#if i end up fired broke alone homeless so be it

[novadreii]

Me writing a scathing, data-supported email to the president of the company I work for demanding that everyone in my office gets double the raise they were offered to keep up with the absurd CPI increases the last 2 years PLUS asking for a bonus:

[stewardofningishzida]

Some Reflections

This is for whoever needs it right now. I see you and although I cannot promise to know exactly how you’re feeling since everyone’s situation and way of processing things is different, I can at least say that I’m familiar with your situation and fully empathize with it. We may not know each other, but I still care and wish you the best of life, health, safety, and success. Recalling the memories included in this post hurts. They’re still raw and painful, but I’m going to do my best for you. Admittedly, it’s not easy.

TRIGGER WARNING: Homelessness, loss, death

When we first lost our home, it was a horrible shock. Seeing the notice on our door, even as a teenager, I could already have some basic concept of “this is very bad”. My stomach practically dropped to the sidewalk and when I looked at my mom, she looked as if she had been slapped in the face. We both went inside, having just gotten back from picking me up from school, and I followed Mom to her room where she sat on the bed staring at the paper. Then, she burst into tears. All I could do was watch while trying not to throw up at first. Then, I reached over and gently tried to awkwardly comfort her.

This new ordeal freshly after her father (my grandfather) died of cancer and my aunt had burned to death in a house fire the same year. To make it even worse, my dad had been laid off at work, struggling to make ends meet. It got so bad that we couldn’t use the heater because it broke and we couldn’t afford to fix it. So, we heated up bricks in the oven, wrapped them in newspaper, and slept with them in the beds. He got a letter about refinancing the house, but it turned out to be a scam…That’s how we lost the house. We knew we were screwed, but at least we were still together.

When packing, we only had 3 days to leave. So, we threw as much as we could in some boxes and had them taken to either a storage unit or to my grandma’s place. Still…We had to leave a few things behind. When we first moved into my grandma’s place, we all slept in the living room. My mom and dad were on the couches and I was on the floor. After a few nights, Dad decided to switch with me. All the while, my grandma began asking (after only a few days, mind you) when we would be leaving. The only reason she took us in was because my uncle talked her into it. He wanted to help, but only had a small apartment with his wife and kid. So, no room. She had a house to herself since her husband had died. So, my uncle told her to share.

Dad claimed it would just be for a few months and then we’d go. Then those months became a year…My grandma is not a patient woman. Dad was in a job again, but it barely paid enough for health insurance, let alone a new house. I was still in high school. So, I couldn’t do much besides finish my classes. Mom was at the breaking point because she had recently become the primary target for intense verbal abuse from my grandma. She would call us “poor”, give us flyers for local homeless shelters, tell us to get out if we were not going to do anything, etc. The screaming fights would happen almost every day. So, Mom couldn’t do much either. It was not a pleasant situation, but it was at least better than the street. Dad eventually got a job with a bit more money. So, we started looking. At this time, the housing market was starting to rise again. Awful timing.

Whenever we did get a bit of extra money, it was nice, but not nearly enough to get out of our situation. So, instead, we would save part of it and use part of it to travel. A brief respite from my grandmother. We visited many national parks, countries, etc. Sometimes, it was a business trip meant for my father and Mom and I would tag along while Dad could write off some of it as traveling expense to the company. When we couldn’t afford that, we would simply go for long drives on weekends to get out of that house. Being out in nature wasn’t just a nicety. It was a necessity just to stay remotely sane and have some semblance of peace, if only for a few hours.

This salary vs market treadmill effect kept going on and on for years. Dad would get a better-paying job, the housing market and prices rose. Over and over and over. The fights and verbal abuse continued. I got into college and offered to work, but was told to focus on my studies so I could graduate and get a good-paying job right away. So, it continued for 11 long years. At this point, we had become so jaded that that we were about to give up. Everything was expensive and no matter what, the goal posts would just get moved again. Then…At a restaurant, Dad got a phone call. It was the realtor we had contacted before. We got a house!

After all of the heartbreak and disappointment, it didn’t feel real. Even after we moved in…It still didn’t feel real for months afterward. As though we might wake up back at my grandma’s place and the nightmare would continue. Now, we’ve come to terms with it. Though still sometimes it feels dreamlike. Every day I wake up and we’re actually HOME, I’m grateful.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suppose that basically what I want to say is to please stay strong and know that you aren’t alone. A lot of the time, good things such as a change in fortune happen on their own time. Though the wait can be excruciating. Just…stay safe, appreciate the ones who really care about you, know that you are seen, and maybe occasionally take time to clear your head somewhere peaceful. It may save your life.

[alirhi]

Finally caught somewhat of a break. I'm in a tremendous amount of pain even with my meds, but it's been a good day overall.

A few weeks ago, we had a small electrical fire in our bathroom, only we didn't know that's what it was at first. It tripped the outlet on the house, which shut down power to the camper and killed the fire before it could really catch. This happened every time we tried resetting the outlet and plugging the camper back in, until finally one of us was inside while the other fiddled with the power and loud buzzing was heard and bright blue light from sparks/flames was seen and we went "oh. okay, no touchy. got it." So we've been without even the minimal power we had for some time now, just one extension cord run from the house, through our kitchen window to a power strip we used to run lights, the space heater on colder nights, and charge electronics. It fucking sucked. We ended up putting the small appliances in storage, since we couldn't use any of them. no power to the outlets, and nowhere to put them near the power strip.

So anyway, that sucked ass, but we got through it, and a few days ago we talked to someone outside the entrance to Walmart who was asking for donations to help the homeless. I told him "sorry, we're in the same boat" and he asked if we need help. Sis and I explained the situation we're in the best we could, asking if he knew any electricians who would be willing to help for free, and he took sis's number and said he'd put out feelers online. Said he was pretty connected.

Dude wasn't kidding. The NEXT MORNING, someone called, and she was texting with him and setting up a time for him to come out and take a look. This afternoon, he replaced the bathroom outlet and faulty wiring that was causing the fire, cleaned out the crappy paper insulation that was feeding said fire, and was kind enough to do it all for free. He then gave me a quote for the cost of installing a 30amp outlet on the house so we could fully power this damn thing and have things like a working fridge and running hot water. It'll be insanely pricey, but when he broke it down for us, I realized he was still giving us the steepest discount he could. We'd mostly be paying for the (holy shit expensive) wire. Absolute sweetheart, as is the man outside Walmart who put us in touch with him. I'm so glad I didn't just scoot by with a "sorry, not today" when he asked if we wanted to donate.

Sis also found a baby garter snake in the yard today with a crushed tail. He still gets around okay and the injury seems to be low enough that his organs are functioning pretty well (he peed on her hand lmao and chugged water when we put some out for him; I've never seen a snake drink before and that was cute as hell).

We called a wildlife rescue that's going to take him tomorrow and see what they can do to help him, so he's resting in a fish tank with some paper towels and the little bottle cap full of water. Absolutely enamored with lil sis lol. He was scared at first, which makes sense; poor thing was trapped, injured, and these huge stompy creatures were hovering over him and touching him. But then she got him free of the dirt and grass he was caught on and he slithered all over her arms and shoulders. kept trying to go up her sleeves to hide lol. I asked to hold him before he's gone (originally she was going to drive him to the rescue while I waited for the electrician, but it was too far away and she didn't want to drive alone) and he wasn't having it. Wanted to stay with her.

Even after we got him in the tank, he stuck as close to her as he could. While she was standing nearby talking to the friend who loaned us the tank, he was nestled in the corner under the towels, when we got him inside and she sat by him, he smooshed up against the side she was sitting at and kept trying to climb out to her. Now she's in her room (opposite side of the camper from the seat she'd occupied) and he's hanging out on the side of the tank closest to her room. Every time she gets near or walks by, he follows her the best he can. it's fucking adorable. Wants nothing to do with me, but that's okay. He's still cute and sweet and I hope he makes it through the night and they can help him tomorrow.

I'm so grateful we were even there for sis to see him trapped. We never go into friend's yard if we can help it, but she's got baby chicks and said we can play with them if we want, so naturally we both booked it over to the coop to see the cute fluffies lol. and there next to it was this poor little guy stuck and hurt and dehydrated and probably scared to death.

I feel so blessed that someone was able and willing to help us, and that we're able to help this little snake. I just keep praying... Mother above, please let him be okay. He's such a wee babe.

[skinnytrips]

I’m so broke it’s just sad. (sh’tty vent)

My tendons are messed up and the many times I’ve tried to apply to disability I wasn’t deemed as unable to work (because my doctors believe for the past TWO YEARS I’d heal in 4-6 months, due to my age, nobody listens, family thinks I’m being dramatic, strangers think I’m finding excuses to not work. I’ve tried many different doctors to try to get someone to understand and it’s the same thing or they don’t think I have the issue at all). —I can’t work despite it —

—unless I wanna be trapped in bed again unable to dress myself, eat, or use the bathroom without help for months (It f~cking sucked) I take good care of my arms so they could heal, but they never ever get better where I can lift anything heavy or simply type—let alone write for a couple hours. No phone service for call centers. Unable to work in food services (lifting and repetitive work is a must around here), definitely can’t work in a demanding factory like all that exists in this entire state. No car to do deliveries.

And I’m stuck with my damn ex, about to move back with my abusive parents since it’s safer than homelessness or continue losing my mind with my ex (with him, any hurt or pain I feel towards him is forbidden. I have no choice but to obey, or I was risking homeless or my very toxic family, but it’s not worth this), even if I get so unstable.

I wanna cry. I wanna explode. I wanna dye (intentionally spelled). I crave to grow and I want to work so bad. But I feel like I’m just rotting, I have no future or hope of anything getting better.

I just wanna drink tonight away. I wanna ask you strangers on here for money, maybe PayPal it, but I hate not being able to return anything. My mind claws at the idea in my head since I’m desperate, I wish for better.

I hate everything about the past two years, living with my ex, being destroyed by our history together as well as the crap with my arms. I’m losing it. I thought I lost it though 4x over, and I keep finding myself back here, feeling I’ll snap. To top off moving back with my toxic parents, I won’t be able to lose weight, if I tried I’ll end up being force fed by my mother or losing a door. Maybe I’ll be locked inside against my will again if I’m caught.

I thought I finally did this life thing right. Now I’m just a jealousy-driven loser needing daddy’s help 🤢 I feel like everything is on fire. Everything is sickening.

[imthefailedartist]

World War Z, the miniseries

We all know the reason we don't like World War Z (2012) is because it has nothing to do with the Max Brooks novel we love, it's time to rectify that.

I want a documentary style mini series. A crew of amateur filmmakers are making their doc about the world since the outbreak. The camera quality isn't too great, think In the Loop (2009) And because the book is so great and detailed the visual doesn't need to be a page for page recreation just in the same spirit. That way viewers get new information interspersed with the old. Each episode focuses on a different aspect of the apocalypse and life after. It doesn't need to be horror, no one has to get bitten or killed, It's more about the resilience of nature and people.

I want to see the set ups. The countdowns. The b roll breaks. The shooting the shit with the subjects.

I want harried walk and talks as government officials are called to meetings about Zombie Legislation. I want relief camp workers helping people as they explain how they got started and how things have changed since the apocalypse got under control. Sit downs with officials who are shady about its origins or the conspiracy theories about it. Interviews with refugees from severely infested countries, where more prepared countries denied to help and interviews with people from under infected countries. Military how did they try to handle it when did they know their efforts were useless.

What new fail-safe's are being implemented. What officials aren't taking it seriously or are just trying to further their political career and hindering progress.

International affairs. National affairs. Intrastate affairs. Homelessness, world hunger. United Nations. CDC. World Health Organization. Interviews with the scientists, those who discovered the virus, interviews with the people who knew the ones who died. Journalists who broke these stories.

The crew follows a patrol team as they investigate zeke sightings and clear out horde areas. Interspersed with scenes of the crew filming fenced in hordes as they ask the introspective "wonder if there is any one left inside or is it all gone?", "Who do you think this person was?" Questions as it cuts to images of that zombie as a person. They try to answer what is the sound of the world now that it's populace is decreased by half. What is the smell of a planet riddled with walking death and fire. The color of the sky stained with ash.

Farming. Food. Water. Weather. Fauna. Transportation. Electricity. Technology. The environment.

The survivors, the militias, the nomads, the different civilizations that appeared and survived. How and why? How many of them survived to the present? What did it take to begin? Were their any Mad Max, Doomsday (2009) situations?

I want to see the stilt homes and how the Zs affected architecture and security and safety drills. The architects who are shaping the new landscape. The walls that were built. Do they need to come down?

Hospitals. Business. Industry. The work force. Did things go back to the awful way it was done before or were things changed. Did capitalist societies develop more socialist practices.

The death industry. In Fido (2006) heads were buried separately. Cremation. Natural deaths. Do people die alone now. How did people's perception of death change. Life how has it changed Life.

Population. How were heavily populace cities and states affected. New York, Beijing, Tokyo, Mumbai. The filmmakers don't travel to international places but they do video chats with the people in them.

Religion. How are religious organizations handling the zeke apocalypse? What new religions were created? What religions essentially ended? Interviews with religious people who've lost and or kept their faith. People who want to turn. They interview a cult that believes it was heaven sent and see being turned a good thing.

Crime. Drugs. Gangs. Scammers. What "miracle cures" did they sell?

Art. How did the outbreak affect art, museums. Historic architecture, documents, artworks. Pop culture. Music.

[jeminy3]

old archie x maxie (hardenshipping) doodles i never posted, from 2017 or 2018. they were related to some of the doodles in this post.

I have a lot of unpublished drawings of these guys, and i never did elaborate on my headcanons for them. The truth is, I was (and still kinda am) very anxious and embarrassed about this fixation, probably because it centers around villains and “woobifies” them, but also because after playing and researching more into ORAS, i discovered that my personal canon was contradicted by actual canon and i felt invalidated.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll summarize my old headcanons below. (It’s still pretty long, ugh)

A grunt in Team Magma’s hideout says that Archie and Maxie “used to be on the same team.” In canon, this probably implies that they worked together on New Mauville, Sea Mauville, or another unnamed project, depending on how old they are and how long ago those projects started and ended.

However, like many other fans, I thought this meant they used to be in Team Rocket together, and I elaborated an entire backstory based on that:

+ Maxie and Archie were part of a group of Rocket recruits attempting to start a branch of Team Rocket in the Hoenn Region. The project failed because soon after they arrived, Giovanni was defeated in Kanto and officially dissolved Team Rocket, causing a schism to form within the Hoenn team over whether to give up the project or not. This eventually lead to the team splintering into two factions, one lead by Maxie and the other lead by Archie, which eventually grew and rebranded themselves into Team Magma and Team Aqua.

-Maxie and Archie met and connected enough to start dating, though they were emotionally dysfunctional. As problems arose and the Team began to splinter, their relationship also broke down and their separation was very messy.

Maxie clung to the ambition of staying in Hoenn and building up the Team as a paragon of human industry, pushing away Archie and anyone else he deemed as “not useful.”

Archie also wanted to make the Team work, but not in the way Maxie and his side wanted, at the expense of nature. Archie felt hurt and betrayed as Maxie pushed him away and disagreed with him, making him contradict and lash out at Maxie even more.

This all culminated in a huge fight between Archie and Maxie and their respective sides, involving both Pokemon battling and actual fist-fighting. Local authorities were called in, causing the teams to scatter, but not before Archie and Maxie promised to face each other again, reforging themselves as bitter rivals.

-- Maxie

+ Maxie is (the pokemon equivalent of) German/Japanese, and was born on Cinnabar Island. His birth name was Maximillian Matsubasa Von Brandt, but he prefers simply “Maxie”. He IDs as bigender, asexual and demi-homoromantic.

His father is a Kanto businessman named Masaru Matsubasa. His mother is from somewhere in or near Kalos, named Melissa Von Brandt. They were both wealthy and successful business people who frequently left on business trips, Masaru travelling between Kanto and Johto and Melissa to her home country.

Maxie was often left alone or with a nanny at home. He was well-provided for and self-sufficient, but he was lonely and emotionally stunted. He had a passion for geology and engineering, and showed interest in contributing to helping Cinnabar’s local issues, which were often tense because of the limited land space. Homelessness and unemployment were high, and development plans to alleviate these were stymied by parties who lobbied for the preservation of the local Pokemon wildlife by any means.

Maxie’s parents were skeptical of his choice in career but still supported him, if only half-heartedly. This lead Maxie to study Cinnabar’s volcano, which he found to be very much active and possibly dangerous. He developed a plan to build in and around the volcano in such a way that it would utilize extra space inside the mountain for housing/businesses and its magma for natural energy to power the city, possibly circumventing its eventual eruption.

He presented this plan to Cinnabar’s city council, but was practically laughed out of the meeting for such an ambitious and dangerous idea, especially by the wildlife parties. This damaged his reputation and caused him to be fired/demoted from his job. His parents reprimanded him, regretting their decision to support him.

Lost and disgusted with his life, Maxie found recruitment with Team Rocket and left Cinnabar to join their efforts on the mainland. When he presented his research to their higher-ups, they were impressed enough to pass it along to Giovanni himself, and Maxie ended up contributing to the construction of some of their underground lairs, like in Celadon City.

This also made him a prime candidate for the Rocket Hoenn project as a lead engineer and scientist, and he joined the project with high hopes.

+ His interest in Pokemon was soured by his past and usually only extends are far as his ambitions, which means he views Pokemon only as things that can be useful to whatever projects he’s working on, otherwise they are a nuisance. After becoming the leader of Team Magma and having to train a personal team to defend himself with, he warms up to Pokemon a bit more.

+ Maxie plays up his confidence and genius, but does have moments of crippling self-doubt and anxiety. Deep down, he’s socially awkward and has trouble expressing his feelings, tending to bottle things up until they spill out in moments of anger.

+ Maxie used to be a semi-heavy smoker in his youth to cope with his anxiety. After becoming the leader of Team Magma, his health was suffering and his grunts were visibly uncomfortable around him, so for the sake of his own health and that of his team, he quit, with help and advice from Courtney and Tabitha.

+ Maxie hates his parents and hasn’t contacted them since he left Cinnabar, which was over ten years ago by the end of ORAS events. He avoids them to the point that he uses a forged identity in Hoenn, named “Maxie Stormfront.” ���Stormfront’ is a reference from one of his favorite metal bands, the Doom Hounds, because he is a nerd.

+ Years later, Cinnabar’s volcano did erupt and destroy the town, displacing its human population. Maxie has mixed feelings about this – he’s not sure if it’s righteous karma for the City Council rejecting his plans, or a sign that his old plans were doomed to failure and he was better off leaving Cinnabar after all.

-- Archie

+ Archie is (the pokemon equivalent of) Black/Hispanic and a Hoenn native. His birth name is Archibald Rodriguez. He IDs as a cis man (or trans?), pansexual and panromantic.

He was born to his father, Alexander Rodriguez and his mother, Alicia Fuentes (Rodriguez after marriage) in a small fishing town on one of Hoenn’s coasts, with its fishery being its only major industry. Most of its residents are middle-class or poor, and few members pursue an education after high school, usually joining the local fishing industry.

In his youth, Archie didn’t care much for school or work, preferring to spend his days playing with the local water Pokemon and his friends, Matt and Shelly. However, this exposed him to the effects that overfishing and pollution had on the local wildlife, and he eventually grew to want to pursue a career as a Veterinarian, specifically for water pokemon.

His parents didn’t believe he would be successful and his town had few resources to help him. The most he could do was research at the local library and a then-primitive internet.

Worse, his town was outright apathetic to the damage their industry was causing to the local wildlife because they depended on its capital to survive.

+A possible traumatic memory involves a young Archie nursing a sick Magikarp back to health for weeks, only to later discover it trapped in the nets of the fishery his father worked at, doomed to become food/products. When he attempted to cut the nets and save the Magikarp, his father restrained him and reprimanded him, claiming “it’s just a fish, boy! They’re all just stupid fish!”

Eventually, Archie was a depressed drifter in his 20s, unable to hold onto work and unable to afford to leave to a larger city. He often fought with his abrasive father and his mother was coddling, but unsupportive. This made Archie a prime candidate for Team Rocket recruiters as they arrived on Hoenn, promising a way out of his backwater town, decent pay, and a career where he’d be appreciated and be able to work with Pokemon to change the world.  He joined as a lowly Grunt, but was talented and well-respected within the Team.

-Archie has limited contact with his parents since he left home, only calling them once a year or so.

-Archie doesn’t like being referred to as his full name, it feels pretentious and brings back uncomfortable memories of his family.

+I used to headcanon Archie and Matt as biological brothers because of the “bro” thing, but I’m not sure about keeping that. If so, Matt’s name would be short for Matthias Rodriguez, because their parents liked pretentious names.

-Like some of his dialog implies, Archie is kind of depressed, pessimistic and cynical deep down, but hides it behind his boisterous, reckless attitude. At his worst, he’s downright bitter, uncaring of his own life or the lives of humanity in general, in favor of Pokemon.

[impalaspixie]

Outrun the Past (Chapter 2)

Pairing: AU! Dean x Reader

Warnings for series: Swearing, mentions of self-harm, homelessness, past assault/abuse, depression, violence, angst, fluff, and soulmates (are they even classed as a warning?). Maybe more that I miss along the way?

Word Count: 1343 +

A/n: Quite a few of you enjoyed chapter one! I hope you enjoy this part too. If you'd like to be tagged, let me know 😊

Main masterlist

Series masterlist

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“Y/N, what did I tell you about disobeying me?” A deep voice spoke as it approached you, the snap of his belt in his hands making you flinch in fear. “Let’s make sure we can get you to remember.” His smirk only growing as he raised his fist.

You sat up quickly, eyes wide as tears slowly slipped down your face. Looking around, you were confused, how did you end up on a bed? A comfortable and soft bed mind you, but you didn’t remember going to a motel. The door opened and you were about to scream when you saw Dean, the bartender walk through. Just seeing him, you could feel yourself relax slightly but it was clear you were still tense and on edge.

“Hey, don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. You were in a bad way the last night.” Dean told you, walking over with a small bowl of mixed berries and some pain medication. He gently set it down on the nightstand and silently asked for permission to touch your face.

“What happened last night?” You asked, raising an eyebrow as he carefully pushed your hair to behind your ear to look at a small cut on your eyebrow where your eye was bruised.

“Found you under a park bench, two jackasses were hurting you. Don’t worry though, they won’t be coming anywhere near you any time soon. Your ribs are a little bruised and you have a small cut here, but you’ll live Miss girl with a dream.” He told you as he gently touched the cut before moving away. “I wasn’t sure what you like food wise so, I brought you some berries. My idiot brother thinks everyone likes fruit but honestly, it’s waffles or pancakes that people like the most.”

“Thank you, Dean.” You said softly as you slowly ate a few berries, taking the pain medication at the same time. “It’s Y/N by the way and waffles are better than anything else for breakfast.” You saw him raise an eyebrow, causing you to giggle slightly. The sound of your giggle obviously made him happy since a smile broke out on his face. “My name, it’s Y/N.”

“Well, Y/N, that’s a beautiful name for a very beautiful lady.” Dean told you with a wink. Standing up to walk over to pull out some clothes for you to wear. “Hope you don’t mind; I got a friend to pick up some clothes for you this morning. I don’t think you’d want to stay in those, they’re a bit muddy. Why were you out like that anyway?” He asked you, placing the clothes at the end of the bed.

You looked up at Dean, biting your lip nervously as you nodded, closing your eyes briefly whilst you ate, the fear slowly bubbling up in your chest again as to what was going to happen next. Unbeknownst to you, Dean could feel that fear as well. “R-right, thank you again. Like I said before, just heading for my dream.” You said simply, finishing off the fruit and placing the bowl on the nightstand.

“A girl with dreams usually makes sure they have enough money for a motel, you didn’t even have enough to cover the beer. Cut the crap and just tell me why you’re really here okay?” Dean said, eyeing you up. Even with his small outburst, he kept his tone even and as calm as possible, but you couldn’t help but let the tears fall.

“I… I was kicked out of my home. I don’t drive so I’ve been walking for a month, and I finally ran out of money.” You admitted quietly. It wasn’t really lying; you did run out of money but maybe it wasn’t the full truth.

“What about your parents? Friends? What about a soulmate, everyone has a soulmate?” Dean asked, concern filling his eyes as he watched your movements. The fact you’d been by yourself for over a month with no money concerned him greatly.

“Soulmate?” You asked, refusing to address about your parents. A weird was felt in your chest when you saw Dean grow even more concerned. It was as though you could feel the concern he felt.

“Everyone is born with a soulmate. Then there’s lucky ones like my brother Sam. Sammy has two the lucky son of a bitch. He lost his first one though to a house fire. He was head over heels for Jess, but he’s now happily married with Ruby.” Dean explained with a smile.

“How do you know they’re your soulmate? Have you met yours?” You asked, mentally cursing your father for never teaching you about soulmates. You saw Dean look down as he shook his head.

“Never met mine, although I think I will very soon.” He started, his eyes lingering on you for a few moments. “Well, there’s usually three different signs. First, there’s the mark sign; both soulmates will have the same mark. Second, both will feel similar feelings, if I were hurting and I met my soulmate, she would also feel it but only after we meet for the first time. The final one is, you naturally feel safe around your soulmate.” He explained, you nodded along as you took it all in.

“I was just told my ‘mark’ was just a scar.” You told Dean, lifting your shirt up slightly to show him the star on your side. You flinched away slightly when you felt Dean’s fingers trace it gently.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have... Well, it’s definitely not a scar.” He told you with a soft smile. “I’m sure you’ll meet yours soon… Or maybe you’ve already met him.” He said with a smile as he stood up.

“Maybe, I’ll be out of your hair soon by the way, I-I’ll repay you for the clothes.” You told him as you stood up, a little shaky at first until Dean steadied you.

“In the condition you’re in, no way. If you’re comfortable with it, you can stay here. Or at my mum’s motel if that’ll make you feel better? Then when you’ve fully healed, you can make the decision to leave or not. I can take you wherever you want in my car. In the meantime, the bar needs an extra pair of hands, and you can earn some extra money. Win-win situation if you ask me and you might even meet your soulmate.”

“I mean, knowing about them now… I would like to meet him one day.” You admitted quietly, watching Dean’s smile grow.

“Great! You go get showered and I’ll meet you downstairs, then, I’ll show you around the town, introduce you to a few locals and friends of mine. You’ll love it here.” He told you with a bright smile, quickly heading out of the room, leaving you standing alone in the room.

You took a deep breath as you walked into the bathroom, getting undressed and stepping under the water falling. A million thoughts running through your mind as you cleaned off. ‘Everything Dean had told me about soulmates was how I felt about him, but he can’t be my soulmate right? Otherwise, he would have told me, surely he would have…’

Dean’s POV

“Hey Sammy… Yeah, no I’m fine. I think I finally found her though. I’m certain it’s her, we have the same mark. I’m worried about her though, she’s been hurt before, she barely trusts me. I can feel it. I haven’t told her just yet… Okay, see you later.” I told Sam over the phone before hanging up and placing my phone down.

I took a deep breath as I smiled a small bit. Now that I’ve found her, I can’t let her go. I won’t let her go; I just don’t want to scare her away and telling her too soon after everything could scare her away for good.

I can feel her loneliness in my chest, and it breaks my heart. “I’ll fix you sweetheart, I promise.” I mumbled to myself as I thought of the perfect plan.

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TAGS: @vicmc624

[mxtxsblog]

Untamed did XY dirty

I love Untamed, I really do. Unpopular opinion: I love love love almost all the changes from the novel. WWX having the same body? Inspired (and MDZS cheated about it: in most adaptations WWX's and MX's body are so similar the audience can't disintiguish them!). The bit about WWX falling, LWJ trying, JC stabbing (but not really)? A piece of art. Demonic cultivation as black smoke? Yes baby!

JC and WQ? Genius.

WWX tenderly wiping away JC's tears in the climax? I want to scream (WWX and JC's relationship is my second favorite one, just after XueXiao). And I love the changes about Yi City quartet! XY appearing early and being a force of demonic cultivation? Sweet. XXC not being so driven to arrest him? Yay. XY dying with a smile remembering XXC? Babies. But I really really really hate the change about XY's tragic backstory. It really changes everything about XY and I simply ignore it (and so usually does fandom, so yay!). Why? Because XY's backstory is divided into two parts, and the division is essential.

(As usual, I wish I had more time and energy to dedicate to this meta, but sadly I can't).

From the start, XY doesn't make it a mystery he grew up beaten up. Because that's not the point, not really. Then XY decides to share a bit with AQ and XXC, and it's the sad story of a child without parents nor money who loves sweets but can't eat them. Of course sweets are a symbol of food, a home, a family, kindness, happiness, everything baby XY (he's only 7 years old!!!) doesn't have. It's noted that child XY is strangely naive and trusting (they call him dim-witted!). So even in his poor situation, he conserved a trust in the world and its justice. (And I think this particular is key to WHX's belief that XY has a good nature). So a man asks XY to do a task, in exchange of some sweets. XY does it (and he's happy to earn the pastries! He doesn't even think about stealing them or anything!), and he's harshly beaten (twice!) because of it, injustly. The story ends for the moment, XY lets out the most important part (and XXC feels that the story is unfinished). Then everything happens. And XY tries to share the last part to XXC. And yes, that's the really important part. XY runs in Chang Cian and, with an innocence impressive for a child in his situation, tells him what happened. He doesn't understand yet, he thinks there was a mistake ("he felt both frustrated and happy"). Surely Chang Cian didn't send a poor innocent child to be beaten for fun. But Chang Cian beats him too, and denies him his pastries. XY tries to stop him, and Chang Cian decides to strike him in the face with a whip and runs him over with his charriot. That's the important part of the story, that's the thing who destroyed and shaped XY. It's not about his little finger (but of course his mutilated hand is a eternal remind of what's happened!). It's not about physical suffering: living poor, alone, homeless, in the streets, XY must had already met many bad people (he himself says that he was beaten a lot as a child). (Although I can concede that the excrucing pain of a crushed hand, obviously not treated, was the worst pain XY had ever felt, with painful and lasting consequences.) It's about hurting a child for one's amusement. It's about tormenting him without any care. As he was a stray dog, a broken toy. It's about being manipulated and hurt simply because a person is rich, is gentry, is powerful. (And also normal people, the man, the waiter, the driver, hurt him without any care. I think that's essential for XY loss of trust in anyone, and his disgust with people in general). If Chang Cian was simply a person who denied a begging child few pastries, if he was simply a cruel man who beated a child, he wouldn't have earned XY's revenge. But XY hates him, not the waiter, not the other man. Why? Because Chang Cian chose him to amuse himself with his pain, with his shattered hopes. XY did everything right, did what was asked of him, and was cruelly hurt for it. And when XY tried to stand up, to demand his recompense, he was hurt even worse. "Is it that, since the fingers weren’t yours, you guys were incapable of feeling the pain?! You guys didn’t know how horrifying screams sounded like out of your own mouths? Why didn’t you ask him why he decided to amuse himself with me without a single reason?!" And of course nobody helped him. Not the waiter, not the driver of the charriot, not the people. Nobody cared about a starving nobody. And it's this cruelty, this abusing of an innocent child's trust, who broke XY. So yes, the backstory in Untamed about a man who denied a homeless child's begging for sweets and run him over, while tragic, lacks the most important part. The things that set Chang Cian apart from all the other people who hurt a homeless child. "A man sat on a table inside the shop. as he saw the child, he gestured for him to come over." XY wasn't bothering him in any way. The man just saw a poor defenseless child and decided to hurt him and be cruel without any care. And yes, I can't forgive The Untamed for this. So in all my meta XY's backstory is MDZS's one. Because the other one really doesn't make sense and lacks the

original's complexity and brutality (also, XXC gives XY candies even in The Untamed, so it makes more sense if the story was told). Last but not least: they robbed us of XY sharing the first part of his story around the fire. Eternal shame on them. Of course in my meta that scene happened. Strangely enough, they originally also cut XY's incredibly complicated smile at XXC by the fire. Maybe they didn't know how the audience would have reacted to XY, who from what I can see he's a popular but deeply divisive character. So they couldn't decide how much sympathetic they wanted to present him? (Similar to Loki's case, in truth). So in the end: don't let Untamed fools you, XY's backstory is tragic and deep. And it's not about physical hurt, but the shattering of a child's trust in the world.

(Also, XY knows and hates that cultivators and people in general don't care about powerful people abusing poor nobodies. Ghosts and monsters? Political conquests? Of course, but rich powerful people hurting defenseless children? Ahahah, no.)

In short: XY is a woobie destroyer of worlds and that's really sexy of him.

Also, the world fully earned his enmity.

Also, I want all the AUs where somebody is kind to this child and nurses him back to health. As consequence, magic ancient China loses a killer and gains a bloody defensor of starving children, eater of the rich, rogue demoniac cultivator.

[frecklesandstardust]

Let’s Talk About Klaus

Hi, friends. The Umbrella Academy’s second season came out recently. I finished it about twelve hours after. And I have feelings. We need to talk about Klaus. 

Now, here is my disclaimer. From the very first moment I saw him, Klaus was my favorite, but please read to the end before yelling about how Klaus-stans refuse to see his negative qualities. Thank you <3 (Also, this will involve spoilers for Season 2 and probably be an essay, so be prepared.)

Okay, first of all. Let’s look at Season 1 Klaus. 

He’s an asshole. Just like all of his siblings. They were raised by a narcissistic egomaniac and given hero complexes from pretty much the second they were born. Obviously they all lack empathy and healthy coping mechanisms. We can all agree on that. 

However, Klaus is also kind. So unbelievably kind. He makes crass jokes and looks out for himself first, but he is also so caring. 

When we first see him, he is encouraging people in rehab. He has a rapport with the EMT who brings him back to life. He hugs Allison as soon as he sees her at the mansion and seems genuinely concerned about her and her life. When the giant portal opens, he grabs a fire extinguisher and runs to the front to try and protect his siblings. Siblings who essentially ignored and belittled him for years. 

Fast forward and we see him helping Diego and Five and Luther. We see him caring, sincerely caring about his siblings. He breaks a snowglobe over his head to help Five get the answers he needs. He follows Luther to a rave and dies trying to save his life, even though he’s riddled with PTSD and freshly sober. We see him try so fucking hard to not give out any information about Five when he’s being literally tortured by assassins. He saves Diego from Hazel and Cha-Cha at the hotel, even though he could have stayed safe in the car. He risked his life to save a brother who didn’t even notice he had been kidnapped. 

We watch him die. We watch him get locked in a museum by his father figure and tortured by his abilities. We watch him be traumatized over and over again by ghosts that look just as gruesome as the day they died. We watch him be hurt and kidnapped. We watch him get thrust into a literal war, where he lost his soulmate after staying and fighting for ten months because he was just that in love with Dave. 

Out of every character, Klaus clearly has the most trauma. This isn't even including the fact that he was homeless for years and alluded to non-consensual sexual situations. Ergo, trading sex for a place to sleep and things like that. I am personally of the belief that Reggie was the reason Klaus broke his jaw, which Diego talks about in S1, but that’s my own opinion. 

Looking at all of that, Klaus has PTSD out the whazoo. Like, he is filled to the brim with trauma and no one cares enough to ask or help him. Five sees him after Dave dies and only cares about the briefcase. Diego hears that he lost someone and has the absolute audacity to call Klaus “lucky” because at least he can see them whenever he wants. Not one of his siblings understands Klaus’s powers and that’s terrifying because he had to deal with screaming, tormented ghosts completely by himself. Imagine that. Powers that you can’t control eating you alive and the only thing that helps dim the noise is drugs. 

And your family doesn’t care enough to ask. They just write you off as a useless junkie. 

Now, like I mentioned earlier, Klaus is not an innocent quote unquote soft boi. He is inherently selfish. But, he had to be. He had to be selfish in order to survive. He was on the streets. Alone. If he wasn’t selfish, he would have been dead ten times over. 

He stole things. He lied. He hurt people. He was an asshole. Just like they all were. 

But he was never cruel. 

His relationship with Ben in the first season was pretty awesome. We get to see the snark and the familiarity and the bond between them. And it makes sense, to some extent, why Ben is constantly trying to get Klaus to be better. If Klaus hasn’t seen his siblings for years, neither has Ben. I genuinely think Ben wanted to believe that they had changed. He wanted his siblings to be good, decent people. 

That’s why he told Klaus to go after Luther. Why he told him that his family would notice he was missing when he get kidnapped by Cha-Cha and Hazel. 

But it does not excuse the fact that Ben never apologized. He was wrong and he never said sorry for it. He inadvertently got Klaus killed and he never admitted that he made a mistake. 

He was there for so much of Klaus’s trauma and he just brushed it off. We never see Ben try to be there for Klaus or try to help him come to terms with everything. Ben can see the other ghosts. He knows that they’re terrifying and that Klaus’s powers are completely haywire. Why doesn’t he acknowledge that? 

Let’s move on to Season 2. 

For some reason, all of Klaus’s character development has been tossed out the window. He is a wildcard with no plot line to follow. He says random things and seems to act as comedic relief for the most part, except it rarely works.

For starters, his powers are completely gone, for the most part. We see him in a brief opening scene absolutely kicking ass with his ghost army. But, after that, we don’t see any ghost except Ben. We don’t see him learning to control his powers or talking to ghosts. We don’t even hear about his powers. It’s like they’ve been erased. 

That kind of trauma doesn’t go away. Especially when we find out he has been sober for three years. 

I’ve seen some people argue that he traded addictions. Swapped the drugs for the cult and the adoration that came with it. I don’t agree to that for a few reasons. 

First, he is very clearly uncomfortable with the cult touching him. And we see in the flashback that it happened completely by accident. Klaus was, again, trying to survive. Was it selfish? Yeah. Did he use that old woman to shamelessly find a place in a world he’s not supposed to exist in? Yeah! But, like I stated earlier, Klaus knows how to survive. He knows what to do to get by. All he is doing is trying to survive. Ben can scream all he wants about fairness, but he wasn’t offering up any options to get Klaus a place to sleep and a way to survive in the past. 

Second, we don’t know how the cult came about exactly. We don’t know what started it. We don’t know how it spiraled from whatever it started as into a cult. And Klaus hates it. He spends the entire season trying to get away from everyone. He used it as a means to survive and then wanted space. His entire plan was to get to 1963 and save Dave--probably from the start of 1960, to be honest. But to get to Dave, he had to survive. He had to get to a place where saving Dave was possible. He can’t save him if he’s dead or homeless. 

Third, Klaus very openly is touch-starved and desperate for attention. He spent his childhood being overlooked and his adulthood being treated like a disease. He just wants someone to take him seriously and care about him. The cult does. They love him for who he is, for his weird humor and mannerisms. They believe him when he talks. He’s never had that before, not since Dave. 

He finally has a group of people that genuinely care about what he has to say. Even if it’s all bullshit! They still listen to him. So, of course he sticks around. Of course he lets it grow. He thinks everyone he loves is dead! He’s holding onto the only thing he can. It just happens to be a cult. 

Next point: Ben. 

Ooh boy, this is gonna be a long one.

Ben is also not a soft boi. One tender scene with Vanya does not undo an entire season of cruelty and callousness. 

Before we get into that, let’s talk about the point everyone brings up: Klaus didn’t tell anyone Ben was there! 

Why should he? They never believed him the first thousand times he tried to tell them. What makes it any different fifty years in the past? 

But aside from that, I have two theories. 

One, I’m curious as to if he was subconsciously trying to punish Ben. Ben essentially got him killed at the rave with Luther. He also never apologized, as I mentioned earlier. He blows Klaus off, just like the rest of his siblings, even though, out of anyone, Ben should know better. From the very beginning of S2, Ben is saying some pretty nasty stuff to Klaus. Low blows that shouldn’t be brought up. If that’s been happening for 3+ years, it’s possible that Klaus internally is punishing Ben for being just like the others. 

Second, he’s scared of losing Ben. It’s been 17 years of only having Ben by his side. Constantly. And we know Klaus has watched the love of his life bleed out right in front of him. That’s PTSD. And PTSD doesn’t exactly involve healthy coping methods. So, it’s entirely possible that Klaus doesn’t saying anything about Ben being there because he is scared to lose him to his siblings. If Ben is corporeal, if they know Ben is there, what’s stopping Ben from leaving to go spend all his time with someone else? Someone that isn’t Klaus? Klaus could be trying to protect himself from losing another person. 

Does that make it okay for Klaus to hide the fact that Ben is there? No. But does it kind of make sense? Yeah. Ben deserved to reconnect with his family, but Klaus is traumatized beyond belief and clearly isn’t in the right state to make sound and logical decisions all the time. If we can forgive Five for murdering the Commission Board in cold blood and Vanya for blowing up the world twice, we can forgive Klaus for keeping Ben’s existence to himself (especially since he tried to tell them in S1 and was immediately written off as an attention whore.)

Now, let’s talk about the possession, aka my least favorite thing about the entire season. 

Ben possessing Klaus is assault. End of story. Non-negotiable. It’s not funny. It’s not cute. It’s not “payback.” It’s assault. 

We know that Klaus is terrified by his powers. We know that he has trauma in his past, involving non-consensual experiences. So does Ben. Worse, Ben was there for a lot of it. 

Ben flat out ignored Klaus’s discomfort for his own selfish gain. He was so hellbent on possessing Klaus that he ignored the fact that Klaus was terrified to go to sleep because he knew Ben would possess him without consent. 

And let’s acknowledge the fact that Klaus doesn’t owe Ben anything. He has no obligation to let himself be possessed. Ben is dead. And that’s horrible. It’s unfair and Ben did not deserve to die. But he. is. dead. The dead do not get free access to the bodies of the living just because they want to feel things again. 

Ben completely disregarded Klaus’s feelings because he had a crush on a girl who didn’t even know he existed. Klaus, who willingly accepted possession the second he realized it was important to Ben. Klaus, who laid out strict ground rules, showing he was clearly terrified of the idea, but still did it anyway because he loves his brother and harbors guilt for conjuring him the day of Ben’s funeral. Klaus, who had just been brushed off after failing to stop Dave from enlisting.

Ben possesses him and almost immediately starts to make out with a girl who thinks he is Klaus. That is sexual assault. If I have a twin sister and that twin sister sleeps with my husband, who believes she is me, then she has raped him. That is rape. 

Ben doing anything physical with that girl, who clearly showed that she was interested in Klaus, is sexual assault. She did not consent to sleep with Ben. She consented to sleep with Klaus, who was trying his best to break the possession and stop the entire thing from happening. 

And Ben fought him on it. We see them struggle in Klaus’s body for the next several minutes. Ben doesn’t care that Klaus is clearly uncomfortable, that Klaus wants him out. He selfishly wants to stay in control because of his own desires. He ignores Klaus’s rules and does what he wants without considering the consequences. 

This is the third time that Ben has used possession to control Klaus. We see it when they are fighting earlier in the season at the cult mansion. We see it again at the dinner with Reginald. We see Klaus essentially have a seizure (and we see none of his family members ask if he is okay. They just roll their eyes.) We see Klaus literally vomit once he forces Ben out of him in that alley with Five and Luther. Still, no one asks if he is okay. 

Worse than that, Ben says that he no regrets. And then reiterates the statement! Ben assaulted his brother and does not give a flying fuck. That’s crueler than anything Klaus has ever done. I would argue that it’s the cruelest thing any of the Hargreeves have done, to be honest. 

It doesn’t matter how much of an asshole Klaus is or how selfish or how flamboyant. His consent still matters. His boundaries are just as important. 

Overall, this season just gave Klaus more trauma while still leaving his PTSD and mental illness completely unaddressed. They essentially removed his powers and took away his bond with Ben. Like, in the first season, Ben is almost always with Klaus. That is Klaus’s power, after all. In the second season, Klaus’s entire arc is without Ben. All of his missions are without Ben present. 

There is absolutely no fucking way that Klaus wouldn't bring Ben with him to get tacos with Vanya and Allison. He loves Ben, more than anyone. We see that constantly in the first season, outside of a few mishaps. 

I love Ben. I genuinely love Ben and his story in the first season. But in S2, they took him and twisted him into a callous thing with no respect for consent or his brother. If those three years with Klaus in 1960 were anywhere near as bad as what we see in 1963, I can see why Klaus wouldn’t want Ben around his family. 

I was supposed to love Ben and cry for him. And don’t get me wrong, I did. I cried a lot in the last episode. But that scene with Vanya? Where he tells her she’s not a monster and that they should have done better and that they could help her control her powers? That’s the exact same damn speech he should have told Klaus. Vanya’s destruction was always outward. It always cost millions of people their lives. Klaus’s was inward. So why does Vanya deserve the help and love and support while Klaus gets tossed aside?

They both needed a family and only one of them got it this season. Sure, Allison and Klaus had some great scenes together. But she didn’t ask if he was okay when Ben possessed him at dinner. She didn’t check on him. 

Klaus deserved better. He deserved to work through is trauma and to have a family that takes care of him and supports him and helps him figure out how to deal with the ghosts. He deserved to control his own body and to say no when Ben wanted to possess him. He deserved a goddamn hug. 

Klaus was inherently selfish. However, he also gave up everything. He sacrificed his entire relationship with Dave to try and save his life. If he had succeeded, if Dave had never enlisted, they never would have met. They never would have fallen in love. Dave would never remember being with him. He nearly gave that up to protect the love of his life. 

Klaus is not perfect. He’s an asshole at best sometimes. But he’s also kind and compassionate and loves harder than every other character on that show. He deserved better. 

This has turned into a massive essay, but the bottom line is that S2 let Klaus and Ben down. So many things were handled poorly--from consent to mental illness. It could have been great. It could have been an opportunity to fix a lot of the mistakes made in the first season. Ben and Klaus could have talked everything out and figured out the ghosts and the war and the trauma together. They were never given that chance. 

There were so many good parts of this season, but the bad parts were so bad that it tainted the rest. I know the writers could have done better. They did it with Luther and Allison! They made their characters great this season and showcased some amazing relationships between the siblings. I’m confused as to how they let Klaus and Ben fall through the cracks so heavily. 

[cdt12345]

Here are some of my rambling thoughts on Shameless 11x09. My only real issue with this episode is the way it ended. For some reason these episodes have been ending awkwardly. I feel like the episode isn't finished yet, but then it ends. Like, what the hell happened to Gemma and Amy? We never saw Kevin find his children! It's like whoever is in charge has never ended a show before and don't know where to stop.

I hate that Mickey was in pain and crying, But I did love that he was allowed to cry and grieve. He had a safe space and safe person he could cry in front of and go through all his crazy range of emotions with.

I loved that Ian gave Mickey the space he needed, brought him coffee, and kept Mickey's perspective of Terry in check. All the while still letting Mickey grieve and helping him through.

The scene with them going through Terry's stuff was a reminder of what Mickey said to Ian in season 7. Ian always had his back more than his family ever did.

Mickey is left to deal with Terry's arrangements and going through his stuff and all the Milkovich's are gone. Where was Sandy, where were the other Milkovich's who were actually living in the house with Terry? They wouldn't even take care of him when he was alive. Not a single one is there to help Mickey. Only Ian!

Ian was there through everything. Ian always has and always will have Mickey's back. I don't know what more proof people need to see how the Milkovich's just aren't close and Ian is the only one who was and will always be there for Mickey. I need no more proof of Ian's love for Mickey. Haven't needed it for a long time.

People wanted Mickey to be close with Sandy when she was introduced last season, but they hardly even interacted. How is it, that people like to point out how Mandy and Mickey weren't close, but actually believed Sandy and Mickey could be close?

I agree Mandy and Mickey aren't as close as we'd like them to be. Especially not as close as she was with Ian. But if Mickey was close to any of his relatives, it would've been Mandy. They grew up in the same house with the same father. Sandy didn't. She may have lived with them from time to time throughout the years, but it was not the same. Not to mention she was never even mentioned before, just like the rest of the Milkovich's that showed up this season.

I didn't expect it, but I thought this would be one of the last chances they had to at least mention Mandy. Maybe saying they talked to her and told her about Terry's death over the phone. Anything! But still not a single mention. Like the writers forgot she existed. Even when Mickey is reminiscing about dodge the dagger, he mentions his brothers. If someone was watching the show from season 7 on, they'd never even know he had a sister.

When Mickey described the nun as "A cold blooded killer in a nun costume. We don't actually know that yet." that made me laugh. Ian stopping him from ranting any further was hilarious!

I loved how @annatrow pointed out that Ian still thought Rachel could've married Terry after he killed her father because Ian would've, had Mickey done the same to Frank. Ian's like that's not a deal breaker for me and Mickey! 😂🤣😂🤣

Omg the knife scene at the funeral home! When that guy was behind them and they get all awkward and Ian tells Mickey to put the knife away! I laughed so hard at that! That was fucking hilarious! These two are so embarrassing, you can't take them anywhere! 🤣🤣🤣

Another time that Ian took charge for Mickey. Like finding Terry a nurse, he was talking to the guy at the funeral home about Terry's wishes and asking what the most affordable package they had. I love that Ian takes charge for Mickey like that, even when it's for Terry and Ian could care less about the man. Ian knows, seen, and has been a victim of Terry's. He even knows about Mandy's rape by Terry. I don't even think Mickey ever found out about Terry raping Mandy. Only Ian, Lip, Mandy, and Terry knew about it. Wonder if that would've changed the way Mickey grieved Terry? The love of Ian's life has suffered so much because of Terry. Ian has every reason to hate this man. It continues to amaze me how he still keeps helping take care of Terry and makes arrangements for him because he knows that's what Mickey wants and needs right now.

THEY SANG AGAIN!!!! I know some people find it odd. But it was a final fuck you to Terry. Ian even said I know what Terry would love. Obviously he was being sarcastic because he knows Terry would hate that. Maybe if it hadn't been right after they just sang in the bathroom, it wouldn't have seemed so odd to people. Maybe if it had been more spread out from the last time they sang. But I do love that it's canon that they sing together pretty often now! They're free and happier than they've ever been before. Who is to say that it's ooc for them now that they can be themselves and their happy for the first time in their lives.

The song Ian picked?! Fucking perfect! It was Mickey's life story in that song! And the fact that Ian picked that song shows how Ian really sees Mickey. As a survivor who has been through so much, tormented by a father who wanted to knock him down, but Mickey persevered. He sees Mickey for who he really is and how much he's gone through in a way that no one ever has or ever will.

Mickey deserves that. He deserves Ian and vice versa really. They deserve each other and in moments like these I'm so freaking happy they have each other for the rest of their lives. When Ian lost his mom, he was alone in his grief and that broke my heart. Not anymore!

Okay, and the whole time they're at the cemetery, I was watching that guy behind them. I was thinking, Ummm are you going to do this with that guy right there?! I'm sure he's gonna notice the fire behind him! 🤣🤣

I didn't notice until a GIF was made about Mickey touching Ian's butt at the cemetery! When re watching, I realized Mickey wasn't holding Ian until the guy yelled at them. I don't know why that made it so much funnier to me, but it really did! The guy yells at them, Mickey grabs Ian's butt in response and then they run off. That's fucking hilarious!!! Love the parallel from them running off after Mickey punched Ned in season 3. Even laughing when they ran away at the cemetery! I wish we could've seen them laughing and running away in this one instead of just hearing them laughing.

When discussing this episode with @luckyshazmrsmonaghansblog we spoke of how everyone seems to be more stupid this season, especially Lip in my opinion. When watching season 8 & 9, I forgot that Lip was supposed to be the genius of the family! I literally forgot! There were easy words that I knew, that he would ask what that meant. And I was like what? How does he, the genius, not know what that means? Even I know what that means! Not to mention remodeling a house he didn't own this season! The writers have really dumbed everyone down. Probably for comedy sake but it's just frustrating.

Other character points:

• Debbie had the nerve to ask Liam if he wanted to ask her what she was doing, after she told him she didn't have time for his shit when he had real concerns about being homeless. She won't listen to him but she expects him to listen to her. Then she tells Lip about Liam's fear! Meaning she knew what was bothering him and she never tried to console him or talk to the others about it.

• I did find it weird that Lip said he and Tami talked about it and wanted Liam to come live with them. I thought when did they have time to have that conversation? Lip didn't even know that Liam was worried about that until Debbie told him. Then I saw a few posts about people even doubting that that conversation even happened and I now feel like that is a real possibility. Lip has spent this whole season lying to Tami and keeping things from her. So, it's not far fetched to think he didn't talk to her about it. If they did, why not talk to Liam about that sooner? Also doubt Tami would be okay with it. Though Liam is just a kid, she never cared for the Gallagher's and only cares when it's her own family that needs something. Like wanting the Gallagher's to chip in on her sisters medical bill. I'm never gonna get over that! I know she was scared but what the hell was that?! You know she wouldn't do the same for the Gallagher's. She's the kind who only cares about her side of the family and not her significant others family.

• I know they're going to sell the house and I would normally be okay with that. But I hate that Lip is making the decision for everyone. He doesn't live in the house, it's not even under his name, Carl paid for the house when they almost lost it, and the rest of the Gallagher's have been paying the bills while he's been out of the house. Lip is not the all mighty one in charge of the house or their lives. He makes me not want them to move out of the house only so he doesn't get his way. Especially after he tells everyone they're not talking about it anymore and he starts tearing down walls to a house his siblings and niece are still living in and when he doesn't even live there anymore. Fucker needs to not get his way every once in a while.

• Vee keeps telling her mom, she's not going to last in Kentucky and she'll be back in a few months. That's a sure fire way to make sure her mom never moves back to Chicago. Could just be me, but when someone says shit like that to me, it makes me want to prove them wrong even more!

• I'm not usually a fan of Frank, but I did like seeing him with Serena. It showed a rare moment of his humanity, hugging her and even putting on his mask before doing so. I thought that was thoughtful of him.

[voidstilesplease]

command me to be well

(a Beacon Hills Academy for the Supernaturals ficlet)

~•~

Supernatural creatures are known and accepted in society, and they have their branch and section in everything - the government, religion, court justice, health, food production, etc. They coexist with humans. There are still supremacist groups on both ends of the spectrum, but as a whole, supernaturals and humans share the world in equal.

In Beacon Hills Academy for the Supernaturals, mages (magic wielders) and shapeshifters (werewolves, werefoxes, were-coyotes, etc.) study and learn about themselves, strengths, and weaknesses, and adaptation in the human world. 

Stiles takes both mage and shapeshifter classes. His mother had been a fire werefox, and his grandmother a mage. The magic ability stays dormant in between generations, so Stiles received the spark that skipped his mother. Stiles's dad is the Sheriff of Beacon Hills, Homo Sapiens division. (It's not what it's called, but Stiles uses the term to annoy his father.) 

Every werefox can shift to their animal forms since birth. Their blood has no infectious components like werewolves, to turn an existing creature into one. So their kind only reproduces through procreation, but the power comes only between the ages of eighteen to twenty and never predictable. There are thirteen classifications of werefoxes: Heaven, Wind, Spirit, Fire, Earth, River, Ocean, Mountain, Forest, Thunder, Time, Sound, and Dark. And they all have to study every single one element through simulations and a weird practice called internalization. It's like the Buddhists' enlightenment when they have to "seek within themselves the core of their being" or whatever crap like that.

His mage classes are much worse. As a werefox, his reading skills are for shit, even with his human blood. His kind takes time to make sense of written symbols -it's called dyslexia in the human tongue- and so it proves to be a problem in his magic lessons.

"Stiles!" Kira, also a werefox and his non-biological sister, appears at his side after class. "Come over this afternoon and have dinner at home. Dad is making sushi."

The mention of sushi makes his mouth water, but he curls his lips downward. "I can't. I'm on my way to solitary study."

She winces sympathetically, "Yikes."

The solitary study is another word for detention in the Supernatural school. The students are put into confinement to reflect and read. It could be for an hour up to five -their offense and the amount of hate the teacher has for them decides the length of the stay. It doesn't sound bad when you hear of it the first time, but the stillness of being alone in a white room, being forced to think, drives everyone crazy. Stiles is probably the one person in the school who has seen those walls the most.

"What happened?" She asks, hoisting her backpack, forehead creasing intently.

Stiles shrugs, "In my mage class, we were practicing an incantation. I mispronounced a word because the symbols were flying all over the page," they stop walking when they reach the hallway that will separate them; Kira to the exit, and Stiles to his punishment. "All the light bulbs in the room broke simultaneously, and the shards went everywhere, mostly lodged in my classmates' and teacher's faces."

"Ouch,"

Stiles hums, curling his lips. "My incantation teacher hates me, just as much as I hate him. Every mistake I make is an excuse for him to send me to solitary. He also thinks I'm doing it on purpose. He gave me five hours today, and I'm expecting another tomorrow for the potion I fucked up earlier in another of his class."

"But that's unfair," Kira says, indignant for Stiles. "We're dyslexic. Every teacher should consider the limitations of each of us."

Stiles purses his lips but doesn't say anything. He doesn't mention to Kira that when the symbols rearrange in his mind, it's not always a gibberish mess. Sometimes, they're also perfectly readable -and quite harmful, depending on the caster's intention. He doesn't mention that more than half the time, he purposely utters curses and adds the wrong ingredients to concoctions. Stiles only does it for fun, though, to ruffle his teachers and enemies. He's a school jester; everyone knows that. He doesn't mean to cause pain to anyone -not all the time.

He's not vicious or vengeful. He swears he's not.

He's only a playful fox, curious with the less explored potentials of his power -even its violent capacity.

~•~

But it gets worse. It becomes an inclination more than a mere curiosity, especially when Stiles meets him.

In his fourth year in the Supernatural school, the management opened a program for the underaged supernaturals in the custody center. They're the young, homeless lawbreakers abandoned to the care of social workers after countless encounters with the law enforcement and their family's depletion of funds to cover the fines for damages they have caused.

The program grants them one term of attendance in the school instead of being instructed by tutors at the center, and a second one if the first term yields positive reports.

There are eight of them, and all are shapeshifters. There are three werewolves, a kanima, a wendigo, a chameleon, an electric eel (Stiles doesn't want to know how this kind came to be), and a were-coyote. All of them have criminal records, of course, but one has a count for murder - and his sister, no less. And Stiles knew him before his lock-up. They had not been friends because of Stiles's mistrust of canine shapeshifters, but he recognizes him right at first sight in years.

But while werefoxes prefer to stay away from the dogs, the latter doesn't have such urge to keep scarce, especially one among the outlaws: Theo Raeken.

He's taken one look at Stiles and decided to torment him. Witnessing Stiles do illegal magic did not help the case. Instead, it invited Theo more. Theo stalks him (as much as he can inside school grounds), stares at him, vies for his attention, pushes all the wrong but right buttons. Stiles feels repulsed by the way his blood thrums in Theo's presence. He's disgusted with himself for getting excited by his challenge. Stiles reminds himself daily that it's Theo -the one who murders their blood, and will probably have no qualms on staining their hands with someone else's. But Theo keeps provoking him, daring him to let go of caution. 

One day, Stiles does.

He unleashes himself and leaves Theo bloody, beaten-up, broken, and exhilarated, and himself satisfied for the first time. Theo stops prodding him after that. He starts tempting him: We can run. None of them listens. Their truth is the only truth. And Stiles thinks he's right.

He's almost eighteen. His fox's element should be manifesting -and it looks like it is.

~•~

"What happens if I turn out to be the wrong kind?" Stiles asks Kira one night, in the middle of video game night at her house.

Kira is focused on the screen, but she echoes Stiles. "The wrong kind?"

"A dark fox,"

That pulls Kira's attention away from the screen quicker than they can run. Her eyes are wide with alarm when she presses pause and turns to Stiles. She opens her mouth but speaks nothing for a long time. It seems she's too shocked for words. Finally, she shakes her head. "You're not."

Stiles sighs, putting down his controller. "There's one out of thirteen possibilities that I am. It's little, but it's there nonetheless."

Kira scoots closer, holding Stiles's arm, her clutch tight. "Yes, but," she stammers, "there hasn't been one in a long time."

"Of course, there isn't," Stiles agrees, looking at Kira. "They're exterminated as soon as they present to snuff out any chance of gaining power and growing a second tail."

"But you're not one," Kira says forcefully, eyes suspiciously moist.

Stiles replies softly, "I enjoy causing mayhem."

She shakes her head hard, "We all like trouble, Stiles. That's sort of what we are,"

Stiles can't look at her eyes when he admits his truth, so he turns away. "I inflict pain," Kira freezes in her touch. "and like it. The sight of blood makes me sick but with pleasure. I-" he pauses, wipes the sweat that gathered in his nose. He swallows. "I want to get into someone's head and twist their mind. I have done it, and I want to do it again."

Kira draws uneven breaths beside him. Her scent has turned sweet with fear -and though it makes his stomach twist, Stiles inhales it, savors it.

Kira's voice quivers, "If you learn to suppress it-"

"If it can be suppressed and controlled, there would've been no vulpine law authorizing the killing of a nogitsune."

Kira bows her head in defeat, sniffing.

"My magic," his whispering voice is loud in her room, reverberating in its four walls. He's been coming here since he was a child. Who knows when and if he can have the chance again. "It knows what I might be. It flows in my veins with my blood, rushing when I'm doing what I shouldn't be."

They're silent for a long moment; Stiles refuses to meet Kira's eyes, and Kira strives to calm her racing heart. She doesn't recoil from her touch, even when she was afraid. Now that the fear has subsided, she moves to kneel in front of him and takes his face between her small hands, prompting him to face her. When he raises his head, Kira's eyes are glowing, fiery around the black. Stiles flashes his in response.

"If you are," Kira says, tone final and sure. "I'm with you. You're my brother, and I love you."

Stiles knows she will stand by her words, but he doesn't wish her to. Kira has a whole life ahead of her that she can't spend hiding a nogitsune or running with one.

Because Stiles will run, damn if he won't. He's not going down, and he won't let them catch him. 

He leans his head against her hand, kissing the soft palm of it. He rubs his nose on the residual unease still clinging underneath her skin. "I love you, too."

And then he will come back invincible.

~•~

[quillandink333]

Scarlet Carnations ~ Part VII

BotW Link X Zelda ~ Detective AU

Rating: T

Word Count: 4k

WARNINGS: death, murder, loss, trauma, blood and gore, terrorism, organized crime, self-harm

Summary: Inspector Zelda Hyrule, assisted by the faithful Constable Link Fyori, is infamous for cracking the most confounding of cases in a town dominated by crime. Her latest assignment is to solve the murder of her own godmother, Impa Sheikah, the late CEO of Sheikah Tech. Incorporated, while staying under the radar of the dreaded Yiga organization.

Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V • Part VI • Part VII • Epilogue • Masterlist

It took me far too long to recover from the discovery I’d made deep beneath the foundation of the Sheikah estate. Who knew how many more had been forced to suffer at the hands of the Yiga over the course of that period? It was high time to end this era of tyranny and grief, and to have anyone but myself take the lead was not an option. Whatever truth was waiting for me at the end of all this, so be it. I had to see it with my own two eyes. I had to see her.

To help set my plan into motion, the only person I had left to turn to was Prosecutor Sigatur, and though she had once held my mother in the utmost respect, she had benevolently volunteered to present my findings to the courts in my stead. As confident as I was in my argument and as desperately as I desired to be there for Link, I couldn’t quite stomach the thought of taking the stand and exposing myself to the discrimination of the public eye again.

And so, as the proceedings went on for the following few days, I spent my time back at the apartment, making myself useful by poring through my mountainous collection of data on the eighteen-year-old incident that I’d amassed over the years and had been keeping in my office until now. Now that I had been let go, my flat was practically overflowing with newspaper clippings, copies of investigation reports, and whatever else not. Every time I would open the door upon arriving home, I’d get hit in the face with the musty stench of dust and old magazines that I had nowhere to properly put away.

Though my collection was indeed vast, it was far more so in physical volume than in information. Most of the documents in it were no more than different accounts of the same basic facts. All the useful info I could glean was that the fire at City Hall had taken the lives of most, if not all, administrative officials who had been there working at the time, and those members of council who may or may not have been killed had never been seen nor heard from again, their bodies left for ash. And according to my sources, Mayor Hyrule had been amongst them.

There was a certain line in her letter to Auntie Impa that had tipped me off to her current whereabouts. “...I have been keeping watch over you from the ashes of the afterlife...” The imagery laced so intricately into those words had struck a nerve. There was only one place in this town that both would’ve been of any significance to her and was covered in ash: the crumbling ruins where the former City Hall had once stood.

Having reached the point of culmination in my plotting, I invited the newly reinstated Constable Fyori over for tea. The two of us meeting in my office would have been preferable, but we’d just have to make do with this for the time being.

“If my hypothesis is correct, then I am about to enter the belly of the beast,” I deliberated. Seated on my settee and restlessly tapping the floor with his heel, Link listened with both eyes and ears as I paced about the room. “Ideally, I’d have some sort of backup at my disposal. Maybe I could phone Urbosa and ask her to lend me a hand, just once more...”

“If I may,” he butted in, “why are you speaking as though you’ll be on your own?”

I hadn’t been nearly as prepared as I probably should have been for such a question. “Well...” I stammered, forcing the shame of admitting that I was too afraid to confront my own mother alone down my throat, “would you happen to know someone who’d be willing to accompany me?”

His mouth gaped at my answer. Then jutting his neck out and laying his palms across his chest, he stood up. “Me!”

I took a step back. “Link, what are you talking about?” If something happened to him as a result of this, which was more likely to occur than not, then his last moments would surely be filled with nothing but fear and regret. Not to mention, I would never forgive myself. “I really shouldn’t have to remind you. She’s the reason your family—”

“I know,” he snapped. His eyes were burning a hole straight through me. It was almost frightening. “Believe me, I’m not about to go forgetting it again any time soon.”

“Then why...?” I half-whispered in the most deathly serious tone I could muster.

“Because I’m tired of hiding.”

A harsh breeze rattled the blinds against the window frame. It took me by surprise, but he wasn’t phased by it in the least.

“I’m tired of turning a blind eye and acting like none of the horrible things she’s done ever happened.” I tried to think of a snappy rebuttal, but none came to mind. He’d said these words as though they’d been burning on the tip of his tongue for an untold number of days. He’d had a lot of time to reflect between his false conviction and his acquittal, so it seemed. He and I were of the same mind, of course, but... “And, because...” He stopped himself. Some of the fire in his gaze had gone out in smoke. I got my hopes up when he broke eye contact for a moment or two, and I could all but sense the resolve in him dying, just a little bit.

But then, emitting a slight sound of frustration, he stepped closer. His hands gripped my shoulders, and he pulled me in with the force of a hurricane.

When his lips made impact with mine, my eyes flew open.

He kissed me with what could only be described as reckless abandon. His mouth scraped across my own, and I could feel every ounce of his aggravation in the way his fingertips bit down on my skin alone. It was rough and clumsy and pressed, as if this were sincerely the last and only chance he would ever have.

All of a sudden, we were seventeen again, and standing in the middle of our secondary school’s greenhouse. The scent of dust was replaced with that of lush flora on all sides of us, and sunlight shining in from above caressed the top of my head with its warmth. This was the very scene that I’d used to daydream about time and time again, wasting more hours of each day than I’d have liked to admit at the time.

Now his fingers clung to the corners of my face like I was made of paper, his lips brushing mine almost imperceptibly as his bated breath fanned out against them. When my eyes opened and met with his, his complexion had turned a delicate rouge, and his faultless aquamarines had been clouded over by doubt. In that moment, all I could think to do was to make that doubt vanish. So I ignored the distant sense of guilt that yet lingered and seized the navy blue tie around his neck. Our forms collided, and a sigh like trees swaying at the mercy of a light breeze in summer grazed my cheek.

With Ms. Sigatur’s aid, the constabulary had been more than willing to cooperate and construct a perimeter of officers around the old City Hall’s charred skeleton. Just the fact that the vicinity wasn’t littered in tarps and rubbish and other evidence of homelessness was proof enough of my theory. And yet, the way the wind howled and that the only signs of life were the crows circling up above filled the pit of my stomach with an unease that I could not ignore.

“You know what to do as soon as you sense any sign of danger, I trust?” Urbosa had both her hands planted firmly on my shoulders, bending down to meet my gaze with that same, old look of worry.

I gave a firm nod, never breaking eye contact. “Of course.”

“And you have Fyori and the others looking out for you, so don’t be afraid to call for them if—”

“I’ll be fine, Urbosa. I—”

“No, you will not.”

All I wanted was to get this over with, but she just had to go and remind me of the risks. No matter what I wished for, it wouldn’t change the fact that this was, in all likelihood, a suicide mission. Which was why I’d been so adamant in refusing to allow Link to come along initially.

Said constable was watching the two of us out of the corner of his eye, ever the vigilante as he stood facing the stronghold a mere half dozen paces away.

I heaved a constricted sigh and looked the prosecutor earnestly in the eye. With a deep breath, “I understand how worried you are for me, but please, don’t try to stop me. I’m aware of the risk and I’m prepared to face the consequences. I wouldn’t be doing this if I weren’t confident in my ability to succeed.”

Her stance softened, if only just slightly. “If Hilda weren’t still alive, her spirit would haunt me for letting any harm come to you.”

“But that won’t happen, because she is alive and she would never try to hurt me.” This much I was certain of, for if she had harboured any such intentions, she would have acted on them already, with how the Organization typically operated.

Urbosa’s lips tightened, and the out of place worry lines permeating her expression faded incrementally. She cast her gaze toward my stubborn guardian in silence, and he offered her a calm, yet resolute, nod of the head.

After a quiet embrace that seemed to go on endlessly, she sent me on my way. I looked over my shoulder as she grew smaller and smaller, then turned my focus ahead of me.

Staring up at the towering columns before me, I fell into an unnatural combination of wonder, nostalgia, and loss. (For whom or what was I still mourning? At this point, I didn’t even know the answer to that.) For the most part, the only parts of the building left standing were those invulnerable to fire, and even a great portion of that had fallen victim to weathering and decay over the years. Many of the brick walls had crumbled, leaving little in the way of places to hide a single person, let alone an entire crime syndicate.

The wind was unrelenting as it whipped and thrashed my hair about my face. Yet somehow, even as we drew nearer, the air remained as deathly still as ever.

As we finally came upon the scorched remnants of the main entrance, a gust from the north sent a whirlwind of ash in my direction. My arms rose to shield my face in the nick of time.

After taking a moment to collect myself, I took my first step since childhood into the domain of my mother’s workplace. Surely when I crossed that threshold, I’d thought, surely that was when havoc would finally be wrought upon us. But I was met yet again with stillness. Was nothing but my own breathing able to break this seemingly impenetrable silence?

Just then, my question was answered.

I felt my soul jump out of the confines of my body when the caw of a crow reverberated throughout the government building. If my heart hadn’t been pounding hard enough already...

I jumped again seconds later, though not nearly to the extent at which I just had, when Link’s hand came to weave itself between my fingers. We locked eyes, and he gave me the kindest of smiles. It made me want to melt right into his arms and to never let go, lest I lose him a third, and very likely final, time.

But a clearing of the throat from one of the other nearby constables reminded me of the ever present need to stay alert.

I elected to have the group split into two: one to search the ground floor of the ruins and one to search the upper floor. It was hard to say for certain how stable they were, but the stairways connecting the two stories were still almost fully intact. The upper floor itself, however, was another matter. Though its foundation hadn’t been constructed from any organic material, much of its structural integrity seemed to have been lost. About a third of it had broken off and landed square in the middle of the ground floor, leaving a vast chasm between the two sections of the upper floor that remained. The police had come prepared and equipped for the traversal of rough and uneven terrain, though there was still the danger of stray pieces of rubble raining down onto our heads from above.

I adjusted the strap of my helmet, which was beginning to chafe at the skin underneath my chin, before making my way around the monstrous hunk of brick flooring lying along the length of the grand foyer. Beyond that, as I’d remembered correctly, was the hallway leading to where her office had once been. But the scene I would discover there was a far cry from what I recalled.

What I found there wasn’t unlike what we’d found in the other offices up until now. Any furniture that had once filled the space had been destroyed. I could only just make out the contorted pieces of an old, blackened writing desk, its legs collapsed and the only thing relaying the tale of its former shape being the lamp lying shattered beside it. This I’d only noticed after hearing the crackling of shattered glass underfoot.

A clipped, nasal exhale sounded from behind me, where Link was taking in the scene with an expression similar to my own set into his face. He’d been clinging to my side since we��d begun searching, whether out of a desire to protect or to be protected, I did not know. A question rang in my ears that he’d posed to me during our meeting at my flat. “What will you do once you find her?” It was a simple question, one that I reasonably should have been able to answer, but the only one that came to mind would have sounded beyond foolish if said aloud. In the midst of such an era of power, what crime boss in their right mind would be swayed by a meagre plea to stop? But if not try to reason with her, there wouldn’t be many other options at my disposal.

This supposition only applied given that my mother would be found. My inspections so far had yielded no signs of Yiga activity, or for that matter, any activity whatsoever. Everything here seemed to have been here since the very incident that had levelled the place. In a way, this only added onto my already existing restlessness. The longer this search went on in vain, the less likely we were to find anything of worth, and the more likely it was for this endeavour to end in yet another failure. The moment I would finally give into my fear and call off the mission was steadily approaching.

A shadow flickered in my peripheral vision, followed by auditory pandemonium.

I just barely withheld my yelp. Link had turned toward the source of the sound with his hand on his holster.

But it had only been a piece of debris coming down from the floor above. I sighed furtively.

Between how Link’s shoulders had tensed up to meet his ears and the way his hand twitched as he lowered it from his hip, it was plain to see that I wasn’t the only one who was shaken up.

There was one more area of the ground floor that I had left to search: the conference hall. If the Yiga were anywhere to be found across these vast burial grounds, it was there.

What was left of the wood flooring creaked underfoot at a much greater volume than I’d been expecting. The ceiling, though just as high as that of the rest of this floor, somehow felt even loftier. Out of all the rooms we’d visited, this one was the most intact. Half of the risers, though scorched, were otherwise undamaged, and even the podium was still standing tall. But of course, being more intact meant giving sharpshooters more places to hide. One misstep and—

Crack

The floor fell out from beneath me. I let out a shriek, feeling the realm of death open its big, black maw and swallow me whole.

Then I landed with a calamitus crash.

If I hadn’t managed to curl my limbs around myself in time, the concrete flooring I seemed to have landed on surely would’ve cracked my head open, or given me a severe concussion at the very least. My whole body ached from the impact, and it felt as though I may have sprained my ankle, for when I tried to stand, it throbbed in the most violent pain I had ever experienced. I fell to my hands and knees, reeling.

The spot in the floor that I’d placed my weight on must have lost much of its hardiness to the fire. In all the times I’d been here as a little girl, it had never once occurred to me that this place had housed a basement.

“Zelda...!”

I looked up to see Link peering down from the hole in the ceiling that I’d made, his expression poised with worry. My body, covered in scrapes and bruises, cringed when I realized he had borne witness to that pathetic spectacle, making the pain tenfold.

“I’m fine,” I whisper-shouted up toward the only source of light in the room, and some of the fear in his face relaxed. He glanced around him, then looked back down in my direction before standing up and disappearing.

I could only hope he’d find his way down sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I shifted into a position I hoped I’d have more luck rising back to standing from, and I did. Though, maimed as I was, I’d still have to find some way to take some of the weight off my right foot.

The first thing I latched onto was rusty and sharp. I winced and pulled my hand back, looking blindly to see if my palm was bleeding or not.

As my eyes adjusted, I was relieved to see that the cut had only just grazed the surface of my skin. I scanned the room, seeing that the thing I’d touched was a piece of an old oil drum. In fact, the room was full of metal scraps resembling it.

A vision flashed before my eyes. Of City Hall being engulfed in flame within seconds, and the criminal mastermind hiding the evidence in a cellar, where no one would ever find it until the better part of two decades later.

The rest of the basement was still a cluttered mess, but somehow it felt a great deal more lived-in than what I’d seen up until this point. There wasn’t a soul to be found in any of the windowless rooms I came across, but the few things I found lying around with the help of my pocket torch, like an unopened pack of cigarettes and a deck of cards left strewn across a small table, gave me the distinct impression that I wasn’t alone. The numerous corners provided by old, metal bookshelves and file cabinets did little to slow my racing heart.

Eventually, I came upon an open doorway, beside which a small sign on the wall read, “Archive A.” Beyond the barrier, unlike the pitch darkness I’d been wandering through for I’d long lost count of just how long, a few threads of light were trickling in from above, presumably through a crack in the flooring above that I’d failed to notice before.

I stepped through the doorway, turned to face the yawning expanse of the former archive, and saw her. Dressed in pale white and standing radiantly in the center of the room.

My mother. The very image of my ever vivid memory of her was right there.

My feet carried me, with newfound purpose and with minds of their own, toward her. I wanted to reach out and feel her next to me. I wanted to ascertain that she was truly there and that I hadn’t actually hit my head and wasn’t now seeing things. I wanted to run at her, arms outstretched, more than anything in the world.

But then my ankle throbbed violently in protest, and my reason for being here came back to me at full force. I swallowed down my longing and stopped in my tracks. Her smile—that warm, glowing, congratulatory smile that held all the hope and light of the sun within its corners—wasn’t making this any less difficult, however. I was reminded of the simpler times, when at the end of each day, there was someone back at home waiting to hold me close and make all my worries melt away.

She held her arms out to me in a gesture that made my eyes well up with the tears of a child. It felt unspeakably wrong, but for what reason I could no longer place. Why shouldn’t I? What harm could it possibly do? It was only natural to want to wrap my arms around her as tightly as I was able, and to never let go again, wasn’t it?

A gunshot ripped through the peace.

Her face turned still as stone. Square between her harmless eyes had appeared an inky black-red orifice—an exit wound—from which a spray of crimson had decorated her visage.

Time slowed almost to a stop as Mother careened forward and fell flat onto the cold, hard floor. A hollow thump echoed throughout the empty space.

Before I’d had time to react, I looked up and met eyes with a painfully familiar pair of icy azures, which thawed in an instant as the owner lowered his weapon. I glanced down at the body, which had landed just two or three paces in front of me, then back at him. Then my own body started to shake.

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t control the violent tremors that had taken hold of me. My knees hit the floor, my bad ankle being wrenched one way in the process. This tore a scream from the depths of my lungs as the tears began waterfalling down in spiteful defiance against my will. I couldn’t bare to look at her—lithe arms strewn out limply at her sides and golden hair scattered in every direction—so I hid like the coward I was behind my stinging palms.

A metallic clack, followed by footsteps pounding the cement one after another as they neared. When his arms cradled my head into the shelter of his chest, I didn’t stop him. Nor did I when his hand began its gentle stroking up and down the curve of my back. He could have said something, anything, but he refrained. Instead, the silence surrounding my cries did nothing but amplify them.

A resounding clatter broke the air.

My vision was fogged up like a window pane in the dead of winter, but as I blinked away the tears, I began to make out the shape of an assault rifle lying on the concrete, at the feet of a person who hadn’t been there before and whose face I was unable to make out from this distance. In the figure’s hand was a bone-white mask, which they turned over in their grasp before dropping it onto the floor as well. It shattered upon landing.

In every corner, assassins were emerging from the shadows, each one of them laying down their weapons and turning to face the cooling corpse resting at the axis point of it all. Somehow, the room seemed even more devoid of daylight than ever before.

[unmaskedagain]

Day and Night

Okay I got this prompt and as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to write. I’m a huge Tim Drake fan. Its how I got into reading Batfamily fanfiction. I love Marinette. So I thought I’d give it a shot.

           The café was small, empty, in a little nowhere town that had the unfortunate luck of being built in the middle of nowhere; somewhere in a part of England most people never heard of. The café, and the town, wasn’t the type of place you went searching for. Anyone who ended up there, that didn’t already live there, always happened upon it be accident. Usually because they were lost.

           The two sole customers in café were most definitely lost. A boy and a girl.

           The boy-The young man had dark hair, the iciest blue you could imagine, and a broken look on his handsome face. He sat near the window, on one side of the café, watching the rain poor down. He looked tired, forgotten, and lonely. His name was Tim.

           The girl- A teenage girl, still growing into herself, had blue-ish black hair and the deepest, brightest blue eyes imaginable. She said on the other side of the café. A solemn expression on her lovely face. Her eyes sad, and just a bit red. Exhaustion seemed to have set in her bones, and held herself in way soldier who just came home from war did. She was jumpy, scared, and above all looked absolutely heartbroken. Her name was Marinette.

           He was from Gotham. She was from Paris. And at that moment, there were no two more lost souls in the world.

           The café owner was a kind elderly woman who had taken her tea in back to account inventory; she hadn’t seen any harm in leaving the two kids by themselves for a bit.

           Tim had gotten to the café first, and had known the moment the girl had entered.

           Marinette noticed the boy sitting, alone, in the quiet café as soon as she walk inside.

           Neither had talked to each other. They hadn’t had the energy that day to feign niceties. However, as the rain came down harder, the lights flickered, and Billie Holiday’s Good Morning Heartache played its sweet melody… Something just came over the two.

“Running away,” Marinette asked loud enough so the boy across the café could hear her. He couldn’t have been much older than her, she noticed.

           Tim gave her a small bitter smile, “Is it really running away if you don’t have a home to run from? Or if no one cares or notices you’re gone.” He closed his eyes for a moment as wave of emotion hit him. “When does it stop being running away, and starts just being leaving? What about you?”

“I think I’m doing both,” Marinette answered honestly. Her throat dry, and tears burning in her eyes. “Running away from everything, and still doing the right thing by leaving a bad situation.”

           Tim nodded. He was in the same boat. “Where you coming from?” Though he figured France from her accent.

“Paris. And you?”

“Gotham.”

“No one waiting for you?” Marinette asked. He shook his head. “Me either. Aren’t we a pair?”

           It went quiet. Billie Holiday still filling the silence.

“I lost all my friends to a liar,” Marinette said. “My partner, uh, teammate was five seconds from having sexual harassment charges filed against him. He got… fired. Now I have to do everything by myself.” If Tim noticed her slip, he didn’t say anything. My parents don’t trust me.” She failed to stop Hawkmoth again and again. She failed to keep her friends from falling into Lila’s clutches. She failed her parents with all her lies and excuses of where she was going and where’s been to the point where they couldn’t deal with it. Too scared and weary of what the daughter they no longer recognized had become. They asked her to leave; move out. Then it was Official Marinette had no one. Marinette was lucky her grandma had apartment in the city she never used. Or she’d have been homeless.

           Tim did notice though. “I thought… I thought I belonged somewhere I didn’t. Thought I had found a family; a real family like I always wanted. Turned out I wasn’t wanted. I was a just a placeholder. Not a brother. Or a son.” He had nearly died several times, had lost his spine literally, broke through time, fought aliens and world conquerors, rescued batman from the time stream; dome more than humanly possible. But it hadn’t been enough. Or maybe it hadn’t meant anything to the Bats. A part of him had it all to prove he belonged, that he earned the cowl; that just because Batman hadn’t picked him like had his other Robins, but just let him stay, hadn’t meant anything. But it did. And Tim knew the truth the world had been trying to get him to see. He was just pretending; pretending to belong to and with the Batfamily, pretending he had been a good Robin, pretending they had wanted him.

“I’m a failure,” The bluenette said.

“I’m a pretender,” Tim shrugged. “Name’s Tim though.”

“Marinette.”

           She got up and walked across the café and sat in the seat across from Tim. “My friends tossed me aside from something shiny and new. I’m been thrown away.”

           Time gave her a nod “The people I thought were my family don’t care that I haven’t been to the manor in almost two years. Or didn’t realize. I’ve been forgotten.”

“Been there.”

           Tim leaned forward in his seat, “I make one mistake. And B acts like I tried to end the world. I was rash. I acted out. I made a mistake. I’m human. It doesn’t even matter that I fixed it. He just refused to let it go.” Captain Boomerang killed his father. Tim had wanted to make him pay. It’s not like pointed a gun at villain. He just set the bastard up in a way he couldn’t walk away from. “He never listens to me. I get it, though. I wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t want another son. He didn’t choose me.” Tim blinked hard, his fist clenching. “No one ever chooses me.”

“Everything I do has to be perfect,” Marinette whispered. “I can’t mess up. I can’t make mistakes. I have to stay in control at all times. Not like everyone else. I don’t get to be human. I have to be more. I have to be better. I have to be an example,” She hissed the word. “The world’s burning but I still have to be perfect. I still have to be strong and righteous and good. I have to take the high road.” She closed her eyes. “When all I want to do is scream. I have defend the world when no one even bothers to defend me.”

           Ilene Woods’ So This Is Love started playing. They listened to the song play, a weight off their shoulders left. Not all of it but some. And at that moment the ridiculousness of their situation hit; they had left their countries, ended up god knows where, stuck in a café to avoid the rain, and were complaining to a perfect stranger about how horrible their lives had been as of late. And they laughed. And laughed until it hurt.

“Why we do put up with it?”  Marinette leaned back in her seat. “I mean, I know why. But really. Why?

           Tim shrugged, a smile still on his face. We know why. We’re doormats.”

           Marinette nodded, “They only want us when they want something. That’s the only time we matter.”’ She looked up, right into his eyes. “But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because we can’t take it anymore.”

“And we know we shouldn’t,” He nodded firmly. “Because we shouldn’t and we’re not.”

“Never again,” Marinette swore. And then stood up. “Pardon, I must use the restroom.”

           Then she left. As soon as she was gone, Tim pulled out his phone and looking up any superhero activity happening in Paris. There was a lot. Mostly about a hero named Ladybug, who loved more than just a bit like his new friend.

           Marinette, on the other hand, left to Speak with Tikki and Plagg who had fighting to get her attention. As soon as she was alone in the bathroom, Plagg stated, “Him! I wanted him. He’s my new Kitty!”

“I like him too,” Marinette said softly.

           They convinced Marinette that Tim would be a good hero; and she needed help.

           When Marinette rejoined the table, neither said a word. They went back to telling each other a bit more about their sorrows and heartaches until a relative peace settled between the two. Feeling freer than they had in months.

           Marinette drank her, now, cold tea. She placed down the cup, “So Tim, any plans on going back to Gotham. Cause if not, I’d like to make you an offer?”

           Tim smirked, the thrill of a potential adventure hitting him, “Is Marinette asking me? Or is Ladybug? For the record, it’s a yes either way.”

           Marinette smiled, glad that her new partner was seemed to have high intelligence. “How do you feel about Paris?”

“Love it,” Tim stood up. “I get to design my own look though. Unlike you, I don’t look good in skintight anything.”

“Oh I don’t know about that…” She teased her blue eyes sparkling. “That might be something we’ll have to find out.”

           The young man held a hand out, “Care to dance?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” The young woman said as took his hand in hers.

           They swayed to the music, laughing and twirling around. An elderly woman watched as once again her café worked its magic like it did for every lost soul that wandered in.

           Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World started to play in the background as icy-blue eyes met bright blue. The rain slowly stopped as two lost souls, alone in the world, found each other.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself what a wonderful world…

[novainthevoid]

First of a potential series I might do, based off the 100 Themes Challenge!

Day 1: Introduction

Characters: Dream, Ink, Nightmare (mentioned)

Ships: none

Notes: this is set after Dream is freed from the stone but before what I’d imagine to be “present day.” Basically, Dream doesn’t know any outcodes other than himself and Nightmare and is still learning a lot about the multiverse in general.

Dream meets an odd little skeleton while running from Nightmare’s guards.

Dream’s soul raced as he ran down another alley, desperating trying to outrun the guards Nightmare had left in this desolate, depressing version of New Home. He hadn’t meant to run into them, hadn’t even meant to show up to an AU controlled by the self-proclaimed King of Negativity, but being homeless didn’t leave him with a lot of easy options and he was spotted before he could discreetly port out of there. Dream didn’t want to risk having the guards track him, especially if he accidentally ported into a positive AU, so instead he resorted to trying to get as far away as possible so he could do so unnoticed.

He weaved in and out of streets and alleyways, succeeding in losing only himself in his attempts while the guards remained on his tail. Still, he had managed to put a little bit of distance between himself and them when he turned down one more alley and slammed face first into another individual.

Dream collapsed onto the ground, clutching his skull in pain as a sudden burst of pain blinded him. He sat there for a few seconds when the moans of pain from the other person jolted him from his dazed state, forcing him to jerkily look back up and push the pain into the background. Luckily, he was incredibly good at ignoring his own personal problems and pain for the sake of others. As a few more precious seconds passed by, Dream found himself staring at the person before him. They appeared to be a rather small skeleton monster, wrapped in a dark cloak that had likely been pulled over their head before they had run into one another. They were clutching their skull much like he had not a minute earlier, blocking his view of their face.

The quickly approaching shouts and footsteps of the guards pushed Dream finally back into reality and, with barely a mumbled ‘sorry!’ he was back on his feet, preparing to take off once more. But before he could take so much as a single step, he felt himself go cold as he spotted another group of guards heading for him from the other end of the alleyway. It was the worst turn of events: he hadn’t even thought he’d been in this AU long enough for backup to be called. Only when the little skeleton leaped to their feet and whipped around in an identical fashion to Dream did he finally understand that they weren’t chasing down him , but instead the person he had just so carelessly run into.

This wouldn’t do. He could live with leaving a civilian while he was being chased -- after all, as someone wanted by one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse, it was far more dangerous for him to help another than leave them alone, a fact which broke his heart each time he remembered it -- but he couldn’t live with leaving someone to fend for themself in front of Nightmare’s horrible guards. Without a second thought, he snatched the other’s wrist and pulled them along as he climbed up on top of a dumpster and used the extra height to boost himself onto an apartment fire escape. Luckily, the other skeleton not only caught on to what he was doing, but they also seemed to have some skill in climbing things that weren’t meant to be climbed, preventing Dream from having to take more risky action to save them.

They narrowly managed to make it onto the roof before the guards below caught them, dodging some wayward attacks as they were given a brief reprieve from the chaos. The two of them took just a few moments to breathe before taking off across the empty roof, Dream’s hand once again finding its way around the mystery skeleton’s wrist. The shouts and attacks followed them as they ran, but the small headstart had helped them immensely and the two found themselves leaping across the buildings towards the edge of the city. Had Dream had a moment to stop and think about it, he likely would have been both impressed and confused by how the other’s parkouring abilities seemingly matched if not exceeded his own despite him being a homeless immortal guardian constantly being hunted by the immensely powerful, but as it was he neither had the time nor the care to give it any thought.

The dread Dream had been feeling the entire time magnified tenfold as they approached the end of the buildings and it suddenly became clear that, rather than another fire exit or similarly climbable way down, the area ended in a massive underground lake that was most certainly not present in the original universe. During their flight, however, their roles had somehow reversed and the other skeleton was now the one holding onto Dream’s wrist and dragging them both closer and closer to the deadend. With panic rapidly building inside him, he finally cried out at the skeleton, “Wait!”

They made no attempt to show that they had heard him, continuing on at full speed. Dream tried again, “Wait! There’s nowhere for us to go and a jump from this height would be insane!”

Again, he went ignored. They were nearly there and Dream just barely managed to pull away before both the skeleton abruptly stopped at the edge, staring down at the abyss below. The space they had gained between them and the guards was rapidly closing and with it Dream’s inhibitions about porting were going rapidly down the drain. The small monster turned towards him and he finally got a good look at their face. They did not look like an average skeleton monster, that much was for sure. Their eyelights were a pain of mismatched, colorful symbols that changed when they blinked, they had what looked to be an odd black stain on their cheek, and their mouth, though technically normal, was pulled into a wide, mischievous grin in spite of the deadly situation they were in. For the first time in the short time Dream had known them, they spoke, their voice as odd as their features with its high-pitched cadence and strange, ethereal accent, “Trust me?”

The guards were closing in. He knew absolutely nothing about this person outside of the fact that they had been running from the law, which under Nightmare’s rule could mean just about anything. They were strange and out-of-place and either did not understand the danger they were in or simply did not care. They were a walking red flag plastered in warning signs with alarm bells playing shrilly in the background. Every survival instinct Dream had learned in his time on the run told him to get as far away from this person as possible.

He took their hand.

Their grin widened just a smidge more and then, to Dream’s absolute horror, they pulled the both of them into the watery depths below. For a brief second, Dream thought he was about to die, condemded to death for his stupid, trusting nature (the same one, a voice in his head whispered, that had forced him to not see the error of the villagers, that had allowed them to walk all over him and Nighty and had forced his best friend in the entire world into such despair and desperation that he was willing to do the unthinkable. Perhaps, it whispered, this was exactly what he deserved. Nightmare would be so much happier with him gone).

He felt when his body hit the water, but it wasn’t the shattering of his bones like he expected, nor was it even the feeling of submersion. Instead, he felt himself become cocooned inside some strange, thick, liquidy substance before being pulled across all of space and time as though he were traveling straight through the void. After a few disorienting, almost nauseating seconds, he was spit back out onto solid ground where he sat on his hands and knees and just breathed in the feeling of fresh air. His soul began to beat slower in his chest and his thoughts began to clear as he realized he was no longer in danger.

“Woah, there! Are you all right?” Dream whipped around at the jovial voice, which seemed far more curious than concerned, “I don’t normally take along passengers. Didn’t know you’d react so poorly to it!” Though it was phrased like an apology, the tone sounded like anything but.

Finally, Dream was able to get a clear look at the stranger. They were short, perhaps even shorter than Dream, with a frame that appeared tiny in the oversized cloak and scarf they were wearing and bones that were completely covered from his neck down to his ankles, although oddly enough they weren’t wearing any sort of shoes. Their eye-lights had changed from the last time he had seen them, now appearing to take the shape of a circle and questionmark as the stranger tilted their head to the side like a curious child or needy dog.

“What the… who… who are you?” He asked, his voice far too frantic for his liking as he instinctively moved away from this odd little skeleton. They smiled down at him, offering a hand to help him up which Dream ignored in favor of getting up himself and moving a few more steps away. It wasn’t anything personal. He just didn’t know anything about this other person and though he hated how much he’d grown to distrust others it had become a necessary part of survival. They didn’t seem to be offended, however, and merely continued smiling as they let their hand fall back to their side. “Oh, I’m Ink! It’s nice to meet you!”

Dream warily looked them up and down before responding, “Likewise.”

They let out a little hum, bouncing up onto their toes before rolling back onto their heels, effectively rocking back and forth. “I’m not super good at the whole ‘conversation’ thing, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to give me your name in return.” They looked amused.

Dream looked off to the side, running through a list of various stories ranging from something close to the truth (like refusing to give his name because he didn’t know them well) to outright lies (like simply giving them a false name), only to be derailed by the scenery around them. Originally, he had been far too distracted by the disorienting port and odd skeleton, but now he was starting to truly understand how weird of a situation he was in. The two were standing on a floating island, surrounded by a sea of floating islands, all in what appeared to be some sort of odd space-like place. Each of the islands had an intricately decorated archway, inside which was probably the most stereotypical depiction of a portal Dream had ever seen, completely opaque and filled with swirling colors.

“Helloooo… Earth to Sunny?” Ink was suddenly much closer than Dream remembered them being, and their fingers were snapping right in front of their face, causing him to take a step backwards. A million different thoughts ran through his skull, but embarrassingly the only thing that came out of his mouth was, “Sunny?”

They gave a little laugh before interlocking their hands behind their head and continuing their rocking. “Yeah! You wouldn’t tell me your name so I just made up one for you and ‘cause you’re wearing all yellow you made me think of the sun so boom! Sunny.”

Stars above, Ink’s rambling was even more disorienting than their portals. Dream found himself uncharacteristically at a loss for what to do, confused by the strangeness that had been thrust upon him. He hadn’t survived all these years by having poor flexibility, however, and with a little bit of mental coaching, he began to form something that resembled a plan. Okay, it was really just a question but still. He was getting there. (In the back of his mind a small voice yelled at him that there was something wrong here, something off about this stranger but for now he ignored it).

“Where… where are we?” Dream asked, looking around once more.

“Oh, we’re in the Doodle Sphere,” Ink responded casually, as though they thought he would know what that was.”

“The what?”

“The Doodle Sphere! It’s my home,” They offered no other explanation.

“This AU is called… Doodle Sphere?” It was an incredibly odd name, that was for sure.

“What? Of course not! That’d be silly,” They made a face as if to prove just how silly the idea was, “The Doodle Sphere is like… - they snapped their fingers again - a table of contents! It has access to all the different AUs and lets a person travel to each of them.”

Dream stared at Ink, completely off-balance once more by the little skeleton. He had never heard of places outside of the AUs. Nothing other than the void, at least. And while his first instinct was to believe Ink was merely confused or lying to him, the appearance of the place lent itself to their story. Worryingly, Dream didn’t know if he’d be able to port out of a place like this, but he oddly didn’t really want to right now. He had always had a more curious nature (Not quite like Night. Night had always been the bookworm of the two but Dream still had that drive in him, that desire to know about the world around them. God he missed him).

“Well, Sunny, wanna come inside? I can make tea!” Ink asked, clapping their hands together before gesturing towards something behind Dream, which, upon turning around, appeared to be a house. It was about as strange as the skeleton that inhabited this place was, clearly made without any sort of floor plan in mind with rooms added on as they went and the walls covered in all sorts of colors and murals. In front of the home was a collection of items that ranged from mostly normal, like a set of garden gnomes, to the more eccentric, like a miniature windmill, to the absolutely absurd, like a life size replica of David Hassolhof. Without waiting for an answer, Ink had started off towards the house, humming and swaying just a little as they walked. Against every survival instinct he had, Dream followed.

The inside of the house was the same mix of oddly normal and completely eccentric things, with a couch and tv sharing space with the sort of things you’d find at a garage sale or an auction of a criminal’s items. The final result gave off a very uncanny value feeling, like a robot had analyzed a bunch of different homes and thrown in anything it thought fit without regards for how a few odd things that would be a little quirky in one home would look insane all together. Actually, on further thought, everything about Ink seemed to give off that vibe (there was something wrong, something missing about them, what was it).

The small skeleton rushed off to the kitchen, leaving Dream in the doorway to figure out what was the most appropriate thing to do in this situation. Finally, after a quick search of the room with special focus on the area around the couch, Dream hesitantly sat down on the green monstrosity, making sure to remain on the edge so that he could jump up at a moment’s notice. Clanging accompanied Ink’s humming in the kitchen area, though he couldn’t see what exactly was happening from his vantage point.

Finally having a moment to himself, Dream’s brain began to catch up with everything that was going on, rational thoughts forming together in the vague beginnings of a plan. Or, rather, a general set of things to do as opposed to doing whatever this stranger dragged him towards.

Ink waltzed back into the living room a short time later, two funny looking mugs in their hands, one of which they passed off to Dream before plopping down on the couch next to him. Though he didn’t plan on drinking anything they gave him, Dream took a cursory look inside his mug anyways and found something that absolutely did not resemble tea in any way, shape, or form. It was incredibly dark, with bits of something burnt floating inside of it and a smoky smell emitting from inside. A sideways glance towards Ink told him that they apparently had no qualms drinking something so horrendous, as they happily sipped on the noxious liquid. Of course, there was always the possibility that they had only given Dream the questionable drink but the smell of burning that came from their side of the couch said otherwise.

Growing uncomfortable with the silence and not wanting to try the poison sitting in his mug, Dream finally set down the drink and spoke up. “So, um, who exactly are you?”

“I already told you silly! I’m Ink,” they seemed to have an endless well of energy.

“Right,” Dream said, carefully considering his next words, “It’s just that I haven’t met a lot of people who can travel across universes, much less in such a… unique way. Not to mention this Doodle Sphere of yours,”

“Well, I can port because I’m an outcode, just like you,” They finally set their cup down and relaxed a little, turning their body to fully face him. “And while I don’t know why I’m the one who can access the Doodle Sphere, it probably has something to do with the fact that I’m the guardian of the multiverse.”

With that final statement, they casually picked up their cup again while Dream’s mind attempted to pull itself together again. “I’m-I’m sorry, back up. Guardian of the multiverse? Outcode?”

For the first time, a slight bit of confusion and maybe even annoyance appeared on the other’s face. “Uh, yeah? I protect the AU’s from outside threats. But, wait, you don’t know what an outcode is? Aren’t you and Nightmare the same age? I feel like you should know this by now.”

Dream froze. They knew about him and Nightmare. How? How could they know? Their relationship wasn’t public in the slightest. Neither of them wanted the rest of the multiverse to try taking advantage of their connection so in some odd agreement they never told another soul. So how in the world did some odd skeleton living on the outskirts of nowhere know about them?

He didn’t think. He couldn’t think. He simply acted on instinct, pulling out a small dagger he had hidden on his person at all times and pinning Ink to the couch, the dagger right up against their throat and their hands held in a death grip above their head. His knees dug into their thighs, pressing them down in a way that would probably bruise if held too long. He wasn’t planning on hurting them, stars no, but the only reason he could conceive of them knowing about his connection to Nightmare was if the King of Negativity himself had told them and Dream had not worked this hard just to be captured. He would threaten them, scare them a little, but only he had to know that he never wanted to hurt another soul.

Infuriatingly, though, the smile never left their face. In fact, they seemed even more interested in Dream than they had mere moments before, not bothering to resist at all. “Woah, there!” They said, a small laugh bubbling up behind the words. “Sorry, Sunny. I didn’t mean ta startle you.”

“How the hell do you know about Nightmare and I?” Dream snarled as he pressed the dagger slightly harder into the other’s neck, making sure it didn’t cut while still appearing dangerous.

“Well, I’ve been around awhile, ya know?” Ink gave him a bit of a mischievous smirk, unconcerned with the dagger digging into their vertebrae. “When I first heard about Nightmare he sounded super interesting with his weird tentacles and goop and the way he supposedly just came up out of nowhere so of course I had to check him out! He didn’t seem to like me very much though. Always tried to kill me when I broke into his castle. Which was rude, but whatever.”

Dream gaped at the little skeleton. Who the hell did they think they were? Ink continued to ramble, the pout that had appeared when they talked about Nightmare trying to kill them fading almost immediately as they moved on. “Turns out, he really likes to read and has this super huge library filled with all kinds of books. I even found some romances that definitely had traces of goop left on them!” Dream’s soul ached at that. Night had always loved cheesy romances, even though he was too embarrassed by it. “Anyways, I found this super secret room in there and it had all this hidden stuff about his old home and this weird tree and some old friend of his, though I can’t remember their name.”

They shifted a little under Dream, turning their gaze back on him as they finished their story. “I kinda forgot about it for awhile, but then when I saw you I realized, ‘Hey, they look exactly like the person from those old photos!’ and if that was true then you must be super old, like him, so I figured you knew about outcodes and stuff too, since all multiversal travelers, especially outcodes, should know what they are.”

Dream stared down at Ink, trying to absorb all the information that had been given to him in the most rapidfire fashion. His knife no longer dug into their neck, though it was still there, and his grip on their wrists had loosed just a smidge. Not enough that they could easily get out, but just enough to be a little more comfortable. Even so, after only a few moments of silence, Ink began to squirm again, looking uncomfortable for the first time over the short period that Dream had known them. “Hey, bud. Not that I mind the view or anything, but would you mind getting off of me? I prefer being able to move around and stuff.”

Taken aback, a flush appeared on Dream’s cheeks, but he remained on top of the other, tightening his grip ever so slightly. “I still don’t know your intentions for bringing me here. You could be working of Nightmare and lying to me--”

He stopped short. They could be lying to him. Except, people couldn’t lie to him. Not easily at least. He could always feel their emotions radiating off of them like the world’s worst tell and because no one knew about his powers they never bothered to even attempt to hide them. With Ink, however, he felt nothing. It was as though he were alone in the room, though the rest of his senses clearly said otherwise. But how? They knew Nightmare, so maybe they had found a way to block out empaths from being able to read them? But he had never even heard of such a thing, never felt it on any of Nightmare’s other lackeys or even on the mercenaries that sometimes came after him, people that would surely know about his powers and want to have greater agency by hiding their feelings.

Ink seemed to be getting restless now, tapping their foot up and clenching their hand repeatedly, “Geez, and I thought I was a space case. You good there Sunny?” Dream focused on them and, relieved, they continued, “I can promise you that I’m not working for Nightmare or lying to you, but I guess you probably wouldn’t believe anything I say, huh? Is there anything I can do to get ya off of me at least?”

“I… you…” Dream stuttered out, “Your emotions,” Ink flinched ever so slightly, something that he might have missed if he wasn’t so close to the other and so in tune with the ways emotions manifested. It was almost as if they were worried.

“What about them? Kind of a weird change of subject, dude,” Their smile was still there but it had lost some of its genuineness, wavering a bit.

“I can’t… they aren’t…” Damn, he couldn’t think of a way of bringing them up without giving away his powers. “Whatever, it’s. Whatever.” The silence pressed on as Dream considered all his options. On the one hand, it would be intensely, monumentally stupid to let Ink up without knowing their intentions. But on the other hand, it seemed odd that they would go through the trouble of bringing him here while he was being chased by Nightmare’s guards. They could have easily let them catch him and boom, problem solved. The set up seemed far too odd for it to be a trap. And besides, as weird as they were they actually seemed to be pretty genuine about most things. The only time he felt like they weren’t telling him the truth was when they deflected his questions on their emotions, but even that may have just been because of how weird Dream himself had been about it. He made his decision.

With a sigh, Dream finally got off of Ink, which they immediately took as an opportunity to sit up and start fidgeting with their hands. While their focus switched away from him, Dream put his knife back in its holder, though he continued to keep his guard up. “Sorry,” he belatedly told them.

Ink’s smile was right back on their face as they responded, “Oh don’t worry! You’re hardly the first person to put a knife to my throat for saying the wrong thing. You’d think by now that I’d know wanted criminals were the kind of people I should be careful around, but it's just so easy to get carried away, ya know? And normally so much more interesting.”

Dream made a noncommittal noise as he hesitantly shifted to a slightly more comfortable position, “So, uh, Ink, was it?” they nodded enthusiastically, “What exactly is an outcode?” That he could at least get an answer for.

“Oh, right!” Ink’s hands moved around wildly as they spoke, helping them enunciate each idea. “An outcode is someone who isn’t a part of any AU. There’s only a couple of true outcodes -- outcodes who have been completely erased by their AU and thus have nowhere to go -- but people who’s AUs have been nearly or completely destroyed tend to be counted as outcodes too since they also don’t really have anywhere else to stay.”

“Destroyed?!” Dream yelped, suddenly on edge once more. In all his (admittedly short) time traveling the multiverse, he had never heard of such a thing. While he had met some people, such as Nightmare, who could feasibly “destroy” an AU by killing all the inhabitants, the idea that someone could be so powerful that they could tear about an entire reality was insane.

Ink didn’t seem to pick up fully on his distress, instead giving a little laugh and moving their hand in a “you-know-how-it-is” gesture, “Oh, yeah. I mean, what do you think I protect AUs from? Only thing that can threaten the multiverse as a whole is something that can destroy or stop AUs from happening.”

Hesitantly, Dream relaxed a little more as the shock wore off, “It’s just, I’ve never met anyone powerful enough to completely destroy an AU. Heck, I didn't even know that was actually possible.”

“Well, you know what they say! The more you know.”

“Heh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, Ink? I was wondering, why did you bring me here?”

“You seemed interesting,” They didn’t bother to go on anymore, as if that said it all.

“Interesting?”

“Yeah! For one, I knew you’d be cool ‘cause most of the people Nightmare are after are. He really can not take a joke. For two, you saved me, even though most people would save their own skins when being chased by something as terrifying as his guards. That automatically made you pretty interesting! And, lastly, you didn’t look like you belonged at all, so I kinda guessed you were probably an outcode which you basically confirmed from the rest of our interactions. Plus, even if he’s a grumpy Gus, Nightmare is super intriguing, so I figured that someone connected to him would be too.”

Dream soured a little at the last bit, not happy to be compared to and reminded of Nightmare again, but still considered all the things they had to say. It was an odd answer to say the least, not something he expected at all. And yet it was so unorthodox that he couldn’t help but believe it. “Huh. All right then, I guess. Well, it was really nice of you to help me out but I really ought to be going now. Could you tell me how to get out of here?”

They leaped to their feet, “Oh, wait! Do you really have to go now?”

“I mean, yeah? I need to rest pretty badly.”

“Why don’t you do that here then?”

Dream stared at them, “Here?”

They clapped their hands together excitedly, “Yeah, you could stay here with me! I can show you how to leave so you won’t be stuck.”

“But why?” Though the thought of having somewhere semi-permanent to stay was appealing, he couldn’t help but be wary of the offer.

“Well, based on your clothes and stuff I kinda figured you were homeless and needed somewhere to stay,” Dream frowned a little at that. He didn’t think he looked that bad. “And, again, I think you’re super interesting and I’d love to get to spend more time with you! It’s not often that I get to hang around people like that.”

Dream found himself once again at a crossroad. On the one hand, Ink was definitely weird as hell and quite possibly dangerous. But on the other, they seemed genuine in spite of their quirks and the offer was pretty tempting. And besides, he also had a pretty strong dose of curiosity and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t find the other just as interesting as they found him. He stood and approached them, holding out his hand.

“All right, deal. But I get to leave whenever I like.”

They beamed at him and grasped his hand, their grip firm yet dainty, “You got it, Sunny!”

He gave them a slight smile. He sure hoped he didn’t regret this, “Call me Dream.”

[psychedellic-phase]

Sanctuary

A/N: i loved this fic request! Requests are always open :)

Summary: Reader is having a bad case of imposter syndrome, but luckily her boyfriend knows just how to help.

tw: none, pure fluff      word count: 2.1k

masterlist

You sat at the kitchen table, head in your hands, staring at your laptop screen. It’s like it was taunting you, lines and lines of words and symbols mocking your inability to fix them. All you had to do was find the error in the code, a task you’ve done a million times. But this time it seemed utterly impossible. The software was due in two days and it was your first solo project and you wanted to impress everyone, finally prove your worth to the company. The pressure was on and it had to be perfect. You needed it to be perfect. But it wasn’t even close to perfect. In fact, every time you launched it, it crashed; leaving you to stare at your reflection in the screen, making you want to give up and cry. 

You knew how to fix it, you always know how to fix it. You’re who everyone comes to to fix it, but you were too nervous to even begin typing. If you failed, you’d be proving everyone who doubted you right. The thought made you nauseous. You’d be proving that every misogynistic a-hole teacher you had in college who said ‘software isn’t a woman’s job’ to you right. All the men at the startup would chuckle at your failure and say something rude like ‘see? that’s what we get for letting a woman do the work.’ You’d be ruining the chances of any other woman who interviewed. Most of all you were terrified of failing and letting yourself down, letting everything you worked for go to waste. Maybe everyone was right; software isn’t a woman’s job. Deep down you knew you were being irrational, but the thoughts just wouldn’t stop. 

You kept staring into the abyss of numbers and symbols, going through every letter in every line. Was it in HTML? JAVASCRIPT? Neither? Suddenly you couldn’t tell the difference. 

“Y/N?” Your boyfriend said opening the front door of your shared apartment, “What are you doing up? It’s 1 am.”

You didn’t look up at Spencer, too fixated in trying to decipher your work to acknowledge him. How was it already 1 am? You’d been sitting there for hours and had done nothing.  

Spencer waved his hand in front of your face, “Y/N?”

No response, you just stared into the code getting more and more hypnotized by it, entering some sort of strange trance. 

“Y/N!” He said more forcefully this time, causing you to blink and look up at him. 

“What?” 

“What are you so stressed about?”

You broke eye contact then and brought your lower lip in between your teeth, “Stressed? I’m not stressed!”

A lie. A very obvious lie. Which Spencer knew, because reading you like a book was high on his never-ending list of talents. 

“Really? You’re not stressed?” He sounded half amused. 

You shook your head, “Nope, never been more calm in my life.”

He chuckled, “Then maybe you should stop chewing on your lip and lower your shoulders, they’re practically at your ears.” He moved behind you and pressed his hands against your shoulders, lowering them for you. He took his thumbs and rubbed the knots that formed there, “Now, Angel, tell me, what are you so stressed about?”

Again, you didn’t answer. He thought he’d catch your attention by using your favorite term of endearment, but instead you just turned your attention back to the screen. 

Spencer didn’t understand, he never would. If you google ‘genius’ a picture of Dr. Spencer Reid is what comes up. With an IQ of 187, the ability to read 20,000 words per minute, three doctorate degrees and three bachelors degrees all by the ripe old age of 30, there is quite literally nothing he can’t do. Except maybe ten push ups, he could probably get to 9. He was a child prodigy and CalTech graduate. You went to public school and a college with a 70% acceptance rate. He was recruited to the FBI at twenty-two. When you were the same age you were a college senior getting trashed at a different bar every Thirsty Thursday. He spends his work days catching killers and saving lives, and you spend yours typing away at a computer hoping something works out. 

Being with him was simultaneously the best and worst thing for your self esteem. Sure he made you feel loved, appreciated, beautiful, important, but he also made you feel stupid. Not on purpose of course, it just seemed like he was  better than you at everything, even the things you thought you were best at. Thank god he’s a technophobe, if he knew his way around a computer better than you that would be the last straw. Oftentimes you wondered why he even wanted to be with you when you so clearly were not on his level, and when there are so many people who are. He’s smart and handsome and could have his pick of the bunch, so why did he pick you? 

“You know, 83% of workers in the US feel stressed out in their jobs, it’s totally normal. I’m stressed all the time at my job,” He said, trying to coax you out of the shell you crawled into. It didn’t work, instead you went through the lines of code again mumbling to yourself that it looked perfect, so what was wrong with it? 

“Can I help? Let me see,” He asked. He didn’t wait for a response, and reached over to turn your laptop towards him. 

“No!” You yelped, and snatched the laptop away from him. You couldn’t have him help you, you couldn’t let anyone help you. If anyone helped you then it wouldn’t be your achievement. This was one thing you had to do alone. 

He sighed and put his hands up in defeat, “Alright alright, I know I’m not a computer whiz. I just want to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” You snapped, getting frustrated with him now. Why couldn’t he just let it go? Why did he always have to try and help? You knew the answer was because he loves you and wants to make you happy, but your judgement was too clouded to see that. You huffed out angrily, trying to suppress the hot, frustrated tears that were threatening to spill over.  

Spencer slid into the chair next to you and gripped your shoulder, “Y/N...Ang—”

You turned to him and cut him off, “What? You think I can’t do this on my own? Don’t you?”

He just took the jab in his stride. “I know you can do it on your own,” he grabbed your hands from the keyboard and held them between his, forcing you to stop for a moment and just be with him.

“Talk to me.”

You waited a moment before conceding, “Okay fine, the software is due in two days and I’ve been working on it for weeks and it still isn’t perfect. Something is wrong with it and I can’t find it and if I can’t fix it then I’m just proving to everyone that I can’t handle this job and that I’m stupid and incapable of doing anything on my own and then I’ll get fired because there’s newer, smarter kids coming into tech everyday and all the men at work will never take another girl seriously again and then after I get fired and end up homeless you’ll realize that I’m actually stupid and useless and that you can do it wayyyy better than me an—”

“Woah slow down,” He interrupted your rambling. You were staring at the floor, hands still trapped between his two much larger ones rendering you useless. He let you go, hands coming up to your cheeks and forcing you to look at him. They  were calloused but soft, and his eyes demanded your attention, darting all over your face to read your expression. He poked his tongue out of the right side of his mouth, the same way he has a hundred times. You softened a little into his touch. 

“I think you have imposter syndrome.”

You pulled back, “What? Don’t you dare try to diagnose me or profile me Spencer Reid.”

He ignored you and started into his own ramble, much like the one you had just finished, “It’s a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success. 'Imposters' suffer from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence. It was first documented in the 70s by successful working women who felt like they had ‘fooled’ everyone into thinking they were intelligent.”

You looked at him even weirder now, your eyebrows scrunching together, “Oh?”

“It’s very common in the tech industry because of how fast paced it is.” He said it all so matter-of-factly. 

“I-I don’t think so. That’s not me.”

“Think about it Y/N. It makes sense!” 

It did. It made perfect sense. It explained the constant questioning and anxiety. It explained why you don’t ask for help or offer up an opinion at meetings. It explained why you had jumped from failing a project to being homeless like it was the natural progression of things. A ‘diagnosis’, if you even could call it that, should’ve made you feel better about everything, but it didn’t. 

“I just feel like I don’t deserve anything I have. I-I don’t even know how I got here Spence! Like how did I manage to convince everyone that I’m talented enough to do this on my own!”

He let the words marinate between you. Then it all clicked in your head; you sounded exactly like those women in the 70s. 

“You just proved my point, Angel.”

You glared at him, “Okay here’s another example. I don’t deserve you. You just got home from a long day of saving lives and being a genius crime fighting machine and instead of getting some damn sleep you have to console me because I’m over here crying like an idiot because some code won’t run.”

Spencer’s hand came under your chin, forcing you to look at him again, “You don’t know how much you do for me, do you?”

You just shook your head, genuinely not knowing what he meant. 

He smiled, the corner of his mouth turning up just a little, “Yes I am a life-saving crime-fighting genius, but without you I wouldn’t be able to cope.”

“Really?” You sniffled. 

“Yeah, Angel, really. I spend all day looking pure evil in the face, and without you to come home to and talk to I’d be trapped in my head all day, thinking of what I could’ve done better. You’re my safe space. Without you I’d probably go insane,” He tucked a stray piece of hair behind your ear. 

You smiled now. You believed him; Spencer isn’t one to lie, “And you’d have no social life.”

He laughed, “Hey! I’d have a social life.”

“Who? Henry and Jack?”

He laughed, “You’re right, I’d have no social life.”

You stood up then and he followed suit. You threw your arms around his slender frame and nuzzled into the crook of his neck. Spencer’s shaggy brown hair tickled your cheek but you didn’t mind. All that mattered was his heartbeat and breathing. You were his sanctuary, and he was yours. When either one of you would dive head first into the deep end, the other would be waiting there to catch you. Tonight it was his turn. 

And catch you he did, into a loving kiss, holding you close to him. When you pulled away he planted another kiss on your forehead and mumbled into your hair, “Trust me, you keep the internet world running. Without you we’d all be lost.”

You sighed and thanked him, happily sitting in front of the laptop now. All your fears had been pushed away. You knew they would resurface eventually, but right now it felt like you were unstoppable. With two simple corrections you tried to run the code and it worked perfectly. 

“See!” He cheered, squeezing your shoulders again, “You deserve the world, Angel.”

You stood up and jumped into his arms for another hug, wrapping your legs around his waist, his arms holding you up.

“You may be a life-saving, crime-fighting genius Dr. Reid, but I am a bad-ass, intelligent, woman who codes at the top of a male dominated field.”

He smiled then, pride practically beaming out of him, “Well, I’d say we’re a perfect match.”

[crystalstar8]

Knights of the Night (ch 12)

Chapter 12

Ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 5, ch 6, ch 7, ch 8, ch 9, ch 10, ch 11, ch 12

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139240/chapters/71536491

pairing: Jungkook x oc

genre: vampire au, college au, twilight, romance

word count: 1,568

warnings: blood (obviously), kidnapping, child kidnapping, needles, France

notes: vampires, vampire au, college, college au, so many twilight references, blood, needles, kidnapping, children, homelessness, dance, ballet, flashbacks, romance, slow burn, probably no smut, idk yet tho, France, French things, attempted genocide, inaccurate French history, bisexual main character, @strawberriewithchocolate-blog @mozy-j  @daechwitad-2​ @zobadak​​

summary: Catalina starts college in a small town all the way across the country. She doesn’t know anyone and isn’t exactly looking for friends. She just wants to focus on dance. But when she meets fellow dance major, Jimin, and adventurous, fellow freshman, Jungkook, Catalina ends up discovering a whole new side to the small college town; one that is dangerous but oh so enticing…

tw: graphic depictions of violence, death, mentions of suicide, possession

                “Where to start?” he asked. “I was…the son of a king. My life was pretty strict but I had this group of friends. We were all scholars, but when we met in secret, we liked to play with things like witchcraft and necromancy. We wanted to summon something, I don’t even remember what we wanted to summon, maybe someone who had power to give us something. Anyway, we planned it for a long time, and then we went to the woods and did this elaborate ritual. We made a human sacrifice, a woman who served in the palace. I remember her, she was terrified. I didn’t feel bad about it though. I was… cold and apathetic back then, but I still remember her face. After we slit her throat and drained her blood, we set fire to her and all the other ingredients. And then a woman came from…”

               Yoongi narrowed his eyes and looked to the ceiling, as if struggling to remember.

               “She came from the woods? Or…No, she was standing in our circle. But I think she came from the woods. She was a demon. Her eyes were bright and hard to look at, and the way her body moved seemed unnatural.”

               “She was probably just some kind of witch,” said Namjoon. “Demons aren’t real.”

               “I know what witches are like, my friends and I were witches,” said Yoongi. “She was definitely not human. Not a vampire either. She was not like anything I’ve ever encountered since – I’m getting off track, we’re not having this conversation, Joon-ah!”

               Namjoon chuckled and held up his hands. “Fine, fine.”

               “Anyway, she asked who our leader was and they all pointed to me,” Yoongi continued. “Then she asked me what I wanted, or what I most desired, or something like that. I said I wanted eternal life. She just smiled and said that my wish was granted. A day or so later, I started feeling this thirst, this painful, painful thirst. I tried everything, then I realized what I wanted. I started taking blood from the servants in the palace, and my family hid me from the public. They all hid my secret because I needed to take the throne when my father died. But my family was scared because they thought it was a curse. That it might be bad for the kingdom once I took over. I didn’t even really care about taking the throne anymore, or maybe humanity in general stopped being interesting to me, but whatever it was, I left my city and started travelling and living on my own. I might have been trying to find the demon again, I knew she was still wandering around, but it took me several years to find her. It was when I came back to my city and found out that she had taken over the body of my sister, killing the rest of my family and taking the throne. I knew it was her because her eyes were the same and she moved the way she did in the woods that day, but it was unnerving to see it on my sister’s body. It was… difficult to see my family the way they were. She had left them in the palace to rot. There was no staff, just her. I never felt close with my family, but I was alone without them.

               “I asked her what she did to me and she told me that she gave me a great gift, that she gave me eternal life. I told her to take it back but she just laughed. I ran away again and was living in the wilderness for years, feeding off of travelers. I was just wandering for so long and it was miserable. I wanted to die, but nothing I tried would work. A few years passed and then I went over to America for a change of scenery. Then I met Namjoon and Taehyung and I moved in. I even checked on my old palace to see if my stuff was still there. It was, so I had it shipped here. I’d say it’s still in pretty good shape after all this time.”

               “And by ‘a few years’, he means one thousand years,” said Hoseok. “When were you born? Two-hundred B.C.?”

               Yoongi shrugged. “I have no idea. Something like that.”

               Despite how disturbed Catalina was by his story, she found it incredibly fascinating. Yoongi must have seen the disturbed faces of the humans in the room because he sat up and said, “I’m not like that anymore. These guys taught me humanity and empathy or whatever.”

               “Okay, Hoseok. Your turn,” Jimin said with a grin.

               “Me? I already told you everything there is to know!” he said. “Born in the 70s, turned in the 90s, I was a broke college student, but then I had to drop out.”

               “This is all we know too,” said Namjoon with a wave of his hand. “He doesn’t like talking about it.”

               “Yeah, we can talk about something else,” said Hoseok. “Like, you guys. What do you all plan on doing after school?”

               “I want to work L.A.,” said Jimin. “I want to dance in movies and music videos. Maybe be a choreographer for stuff like that.”

               “Ooohh,” Hoseok exclaimed. “That would a lot of fun! I would do that.”

               “We can both dance in L.A.!” said Jimin.

               “Gukkie, what about you? What do you want to do after you graduate?” Catalina asked.

               “I have no idea,” he said, laughing. “I like film, but I’ve already changed my major three times, so who knows what will happen with that.”

               “What were your previous majors?” she asked.

               “Dance, fine arts, political science, and now film,” he said, listing them off of his fingers. Catalina’s eyebrows raised.

               “Political science?” she asked.

               “Heh, yeah, it was too hard though,” he said. “I don’t like school enough for something like that. I kept failing my classes that semester. What about you? Do you have plans after school?”

               Jungkook played with the end of her braid as he asked.

               “Um, long term plans, I don’t really know,” said Catalina. “But my dream is to perform in a ballet in France. I hope I can go there and audition after I graduate.”

               “You will, you’re really good,” said Jungkook. Catalina blushed and looked away before she did something crazy, like jumping him in front of everyone.

               “Thank you,” she said.

               “Why did you come all the way out here for college though?” Jimin asked. “You have huge schools in Michigan, and really good performing arts schools in Chicago.”

               “Ah, I think I just needed a change,” said Catalina. “I needed to get away. I miss my mom, but I didn’t like my friends there, I didn’t like my town, and ever since I came out as bisexual, my mom had been acting weird-“

               “No wonder you, Jungkook and Jimin all get along!” Jin interrupted. “Birds of a feather!”

               “Whoa, Jin! So, we’re just outing everyone now?” Jungkook exclaimed. Jimin sighed and rolled his eyes.

               “It’s fine, I already knew about you,” Catalina said, patting Jungkook’s thigh.

               “I never told you though,” he said.

               “Jungkook, what was the first thing you noticed about Namjoon?” Catalina asked.

              Jungkook blushed and said, “Thighs.”

              Catalina raised an eyebrow. Namjoon looked up with wide eyes.

              “Plus, I know you knew it was gonna rain during the baseball game. That’s why you had everyone wear white shirts,” said Catalina.

               “That was for you too,” he said with a smirk.

               “It was definitely for both of us,” said Catalina, making him laugh. “I appreciate it though.”            

               “I know,” he said, slipping an arm around her waist. “I saw the way you were looking at me.”

               “Okay, I’m about to puke,” said Jimin. “Jimmy K, hurry up and talk about yourself before these two get out of hand.”

               Jimmy K chuckled and said, “Well, I’m working on my Masters in Astrophysics, and after grad school, I hope to work for NASA.”

               “Jungkook said you were a ‘former bad boy’?” Catalina asked, laughing. “What did that mean?”

               “During high school, I used to cause a lot of trouble in this town I guess,” said Jimmy K. “The police chief was my arch nemesis, but now I work with him.”

               “Wow, so cool,” Catalina said, sighing dreamily. Jungkook snorted beside her. Jimmy K threw her a wink.

               “I already know what Jin is gonna do after college so no need to share-“ Jungkook began.

               “Jungkook, you brat! I know what you’re gonna say!” Jin said, pointing a finger at him.

               “What?”

               “You were gonna say that I’m gonna be a housewife and stay-at-home mom,” Jin said.

               “Hey, you said it, not me,” said Jungkook. Jin took off his slipper, got up, walked over, and swatted Jungkook over the head with it. Jungkook leapt to his feet and chased after him.

               “He’s getting his teacher’s license,” said Jimmy K.

               “You want to be a teacher?” Namjoon asked. Jin shoved Jungkook off of him and sat back down. Jungkook dropped back into his spot next to Catalina.

               “Yeah, I want to teach elementary,” said Jin.

               “Oh god, good luck,” Yoongi mumbled.

               “Well, you better hurry up,” said Jungkook. “Your youth is fading away quickly.”

               Jin grabbed a nearby pillow and threw it at him. Jungkook retaliated and soon, the whole room erupted into a pillow fight.