more weight to her words, she turned around and started walking towards the back of the graveyard with steady steps. Michel sighed for what was probably the tenth times since he entered this place.

Dealing with Morgana was always a real headache, but he wouldn’t give up on her just yet. He hadn’t given up on her back when she was a cruel witch who had tormented him and Giselle, and he wouldn’t do it now that she was just a stubborn teenage girl.

“Morgana.”

He didn’t even had to grab her hand or to hold her back — the tone of his voice seemed to be enough to make her understand it was important, and she stopped.

“I am not going to force you if you really don’t want to,” he continued, then smiled wryly. “Like you said, I am not your father, and even if I was I still wouldn’t force you.”

This time, it was Morgana who sighed, and he could see her shoulders drop, in what seemed to be more tiredness than annoyance.

“When we met again in this era, you said… that you wanted to take your life back into your hands. Were you lying?”

The girl turned around and glared at him, her gaze shining determinedly.

“Of course not.”

“Then why are you so afraid of living and trying to be happy?” Michel took a step forward, ruby eyes not letting go of the golden ones for a second. “You have a life full of opportunities in front of you, but somehow you prefer to stay stuck in your suffering. Like you did back then.”

Morgana opened her mouth as if wanting to say something, but her lips trembled and no words could get out.

“You’re not locked up in that cursed mansion anymore. You can go wherever you want. Taking care of a graveyard is nice if that makes you happy, but… it’s not by staying with the dead that you’ll take back your life. It’s by being with the living.”

It hurts, sometimes, to look at the girl in front of him. It was a similar sensation as to stare in a mirror and seeing the reflection of a painful past self he had managed to overcome.

A child playing pretend with dead dolls when they were too old for that.

Morgana had done this since she was a little girl, but unlike him she had never let it go. He had left this behind in the past, but she was still desperately clinging to it.

Michel advanced once again, and stopped only a few centimeters away from her. Morgana was small and only barely reaching his chest, and the way she seemed to intensely stare at the ground in this moment made her seem even smaller.

He put both of his hands on her shoulders, making her look up at him, and when her eyes finally crossed his, he smiled softly.

“I love you and want you to be happy, because you deserves it. You don’t have to treat the entire world like it’s your enemy, so let people help you and love you. That’s all I really wanted to tell you.”

Morgana’s eyes widened as if not believing he had actually said this, and Michel had to admit he kind of felt the same. The words were like ashes in his mouth, and he had never been good at being open with people, not even after all those centuries. It was hard and uncomfortable and awkward, but he meant every single one of them, and he hoped Morgana could sense that, too.

Before the girl had the time to recover, he leaned in and gently kissed her forehead affectionately. He didn’t hear her gasp, but he could feel her shock and her body tense through his hands. He pulled away slowly, smiled one last time at her, before turning around.

He didn’t need to face her to know she was completely motionless and inert, but this was in a good kind of way this time.

______________________________________________________________

The odor of death was the thing that remained the most vivid in his dreams.

It wrapped and clung to his sense of smell and made him want to wince and gag. Even after he’d wake up, it would still linger with him, stuck to his skin. He had to really struggle to get it off and to fight the blurry images of the dark tower and of the soulless, dusty skeleton sitting next to him.

The unmoving, unbreathing dead doll.

But the doll wasn’t here when he came back to him, only the warm body of the black-haired woman he was going to marry in a few months. Her chest was slowly moving up and down, her lips ajar and eyelids closed. She was smiling and breathing and living, a far cry from the corpse that had been his only companion for years and years a long, lost time ago, and that was enough to bring him back in the present.

As he had often the habit by now, he stood up and headed in the kitchen, preparing his mug of coffee almost mechanically before getting outside. He noticed with regret as he sat on the courtyard’s bench that still no stars sprinkled the dark sky.

“Seems like meeting down there is starting to become a routine for us.”

There she stood in front of him, the skeletal doll.

But she wasn’t skeletal or unmoving or unbreathing anymore — with her golden eyes and long red hair slightly illuminated by the moon, she looked more like some sort of unworldly nymph.

“Seems like it,” Michel said quietly.

Morgana grimaced slightly in disappointment. “And here I thought I’d manage to pay you back and startle you like you did with me last time. Were you expecting me or something?”

“Something like that, I suppose. Maybe a part of me can always sort of tell your presence, like when we were in the mansion.”

“That’s not possible. You’re joking, right?”

“What do you think?”

Michel smiled mischievously at her, and the girl rolled her eyes, before simply sitting next to him. For a long moment, neither of them said anything.

If he closed his eyes, maybe he could feel like he was still that barely adult young man in the tower seeking comfort from a corpse.

“That was kind of unfair, what you did at the cemetery,” Morgana finally said in a soft, quiet voice. “Leaving me all alone behind after saying something ridiculous like that.”

“It wasn’t ridiculous. I meant it.”

“I know. That’s what makes it ridiculous.”

She was staring at her feet now, and while there wasn’t any expression on her face, her voice was barely a murmur. Michel felt that Morgana wanted to talk for once, and it was a rare enough occasion that he kept his mouth shut as much as possible.

“You shouldn’t love me. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why not?”

“Not after… I don’t know. Everything.”

“Hmm… Could it be some backward way trying to apologize for what you did to me and Giselle? That’s quite something, coming from you. Did you hit your head or something?”

“It’s not. I just don’t get it. I don’t get you. You don’t make sense, that’s all.”

Michel sighed. It didn’t really surprise him. Forgiving Morgana and becoming her friend made sense to him, but it certainly was understandable that it wouldn’t really from her perspective. The sad thought of how a part of her probably would not believe anyone who’d say ‘I love you’ to her regardless of who it was crossed his mind…

“I did felt a lot of ways towards you during these years,” he finally said. “I hated you, and resented you, and pitied you. You did a lot of heinous things to me. But I think I myself did a lot of bad things to you. Though, well… you already know that, don’t you?”

No response came, but he didn’t need any, so he just let his eyes wander at the starless sky.

“My point is, that when I really started to see you as a person, when I really started to emphasize with you and wanted to save you, I’ve stopped resenting you and started loving you. I know it probably doesn’t make sense to you, but that’s how it is. I hope you’ll be able to understand it one day.”

Morgana sighed, and also raised up her head. “I… will not make any promise,” she finally said. “But…”

She bit her lips. Looked away.

“But I’ll… I’ll think about it. The shrink.”

And then Michel couldn’t help but chuckle, because in this moment she sounded so much like the stubborn teen girl she was supposed to be and not like the centuries years old cruel, vengeful witch, and it was how things was supposed to be.

“You know, Morgana… some time earlier, I got myself wondering what would have happened if I had never met you.”

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him.

“How would that work…?”

“Well, I don’t know… Maybe if you never had died the way you did, and never put a curse on the three men. Maybe if Jacopo had never locked you up in that tower.”

Morgana snorted. “That indeed would have prevented a lot of annoying events, yes. But that would mean counting on the fact that this idiot can possess anything resembling human common sense.”

“Well, regardless… I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

“Hmm… Well, if I had indeed never been killed that way… for starter, the mansion itself would have never been cursed. So maybe you would not even have been sent at that mansion at all. Or maybe you would have, but either way I do not think it would have changed much about what happened there, or changed anything about your death.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

“However, Giselle… would have never become the Maid.”

“Indeed…”

Morgana’s gaze seemed unfocused as she looked into the horizon, and Michel wondered what was going through her head. Maybe she reminisced all those centuries she spent in company of the Maid.

“Maybe… it would have been better for her,” she finally blurted out.

“That’s… also what I thought. But then… that might sound selfish of me, but… if she had never become the Maid and stayed in the mansion, then we likely… would have never been reunited. The both of us getting reincarnated here was principally thanks to your wish.”

“Heh, I’m not so sure about that. That’s going to sound cheesy, but I think your bond was strong enough for you to meet again.”

“Maybe… It’d be nice if it is the case…”

Michel put his gaze inside his cup of coffee, that was probably cold by now.

“But you know… while I do wish Giselle hadn’t gone through so much suffering during her time as the Maid, and that I would do anything to take it back… I still… do not regret meeting you.”

He turned his head towards the young girl sat next to him, and stared straight into her eyes.

“Despite everything, I am still glad to be your friend now.”

Michel smiled gently at her, and put a hand on the top of her head, gently ruffling her red hair. Morgana sighed and rolled her eyes. “I am not a child,” she grumbled, but even so she did nothing to put off his hand. So Michel chuckled, and despite her reluctance, Morgana joined in his laugh soon enough.

Years, decades, centuries ago, she was just a lifeless doll he’d shared an abandoned mansion with — a convenient plaything to make a desperate, broken boy feel less lonely.

And then when she started talking as a witch, she became an annoyance and he wanted nothing but to get rid of her.

But he was glad to not have given up on her in the end, so that he could now see into what kind of woman she would grow into.

And just like he had done an eternity before, he extended his arm and grabbed her hand, holding it gently but firmly.

This time, those were not cold, dusty bones that met his fingers, but warm, smooth skin.

This was not a skeleton sat next to him that he could play pretend with like a doll, but a dear friend he had pitied, hated, resented sympathized with and loved all at once.

15 notes · View notes

huxblush · 7 years

Text

Huxblush’s (and various other people’s) Underrated Faves Kylux Rec List

It’s been a really long time since I made a rec list and this was meant to be a small list of underrated favourites but I got a lot of suggestions (part 2 soon levels of suggestions). Shout out to the anonymous suggestions and the suggestions I received from stardestroyervigilance, woehuxbub, honeypothux, sparrowlicious, haeym, ellstra, mademoisellebianx, and thissisatitle.

Please remember to heed all tags and warning and to leave some love for the authors.

Emperor’s Heir by @ellstra Rating: E. Wordcount: 88k.

Hux is, without doubt, the best General the First Order could have. But like other geniuses, he isn't appreciated during his life, and now he has to choose between two equally unappealing alternatives: undergoing some ghastly ritual to gain Force sensitivity, or death.

A Time To Heal by @glass-oceans Rating: E. Wordcount: 5k.

Following the destruction of Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren struggles to regain his footing and strength, aware of the watchful gazes of those who would see him fall. General Hux is one of those watching, but Hux would see Kylo rise.

Rebel Yell by @sarensen Rating: E. Wordcount: 6k.

Kylo Ren has seen evil, true evil, in his life. He's peered into the hearts of men and seen the darkness and depravity of monsters. He's walked in fields drenched in the blood of his enemies, slaughtered by his own hand. But nothing has shaken him so much, filled him with so much pure and abject horror, as this:

Karaoke night.

Freefall by InkStainedFingers Rating: T. Wordcount: 2k.

The night after the disaster at Starkiller Base, Kylo Ren pays a visit to the General's quarters.

no one else can heal your wounds by @mermaidtechie Rating: E. Wordcount: 2k.

An injured Kylo drags himself to Hux's quarters after being punished by Snoke. Hux takes care of him in the only way he knows how.

Old Magic by @squintlysays Rating: E. Wordcount: 32k.

For the first time in three hundred years, Hux felt the call.

The spell was crude, boorish; a plain tallow candle, words mumbled and mispronounced, none of the courtly gestures to which Hux had once been accustomed. He came anyway, if only to see who, in the Christian year 1803, would think to summon a fairy.

Inked by @ellabesmirched Rating: E. Wordcount: 7k.

When Hux's date picks an awful dive for their first meet up, Hux assumes they won't hit it off. Hux hates dive bars. And more than that, he's pretty sure he hates pretentious bartenders that try too hard to turn strange into an artform. Kylo Ren has too many tattoos, too many piercings, and is just the right side of cocky. Unfortunately for Hux's date, Kylo is also just the right side of intriguing.

MSE-6-H674L & BB-9E's Zany Adventures Into General Hux's Love Life by @stardestroyervigilance Rating: T. Wordcount: 10k.

By all accounts a droid whose sole purpose was to maintain the machinery of the Finalizer should not have been able to wiggle their way into an adventure as dangerous as trying to bring General Hux and Kylo Ren together. But life finds a way and MSE-6-H674L is a mouse droid on a mission. With the help of the familiar face of BB-9E will this well meaning droid be able to bring our two favourite co-commanders together?

Stars Hung With String by @armisticehux Rating: M. Wordcount: 41k.

Kylo stared across the packed room at the man who so effortlessly walked out of his life five years prior. They might have been stuck at the same wedding for a weekend, but that didn’t require interaction. He had no reason to feel anything but bitterness and resentment towards him.

And yet.

Returns by @darthastris Rating: E. Wordcount: 96k (WIP series)

No one had bothered him upon his solo return to the Finalizer. No one had arrested him on sight or come for him in the middle of the night as he’d expected. Counting the two days it had taken them to rendezvous with the Finalizer after the destruction of Starkiller Base, he'd been awake for almost 120 consecutive hours. He was used to long, restless nights, but he hadn’t been kept awake by this kind of anxiety-laden watchfulness since his academy days. Then again, Hux hadn’t slept alone for some years now, and sharing a bed with the galaxy’s second-most wanted man had its benefits.

Crush by @deluxekyluxtrashcan Rating: T. Wordcount: 8k.

It's been years since Kylo last came home, and knowing he won't be able to take the plunge and actually stay with his parents, he agrees to let Han book him a room at a local hotel. The only problem? Han messes up and Kylo has nowhere to stay - that is until his high school crush Hux, who he hasn't seen in years, offers to let him share his room.

Kylo has to navigate the feelings he finds he still has for Hux, the fragile new relationship with his parents, and the realisation that he isn't the only one with a difficult relationship with his parents

(Wasn’t) Made For These Times by @celloing Rating: E. Wordcount: 22k.

Hux meets Kylo Ren in the summer of 1970, tall and dangerous looking despite the denim he wears and the hippies he hangs around with, and Hux finds he can't stay away no matter how hard he tries. (Hippie Alternate Universe)

Memory of Snow by @permian-tropos Rating: G. Wordcount: 4k.

Three years after the defeat of the Order, Kylo Ren finds that his secluded cabin has an improbable intruder.

Too Late to Beg You by @saltandbyrne Rating: E. Wordcount: 20k.

Hux is determined to beat his competition for a promotion at First Order Financial, even if it means hiring a shady sex wizard named Kylo. Some investments are better than others.

Out Of The Darkness, Light by @creepycreepyspacewizard Rating: E. Wordcount: 20k.

1976- A brilliant would-be engineering student is forced to take up coal mining after the death of his father. 1979- The privileged son of a Tory politician runs away to join the Army. Life is not kind to either of them, or to Britain as a whole, when in 1984 the National Coal Board announce 20 colliery closures and 142,000 miners go on strike. In the middle of it all "General" Brendol Hux Jr meets Ben "Kylo" Ren...

sunburn by @honeypothux Rating: T. Wordcount: 4k.

“You’ve been crying,” Kylo says. The again is unnecessary. They both know its true.

Dust, Like Gold by @sugardaddyhux Rating: E. Wordcount: 15k (WIP)

Kylo Ren's mission was simple: Dispatch the target and get off this rat's nest of a planet as fast as physically possible. That is, until he found himself staring at Star Killer, a high society escort with a chip on his shoulder and a strange fascination for the black clad man at the bar.

Raindrops (HS AU series) by @sparrowlicious Rating: T. Wordcount: 2k

Hux has the habit of making Kylo's home his safe haven from his abusive father. But he doesn't always come in through the door. Kylo knows how to deal with that.

A Reckless Act of Domination and Intimacy by callthecops Rating: E. Wordcount: 17k (WIP)

After the death of Snoke and the Battle of Crait, long-time rivals Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and General Armitage Hux must cooperate or everything they value will self-destruct. Hux knows he is the First Order's last line of defense against a raging, uncontrolled monster, and he knows how little he can do to influence him... until Ren's pragmatic attempt to "learn more about him" presents Hux with what he believes is his only chance, unethical though it may be, to save his cause.

Surely, no long-term or far-reaching consequences will emerge from this.

The Secret Heart by @slutstiels Rating: E. Wordcount: 46k.

Hux is an up-and-coming actor when Poe comes to him with the script that will make his career. The only problem: his counterpart, Kylo Ren. He's reckless, volatile, never gets his lines right, and Hux hates him from the start. It's mutual. But when they're on screen together - it's magic.

Koi No Yokan by @petalouda85 Rating: G. Wordcount: 36k. (WIP)

When he was born, he was cursed. Doomed to die at 18 unless he joined the Dark Side. Snoke is confident but there remains one threat, it coming in the form of a prediction made by one of the Jedi Masters: Ben would meet his true love on his tenth birthday and this elusive individual would be the only one that could awaken Ben from his eternal sleep.

Ergodicity by @ballvvasher Rating: E. Wordcount: 45k

Ergodicity: the probability that any state will recur, while having zero probability that any state will never recur.

Anakin Skywalker died honored and venerated as a hero of the Galactic Republic after he and Jedi Master Mace Windu executed Chancellor Palpatine—the heinous, clandestine Sith Lord. In the aftermath, Padmé lived on husbandless on Naboo and dedicated her life to preserving democracy and raising their children. Obi-Wan lived on to mentor Luke in the ways of the Force and the Jedi, but never truly parted with Anakin, his slain Padawan and oldest friend.

Our story finds Ben Solo burdened by the legacy of a grandfather who he never met, the bitterness toward an absent father, and the building resentment of a senator mother preoccupied with rising tensions in the Senate. Ben confides in a boy a few years his senior, young Armitage Hux, whose relationship with his father is so harrowing that he often wishes he were dead. The universe perpetually pushes the boys together when they need it the most. Is love enough to save Hux from his life of torture, enough to pull Ben from falling farther than Anakin ever had?

skin of my yellow country teeth by storytellingape Rating: E. Wordcount: 6k.

HIGH SCHOOL AU. Stensland is the weird foreign exchange student, until his exchange program ends and he has to go back home to Ireland. Months later, his boyfriend Clyde pays him a visit. (Clyde/Stensland)

Supportive Parenting and a Stable Home Life by 5ofSpades Rating: Unrated. Wordcount: 7k.

Hux is certain that as soon as he returns Kylo to Snoke, he will be executed on the spot for the loss of Starkiller. Being that he is not below anything to ensure his survival and his command, he finally finds an advantage to his nature and forcibly bonds with the alpha. Now Snoke will be forced to spare the general or risk crippling his already mentally unstable apprentice

I Don’t Want Love Series by @saltandrockets Rating: M. Wordcount: 132k.

Captured by the Resistance, Hux lies about being pregnant to avoid immediate execution. There's only one problem: It turns out not to be a lie.

Odds of Survival by @marzarelo Rating: E. Wordcount: 44k (WIP)

Kylo is a 5th-year college senior. He works two part-time jobs and goes to school full-time, but this schedule is obviously more than he can handle and he's on the verge of dropping out. He's chronically sleep-deprived, angry, and worried he'll fail and have to crawl back to his parents to ask for help after he cut ties with them several years ago.

Hux is a graduate student, working on a double Master's degree and drowning in anxiety and student loan debt.

Then, one day while they're at work, all hell breaks loose when the streets are suddenly flooded with the undead. Now they're stuck with each other, trying to survive together, despite the fact that they have hated one another since the day they met.

The Hitchhiker by Cylin Rating: E. Wordcount: 16k.

Hitchhiking can be dangerous. Picking up this hitchhiker is even more so.

growing in the landscape, darling, in between you and me by impossibleamypond Rating: T. Wordcount: 12k.

He pauses in the doorway, debating his options. He could turn around and pretend like his subconscious hasn’t brought him here or he could press his palm to the control panel, step into the ward, and admit that there’s a slight chance that he might give a damn about Kylo Ren.

His stomach turns at the thought, the bitter taste of acid creeping up his throat.

In total and completely sincere honesty, he would rather set himself on fire.

[Or General Hux has a big old crush on Kylo Ren and neither one of them is handling it very well.]

Stay by Goober Rating: E. Wordcount: 3k.

He expects to see Kylo in meditation, or talking to the charred remains of an old Sith Lord’s helmet. Expects to find his room torn to shreds and unrecognizable as a living space. Expects a lot of things that spell nothing but paperwork and an easy answer to this unusual behavior.

What he finds, upon using his override code to open the door, is worrying.

(I got a lot of suggestions so a Part 2 is likely...)

#kylux #kylux fic rec #kylo ren #armitage hux #i tagged authors where i know who they are already or they had their tumblr on their ao3 #if i didn't know it i've just linked to their ao3 page #some of the longer one's i'm still busy reading but love so far + they were suggested by people who i trust the judgement of

391 notes · View notes

garrisontownhall · 7 years

Audio

01.02: Clara

Things hadn’t been right for quite some time with my family. We all watched my mother slowly sink into her ancient sitting chair, where she would blankly gaze at hazy daytime television shows until her eyes rolled back into her head, and we would come and shut her lids, and lay down grandma’s quilt across her. Father worked long hours at the mill, and would always come home coughing, then he’d start a pack of coffin nails, and walk out to his work shed without a word, his face and clothes always darker with dirt than the day before. Nobody was allowed to bother father. The doors to the shed stayed locked, and he wouldn’t leave until the whole house was sleeping. It was just me and my younger brother Jason, day after day, struggling to keep each other sane.

My father was respected enough within the town, as he continued working and showing up to church, but the people harbored hatred for my mother ever since the day she stopped leaving the house. Other kids wouldn’t speak to us in the schoolhouse, or on the street. They called our family a curse, and made up nasty ugly rumors, which they whispered just loud enough for us to hear. When I cried, my brother told me not to listen to the lies, but as he said so, I would wonder whether they were lies at all.

Gradually, mother became less and less. Her skin and muscle seemed to separate from the bone like slow cooked meat, sitting loose inside a bag of wrinkled tissue. All of her bodily fat seemed to slump off to her sides and melt into the gaps between cushion and chair. Terrified by my new reality, I allowed myself to be overcome with cowardice, and inaction became the tool by which I would deal with my circumstances. I stopped showing up to school, and though the office called home every day, nobody ever answered. Instead, I would wander the fields and woods between our house and Maine Street. I would write down a name for every critter I encountered, and draw pictures of them in my journal, until Jason got off the bus, and then he’d meet me in the clearing.

One afternoon, we were out in the woods together, playing games. Neither of us could stand to be inside our home, and we would often hide out for hours, in a silent sanctum detached from the nauseating fear, and burning anger that had swallowed up our normal lives. We went running over roots and leaves, and laughed among the trees, until that creature came to light out of the corner of my sight and brought my brother to his knees. Buried under sticks, which had mostly all been knocked away by weather and passing pests, festered the dismembered torso of a massive buck. It’s hind legs were attached, but mangled badly, held together with a yard of barbed wire, and both of it’s front legs were missing, blackened scabs marking the loss. The head was also gone, and in it’s place a broken, gnarled antler, stuck inside the open throat. It’s insides had been cleared out so it’s husk was all that rest beneath the shroud of overarching trees that wept like children for it’s death. And so did Jason, for he’d never seen such a horrible display of decay and destruction. It tugged at his stomach and left him curled up on the fallen foliage, spurting up his lunch and closing his eyes tight while I watched anxiously, unsure of how to help. When he finally regained clarity, all Jason could do was hold his knees to his chin with his back against a sturdy tree and rock himself. The sense of dread that had overwhelmed my spirit came not from the crass perversion of nature that lay before us, but at the thought of what kind of hell driven beast would be capable of such a thing, and the knowledge that this monster resided within the limits of my home town.

Hours passed before Jason could get back on his feet, and we emerged from the enclosure of forest into a night flooded with the watery glow of a moon covered in fog, unsettled and defeated, no longer safe in our only sanctuary. As we marched along the roadside, Jason running up ahead of me kicking a discarded can like a soccer ball, the owner of Garrison’s only fill station and convenience store, Billie G. Dennison eased up beside us in his ghastly green pick-up. Bill always made me feel a bit uneasy, even as a little girl, but he was known around town for being a helpful, handy sort. He rolled down his passenger window and leaned over the center console.

“What’re you two doin’ walkin’ ‘round here so late?” He lifted a cup from it’s holder and spit a wad of brown tinted sludge from between his lips.

“Just heading home Mr. Dennison,” I stuck my hands in my pocket and nervously dragged my shoe against the ground as my brother turned around to join me at my side, “Spent a long day playing outside and now we’ve gotta get home and have some supper.”

“Supper at 8:30?” Billie snickered to himself and pinched the end of his goatee, twirling it around a bit before he redirected his focus to us, “Your mother still make that shepards pie she always used to? Been a long while since we had some of that good home cookin’ down at town hall.”

“Mama hasn’t been cooking much of anything lately,” I stared down at the rocks and the leaves.

“Say, she up on her feet again yet? Heard that surgery they done on that knee put her out of comission for a while.”

“I really should be getting home Mr. Dennison. My dad’s gonna wonder where we are if we’re not back soon.”

“Well then why don’t I give you two a lift back home, little Miss Lamont?”

“I’m all set, but thank you Mr. Dennison. We were just enjoying the fresh Fall air, and besides, the exercise would do us well.”

He slid into the passenger’s seat and stretched his arm out the window to rest an oily black hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off and stepped away. He stunk fantastically of bottom shelf gin and his piggish eyes were rolling round in the sockets like catseye marbles on a wobbly table.

“You look an awful lot like your mama when she was a tight little pretty young thing,” A globulous trail of dirty brown drool running down from his chin to the window, “Why don’t you get in the truck Clara?”

He started sliding the strap of my dress off with his long hairy fingers and I froze in panic. Overtaken by a sense of distress and alarm, coupled with disgust at the thought of what might come, I closed my eyes and began to cry and as he reached for my face, Jason wound up and hurled a golf ball sized rock straight at his repulsive wrinkled face. It cut through the air and landed with an echoing crack right above his lazy left eye, splitting the skin of his brow, and Billie recoiled with a yelp that put Wilhelm to shame, holding his head as blood poured forcefully between his hairy knuckles.

“Fucking inbreds!” He shouted, scurrying back into the driver’s seat, spilling AC/DC and Motorhead tapes from the cluttered seat onto the much more cluttered floor, “You wait til’ the town hears about this you stupid little cunts!” Billie’s truck roared with the thunder of zeus, as it hastily swerved back onto the street and proceeded messily out of sight.

“Thanks Jay,” I re-adjusted my dress and tried to wipe the invisible residue of Billie’s awful touch from my shoulder, “You know I’ve always got your back too, right?”

“I know Clara.” He stared ahead with a demeanor of vengeance, fixated on the shadowy tunnel into which Bill’s truck had disappeared. Jason still didn’t look like himself, and I could tell that his thoughts were caught in the dissonance that had developed between what now existed, and the world we’d always known. His easy way and gentle nature appeared to have changed in the passing of a moment, as if he had grown ages in hours, rapidly becoming achingly aware of mankind’s depraved nature, and all the more resistant to it’s influence.

From that point, our moonlit walk had become overcast by clouds of unease and an fog of mistrust. For once, I felt eager to return home, just so I might hide for a while from the chilling cold and foreign fog that filled the streets which wound and twisted like the entrails of some great beast who’s been reluctantly provoked from out of sleeping. A sickening hum of burning telephone wires overhead rang out in a discordant chorus with the penetrating whistle of a distant railway train, plowing across some barren meadow, sounding out the wail of a harbinger of oncoming trauma.

(continued.)

#horror #Garrison #Maine #story #short #chapter two #writing #art #lo-fi #dark #artists on tumblr #strange #odd #bizarre #uncanny #fantasy #literature #cacophany

0 notes

killingthebuddha · 7 years

Link

On a night in my first semester at divinity school, I was lying in bed in my low-hung, overheated dorm room when a panic overcame me so complete that from that moment on my life would be divided into all that had come before and everything that followed: twenty-four years, six months, and three days of coming to feel at home in my body, changed in an instant.

This night of which I speak, I had set my oscillating fan to high and slipped into a shallow sleep. Sometime before sunrise I was seized by a panic so complete that I felt suddenly possessed with the power to hear all things in their deepest repercussions. Is this what it feels like to be omniscient? I remember wondering. I could hear my heart and its soft aortic murmur, my breath’s every exhalation and inhalation, the downward silences, the sudden laborious intake—would this be the last?—each its own reckoning, each all-consuming. How much noise the body makes when amped on fear I had never realized. I could hear the hiss of colliding molecules—and beyond the room, the compressors’ roar atop the nearby physics building, the sound of car engines and closing doors. All these things I heard as my own creation.

I wrapped my arms around my chest. Something truly terrible was happening, for no one is omniscient but God. My tongue coiled in my mouth like a serpent. A glint of steel speckled my vision. A hack intellect skulked in the spleen. I could not breathe. I arose to a gray dawn metaling against the modular window and no relief.

“Were you hospitalized?” a friend later asked me. I wish. Sadly, however, I knew hardly a thing about mental illness. I would never have thought that I had one. Anyway, I was pretty sure I knew what had happened: God had called me to a vocation of suffering. So no, I was not hospitalized.

Instead, I prayed. I prayed for the mercy to endure. For the strength of days. I also prayed to forget; and for the restoration of the years when I journeyed more or less unfazed through the particularities of me. For whatever it was I possessed the day before yesterday; for ordinary life. I prayed like an evangelical Christian is supposed to pray in troubled times. Without ceasing. The Holy Spirit indwelled my heart, I reassured myself repeatedly; whom then could I fear?

I feared everything.

Before the attack, I could lose myself in a book or warble merrily upon a theme. My attention might drift and stray. My comprehension skills, according to the answers I penciled in one summer morning, were just above average. I might realize half way into a book that the margin notes were my own—that I’d read it before, maybe more than once. I might ascend from a fifty-page submersion with little recall of what I had read. Of who had done what. But I loved reading, and I read a lot. I loved the feeling of disappearing, but also the thrill of increase and movement. With books I felt no shame.

The weekend before the attack, in fact, I had read Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking and Günther Bornkamm’s Paul with only a break to jog in the afternoons. A third, just for fun, was Graham Greene’s A Sort of Life, a memoir of the writer’s pastoral childhood in the town of Berkhamsted, through his student years at Oxford, flirtations with Russian Roulette, conversion to Catholicism and early difficult novels. Little did I know then that this melancholy triumph—three books devoured in blissful succession—would mark the final chapter in the era of immersive reading (even as I would muscle my way through two masters’ degrees and a doctorate).

Within a week, an ambient sadness had set the stage for my mind’s strange productions; and all early signs promised a long and successful run. This may have been the worst part of all: the sense of no end in sight. That the symptoms might even be permanent. I had become gruesomely present to myself, of this I was certain; a pinpoint of negativity and noise. I would never again lose myself in a book—or in a film, a song, a pleasurable diversion, a moment’s reverie. What lay ahead was a life sentence of compulsive self-monitoring, with only the spectral beings in my private spiritual asylum to keep me company. My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose tender voice, along with the celestial choir, I wished desperately to hear, remained as silent as the distant stars. That’s the thing about untreated anxiety: it’s an ever-giving energy. You think things, and sometimes say things, that make no sense to anyone else.

I looked for help in the only place I knew: my inner spiritual life, my personal relationship with Jesus. I kept a copy of Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest in my room, and I began turning to it most mornings, hoping for a remedy, or a healing word, in its severe admonitions.

Evangelical survivors will appreciate my predicament. For the uninitiated, let me try to explain. Next to the Holy Bible, evangelical Christians revered no book more than Chambers’s devotional classic. My mother gave me the Dodd and Mead cloth edition the summer before I started high school. It was a handsome volume, small enough to fit into the pocket of my backpack, and I carried it with me everywhere. My fellow believers cited the book with near-canonical respect—as many still do.

But turning to it under these circumstances, something felt seriously off. The more I read Utmost under the constraints of the attack, the worse I felt—about my relationship with God, my body, my spirit; about life and how to live it. Chambers demanded that I barrel through every compulsion inhibiting Christ-like-ness. I guess I’d never fully considered what that involved, if you took him seriously. Becoming Christ-like. All the petty rebellions that God hated, and all the desires you thought were God-given, Chambers repudiated in painstaking detail in the 365 entries of his devotional. Every day was a life-or-death struggle for holiness, your own private Last Crusade; a full-on battering of your wretched self. He sounded like every creepy youth pastor I’d ever encountered, the kind who derives pleasure in ferreting out your most intimate longings, who calls you on the phone if you miss Tuesday discipleship group, who (you eventually realize) despises you as much as you despise yourself.

“If ever we are going to be made into wine,” Chambers said, “we will have to be crushed.” “Be careful”, “be more careful”, “be careful to see”, “be careful to remember”, “be careful about the treasure”, “be careful to remain strenuous”, “be careful to keep the body undefiled”, “be careful to keep pace with God”, and on and on and on. Depletion, ruin, your ash heap life, the filth exposed—I am shit, God be praised. And yet, Chambers further cautioned, you should not even think of your own admission of depravity as a positive; for that would require a power, a sad withered leaf of a power, which you don’t have. If you wish to be Christ-like, you must prostrate yourself before him and take whatever he gives. And with a prayer of thanksgiving. You must become his “devoted love-slave”. Anxiety, madness, the howling terrors—submit to it all with a glad heart. Whatever powers are wrecking your mind, you take them as signs of his pleasure. “There is no getting away from the penetration of Jesus,” Chambers said.

***

I grew up in houses filled with books. My father was a Southern preacher with cosmopolitan aspirations that often confounded his parishioners; he loved opera and classical art, read koine Greek, and could recite long passages from Longfellow and Browning. (Back in the day, he could preach a hell sermon with the rest of the natives, but his heart was never in it, and the fire and brimstone would pass.) I counted five summers in a Christian commune in the Swiss Alps; two tours of a Bible school in the Cotswolds; and Jesus Movement splashes in California. These were not typical destinations for red-letter Southerners, and my own curiosities surely prospered from them. Which is to say, as long as my priorities were properly ordered—I kept a quiet time, shared the faith and guarded my purity—I could explore, carefully, new ideas and unfamiliar worlds. Fortunately there were places in those days, and maybe some are still around, where the hermits and stargazers of the coastal South could find company. At a bookshop in Jackson not much bigger than a summer pantry, I was introduced to the novels of Robert Stone, Don DeLillo, and Jim Harrison. I placed their books alongside Graham Greene, Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Harry Crews, and Etheridge Knight in my library. I wanted what these writers had; I wanted the strength to rage and howl and break on through. But I feared it even more.

Count it all joy when you fall into trials and tribulations.

Bear the scars of the Messiah, and rejoice.

Consider how great a gift is bodily affliction, in that it both cleanses and restrains.

Each time a believer is chastised by God and become sick, he should be glad.

Do not scurry around in search of healing.

Place yourself in submission to God.

Count it a privilege to suffer shame.

The father of spirits crushes us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

Cursed is the crown; chastening the winds; the lack becomes the Lord.

Such was the mark of my high calling—surrounded by clashing armies, whispering sweet nothings for the gift of my nightmare world; open to God for the taking, as autumn blurred into winter. It gave me no reason to hope if an armistice might have been reached the night before; any ceasefire would have been brokered only by alcohol and exhaustion.

December 23. Remedy: 1) less coffee after am; 1 cup + decaffeinated; 2) no tv at night (1 movie per week); 3) exercise: b-ball schedule; 4) more precise in daily goals; 5) meditation on the Word.

December 26. What is the metaphor of people who break down?

I think it was the rancid beast flanked nearby, knuckle-pacing, heavy and hoarse, smelling blood. Merry Christmas.

***

Had you known me in those years, you might not have seen the fear. In the tradition of the preacher’s kid, I had learned to strike the cynical pose. Orneriness became me as well, and impatience with small talk, and impulsive declamations on the televangelists and Christian kitsch and white supremacy, and stories, not entirely made up, of my father staring down the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, all of which left the impression, I truly hoped, that I had seen some shit. With a few adjustments for the scene in Cambridge—the no-nukes and the f-bombs, the obligatory Reagan-hatred and the occasional hash pipe—you wouldn’t take me for a holy roller. Welshing along in a rumble of ardor, I assumed most people knew, was the only child’s prerogative. But the only thing I knew was the difference that night had made.

The parallel lines of purity and discipline inevitably clash and collide into a flaming heap of shame. I filled my notebooks with anguished dispatches on “self-exaltation=pride=death”, “self-denial,” “subduing the flesh”, “restraining the appetites,” “the renunciation of all things for Christ”. “What does the Lord require but abasement,” I wrote shortly after my thirteenth birthday. I wanted to burn, burn, burn for Jesus, like one of the fabulous bottle rockets I launched from the church parking lot after our mid-week Wednesday prayer meetings. Each day I stood before the ultimate questions as if for the first time: was my soul right with God; had I surrendered all to my precious Jesus Lord and Savior, my friends and family, my pastimes and thought-life, my every burning desire? If you could test adolescents for zealotry, I would have certified genius. And then burst into flames.

I hope you can understand why it was so easy for me to impute the barrage of symptoms to the costs of growing in my faith. Salvation was a zero-sum reckoning with eternity. I knew this like I knew nothing else.

I took for granted that evangelicals lived close to the edge, fretful and trembling. I’d seen books around the house and in my father’s study with titles like Heaven Help the Home, How to Handle Feelings of Depression and Why Christians Crack Up. I gathered that there were Christians who sought the help of wise and godly men. But I was the son of a godly man and an even godlier woman (my father always said). Why would I need counseling? And what intensity could possibly compare to the radiance of the King but the sorrow of a million spirit-fires extinguished? I attributed a crack-up to straying outside the lines, which happened when you let down your guard and became too much in the world. When you forgot the Tenets.

But we did not do therapy. “Psychoheresy!” some would call it. Os Guinness, the popular writer and speaker and “thinking man’s evangelical,” dismissed Freud and his proselytes as “the modern equivalent of the first century Jewish and pagan exorcists.” Therapy loosens the fears and inhibitions that keep us unspotted from the world; the Christian should be grateful for repressed desires and a guilty conscience. Remember old Chambers and his masochistic pieties. The theory of spiritual warfare would finally be the only explanatory hypothesis you could mount against inner torment.

By the end of the semester, the hope for any cure seemed as long-gone as the days when I would read Camus’s “The Sea Close By” over and over on an empty trace of the Redneck Riviera, with a quart of Barq’s Root Beer to salve the heat. “We sail across spaces so vast they seem unending.” It would only break your heart.

“There is no grace in this night’s fall/Morning crouches slightly out of sight/Dreams dart like herons in the rustling light,” I wrote in a poem abandoned in disgust.

Survival depended on the perseverance that rouses the will to suffer and then breaks it. I had not asked for a blessing like this, but now that it was mine, I would give God the glory.

Walking across campus on a blustery night, my legs forked and angled with such confusion I didn’t know whether I’d make it back to my dorm without the strenuous effort to move them in that direction. My tongue slithered around my mouth like an alien seeking light. My brain was an incubator of moribund thoughts, marshalling fears hither and yon. My brain—where do I begin? Thinks of wizards and maskers, mufflers and puppets, whiffled like butterflies, if you’re able. (A list inspired by Burton’s Anatomy.) Nerves tarried on the edge of dark forests, tiki torches of the infinite.

I had to consider that I had hardened my heart, puffed myself up with knowledge, gone too far in my quest for novelty—even though I’d hardly gone anywhere. What I needed was the counsel of godly men. I should join a fellowship group, dial up a contact with the Family, and embrace the stupefaction of born-again congressmen and professional golfers.

I am speaking here of a time when I began to doubt the trustworthiness of everything that had held my life intact. Ten years is a long time to live in servitude to invisible forces. Yet I tried to appear a productive and amiable member of my generation. Genial and expansive. I went to parties and concerts. I volunteered as an English tutor at a community center in the inner city. I kept track of my study hours—6+ a day, 7 days a week, recorded in my journal—and turned in papers on time. I took copious notes in class and typed them up in the evenings for my color-coded binders. I paid attention to fashion as much a student budget allowed, but no poplin and plaid for me. I steered toward seafaring collegiate with a twist of Neil Young, not quite bonhomie academe, but not quite anything really. My chronic skin allergies did not blend well at all with the nautical woolens of the era. The Nordic pullover welted my neck; my wool-lined wallabies caused constant and embarrassing foot sweat. In my brown corduroy jacket I was always either too cold or too hot. I studied in places I hoped would keep my symptoms at bay and minimize exposure to other students: beside a bank of windows in a church refectory or an empty classroom. For our man of constant squirmings and weak bladder could feel heads turning his way issuing ultimatums. Clinging to whatever strategies of adaptation got me through the day, I tried to keep a steady face.

***

“You ascend the scale of erotic desire until you find God,” a Roman Catholic friend told me. Worldly phenomena are the glitter of the holy, he said; all truth is God’s truth. The two of us were sitting on a bench in the quad of the college where we taught. It was an afternoon in early May, a few days after classes ended, and the green trace outside the humanities building was spangled in sunlight. My colleague spoke with a gentle Irish lilt; he’d written ponderous but artful studies on selfhood and otherness (the word felt new and thrilling at the time), and I was delighted by his interest in my work, which I didn’t think amounted to much at the time. I told him I wished I’d heard the Gospel of the erotic scale in the churches of my childhood. “It’s never too late”, he said with a smile. Oh, but it was.

On Baptist Sunday mornings, in cream-brick classrooms, lust flailed beneath my polyester slacks. Best not to stand up in these languid hours. Keep the blazer buttoned. Wear a jock strap over tighty whities, if you must—and I must. “The Great Tribulation,” I wrote in my diary. “Earthquakes, hailstorms, 110 pound chunks of ice, sun will go dark, moon will not shine.” How hard it was to bring erections under the control of Christ. The only good news on the horizon was that Jesus was set to return any day now, according to most forecasts. But would I be ready? Or would I be left behind? It could go either way. I’d found a porn magazine in the woods one afternoon and not disposed of it properly. I might be stretched over a dead log, gaping at breasts, when the trumpets blasted, and the sun would go dark.

“You need Jesus Christ to give you strength in (1) purity (2) dedication (3) courage,” my parents wrote to me in a birthday letter. As further incentive for the journey ahead, my mother explained that premarital sex leads to psychic ruin. “All the girls I know who’ve lost their purity have emotional scars. Their thinking is somehow damaged. They’ve lost a precious something they can never get back. Their personalities are distorted, become one with that other personality.” They’d committed the Unpardonable Sin, the only sin that could not be forgiven. She didn’t say this directly. No Christian had ever been able to say for sure what that sin was. Until now. It seemed the logical conclusion to draw. So I equipped myself for battle like Saint Anthony in the desert—and lost my mind anyway.

I needed professional help. I was afflicted with an acute anxiety disorder. What could be more obvious? The mental upheavals of the midnight raid and so many convocations of dread, every lineament of my case, might have come straight from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edition, published one year earlier), of which I knew nothing. In its description of a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, the DSM noted such grim enumerations as: smothering phobias, hypersensitivity to noise, compulsive self-checking, and the belief that you were going, or had already gone, insane; to which I could have added: eyelid twitches, random bestartlements, nocturnal anomie, muscle aches, and all the elaborate rituals to avoid the feared object.

The onset of generalized anxiety disorder typically begins in late adolescence or early adult life. I was twenty-four the year of my first major attack. The DSM classifies an anxiety disorder as persistent symptoms lasting for at least one month. But it would not be until the spring of my thirty-first birthday that I finally stumbled into an emergency room, in another town, at a different university, and said to the attending nurse: “I need help. No ma’am, I’m not taking cocaine. I don’t know what’s happening. But it’s worse now than it’s ever been, and it’s been bad for a long time.”

That I survived the long ordeal—well, you have evidence before you. A man rounding sixty, the father of three grown children, a scholar of moderate renown. Last month, my wife and I rented an apartment on the Johannes Verhulstraat in Amsterdam and celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. I did better than survive; I found solid footing. But the dark nights of the soul taught me nothing about God. Mental illness, benumbed and untreated, revealed only the ghost of a self. Please don’t believe it when the grace pimps tell you otherwise.

Call it the comedy of redemption, my dogged persistence, or the infusion of both; but my prayers for healing—which had long been unspoken, which had long been conjured mostly as an irrepressible quest for wholeness—were eventually answered by a psychoanalyst named Cohen, a soft-spoken and observant Jew, who, upon the referral of the emergency room physician, invited me for a consultation. To be sure, the physician’s first order of business had been to calm my wrecked nervous system, which required the intervention of anti-anxiety medications. The drugs did their good work; and by the time I met with Cohen, I was eager to hear him out on the prospects of psychoanalytic treatment.

He explained the basics: a complete analysis would take about three years. We should try to meet four days a week. The hospital’s usual rate was $150 for a therapeutic hour, but since this would be a training case, which he needed to fulfill a clinical requirement, he’d be willing to accept less. I should think about what I’d be willing to pay, a rate that seemed feasible. He would not be making any additional income on the analysis.

I told him a week later, “I was thinking I could pay five dollars per session.” Cohen said that sounded fine. He didn’t ask how I’d reached the decision or seem taken aback by my proposal. Though he thought we might agree to revisit the rates should my financial outlook improve. And that sounded good to me.

During the last of our three initial consultations, I told Cohen I really appreciated his kind offer and all he was doing to accommodate my limited means; yet I felt like I needed a little more time to think it all through. Three years of nearly daily therapy seemed daunting, even at bargain-basement prices. Cohen said he understood. I should take as much time as I needed.

At the time, I was carrying a 3-3 teaching load into my second year of a tenure-track job, which meant developing four new courses, in addition to research, student advising, and college service. My wife had taken leave of her ELS position to care for our two small children; and we had recently bought a two-bedroom house, for which we’d borrowed heavily. A thousand dollars a year seemed like a stretch.

I thought about it. Logistical complications woke me up some nights in a cold sweat. To get to appointments on time, I would have to rush out of my second class period, drive from Roland Park into the urban desolation of east Baltimore (at which point my fretful mind would replay the most horrific death scenes in the last week’s episode of Homicide, filmed on these same streets) and the oasis that remains Johns Hopkins Hospital, hope to God there was a free parking place in the Rutland Garage, speed walk through a labyrinth of hallways to Cohen’s office on the 10th floor, and wait in an outer office abuzz with the comings and goings of psychiatrists and med students; and then fifty minutes later, I’d have to do the whole thing again in reverse. And this would be my life; four days a week, with breaks for August, Christmas, and Hanukkah, for the foreseeable future.

I felt completely overwhelmed but exhilarated too; it felt exactly like every prospect for creative growth had ever felt. What did I have to lose? What other better options did I have for my addled mental health? During a visit that happened to coincide with my considerations of Cohen’s offer, the psychiatrist and writer Robert Coles said the arrangement sounded too good to pass up. I’d long been an admirer of Coles’s remarkable career—read his books on Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor and on children in situations of crisis—so I took his advice as the voice of providence. And so, with my wife’s gentle nudge, and the reassurance that Cohen would be there if I lost my way, I phoned in to say I was ready to get started. Then, on a summer afternoon a decade after my first major panic episode, a thirty-four year-old anxious riddle of a man finally got on the couch.

“What do I talk about?” I asked.

“Whatever you want,” Cohen said.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s pretty much it,” he said.

It sounded like nothing so much as a testimony. Having learned early to share my faith with anyone interested (or not), to offer an spoken account, on demand, of my spiritual life, analysis was a fairly easy transition to make. So you might say an evangelical childhood brings certain advantages to the work.

I wanted to talk about my first image of heaven. It had come to me at a Jesus camp. I couldn’t remember which one. I’d gone to so many. It might have been the retreat on the Gulf, or the ranch in the east Mississippi lake country, or the weekend bivouacs on the banks of the Tombigbee River. Jesus camps angled over every sad body of water between Picayune and Dothan. But I recalled vividly how on an afternoon swim I had positioned myself by the ladder, and with goggles and snorkel, watched the older girls lapping in the deep end overhead. I recalled how their bodies flashed like pearls in the aqueous light. How I was hard enough to hold a tray of oysters. How later that evening at the worship service, I had sat in a folding chair and listened to my father preach one of his powerful soul-winning sermons, luxuriating in blissful wonderment.

Cohen responded with an “uhuh,” in what would be the first of a million uhuh’s and uhum’s gracing our sessions, signaling a thought well-spoken, a sorrow shared, an insight gleaned; who knew what he meant. But I always appreciated the reassuring effect. After a brief pause, he said he’d be interested to hear about my first thoughts of hell.

Duly noted. Psychoanalysis did not lead me into paradise. But in the languorous flow of thought and speech, in the recollection of known and forgotten, buried and visceral, terrors, traumas and hopes, under the skillful direction of an analyst, psychoanalysis did free me from the tyrannies of self-knowing. From cruel dogmas and debilitating fears. In analysis, I found the freedom to talk about anything, to follow the lines of the most outrageous desires—and the lightning didn’t strike. In a slow, steady turning, I learned to trust, for the first time, in the aptitudes of bodily life.

“Freud isn’t just desire’s advocate,” my friend Mark Edmundson wrote in one of his eloquent apologies for the talking cure. Freud teaches us to recognize that our “inner lives are in a constant state of civil war”; that we both wish and despise our own longings. He lets us know how we’re likely to behave when “desire slips loose from its reins”, but more importantly how much our lives are diminished from “too much prohibition”—“when the inner censor grows too strong.” The result is not only “listlessness, depression, despondency” but “in extreme cases the hatred of life that takes one to suicide…The death of desire is the death of the individual.”

Freud is a skilled diagnostician of sick theologies, I would add, and might be welcomed as the pastoral counselor every evangelical desperately needs. The un-analyzed God metes out punishments as harsh as the Christian body. Yet a mind chastened by the crash and burn of magical thinking may inspire a faith more alive to mystery. It did for me.

Evangelicals who rail against psychotherapy and pharmacology do so, in my observation, until they need them. When the protocols of biblical self-help fall short, as they will, evangelical anxiety becomes sin’s dark portal into which so many sick and needy people spiral out of control. We’ve all seen the reports: they leave the faith and/or their families, become addicted to drugs and/or porn, religiously and/or physically abuse their parishioners and the young, and commit suicide. (Children of ministers take their lives at a higher rate than their parents. Though the number of both has spiked, nearly a third of the subculture still believes that anyone who commits suicide goes to hell.)

Such however is plight of the Evangelical Self: unaccompanied by respect for the mind’s intricate dramas, the salvation instant shatters. Its identify requires its perpetual unmaking. I recently heard a preacher in one of the numerous evangelical start-ups in my university town say to the audience that he prayed each of us would have a complete nervous breakdown; only then would we be made ready for God. The Evangelical Self is a never-ending experiment to determine whether all people can be brought to despair, made empty vessels, and then—please don’t mistake the self-loathing for passivity—redeployed in service to whatever authority has been certified the real deal for Jesus. The signs are everywhere. In hypomanic fears of extinction. In the narcosis of purity. In a massive persecution complex. In the constant hankering for authority. The Evangelical Self storms into the social order as a perpetually-aggrieved crusader against difference. The pitch for the ego broken for God is finally a grasp for power and control, and it must be resisted.

The philosopher Paul Ricoeur, four decades after the publication of Freud’s Future of an Illusion, argued in a ponderous, largely forgotten monograph that Freudian psychoanalysis prepares the mind for a faith cleansed of idolatry—to the God beyond god. “The question remains open for everyone,” Ricoeur said, “whether the destruction of idols is without remainder.” The analytic dialogue exacts a meticulous, demanding, and expensive process (minus sliding scale) of disentangling the reality from the symbol; of freeing the transcendent mystery from the domesticated word. Freud may have exaggerated his conclusions, presuming he’d exposed faith’s essential naiveté: the natural history of an infantile obsession. You see aspects of caricature in his genealogy of religion, his simplistic reductions and quest for a theory of everything, his confidence in the morality of science—he was a child of the nineteenth century. (Paul Tillich is the rare modern Protestant theologian who grappled with anxiety and extolled the benefits of psychoanalysis. But his accounts linger amid ontological abstractions; you will not find any consideration of anxiety’s harsh somatic presences or clinical context—or his own tortured sexuality. ) Still, Freud’s critique of the idea of God strikes me as less of a “funerary sermon on religious culture”, as T.S. Eliot surmised, than a reckoning with the seductive power of illusion. Psychoanalysis offers a clinical procedure for disentangling symbolic conceptions of God from the reality symbolized. Such at least was my experience.

St. Paul’s prayer that Christians would be strengthened in their “inner being with power through his Spirit”, the Hebrew psalmist’s search for “truth in the inward being,” “wisdom in my secret heart”—affirm the habits of self-care and depth. St. Peter tells the resident aliens scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia to “adorn their inner selves with the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.” The ascent to God, despite the portrayals by its cultured despisers, expands the horizons of worldliness. Faith is a difficult artwork: continually giving, ever unfinished. Might it not then better serve our battered selves (and our threatened earth) to imagine religion as something other than an avatar of shame or opiate against death? We might recall Tillich’s concern for the courage to be, “the power of creating beyond oneself without losing oneself,” to “enter into the fullness of life.” Doctrinaire reductions of religion to neurotic symptoms are silly and unhelpful. It must never again be said that God wills you or me to suffer depression and anxiety.

Our lives are a marvelous mystery. Under the direction of a competent analyst, Freudian analysis builds upon that mystery, in its thorough, respectful listening to the subject—to the suffering self, the analysand. Self-disclosure is “liberating and innovating and therefore creating,” wrote Stanley A. Leavey in In the Image of God: A Psychoanalyst’s View, the book that would open my heart’s door to analysis. We are free when we are open to what is real and disposed toward what is true. Sometimes even you must sin boldly to feel redemption’s joy. You have to give up on the messianic impulse for the sake of your body and mind; for the sake of who you are; of what you wanted to be all along. To go all the way, to feel the body’s grace, to ascend the scale of erotic desire until there’s nothing left to say but: “Here I am.”

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes