#imagine if two characters had been killed for nothing in a cruel way that fucked their season arcs

[pantsaretherealheroes]

It is SO WEIRD that netflix just didn't upload the last two episodes of season four of stranger things, given how much money they've put into it and how popular it is. Its just such a mystery that they seem to have lost them??

[sunnybeewriting]

peachy keen.

Hi guys! So I'm pretty new to writing and this is actually the biggest thing I’ve ever written. I watched The Way of Water when it came out and took an immediate interest in this guy, partially because I thought his character has a lot of potential, and partially because I also thought that he was really hot.

So I decided to set up a series of little works. This one is just sort of a beginning to the Reader’s character and Quaritch, and I do plan on writing more about them in the future with this fic as their base. Maybe do some AU’s, maybe just continue the story from here, maybe lead into the movie, who knows!

That all said, I really, really hope you like it! If you do, please give it a like or a comment!

WORDS: 15,000

WARNINGS: Adult themes and language

peachy keen. Part Two.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Your body jerks to a stop just before you can fully trip over your shoelace and faceplant onto the floor. Unfortunately, the leftover food on your plate could not say the same, jostled just enough that it went flying from your hands and onto the tiled floor of the mess hall.

You lean down quickly to clean it up, scooping the food with your fingers and back onto the plate as best you can. You succeed only halfway, goop just smearing across the floor and onto your hand.

You stare at the mess you made, ears and cheeks burning as you hear snickers of cruel amusement coming from some military meatheads a few feet behind you.

You jump up quickly, making sure to avoid your shoelace so you don’t trip on it again and embarrass yourself any further. You hurry to the counter holding the utensils, mugs, and paper towels, tugging several brown napkins out of the dispenser sitting on top. You take a deep breath to calm yourself.

Kneeling down so soon after sleeping for six years in a cyropod made the muscles in your legs and shoulders ache, but you do it anyways. You wipe up the mess as best you can, piling the dirty napkins onto the plate and dumping it all into a nearby trashcan. You wish the ground would swallow you up.

You aren’t usually so embarrassed by such a small mistake, but it had been a rough past couple of days for you. You had landed at Bridgehead City just a few days ago, and you had felt immediately overwhelmed by the extreme size of the fortress.

It took the RDA fifteen years to return to Pandora, but when they did, they made sure to put in roots. Bridgehead City was an enormous structure, constantly building upon itself and hosting thousands of military combatants, engineers, skel suits, construction robots, anything that was thought of to build and maintain humanity’s last stronghold. Every person of every imagined career was here, working as one like bees and ants had once done for their queens a hundred years ago, before they had both gone extinct. 

Bridgehead was terrifying to look at for the first time, seeing in person exactly how far humanity was willing to go to force itself onto another planet. You had noticed that it almost looked like a parasite, contrasting in color and material against the lively, glowing rainforest that surrounded it just past the barren land of the Kill Zone.

The wave of information that hit you the moment you stepped off the ship was almost enough to make your excitement to be on Pandora wither and die, but you held onto it with shaky, desperate hands.

Luckily for you, it wasn’t long before your enthusiasm bounced back and you met your new colleagues. Most of them had been just as nervous as you, clearly uncertain and overwhelmed. Knowing you weren’t alone made you relax just slightly. They were scientists hand-picked by the RDA as test subjects for re-opening the Avatar program, just like you.

None of you were really sure why the program had been stopped in the first place. The RDA was very quiet about what had happened all those years ago, when most of their military and scientists had been sent fleeing from Pandora with nothing but the clothes on their backs and tails between their legs. They refused to issue many statements, insisting that a minor misunderstanding had occurred with the ‘natives’ of the planet, and they’d be back soon enough to continue their mission.

The RDA had stated that the main reason for discounting the Avatar program was because the cost outweighed any benefit. The only reason they were allowing a few lucky souls to come to Pandora as Avatars was simply as a favor to the scientific community, and as a test to see if the Avatar program should be reinstated. Now the main purpose behind the program is to see if it’s worth it for people to be able to travel around Pandora without having to worry about the environmental protection systems, than a way to make peace with the Na’vi.

Most of the scientists in the base were only allowed restricted access to information regarding the past and current situation with the Na’vi, only knowing that The People were no longer accepting of humans on their planet and that the military is now on constant high alert. Most of the remaining records were classified to you, although you did try to learn as much as you could about what was happening on Pandora. Unfortunately, the RDA was very strict with that information, and you never found anything that mentioned the Na’vi or what happened fifteen years ago.  

The ten members of the new Avatar program had been divided into two parts of five, just to make the introductions and sessions easier. You had met your three new acquaintances, eager to make some friends. They had introduced themselves; Emma, a small, shy woman who preferred observing rather than participating; James, a sweet, handsome young man; and David, an older man in his late fifties who seemed a bit too haughty for his own good.

Your group was shown to your individual rooms over on the west side of Bridgehead, far away from the landing pads and ships you had arrived on. Your new room was small and gray with concrete walls and a thin layering of carpet covering the cold floors. You had a small desk that sat underneath a suction-locked window that let you glimpse into an enclosure full of construction robots, but at least the light it let in was nice. There was a simple cot in the corner and a mirror as the only piece of décor on the walls, but it was yours, a place you could call your own.

You had grinned tiredly and fallen face down on your bed without bothering to take off your shoes. You slept for fourteen hours, and when you awoke you felt as though you were rising from the dead, hair wild and mouth fuzzy. After you brushed your teeth, showered, got dressed in clean clothes, and ate food for the first time in six years, you felt like a brand-new person.

And here you are now, in the mess hall, already making a fool of yourself on your second week.

You quickly rush back to your table and plop your behind into the seat you had vacated to throw away your plate, sitting across from Emma and David. Emma is poking at her food, face pale and gloomy. David is almost done with his own dinner, glasses perched on his nose as he reads from a holotablet.

Geesh. These guys certainly weren’t known for being the life of the party back home.

Maybe they just need some more time to adjust? I know I certainly fucking do.

You take a moment to bend down and tie your shoelace, double knotting it, not wanting to cause any more scenes.

When you sit back up in your chair and make eye contact with Emma, your lopsided, embarrassed smile falls from your face when she simply stares back at you, clearly uneasy for some reason you can’t name.

“Jesus, you’re so fucking clumsy. And why the fuck does it look like you’re all attending a funeral over here?” The voice that chimes up behind you lifts your mood exponentially, and you turn around in your seat to greet the approaching form of the last member of your group and your best friend with a happy grin.

You had met Margot a few months before your trip to Pandora when you both attended a required conference that would discuss certain parts of living in Bridgehead. The second you struck up a conversation with her, it was like meeting your long-lost sister. You had instantly clicked, getting on like a house on fire and scarcely spending a day away from each other.

James arrives at the table with her, holding his own plate. He gives you a comforting look, clearly sympathetic to your embarrassment.

“Hey Margot, James! You saw that, huh?” you ask sheepishly, shoulders raising to your ears as you feel a hot flash of mortification all over again.

“Uh, yeah, honey, I saw. I’m pretty sure half the cafeteria watched you nearly eat shit. You need to learn to tie your shoes better, babe.” Margot’s voice is just as loud as ever, and her bright blonde hair and tall figure aren’t exactly subtle, either.

She was the type of person to grab someone’s attention and refuse to let it go, manicured nails digging in deep. Well, her nails used to be manicured. Now they were just as plain as everyone else’s.

She takes a seat in the empty chair next to you, setting her own plate down with a clatter. She untucks her cheap silverware from the napkin and digs into her dinner, eating hurriedly like someone is about to snatch the plate away from her. You had once asked her why she never slowed down to enjoy her food, and she said that with eight siblings if you wanted any food, you needed to eat it like an animal.  

James takes the other empty seat next to you, patting your shoulder twice before saying, “It’s okay, I don’t think that many people saw.”

You smile weakly at his attempt to make you feel better. It doesn’t help much, but you appreciate the thought, “Thanks, James.”

He nods and moves his attention to his plate.

Your table is silent for a few moments, everyone lost in their own thoughts and tasks.

You break the silence when you nervously ask, “So. Anybody else freaking out at the thought of linking up for the first time or is it just me?”

David looks up, paying attention to your words for the first time since you met him. “Well, I’m not nervous because I did all the pre-linking sessions and training years ago.” His nose is practically raised in the air.

You stare at him.

What a fucking douchebag. Who answers a question like that?

“That’s nice. What about you, Emma, are you nervous or excited? How are you feeling?” you ask gingerly, wanting to include her in the conversation. It would be nice to have another friend so that the next few years weren’t miserable.

Emma stares at you blankly, and then whispers a simple, “No.”

You lean back in your seat and deflate. “Oh.”

Fuck it, I tried.

Margot, the smug bitch, is watching you drown in social awkwardness as she happily munches away. You give her a look and a shrug, and she rolls her eyes before placing her fork down on the table. She dabs the corner of her mouth with her napkin, and then says to Emma, “Girl, I absolutely love that bracelet you’re wearing. Where did you get it?”

To your surprise, Emma perks up in her seat, right hand grazing the bracelet she wore on her left wrist. Her face softens, and she says, “It was my mom’s, actually.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet. Right?” Margot jabs her sharp elbow into your side, and you hiss but nod hurriedly.

“Yes, that is so sweet! I wear my mom’s wedding ring, actually.” You rub said ring with your hand. Your mood drops a little bit at the mention of your mother, but you shake your head to get back on track. “Makes me feel closer to her, I suppose.”

A small smile pulls on Emma’s cheeks, and she looks down, still rubbing the bracelet. “Yeah.”

You look at her, reconsidering your thoughts about her personality. 

Maybe it just takes a little time to connect, that’s all.

You fiddle with the small, emerald cut ring that you were on the ring finger of your right hand. It had been a piece of jewelry your mother had worn faithfully until the day she died.

When you were a child, around ten or eleven years old, you had asked her why your dad had chosen that specific ring to represent their marriage, out of the hundreds of others he could have.

She was still sick at the time, spending most of her days laying in a hospital bed while nurses bustled in and out. She had lost so much weight that her cheeks were gaunt, and her face and hands were so white they were almost transparent, pale blue veins clear through the skin.

Her lips were pale and chapped, and the dark circles around her eyes were deeply imprinted in her skin like bruises. She looked like a ghost, a fragile, terrifying imitation of the woman who had raised you, a woman who you had thought put the stars themselves into the sky. She was weak, and even before she passed away it was like she was already dead.  

She had gripped your hand as tightly as she could when you had asked that question, sweaty palm squeezing yours to the point of pain in a rare show of strength. She was usually so weak the nurses and you had to feed her by hand as she could barely lift up her arms. She looked you in the eye and pulled you close until your face was right next to hers.

In the croak that had now become her voice, she whispered, “I had asked the same question, years after he had proposed. I asked, ‘Jonathon, why this ring? Why this cut, why this color?’. And he had gripped me tightly and pulled me close and said, ‘Well, my love, it’s the breathtaking green color of your eyes. Your eyes and the ring match exactly, you see. And every time you look at it, you will see yourself the way I see you. Beautiful and bright.’

Tears had filled her glazed eyes, and she whispered to you, “No matter what, when you find the one you love, never let them go. Cherish every single second you have with them, never take them for granted, and make sure that they love you for everything that you are, the good and the bad. It is the purpose of our life. Love. Without it, we are nothing.” Against the tears and the agony that claimed her face and voice, your mother smiled for the first time in years.

Your father had passed away while your mother was still pregnant, killed in an easily avoidable accident. No matter how much your mother loved you before she had gotten sick, no matter how much joy you brought to her life, there was always a deep sorrow and grief inside her that consumed her soul every day.

She never got over your father, never dated or remarried or showed the barest hint of interest in anyone else. When asked why, she said that she had already had the love of her life, and there was no one who could ever compare to even the lingering ghost of your father that seemed to haunt her.

And when the sickness truly hit and reduced her to almost nothing, her anger and bitterness twisted her mind and her love for you into something cruel and abhorrent. 

Even years later you kept her whispered words locked away into the very muscles of your heart. Even though your mother had been sick and weak when she told you these things, it was one of your few beloved moments with her. It had shown you who your mother really was, past all the sickness and malice, who she really was deep in her soul. That she had once loved and been loved.

And now you wear her wedding ring as a reminder of your parent’s love for each other, and how regardless of your mother’s cruelty toward you during the last years of her life, your love for her would never fade.

You’re jerked out of your melancholy thoughts when Margot burps loudly and thumps a fist against her chest.

“Jesus Christ, Margot. Where the fuck did you learn your manners from?” James asks, recoiling in disgust.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m almost done, then we can go check out the linking center.”

You nod eagerly, so overwhelmed with anticipation and delight that your fingers tremor just slightly.

You are so ready to meet your Avatar and link up for the first time, but the thought of anything going wrong makes you restless. You wish you could just get it over with so you could stop agonizing over it.

Margot finally finishes her food and stands up to dump her plate. James does the same, and then all five of you are off, walking down a long hallway with lots of twists and turns. The fluorescent  lights shine brightly on the ceiling, and you can hear the distant sounds of never-ending construction.

Even with all five of you working together to get to your destination, the new buildings are too much for your group and you get lost in the labyrinth of hallways. James even has to ask a nearby custodian for directions once or twice. When you turn a corner, you spot a bathroom sign, and suddenly you have business to take care of. You pat Margot’s arm and point in that direction.

“Hey, guys, I’m going to head to the bathroom real quick. I’ll meet you there, okay?”

The rest of the group nods, but Margot decides to go with you. You do your business and you’re washing your hands in the sink when Margot makes eye contact with you through the mirror as she washes her own hands.

“I won’t lie, honey, I’m feeling pretty nervous about linking up as well. I know we’ve been through training simulations and have studied and practiced for years, but this is going to be different.” Her face and voice are uncharacteristically serious, and her hands shake just slightly as she pulls a towel out of the dispenser to dry her hands.

You feel a flash of sympathy for your friend, stopping your own drying. You walk around to her and put your hands on her shoulders, leaning your face close to hers.

“It’ll be okay, Margot, we’ve both got this. We just need to do it, and then it’ll be as easy as breathing before we know it, okay?”

Margot nods and takes a deep breath, looking down for a moment. When she looks up she’s much calmer, and her usual peppy attitude is back and shining.

“Thanks, sugar.”

You nod understandingly, releasing her shoulders and knocking her hip with yours as you walk toward the bathroom door. You both step outside into the hallway and continue your way.

“Of course. And besides, I’m just so ready to finally see her, you know? We’ve seen pictures and videos, but actually being there in real life is going to feel so surreal. The Na’vi are just stunning to me. Ooh, I almost forgot!”

You stop walking as you talk, scientist-brain taking over. Margot moves to stand in front of you, crossing her arms over her chest with an amused expression. This was far from the first time you had gone on a tangent.

“I saw someone from the recombinant unit when I was walking around yesterday, and he was fucking huge!”

You’re so busy trying to organize your thought flow into something sensible that you completely miss the approaching footsteps coming from behind you, and the way Margot looks over your shoulder and turns white.

You continue on, oblivious.

“He must have been pretty high ranking because the people with him followed him around like little ducklings. And the blue pigment of his skin was so beautiful. The color contrast of his eyes versus his skin kind of reminded me of a Primula ‘Zebra Blue’, you know, that blue and golden flower that went extinct like a hundred years ago? It was just amazing to finally see in person, and I-”

“Well, aren’t you just a peach?”

The deep voice that comes from behind you nearly makes you jump out of your skin. You whirl around, expecting to come face to face with whomever just spoke. Instead, you come eye level with the belt buckle and zipper of a pair of navy green camo military pants.

Your heart drops to your shoes.

You tilt your head up, up, up, until it’s practically craning backward. The uncomfortable position hurts, but that’s the least of your problems.

Your biggest problem, literally and figuratively, is the cold eyes and carefully amused face of the man you were just talking about.

You open your mouth to speak but words refuse to leave.

Why does this shit always happen to me?

You clamp your mouth shut when no words appear and swallow nervously, and the man notices your tense expression.

He smirks down at you, almost sneering. From the way he towers over you closely, unconcerned with personal space, it’s clear that this man likes to have people’s attention on him, takes pleasure in scaring people with his massive height and muscles.

And his intimidation tactics completely work on you, that’s for sure.

Jesus, look at his hands. He could cover my entire face and upper torso with just one of them!

You want to put as much distance between this frightening man and yourself as possible. But there’s a little voice in the back of your head, a stupid, too-curious little voice, that want you to examine him all the way from the finger pads and palm lines of his hands to the tip of his tail.

He was terrifying, yes, but you are also stunned by the wonderful science and technology that made up his body.

Of course, you’d seen holographs and pictures of Avatars and the Na’vi people, but they could never hold a candle to the real thing.

The navy green tank top, tattoo, and dog tags were all familiar things, but his height and the bright, smooth blue color of his skin were brand-new to you, something you wanted to take a closer look at. His hair was shaved closer to his skull than any other you’d seen, Avatar and Na’vi alike.

His bright yellow eyes sear into yours, and it feels like he is trying to see into your fucking soul.

Your heart rate skyrockets, mortified and thrilled and fearful all at once. The pile of extreme emotions twists your stomach, making you queasy.

Do not fucking puke on his shoes.

The man takes a step back to make room for his massive arm before he lifts it up, clearly holding his hand between you for a handshake. It almost seems as though he is testing your nerve; you wonder how many people had chosen not to shake his hand, too frightened.

“The name’s Colonel Quaritch, pleasure to meet you. What’s your name.” It’s a demand more than a question.  

You look up at his face again before quickly wiping your hands on your lab coat to get rid of any sweat. You grab onto his hand as best as you can with your own, and holy shit.

His hand engulfs your own minuscule one and part of your forearm, his fingers reaching almost all the way to your elbow. And the skin of his hand is surprisingly soft; he doesn’t have as many calluses as you thought a marine would, but that might be because his Avatar body is fairly new. You tell him your name, and say,

“Uh, sorry, sir! I’m a xenobotanist from the science division, I got here about two weeks ago!” Your voice is squeaky and louder than you want it to be, making you cringe. You barely remember to shake his hand as you speak other than simply hold it in your own.

He continues to stare at you, wicked smile only growing when you say you’re a scientist.

“Ah, you tree-huggers are officially back, then. Part of the ‘newly instated Avatar program’, right?”

“Uh, y-yes, sir. That’s us.” You laugh weakly.

He barely twitches the fingers of the hand still holding your own, but the strength that comes from them is enough to make his grip almost painful.

“Hmmm. Well, I’m real curious to see how long you and your friend last before Pandora eats you alive. Just as a friendly warnin’, you should be real careful about what you say and who you say it about ‘round here. Guess I’ll be seein’ you. Peach.”

Your knees weaken and you nod hurriedly.

He finally releases your hand, gives you one last cold, golden look, and continues on his way. His bare arm brushes your shoulder as he passes you, and it’s enough to make you shiver.

He’s gone in just a few seconds, but you stay rooted in your spot, staring at the floor. You’re wondering if he’s going to come back and shank you with the wicked knife you’d seen strapped to his thigh when a hand gently presses against your shoulder.

You leap into the air for the second time that day, hand slamming into your chest and breath coming out in a gasp as you realize it’s just Margot. You’d completely forgotten she was even there, too consumed with the encompassing presence of Colonel Quaritch.

You look at her, eyes wide and mouth gaping. Margot returns your stunned look, face paler than you’ve ever seen it before.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit. You have the worst luck out of anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life. What the fuck just happened?”

You gulp. “I’m pretty sure that a terrifying man who wouldn’t hesitate to gut me overheard me practically gushing about him?”

She nods. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

You stand there, practically swaying on your feet. “Oh my god, he fucking hates me! Did you see the look on his face? Oh my god, why is this happening? I’m never going to able to leave my room again!”

You bury your face into your hands, suddenly exhausted. First the mess hall, now this? Why couldn’t you just not embarrass yourself for once?

Margot pats your shoulder as you groan. “There, there. It’s alright, all you have to do is avoid him for the rest of your life. If you don’t, I’m pretty sure the next time you see him he’ll either just ignore you or kill you for saying all that stuff about him, and then you won’t have to worry about it anymore!”

“But I didn’t even mean it in a bad way! I was just describing him, the same way I do with all unknown subjects.”

Margot winces. “Uh, yeah, I would definitely not tell him that.”

------

You feel like whining as you finally continue walking to the linking center. After all that, the excitement you had felt at meeting your Avatar had almost completely disappeared. Now, the only thing you wanted to do was crawl back to your room and hide underneath your blankets forever.

But Margot pulls on your hand and ignores your childish wishes. When you arrive, she practically has to push you into the room.

And then every single thing, all of your hard work, the training, the learning, even the awkwardness of that day, was suddenly all worth it when you saw her for the first time.

She was curled up in the tank, cords attached to her body and eyes moving behind her closed lids. She floated gently around in the liquid that surrounded her, sometimes twitching a limb as she slept on.

You approach the tank, mind blank and mouth dry. As you get closer, you can see the details of her face, your face, just shifted into the feline-like features of a Na’vi.

She stole the breath straight from your lungs.

And that was how you spent the next few weeks, gazing at her slash yourself. Eventually, the time came for the first linkup, and everything went well, just like you had told Margot.

You spent the next month linking into your Avatar and wandering around the facilities, checking your reflexes and consuming everything Pandora had to offer while still in the confined space of Bridgehead City.

The disorientation from linking was enough to make you lay in a cot for an half an hour each time, too dizzy to move much. It’s such a bizarre feeling, suddenly being so much taller than everything else, and you are so much stronger than you are as a human.

It took a long time to remember your strength, and you accidentally put dents into a metal door handle when you grabbed it, squeezing it much harder than you meant to. The tiny little humans helping you gave you a pretty wide berth after that, only approaching when necessary.

You practiced using your new body, walking around without sitting on your long-haired queue or stepping on your new tail, which flailed around with a mind of its own. You liked to press your tongue to your sharp canines and look at the swaying tendrils attached to your hair.

It was an exhausting, thrilling process, and you loved every second of it.

None of the new Avatars had yet to actually leave Bridgehead and go into the forest yet. It would probably take a few more weeks for that to happen, and even then, you would probably only be allowed into the tree line past the Kill Zone.

Still, you eagerly look forward to that day, barely able to contain yourself in your excitement. It’s all you can think of day and night, and even in your dreams. On that day, you would be accomplishing so much more than a lifelong goal.  

Now, your group is relaxing in one of the lounges used for breaks, discussing your experience with linking and Pandora. It was something you’d been talking about for the past few hours, the past few weeks, really. It wasn’t like any of you had very much in common with each other, other than your careers and education, but you were trying to dig a little deeper to learn more about these people.

The only problem was they were more antisocial than not, which was almost to be expected by a bunch of scientists. They were also hesitant to speak much about their past. You were the same way. They probably wouldn’t be here if they had a very pleasant past filled with lots of people they wanted to stay with back home.

You eat the small bag of crackers you’d snagged from one of the vending machines lining the gray walls of the room, hoping that the tiny treat will hold you until your next meal. The chair you are leaning back in creaks dangerously and wobbles, but you hold your precarious position, feet pulled up and crossed on the table in front of you.

Your mind wanders as the chatter of the group drifts in and out of your ears. You think of nothing in particular, dazing out of focus, simply relaxing for once.

That peace is shattered when James leaps from his chair further down the table where he and Emma sit. They’re playing an old-fashioned card game; one you’ve never heard of before. When you asked James where he learned it from, he said his great-grandfather had taught it to him. Something called ‘Go Fish’.

James raises his arms above his head in apparent victory, grinning fiercely.

“That’s round three for me, Emma!”

Emma is giggling behind her hand, cheeks flushed a bright pink. She keeps her eyes on James as he playfully postures at winning, and the sight of her joy makes you grin.

You look across the table at Margot and wiggle your eyebrows. She laughs quietly, nodding in agreement.

Sweet Emma and James. You’re almost surprised that they developed such an obvious, big fat crush on each other out of all people, given that their personalities are so different.

Maybe opposites really do attract?

Whatever the reason may be, you hope your friends find happiness in one another. The world could certainly do with more love.  

Margot scoffs in disgust and curls her lip at her empty plate, apparently already over the tooth-rotting sweetness that was Emma and James.

She throws down her silverware onto the table and leans back in her chair, pout firm on her face.

“The food here is ass! You’d think a multi-trillion-dollar company would be able to feed its employees with something other than more fucking oatmeal. I’m so damn tired of oatmeal! It’s been most of our meals for the past month!”

“The supply shipment is late, you know that.” Is all you say. There is nothing to gain from arguing with Margot when she gets into one of these hungry moods.

“Then they need to make it un-late and bring me my fucking muffins!”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that ‘un-late’ isn’t even a word, but I do agree with you. Oatmeal reserves are getting pretty old.”

Margot nods vigorously, leaning forward and placing her hands on the table.

“Coup? Coup? Anybody interested?”

You throw back your head and laugh, “Margot, we’re not going throw a coup just because there aren’t any muffins! I thought you had saved a bunch of snacks the last time this happened?”

Margot deflates. “I ate them all already and the vending machines are out of my favorites!”

“Oh, Margot.”

“I know! Somebody just put me out of my misery.” She plants her face into her crossed arms on the table, moping.

“You know, you always complain about the food here, Margot, but that never seems to stop you from scarfing it down,” James says, putting himself into your conversation. He sits in his chair still, shuffling the deck of cards as he smirks at Margot.

“I have to eat it, it’s the only thing they have here!”

You open your mouth to say something, only to pause when a big blue hand reaches around the curve of the open doorway like something out of a horror movie. You sit there, gaping, as Colonel Quaritch crouches down through the opening and steps into the break room.

Margot, James, and Emma see your startled face and turn to see what you’re looking at. When they see Quaritch, they all lurch out of their seats to stand up straight. The cards Emma and James were playing with go flying all over the table and the ground, and Margot nearly knocks her plate off the table.

Quaritch straightens up and stands, several feet taller than any of you. He rests his hand on the holster of the belt wrapped around his trim waistline and practically cocks his hip as he looks directly at you.

You’re still sitting, cracker packet now crushed to a pulp in your right hand. When he looks at you, you finally jolt up to your feet. You dust off the cracker crumbs from your shirt as best you can, anxiety filling you.

“S-Sir!”

What the hell is he doing here!?

He saunters into the room until he’s standing by the table, just a few feet from you. You crane your head up to look at him, baffled and worried.

“Is there…anything you need, sir?” You can’t help the way your eyebrows scrunch up as you ask, clearly confused.

He stares down at you, head tilting to the side as if pondering something. Eventually, he speaks.

“Walk with me.”

And then he turns on his heel and ducks out of the room as quickly as he had entered. You stand, frozen, turning a bewildered stare to your group of friends. They stare back at you, just as perplexed, until Margot urges you to follow him with a push of her hand on your back.

You get your limbs to move and start walking after him, exiting the break room and finding him waiting. Once he sees you’re following after him, he continues walking down the hallway without a word.

The silence is almost uncomfortable as you walk several hallway lengths away from the lounge to some unknown destination. You’re almost tempted to break it to ask where the hell he’s taking you, but fear of his biting words keeps your mouth shut.

His legs are so long that his stride is practically jogging for you, and you have to speed walk so you don’t get left behind. He notices you struggling but doesn’t slow down one bit. In fact, the bastard smirks meanly at your frustration and funny walking pace.

You scowl at his amusement but refuse to say a word.

Finally, Quaritch stops in front of an enormous metal door, and he takes a key from his pocket and twists it into the lock on the doorknob. He opens it and walks in, and then gestures for you to do the same with an impatient wave of his hand.

You hurriedly scuttle in, freaking out even more. If he’s taking you to his office then he must have something serious to talk about, right? Was he going to punish you for what you said, was he going to yell at you, threaten you? You’re practically sweating, fingers twisting as your imagination goes wild.

You take a moment to break out of your thoughts and look around.

You pause.

You stand in the middle of the room, eyes locked onto one thing and one thing only: the large bed laying flush up against the corner of the space.

Who keeps a bed in their office? Is the first thing that comes to your mind. Confusion rushes through you and you look around the room, taking in the closet doors, the large desk tucked into the corner across the room parallel to the bed, the empty walls just as barren as your own room.

Your own room.

Ohmygod I’m in his room. Why would he bring me to his room!?

You whirl around, and Quaritch is standing so close to you that your face nearly smacks into his crotch.

You leap backward with a yelp and jump when Quaritch barks out a loud, unfriendly laugh and then sneers at you.

“I would’ve taken you to my office before, but it seems I don’t have one of those anymore. So, this’ll have to do.”

Confusion layered with frustration comes back to you, and your eyebrows furrow. “Do for what, sir?” You barely remember to tack on the ‘sir’ at the end of your sentence.

His face suddenly breaks out into a sharp-toothed grin, and he leans back, smug once more. You were really starting to get tired of that expression.

“I have a… proposition, for you.”

You barely refrain from turning a wide-eyed, horrified look at the bed.

Under any other circumstance, if a man had taken you to his bedroom and said he was propositioning you, you would be real worried. Red flags would pop up in your brain, mind demanding you flee fast.

But these aren’t normal circumstances, given that one of his arms alone is almost as big as your body. And you didn’t really get the impression that was something he was looking for right now, so you shake your head to get rid of any crude thoughts. You refuse to lower your guard, though, still uneasy.

“Uh, a proposition, sir?”

“Yes. You see, I’m under the firm belief that to destroy your enemies, you have to think like ‘em, be like ‘em. Kill like ‘em, eat like ‘em, shit like ‘em, that sorta thing.”

He takes a step closer and you take one back.

“And if I want to have even a snowball’s chance in hell of finding Jake Sully and the rest of the natives, I’m going to need to put myself in their shoes, metaphorically speaking. But most of the people here are military, marines, people with no knowledge of the Na’vi except how best to kill ‘em.”

“So. Who best to teach me how to be Na’vi other than one of the soft-hearted, limp-dicked scientists who just eats up Na’vi shit like it’s Mamma’s home-baked cookies?”

His yellow eyes burn into yours.

“One specific little scientist came to mind, you see, when I was thinkin’.”

You knew it was coming, but that doesn’t stop you from blanching. You shove a finger in your chest and point at yourself like an idiot.

“Me?”

Quaritch finally leans back, rolling his eyes.

“Yes, you.”

You sputter, mind going a thousand miles per hour.

“But-but, I’m not even an anthropologist, sir! I study foreign plant and-and animal life! Emma, she is the one in anthropology, you should talk to her!”

Quaritch scoffs.

“Emma Rodrigo can barely string a sentence together without pissin’ her pants, let alone teach me to do anythin’.” He crosses his arms over his chest, muscles bulging. His wicked teeth glint in the fluorescent lighting as he grins.

“Nah, I think it outta be you. Peach.”

Shit, shit, shit!

I was right, I should have just gone to my room and never come out.

“But-”

“You can say no, ‘course. This ain’t an order.” The look in his eyes says otherwise. If you decline, you’re sure you’ll either be cleaning toilets for the rest of your life or found dead with his knife in your gut. There is no going easy with this guy.

You gape at him, dumbstruck by the bizarre turn your day had taken. You had hoped you would never have to see this terrifying man ever again, fully prepared to cower and duck out of every room you saw him in. Now, he was asking you, of all people on this base, to teach him?

While this guy had the height and look of a Na’vi, he seemed to utterly despise everything about them. Was it even possible for him to learn anything about the Na’vi, their culture and their language, for it to really make a difference in whether he found them or not?

You weren’t even good at teaching! You were far better at learning and observing than educating people, and you had never been interested in changing that. Could you really teach this guy anything? Was he even capable of learning?

Your face hardens as you realize you’re faced with no other choice but to accept.

I guess we’ll see.

“You know, if you’re too chicken-shit to help me out, I could always get-”

“I’ll do it.” Your voice comes out firm, as confidently as you dared to speak to him.

“…oh?” He raises an eyebrow, looking surprised. And skeptical, the asshole.

You nod your head, letting out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. You are nervous, yes, but it had been decided. There was no going back now.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Yes. I’ll teach you everything you want to know about the Na’vi. But I-I also want something in return.”

His eyebrow raises higher.

You muster all the courage and audacity you can find in your body. Admittedly, there isn’t much, but you scrounge up enough to say the next few words aloud,

“In exchange for teaching you, I want you to teach me how to fight. I need to be able to protect myself when I’m out in the forest collecting samples, and I would ask one of my friends, but they can barely handle butter knives. And you are obviously…”

You eye him from top to bottom, eyes lingering on his massive arms before you can stop yourself.

“…capable.” You finish lamely, swallowing. You refuse to back down though, tilting your chin up and keeping eye contact.

Quaritch grins slowly.

“Well, little Peach, you certainly have bigger balls than I thought! It’s a deal-”

You hold your hand out for a handshake, palm open.

“To make it official.”

Quaritch glances down at your hand and then at your face, expression unreadable. And then, slowly, he reaches to grasp your hand and most of your arm once more. He pumps your entire arm down three times, eyes never leaving yours.

If you dared to think it, you might have thought he looked almost…impressed.

You clear your throat, face on fire. “So. When would work best for you, for our lessons?”

“…0500 every day for the next two months outta do it.”

Your eyes widen in horror, mouth dropping open all over again in protest. You barely keep yourself from grasping your chest in shock.

These military guys, did they never learn how to fucking sleep in!? That’s so damn early!

His sneering smirk returns to his face at your reaction, “Come on, Peach! Where’s your sense of adventure? You’ll tell me everything I need to know about the tree-fuckers, and I’ll teach you how to take a fist to the face, that sound good? About two hours each, four hours in total every single god-damn day. Good? Good.”

You sputter, hardly believing your ears. “Four hours every day? Don’t you have better things to do!?”

“Nope. My entire purpose for existing is to capture the traitor Jake Sully and end this war once and for all. With your help, I might actually be able to do that, which means that your time is now my time. Got it?”

You nod, queasy. It seems like all of your bravado from earlier had fled, leaving you with only the shakes and a bad feeling in your stomach.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good girl, Peach. Knew you had it in ya’!”

He claps your shoulder, and even through your shirt you can feel the warmth leaching off his hand and into your own skin.

The grin he wears makes you shiver, and you suddenly feel like prey that had just been caught by a predator, sharp teeth sinking into your neck and bleeding you dry.

He leads you to the door of his bedroom and practically tosses you out, done with you now that he had gotten what he wanted. He barely gives himself a chance to say, “See you bright an’ early tomorrow morning, Peach!” before he is slamming the door in your gawking face.

You stood outside his door for a few moments, simply processing. Eventually, you’re able to make your feet unstick from the floor and you wander back to the break room in a daze, mind clouded.

I can’t fucking believe that just happened. This is going to change my entire schedule for the next few months! Jesus Christ.

You practically stumble through the hallways toward your destination. Once you reach the door to the break room, you lean your arm against it and press your forehead into your arm. Your eyes close, and your heart jackhammers in your chest.

I don’t there’s anyone in my entire life who has ever made me as nervous as that guy. Holy shit.

You take deep breaths, trying to relax your muscles and get some air into your lungs. It takes a few moments, but eventually you’re able to get your heart rate down to a steady pump.

You lick your lips, suddenly parched.

When you lean up from your perch against the door and open your eyes, you can see the faint form of your face shining up from the metal of the door. Your pupils are blown, eyes still wide, and your cheeks are red.

He is seriously the scariest motherfucker I’ve ever met. And now I’m going to have to teach him things! I don’t know how I’m going to do it without passing out a few times, ohmygod. This is going to be miserable.

You swallow as best you can with a dry throat and shakily reach up to fix your messy hair, smoothing down flyaways. You straighten your shirt, crack your neck, and plaster a calm smile onto your face.

There’s no reason to let them know how terrified I am.

You open the door to the break room and step inside, ready to answer any questions they must surely have, and…

The room is empty.

You deflate, hand rubbing down your face and feeling embarrassed.

Of course they wouldn’t wait, we have a linking session in thirty minutes…that I am now late for. Fantastic.

------

You spend the rest of the day completely distracted, too worried about what might happen the next morning. It even took longer than usual for you to link into your Avatar, and when you were finally able to get outside, you had to answer to the swarm of nosy scientists you called your friends.

They were just concerned, you knew, but you didn’t like having to relive the entire stressful event down to the last detail. Still, you gave in and spilled, telling them about Quaritch’s ‘proposition’ (ha!) and leaving out the part where he had taken you to his bedroom.  

They had all given you looks that ranged from horrified -Emma-, sympathetic -Margot and James-, and utterly uncaring -David-.

You start drinking from your water bottle franticly after you tell them everything, feeling anxious all over again.

“Well, maybe this won’t be such a bad thing,” Margot says, expression turning contemplative. All members of your group are sitting outside around a creaky wooden table in your Avatar forms, enjoying the fresh, sweet air and the bright light of Pandora as the rays warm your cyan skin. When you tilt your head back to let it shine on your face, it almost feels like home had been before the pollution clouded the sky.

Your hearing in this form is incredibly sensitive, and it hurts to hear the loud, never-ending beeping and rumbling of production taking place. It had taken you weeks to spend much time outside, and even then, you still sometimes have to put your hands over your big pointy ears when the sounds become too overwhelming.

Margot curls her large fingers underneath her chin and props her head up in her hand, “I mean, you’ll learn to protect yourself, so there’s that. Also, um…” She looks at the rest of the group mischievously, and they all get questioning looks on their faces.

She clears her throat and leans in closer to you. She puts a hand in front of her mouth, blocking it from the others, and whispers into your ear,

“I really, really wouldn’t mind getting to see how big his dick actually is and maybe you’ll get a chance.”

You choke on the water pouring into your mouth, spraying it all over the table you are sitting at. The liquid gets caught in your throat, causing you to cough painfully.

“Oh my god, Margot!” you screech, still coughing into your elbow and voice coming out scratchy. Your watery eyes glare at her over your arm.

Margot shrugs, “What, I was just saying what we were all thinking. He’s the biggest guy here, which has gotta mean something, right?” She wiggles her eyebrows and grins salaciously, and you bury your face into your arm.

“If he ever heard you saying anything like that, he would put his knife straight through your face without even hesitating!”

“I’ll let him put something else in my face if he wants.”

“Margot!”

It wasn’t like you hadn’t noticed that Colonel Miles Quaritch was a beautiful man. It would be impossible, really. Despite the sneer he always seemed to have on his face, the deep cyan of his skin, his wide, golden eyes, and his tall, broad frame were enough to make anybody swoon.

And his feline features weren’t the only thing that made him attractive. You could see his beauty in his long-fingered and broad hands, in his high cheekbones, in the curve of his lips even when they were curled up in disdain. 

It wouldn’t surprise you to learn that a lot of people thought he was attractive just because of his attitude, either. Back home it seemed that everyone was interested in the cocky, proud, manly posturing that Quaritch seemed to like to do.

But despite how pretty he may be, he was also absolutely, shit-your-pants terrifying, and an asshole, which was enough for you to keep it in your pants. That, and the fact that he hated your guts.

“Trust me, Margot, I’ll be too busy trying not to piss him off again to see how big anything is.”

Great, now I’m thinking about his dick.

Margot rolls her eyes but leans back in her seat and drops the subject, “Your loss, then.”

James strikes up a new topic, just as embarrassed as you, and you slouch gratefully back into your seat, glad that the interrogation is over.

It’s nearing darkness by the time you all finish your linking sessions, and the group shuffles their way back into the sleeping center for the Avatars. You move over to your assigned bed, crawling under the soft sheets and sighing deeply.

You lightly traced your right-hand index finger over the smooth skin of your left arm, causing goosebumps to rise. It was still so strange, being able to actually feel with a body that was yours but not, having so many new features that you still have to adjust to even weeks later. Having a whole-ass tail, being several feet taller than any human alive, having super strength, hell, even being blue was still just totally fucking weird.

You lay back into the cot and attempt to clear your mind from any thoughts, but it was just as hard as it had been when you had linked earlier. After a few minutes, you are finally able to silence your mind and drift off just enough for the link to become secure and for you to wake up in the gel link bed, back in your human body.

By the time you walk to your room, you are bone-wary, almost stumbling on your feet. You dread the coming morning, and the only thing you want to do now is turn off your brain and rest. Your shoulders hurt from the stress of the day, and when you finally unlock your bedroom door, take off your clothes, shower, and brush your teeth, you’re practically hunched over.

You shuffle under the covers once again, and you’re unconscious before your head can fully settle onto the pillow. 

------

Your eyes pop open, arms and legs flailing wildly in your sheets as you struggle to reach over to your alarm clock to silence its screaming. When you finally smack it, the crack of your hand connecting with its durable metal makes your palm sting angrily.

You let out a hoarse groan, cradling your hand to your chest as you flop down onto your bed. It had barely felt like you had gotten a wink of sleep last night, too busy thinking about your approaching morning with Quaritch. Scenarios ranging from you accidentally stabbing him to him purposefully stabbing you ran through your head, keeping you awake after only a few hours of rest.

Eventually, you stop your moping and reluctantly pull yourself out of your bed, eyes blearily glaring around your room.

It’s still a gray and sad little space, your room, but you had placed the small number of personal items you brought with you to Pandora throughout it. The one picture you had of your parents sits framed on your desk, along with your holotablet.  

The few items of clothing and the two pairs of shoes you owned were put up in your closet haphazardly, and your hygienic amenities were scattered across the small bathroom connected to your room.

Your room and areas beyond it are all so generic and boring, which is why you spend most of your time either with your group or outside in your Avatar, being able to run around and feel. And once you were finally able to leave Bridgehead, your life would start, and it wouldn’t matter what your room looked like.

You tiredly get dressed and brush your teeth and your wild hair, putting it up into a simple ponytail to keep it out of your face. Once you’re suitable, you head out and lock the door behind you, placing the key in the right pocket of your jeans.

The hallways are quiet for once, and even the incessant roaring of construction has stopped. You walk down the softly lit hallways to the mess hall, unreasonably jealous of the people who get to sleep in their beds.

Most of the lights are off when you walk in, but to your surprise, there are a few people sitting down at a table already eating their breakfast.

Guess my assumption about the military was right, they really don’t know how to sleep in.

To your delight, there is a light amount of muffins and bagels laid out on a table nearby, but the most important thing was the coffee pot next to them.

Looks like the shipment finally came in. Margot is going to piss her pants.

You gladly snag two muffins with napkins and two small cups of coffee, heading right back out the door to the hallway with a friendly smile to the person walking in. They look blankly back at you, but you don’t mind as you stuff a chocolate chip muffin into your mouth as you walk.

You shuffle the remaining muffin and cups into your left hand and elbow crook, grasping the cold metal handle of the glass door that leads into the center with your right hand. You can see a head of black curls poke out from the side of a monitor, followed quickly by a scowl and a pair of eyes glaring blearily at you as you walk in.

You wince. “Morning, Tom. Thanks again for doing this, I really appreciate it.”

Tom had been the unlucky soul you had asked to help link you into your Avatar every morning for the foreseeable future. He had balked when you had asked, saying “Hell no!” before the words were fully out of your mouth. You had leveled him with your best begging look and offered to pay for six of the ridiculously expensive books you know he liked to read coming in on the next supply shipment.

He grouchily agreed to the deal but demanded you bring him breakfast every morning. You had accepted with a pleased smile.

Tom rolls his eyes and snatches the cup of coffee from your hand when you offer it. You’re about to warn him about how hot it was when he gulps half of it down. You watch, halfway impressed and halfway feeling the pain for him in your own throat.

“Let’s get started, then.” His voice is even more crackly than yours is this early.

You nod hurriedly and take one last sip of your coffee before you reluctantly set it down on the table. You walk over to the link bed and crawl in, and Tom pulls the cover down over you. You settle in, closing your eyes to clear your mind.

------

“There ya’ are, Peach! I was startin’ to think you’d chickened out on me.” Quaritch’s loud voice startles you out of your sleepy trance, and your head snaps up from where it is laying against the metal table you are sitting at.

The asshole looks as awake and lucid as usual, not a hint of tiredness on his face. He grins nastily when he sees your sleepy expression.

“We didn’t agree on a place to meet up, sir.” You are barely able to cover your yawn with a hand, and you stand with a grimace.

“That is true. From now on, we’ll do our lessons in Courtyard Six. Try to keep up.”

He turns and walks away, clearly expecting you to follow. You hurry to catch up with his long stride, but it’s much easier to do in this form. He’s almost ten feet tall, but your Avatar is eight and a half feet tall, and you are able to lengthen your stride to match his pace. Your shoulder width and muscles are still much smaller than his, but you imagined most were.

As you step in close to him, your nose twitches, and you realize something that almost makes you trip.

Quaritch smells really, really good.

You lean in closer to him and inhale discreetly, deeper than before, and, yep, that scent is definitely coming from him.

It is such a rich scent, a strange combination of rainwater, black coffee, and something smoky, like a campfire.  

The smell is so strong that it feels like a physical mist floating its way through your nose and ears and into your head. Your mind goes fuzzy, as if suddenly stuffed with cotton. Your lips and fingertips tingle. And to your absolute horror, you can actually feel your mouth start to water.

It’s just such a lovely scent.

Do you think he’d be okay with it if I pressed my nose into his neck to smell him better-No!

You try to break out of the mist, shaking your head to get rid of the images of licking up his neck, tasting his skin, the way his head would tilt back and you would be able to feel his rumbling groan spread through his chest pressed up against your own and-

Stop it! Jesus Christ, don’t even think about it!

This is just a completely normal physical reaction, right? Maybe, but it wasn’t like this with the other guys!

In front of you, Quaritch’s footsteps stutter to a stop for a split second before resuming. It’s barely a pause, but it’s enough to make you snap out of your thoughts and look up at him. When you do, you notice the slight twitching of his own feline-like nose.

Is he smelling the same thing?

He turns his head around slightly to look at you, and you make eye contact with him just enough to notice his pupils are blown out, consuming most of his iris.

My eyes are probably no better, you think, before ducking your head to watch your feet as you walk.

Quaritch stares at you for a moment and then turns his attention back toward the path, and you do the same. You discreetly rub at your sensitive nose, trying to get his fantastic scent out of your head. A few moments after you do, Quaritch rubs at his own nose.

It doesn’t work, but by the time you reach the courtyard you’ve already gotten a little used to it. Thankfully you don’t feel as lightheaded anymore, but you have no idea if it is going to come back.

You notice that the sky has begun to lighten up as Quaritch unlocks the chain-link gate leading into the yard. Not that you really need any light, what with being able to see in the dark and all.

 He stops once you enter and closes the gate behind you, and you can immediately tell why he had chosen this courtyard out of all the others. It was hidden behind a big wall of concrete that had no windows, so nobody could see you from inside the building, and it was positioned all the way in the back of the court section, meaning it was far more remote and private than the others.

Probably doesn’t want his tough guy image to be hurt when people saw him learning about the Na’vi and chatting with a little scientist, the prick.

The enclosure is a simple little area with a small basketball court, a tetherball pole, and a metal table. Nothing special, but it would be perfect for your lessons. 

He turns around to meet your eyes, and you still have to tilt your head back to return his yellow gaze. The bioluminescent markings on his face glow brightly.  

“You wanna go first, Peach?”

You swallow nervously but nod, “I’ll go first. I thought a lot about what our first lesson was going to be last night.”

You drop down onto the soft faux grass that covered the courtyard, legs crisscross applesauce in front of you as you avoid sitting on your flicking tail. You look up at him expectantly when he continues to stand.

Quaritch looks at the table sitting just a few feet away and shrugs. He plops down onto the grass hesitantly and crosses his legs in front of him the same as you. Now that he’s actually here, all the plans you made completely leave your brain, and you mind turns blank as you struggle to come up with something to say. You both sit there in silence for a few moments before he says,

“So are you actually going to say anything in this lesson or what? Usually I can’t get you quacks to shut the fuck up-”

“Sorry, sorry! I’m just trying to figure out where to start. Um…” Your brain flashes to what Quaritch had said when he started this whole thing, wanting to learn more about the way the Na’vi think, what’s important to them, how they work.

“Okay. Well, I guess the first place to start would be at the very beginning. Millions of years ago, when-”

Quaritch interrupts you with a loud groan, throwing his head back in exasperation, “I’m not askin’ for a history lesson here, Peach. Just tell me about them now, how they operate now, in this time, not millions of years ago! Jesus Christ, you pretentious assholes always have to drag things out-”

“Okay, alright, I’m sorry! Um, so the most important thing to know about the Na’vi is their connection to nature, their connection to Eywa. You’ve heard about Her, right?”

You continue to speak when Quaritch nods. “Right, well, She protects the balance of life here on Pandora, and the Na’vi love Eywa, the Great Mother. All things on Pandora are connected to each other through Eywa; you, me, plants, animals, you name it. Life and the forest are sacred to them because it bonds them to Eywa. They can actually speak to Her, and there are places like the Tree of Souls and the Tree of Voices that are sacred to them. They connect all the Na’vi to Eywa and to their ancestors, and they can actually hear the voices of past living people, isn’t that amazing? Are you with me so far?”

Quaritch nods again, surprisingly quiet. In fact, it’s probably the longest you’ve ever seen him be silent. His face is carefully blank, eyebrows furrowed with some unnamed emotion as he listens to you speak.

And that’s how the next two hours go, you talking and Quaritch listening with rapt attention. You had no idea if what you were talking about was anything Quaritch wanted to hear, but he didn’t interrupt you other than to ask a rare question.  

About an hour in you stood up and stretched, bones popping and limbs aching from sitting on the ground for so long. Your ass was practically numb, and your left leg was stinging with pins and needles. You put your hands on your hips and looked down at Quaritch, who remained sitting on the grass.

For the first time ever, you were actually the one towering over him, and the thought made you grin as he looked up at you.

It seemed he could tell what you were thinking, because he scowled and pulled himself up on his feet, looming over you once more. He stretched his long arms above his head to get the blood flowing back in, groaning just like you had a moment ago.

You paused your own movement, gaze lingering on the way his strong muscles shifted underneath his pretty blue skin. They bunched up as his arms flexed, and your mouth turned dry.

Your eyes flickered over them for a few moments and then shifted to his face. Your stomach swooped low as you realized he had caught you looking, and you stared at him in mortification as his sneering, arrogant smile returned full force to his face. He looked so smug.

You had no idea your Avatar could even blush from embarrassment, but your cheeks burned all the same. You hurriedly turned your gaze away from him entirely, eyes squeezed shut.

He let out a low, unpleasant chuckle, clearly taking immense pleasure in your misery.

Asshole!

You stood for a few more minutes, back facing him as you pretended to examine the sky with incredible interest, waiting for your blush to fade and your stomach to settle. Eventually, you both sat on the grass once again, and you resumed your speech.

You talked about all things Na’vi related, from their connection to Eywa to what they wore, what they ate, their ceremonies, anything that popped into your head that you felt was important to mention.

In the grand scheme of things, you weren’t able to cover very much ground before your two hours were up and your lesson ended for the day.

By this time, Pandora’s light has returned from the eclipse, shining down brightly on both of you.

“So, how did I do?” you dare ask Quaritch.

“Well. Now I know what a Na’vi eats for breakfast, so. That’s something.”

You groan and bury your face in your hands, “I’m sorry, you said you wanted to know what they ate and everything! I promise we’ll eventually get into the more interesting and important things.”

Please don’t put me on toilet duty. I can do this!

Quaritch sighs, but says, “Don’t worry, Peach. We’ll get to the juicier parts someday. Learning to be one’s enemy is a long process, after all.”

He smacks his thighs, and the sound makes you jump, face moving away from your hands. Your nerves reignite in your stomach all over again as you realize it is now time for your lesson.

Why did I ever ask him to do this!? I should never have said anything, now I’m going to be Quaritch’s punching bag for the next few months! Idiot!

A sharp-toothed grin stretches over Quaritch’s face, and he leans in until he’s right in front of you, face close to yours. His yellow eyes bore into yours, and you can see your own terrified expression reflecting right back at you.

“Time for me to teach you, Peach.”

------

 “Alright, Peach. You know how to handle a knife?”

You think about it and shake your head.

“…Okay. Do you know how to throw a punch?”

Again, you shake your head.

Quaritch curses and takes a step back, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing the middle finger of his right hand between them as if praying for patience.

Both of you are standing in the middle of the small basket court, facing one another. You refuse to feel embarrassed by Quaritch’s reaction to your fighting skills, or lack thereof.

Not everyone can be a terrifying killing machine, asshole!

Quaritch seems to get the patience he was asking for, straightening up with a sigh.

“Back to the basics, then. Jesus.”

He steps up to you and places his warm, large hands on the bare skin of your shoulders. He shuffles you over closer to him, and you go willingly, body tense.

“First step in learning to defend yourself is to not be a pussy.”

Wow. Wonderful advice.

“You need to be firm in your stance and your attack, else your opponent will just be able to knock you off your feet before you can even land a hit. And if your limbs are loose, you’ll lose your balance and go flying just from your own force. Keep your core tight.”

He places a large hand firmly against the bare skin of your stomach and you suck in a surprised breath. His touch tingles through you in a way you’ve never felt before, and you look up at him with wide eyes.

He jerks his hand back and clears his throat. He walks around toward your back, and you can see the veins in his arm shift when his hand flexes by his side.

“When you throw a punch, you need to keep your wrist straight and fully extend your arm each time. Make sure you step like this,” he demonstrates, “and pull your arm like this.”

“Keep your thumb behind your index and middle fingers but out of your fist, don’t stick your pinky out, and you want to hit your opponent with these knuckles right here. Got it?”

You nod slowly, making a fist following his instructions with your right hand. He nods once and then moves in front of you. He lifts his hands in the air, palms facing outward.

“Hit me.”

Already? But I barely even- alright, you know what, I don’t even care anymore.

You shake out your arms self-consciously and try to position your body in the way he had shown you. You pull your arms up, hands folding into fists, stance widening, and you lash your arm out at him with all the strength you can muster.

Your right fist smacks against his open palm with a satisfying thwack, and you grin, tossing your arms above your head at your success.

“Your form was good, Peach, but your fist felt like getting hit with a bug. You need to work on your strength, build up your muscles and your core. Try again.”

You nod, arm flying out and hitting his palm once more.

“No, you need to keep your arm tucked in, not flying out like an idiot bird with a broken wing. Again.”

You hit his hands over and over for the next half an hour as he corrects your form and stance. As he said, you need to build your strength up in this new body, but this was a good start. He has to get in pretty close once again to show you how to move your body, but other than he seems to keep his distance.

You know, this isn’t so bad!

You hit him again a few more times before he nods, satisfied, and drops his arms.

“Now you know how to hit somebody hard, Peach. Always go for sensitive places, like the nose, groin, ears, eyes, kidney, wherever you can reach. Got it?”

You lower your own arms, panting. Reaching out to punch him hadn’t taken much movement from your arms, but doing it over and over again for half an hour made them ache terribly. You struggle to catch your breath.

It had been embarrassing, admittedly, the first few times. You had felt shy and scared all at once, unsure of yourself and uneager to be anywhere near Quaritch, let alone close enough to touch him.

Then you’d lost most of the fear the second time he had lightly smacked your cheek when he got through your defensively positioned arms. They were pretty much love taps, practically pats, but it had lit an angry fire in your stomach. Your uneasiness turned to determination to land at least one hit on him, and you forgot all about your trepidation and that this was Quaritch you were tussling with.

From the way he had grinned and curled his fingers in a ‘come-hither’ gesture, that was probably what he had been trying to do.

He also probably just liked hitting you, the dickbag.

Quaritch nods, and you fully expect him to end the lesson early for the day. What you weren’t expecting was for him to reach down and pull a massive knife from its sheath on his right thigh, bringing it up toward the light for examination.

You lean back quickly, ears flicking to the sides of your head in alarm. You had thought your punching lesson had seemed tame for him! It really wouldn’t surprise you if he decided you needed a lesson on keeping your guard up and lunged at you.  

He won’t stab me, he won’t stab me, he won’t stab me, he won’t stab me-

“This here’s a bowie knife, seventeen inches of serrated steel strong enough to cut through bone.”

He waves it around carefully, smirking at your wide-eyed look of terror.

“And this…” he leans down to put the knife back in its sheath before pulling out something else from a different pocket on his right leg, “This is your knife.”

The little knife is comically small in his giant hand, more of a switchblade than anything else.

“That’ll be the knife you use for the next week at least, so don’t lose it.”

You pluck it from his hand gingerly, fingers folding around the base as you bring it up to your eyes for closer inspection. It looks bigger in your hand than it did in his, and you can see his initials, M.Q, engraved on its tiny metal handle.

Why the hell would a guy as big as Quaritch even need a knife this small? Does he use it as a toothpick?

Nonetheless, you’re glad he didn’t give you anything bigger to use for your first time. You weren’t sure you’d be able to handle it without stabbing yourself.

He shows you how to hold it, how to slash and stab, the proper way to stand and lunge with the little blade.

After another half an hour, he nods.

“Alright, now I want you to try me.” He says, pulling his arms up close to his chest and goading you on once again with a ‘come at me’ curled hand gesture, cocky smirk in place.

You balk. “You want me to charge at you with a knife already? We just got started!”

“Yep, sure did. What, you think you could actually touch me, let alone hurt me with that little thing? Ha!”

You wince. That’s a good point.

You do what he taught you to, adjusting your grip on the blade and positioning your body and feet into the dirt, tightening your core. You take a deep breath, strengthen your muscles, and then leap with a cry.

Quaritch shifts out of the way of your knife quicker than you had yet to see him move, simply stepping to the side with an unsurprised expression.

You go sailing past him, war cry turning panicked. You drop the knife and jerk up your arms to cover your face, turning away and squeezing your eyes shut.

Just as you start tilting toward the dirt, a hand grips the back of the collar of your shirt and pulls you upright before you can even realize you aren’t falling anymore. You remained positioned for impact, hands still in front of your face to cushion your fall even as you stand on your own two feet.

You open your eyes and blink, hands patting down your front as if to make sure no injury had been done to your person.

Quaritch lets go of your collar, knuckles brushing against the sensitive skin of your neck.

“That was fuckin’ pathetic! It was like a wet paper bag was throwin’ itself my way. And where the hell did you learn to cry out like that, ‘cause it was fuckin’ embarrassin’.”

You pay no attention to his harsh words, still stunned you hadn’t face-planted into the dirt for once.

You look up at him, starry-eyed.

“That was amazing, Quaritch! You moved so fast I could barely see you! Have you always been that quick or is it new? Could you teach me how to dodge like that?”

He stares down at you, ears flicking back against the sides of his head. An odd expression crosses his face, almost as though he was taken aback by your wonder.

He clears his throat awkwardly, turning to the side to avoid your strong eye contact.

“That doesn’t matter, not with that pathetic performance. You need ta’ be firm, like I said, and not throwin’ your weight ‘round like a pussy. Come on, do it again.”

You reach down into the dirt to pick up your little knife, and you lunge at him again. He dodges all the same, but you surprise the both of you when you don’t stop, turning around and slashing in his direction.

Of course, the blade doesn’t even touch him, but it’s the thought that counts.

He grins at you, “There you go, Peach! Way to show some initiative, I’ll make a fine soldier out of you yet. Let’s go again, come on.”

And that’s how you end your morning, trying to stab Colonel Miles Quaritch with a knife the size of one of his fingers. You’d have never thought this was where you would be when you met him all those weeks ago, but hey, if learning from him would one day save your life, you’d do it gladly.

By the time two hours have passed, you’re sweating and panting for breath, hands on your knees. Your body was still new, and you hadn’t been in it long enough for you to get past light jogging and reflex training. Honestly, the fact that you were able to do all that moving without collapsing was a god-damn miracle.

You were so much faster in this form, so much more flexible and stronger. Still, that held no comparison to the trained, experienced combat vet you were practically playing with. Because that’s what this would be called, not fighting or even training. It was like playing tag or a slapping game, cause that’s all that happened for the entire lesson.

Quaritch, the fucker, doesn’t have a drop of sweat on him. His chest rose and fell evenly, and he rested one of his hands on the gun holster he had wrapped around his hips.

“You good, Peach? Not going to puke, are ‘ya?” You’d be flattered by his concern for your well-being if it weren’t for the mean, amused tone layering his voice when he spoke.

You stay bent over for a few more moments as you struggle to catch your breath. Eventually, you’re able to rise fully upright. You answer his question, even though you know it was rhetorical,  

“I-I’m good, I think.”

Just as you finish your sentence, your stomach growls angrily, as though enraged at being denied sustenance.

Ugh.

If you weren’t exhausted and beyond caring about what Quaritch thought of you, with your floppy, sweaty form and shitty punches, you would have been embarrassed. Now, though, the only thing you do is pout. Now, you were just a little pissed and tired at getting your ass thoroughly kicked for two hours.

“I’m hungry, can we be finished for the day?”

Quaritch rolls his eyes, unimpressed, but relents.

“Yeah, Peach, we’re done. Let’s get goin’.”

You grin, relieved, and your energy returns just slightly at the thought of lunch. You bound to his side, and he leads the way out of the courtyard and into the space beyond.

The day is in full swing, scientists, soldiers, robots, and trucks all bustling around Bridgehead as you follow Quaritch close on his heels to the mess hall.

You pass by all the tiny little humans, most of whom don’t even spare either of you a glance. Either because they were used to seeing ten-foot-tall Avatars walking around or because they were too busy to give a shit. Probably both, really.

You both have to duck as you walk through the doorway, Quaritch much more than you. You walk over to the table where you had snagged the muffins for breakfast earlier that morning, grabbing three of the sandwiches that were there now instead.

Quaritch grabs six of them, piling them all onto his plate.

You’ve just started scarfing yours down when a large hand whips out across your back, slamming into you. You inhale instinctively and start choking on your food, struggling to breathe. You turn around, fully ready to smash your sandwiches into the face of whichever fucker did that when you see Quaritch’s walking away, waving the spare hand not holding his food up behind him.

“See you ‘round, Peach.”

Oh. Well, at least he said goodbye.

You drink from the water bottle you’d snagged from the mass hall and eat your sandwiches as you walk to the showering station for Avatars. You stay under the pounding warm water longer than you probably should, enjoying the way it soothes the ache in your tense arms and shoulders.

After you’re done washing away the sweat and grime, you head back to the Avatar resting area, ready to be in your own body.

It had taken you a while to learn how to hold onto the brain link connecting your bodies; the first few weeks were the worst when you were learning to hold it longer and longer. Sometimes it would break, and you would slam back into your human body with a gasp, disoriented and head pounding.

Now, though, you were much better at holding onto the link for longer periods, even if it still gave you a headache.

You settle back into the pillows, closing your eyes and letting your mind go blank.

------

When you wake up in your human body, it always feels stuffy, not right, like you’re being squeezed into a tube. Your mouth is always cottony, too, and even though your body was simply laying down like you were asleep, your bones always ache when you get up as if you’ve been doing jumping jacks for however long you were in there.

You step out of the link bed, stretching your arms above your head and groaning. Tom is no longer in the linking center, but you didn’t expect him to be when there were others milling about who could watch over you.

You stand up and wobble a little bit, dizzy. Once it passes and you’re sure you can walk without smacking into anything, you make your way back toward your room, fully intent on sleeping for the rest of the afternoon before the conference in the evening.

Just as you leave the linking center, Margot runs into you, hair wild and eyes a little bit crazy. She grabs onto your shoulders, shaking you back and forth lightly. You let her do whatever she wants, beyond caring.

“How did it go? Did he yell at you, did he flirt any? Ooh, did he smack your ass-? Hey!”

You shake her hands off, walking past her with a roll of your eyes.

“Jesus Christ Margot, you really need to get laid.”

She groans, following after you with quick steps, waving her arms around as she says, “I know! There’s just no one I’ve seen that I’m interested in, so I have to live through you and your sexy romance with Colonel Quaritch-”

You halt, turning around to grab her shoulders. You’re the one shaking her back and forth this time.

“Listen, Margot, there is nothing going on with Quaritch and me at all, nothing sexy, nothing flirty! We literally just met like two days ago, and he’s hated me ever since! Now stop saying stuff like that, or he’s going to overhear us, again, and kill us both. Okay? Okay.”

Margot whines, “Oh, but maybe there could be! If you were just a little less uptight and he was a little less homicidal, you guys could totally get together. I mean, you can’t deny that he might be interested, right? I totally saw the way he was looking at you yesterday!”

“Yeah, he was looking at me like he wanted to wrap his hands around my throat.”

“Kinky.”

“No, Margot, not kinky! More like murderous! You’re starting to sound crazy, Margot, you’ve gotta do something before you start humping anything that moves.”

Margot blushes, finally feeling some sort of shame, and she nods, “Yeah, you’re right, I’m sorry. I’m just so pent-up, honey. Ugh! Okay, I’m going to try to relax somewhere, get outta my head for a little bit. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

You pat her shoulder and say, “See you then, Margot.”

She gives you one last smile before she’s off, bounding down the hallway. You shake your head in fond exasperation, now even more tired than before, and walk back to your room. You adored Margot, loved her, but sometimes her exuberance made your head pound.

You unlock your door, kick off your shoes, and toss yourself onto the unmade sheets of your bed. One last thought floats through your mind just before you drift off to sleep.  

Maybe mornings with Quaritch won’t be as bad as I thought.

peachy keen. Part Two

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 15

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 8k

warnings: swearing, horror descriptors, violence/blood, characters being in danger - people are getting fucked up, but the worst is yet to come (I'm so sorry)

A.N.: I couldn't do it, Chat, I had to split this chapter up into two parts - shit has officially hit the fan

Running is not your favorite activity. Never has been, never will be, and yet here you inexplicably are, hauling ass through the woods of your nightmares like your life depends upon it – which it absolutely does. 

There is no question in your mind as to what will happen to you if you are caught, and it is that very thought that spurs you on. The Demogorgon ate Barb, and if you are not quick, and careful and extremely fucking light on your feet, these bats are going to eat you. 

Somehow, you don’t imagine they’ll do you the courtesy of killing you first, either. 

So no, running is not something you particularly enjoy doing (it’s a wonder you went and willingly volunteered for this – the things you do for love). You might even be inclined to say that running is awful.

Always has been, always will be.

It’s nothing but the terrible sensation of feeling every part of your body moving, shifting awkwardly under the duress of being suddenly thrust into motion, forcing you to become painfully aware of yourself in ways you are typically content to ignore. 

But you’re not thinking about any of that. 

You’re not thinking about the way your lungs are heaving and quickly growing tight and raw, how your knees and ankles are already stinging with every pounding step you take.

You’re not thinking about the walkie-talkie strung around you, thump thump thumping awkwardly against your side, strap chafing against your neck, corner digging sharply in, and grinding a bruise into your hip.

You’re not thinking about the trees and branches reaching out to snag you and slow you down at every turn, and you’re absolutely not thinking about the cloud of certain death tailing not so distantly behind you. 

You’re not thinking at all— you’re just running. 

Faster than you ever have, faster than you ever thought you were capable of, so fast it feels a little bit like flying.

The only indication that the bats have taken the bait is the rushing sound of hundreds of flapping wings and wiry bodies moving through the trees around you like crashing thunder. You know you should be scared out of your wits – you’re sure you would be if you were any smarter, but you’re not. 

You’re just running.

Suddenly it’s like the forest is not even there. There are no bats, there is no Upsidedown, no impending doom brought upon you by some bullshit wizard out of Eddie’s imagination – it’s just you and the wind upon which you glide.  

You’re too caught in the half-drunken state of giddy nerves and adrenaline to be worried about not being scared. The absence of your fear leaves you feeling more than a little bit astounded at how well you’re doing. 

You marvel at your pace – how you haven’t stumbled or faltered even once, how fast you are. 

You could almost laugh out loud at the feeling of it, the freedom – then again that could just be the heady intoxication of running for your life, but you can’t presently be bothered by things of the rational world. 

You’re winged Icarus taking flight, skirting the sky, chasing the wind, led on by the distant themes of the loving Metallica tribute raging on. 

You run hard and fast, without abandon or fear of things like the fragility of your squishy mortal form, flailing desperately as you take flight. 

Nothing can touch you — nothing but cruel irony and raised tree roots.

In an instant, it all comes crashing down. Your foot snags, and you stumble with a harsh, breathless expletive, very nearly tumbling ass over teakettle, and the terrible sobering reality of your frailty comes rushing back to you. 

Suddenly, you remember that running is terrible, and you’re actually very bad at it. 

It’s all chaffed thighs and twisted ankles, huffing and puffing and feeling every drop of sweat that comes cascading down from all the nooks and crannies in your body that you spend the duration of your days mostly unaware of. 

You’re no golden icon stealing their freedom on a wing and a prayer, you’re nothing more than a mediocre student with a shitty car, oblivious parents, and no academic ambition – more than that, you suddenly have the very good sense to be afraid again, and it hits you like a brick to the face.

This isn’t some agonizing fifth-period excursion into the sadistic tendencies of your gym teacher – this is honest-to-God danger. You are being hunted and if you are caught you will die. 

You may very likely die anyway – that’s just the name of the game.

Suddenly, you can feel your blood turning to sludge in your veins, your legs starting to tremble, and your lungs beginning to spasm with each greedy intake of air, but despite all of that, you keep running.

You run, because what other choice have you got? 

The wailing screech of Eddie’s guitar is the guiding beacon, tugging on the strings of your heart and sending you sailing through the woods toward safety, but the squeeze of Dustin’s watch strapped to your wrist is a ball and chain, dragging you down further and further into the loamy earth with every second that ticks away too fast.

As if to drive the notion home, the watch pipes up, beeping a shrill call, an unhelpful reminder of what will happen if time runs out before you make it back.

You resist the urge to check the time – you know you’re already behind schedule, but you don’t think about that. 

You don’t think about tripping or the bats or how slow you are, and you certainly don’t think about getting caught, being torn limb from limb and eaten alive — just like Barb — don’t think about it, don’t think about it — don’t think just run! 

You focus on your breathing, and you try to remember what Steve told you.

In and out. Deep, slow breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. 

Don’t gasp for air. Don’t hyperventilate. Don’t pass out — don’t trip.

Oh shit! 

Your foot snags another tree root and for a second you imagine they must be sentient, lifting up to purposely slow you down like something out of The Wizard of Oz. 

You always hated that movie.

You stagger, arms windmilling, legs kicking out – your palms kiss the ground but you don’t fall. 

You keep running.

Beep beep — the goddamn watch is mocking you.

It’s got to be, because how else can time be passing so quickly when every bit of physical education you’ve ever endured has existed in a bizarre never-ending loop of slow motion.

Why is this so different?

Because you’re running for your goddamn life, Stupid.

Beep beep — Better pick up the pace.

Master of Puppets is still a distant sound, and despite how far you think you’ve come, you’ve still got so far to go.

It’s not getting any closer… why isn’t it getting any closer? 

Slowly, the nagging pull of hideous reality creeps up and begins to whisper to you. You hear it over the rip and pull of your breathing, murmuring terrible secrets through the thunder of your footsteps, the hammering of your heart, the roaring of your blood, like poison in the ear. 

It tells you all the things you don’t want to hear – it tells you you’re not going to make it. 

Desperately, you try to find your bearings and locate yourself out in the dark without taking the time to look around. You can’t afford to take another tumble, but without looking you’re running with blinders on.

Everything is so different on this side, in the dark landmarks are only vaguely familiar and trees all look the same. That much is true up in the real world, but down here it is multiplied tenfold. 

That voice is still whispering, telling you that somehow you’ve turned yourself around, that you’re headed away from the trailer and thats why the music isn’t getting any closer.

Suddenly, you can’t help but get the irrational sense that you are headed toward the Creel House instead of away from it, and it’s enough to send your heart rocketing up into your throat like it means to escape and abandon you to your ever slowing pace. 

Somehow, cooler heads prevail, and you swallow back that fear like bile rising in your throat. You know you can’t afford the luxury of second-guessing yourself – not with hell snapping at your heels like this, so you dig in.

You run, and you trust, and you hope beyond hope that you’re headed in the right direction.

Fuck running, fuck Vecna and his shitty stupid bats, and fuck this fucking place. 

There is no gradual end to the woods. 

The tree line stands a stark barrier, still and silent until you shatter the illusion of peace. You burst through the trees, out into the open ground, and shockingly cold air that has you gasping out, like being submerged in a freezing pool. 

Out of the woods, you are freed from the bone-crushing haze you hadn’t realized had descended upon you until it is gone. The open air fills you with a strange clarity, and suddenly, like lifting a veil, you can see – the edge of the trailer park lies beyond. 

The music is loud now, loud enough that you can feel every chord striking in your back teeth.  

You laugh out a loud, breathless thing that presents itself as much more a desperate shout than anything else. In the distance, you can almost see Eddie and Dustin, crouched atop the trailer.

Little victories are victories all the same, and you watch with something that could almost be misconstrued as glee as the bats shift up in one dark cloud of movement, suddenly much more interested in the sound that drew their attention in the first place. The potential for a larger, more appealing meal than the one you present. 

Another beep yelps at you from your wrist, and this time you dare to steal a foolish glance at the watch. The numbers count down at a rapid pace, just as you imagined they would, pale glowing green signifying a head-on collision with your doom — t-minus sixty seconds, less than a minute to go. 

You kick your knees up higher and throw your arms out in the hopes it might make some minute difference.

Must go faster… must go faster!

You can see them now, no real details, just the suggestion of figures perched atop the trailer, backlit with every angry flash of lightning.

You see Dustin crouched beside the amp, and you see Eddie thrashing against Sweetheart in time with the wailing screech of the solo you’ve long since stopped hearing over the roaring blood in your ears. 

You’re in the home stretch — you’re going to make it. 

You take another hard step, and without any sort of prelude to the danger awaiting the ground crumbles beneath you. Your attention snaps to your feet on instinct and your stomach bottoms out in what can only be described as pants-shitting terror as you realize too late that the road is gone. 

Scratch that — the ground is gone, replaced instead with a yawning chasm of darkness, like a terrible grinning maw, splitting the land open to swallow you whole.

You gasp out a breath you can’t spare and try in vain to dig your back foot into the loamy brush that isn’t there, desperately hoping somehow, you’ll land on solid ground and not go cartwheeling into the abyss. 

It’s always the hope that kills you. 

Before you can react, gravity reaches up to snatch your forwardmost foot and drags you over the edge. Overhead, the swarm pays you no mind as you plummet, still hurdling on toward the deafening sound of Eddie living out his wildest Metal-God wet dreams. 

Sweetheart wails out a keening cry of ecstasy on a high note, the sound is tinged with the faintest hint of a terrified shriek as you drop out of existence.

You fall, something reaches out and snags you, and just as quickly as your plunge begins, it ends.

You come to a hard, lurching stop, and your head snaps backward, cracking against something sharp and solid. It sends stars and colors skittering brightly across your vision before they are quickly banished by shadows creeping in like the tide, and you lay where you landed, dazed and spinning.

Don’t pass out, You tell yourself as you sink further and further into the darkness below, don’t pass out…

...

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

The sound is a faint stabbing thing, prodding you back to life. You groan out a ragged sound as, slowly, you begin to come back to yourself, shifting and attempting to sit up to middling results.

Your head feels fat and swollen – it protests the way you attempt to shake your senses back into place with the bright bursts of an oncoming migraine. The harsh jerk of your head sends your brain buzzing frantically in your skull before bursting, leaving you terribly nauseous and with the vaguest sensation that you are spinning.

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

It takes a very long moment for you to remember where you are and what happened to get you there.

You remember falling, the harsh start and stop of the motion, how you’d cracked your head on something when you landed — a rock maybe? 

Everything hurts, but at least it’s an indicator that you’re not dead — now if only you could open your eyes. Your lids slide over your eyes like sandpaper and you are almost half convinced that you imagined the sensation when the darkness does not disperse. You blink, once, twice, three times to no avail – your vision does not clear, and slowly, you come to the terrifying realization that sometime in the last few minutes, you have gone inexplicably blind. 

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

You’d once seen a Dateline special about a man who was hit in the back of the head during a bar fight and had his retinas snap as a result — a one in a million chance, they’d called it, but the thought causes your stomach to heave all the same.

How far-fetched would it be to assume you could be that one in a million, considering the rotten turn of your luck over the past few days? 

Oh God oh Christ! You think, opening your eyes as wide as they will go against the wall of black in a desperate attempt to kickstart your vision into working order.

Your mind screams at the thought of being stuck down at the bottom of some pit, dying down in the dark without even having the courtesy of seeing what kills you.

Suddenly, there is a flash to your left – you scream and recoil only to be met with another on your right as something flails pathetically in your peripheral vision. 

After a heart pounding moment, you heave out a sigh of relief as you come to realize that it is only your hands, windmilling above you as you instinctively fight the gentle swaying of your body in what’s left of your momentum. 

A cursory glance upward confirms what you knew all along, that you haven’t been struck blind, after all. In the intermittent flashes of light, you can see your dingy sneaker snagged in a gnarled swathe of roots and branches, jutting out from the side of the open earth, holding you suspended only a few feet down — thank fuck for that. 

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

Dangling upside down by one foot, staring into the impenetrable dark of an apparently bottomless chasm with little to no hope of escape is not the worst-case scenario, not by a long shot, but it’s certainly not ideal. 

As you begin the arduous task of getting yourself upright again, you become aware of the hot bloom of blood spreading across your scalp from whatever you’d smacked it on.

Suddenly, you can’t help but imagine it dripping from the ends of your hair, down into the dark to pique the interest of something else – something ancient and terrible slumbering deep down in the dark.  

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

You remember then that there are other things to be afraid of down here, other beasties than the bats still wheeling overhead.

You don’t know what a Demogorgon is supposed to look like or whether it happens to live at the bottom of highly inconvenient chasms in the earth only to be summoned by the smell of fresh blood and stupid girls overexerting themselves, but you aren’t expressly keen on sticking around to find out.

You haven’t seen that movie, but you have no interest in starring in the sequel, and it is enough to light a fire under your ass … or over it, considering your upside-down state. 

You twist and bend at the waist until you can catch a fist full of roots and begin the Herculean task of trying to navigate free of the tangle without losing your grip and dropping off into an inky black eternity. 

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

You try not to think about the last time you did a sit-up as your abs burn and your back creaks and you grunt out the effort of trying to pull yourself up and out of the darkness. 

You twist and tug and finally — finally — manage to get yourself sitting upright again, and then you climb.

Fingers in the earth, hand over fist, you claw your way up and over the lip of the chasm and haul your sorry carcass out of the pit. 

Beep beep — beep beep — beep beep.

Back on solid ground, you lay panting, shivering for the overexertion of your muscles and the way the dank air has settled on the sleek sheen of sweat coating every inch of your body. 

You roll over onto your back and watch the bats wheel overhead. You keep breathing, the storm keeps on raging, and very slowly the horror of this strangely peaceful moment begins to dawn on you.

It’s quiet.

Holy shit – holy fucking shit, it’s quiet. 

“Oh, shit!” You gasp, lurching up with enough force that your head threatens to start spinning again. “No, no no no no!” 

There’s no music, no screaming orgasm of a guitar solo, no voices shouting your name and urging you to get up off your ass. There’s nothing but the incessant beeping of the watch. 

You’re on your feet before your body has anything to say about it, hands fisted in your hair as you scan the horizon, desperately searching the trailer tops for any signs of human life.

Dustin and Eddie are gone.

Your heart jumps up into your throat and lodges itself there before beginning to swell, choking you and stopping you from making any sort of sound. 

The trailer is teeming with bats, not a scrap of the dingy tin siding is visible beneath the writhing mass of bodies — even under the squirming mess of fear that your brain has devolved into, you know you couldn’t get within ten feet of that place if your life depended on it, which it does.

You missed your window. The bats beat you back to the trailer, and that means you’re trapped out here. 

When your heart finally slips back down into your chest, it settles there with a deafening thump and pulls loose the stopper on your bottled fear — you’re filling your lungs before you’re even aware of what you’re about to do. 

“EDDIE!” You scream, your voice breaking in a potent combination of desperation and sheer volume. 

You don’t remember a time you’ve ever screamed that loud – you’ve long since been conditioned to stay quiet and well-behaved by parents who were far too busy to have a rowdy child on their hands, but desperate times call for desperate fucking shouts, and it leaves your vocal cords raw and trembling.

There is nothing but the hollow sound of your voice echoing back at you, less muted than it had been back at the Creel place, but no less haunting. 

It’s a very foolish thing to do, especially when only moments before you’d been gripped in the very rational fear that there are other things skulking about — things much more likely to hear you than Eddie will be, closed up in the trailer a hundred yards off, but you’re just about ready to come apart at the seams watching the bats overtake the structure. 

You suddenly feel hideously exposed. 

You fist your hand in the front of your shirt, clawing at the space where your heart ought to be, where you can feel it beating against your ribs as you feel the black grip of panic closing in on you.

You know what you’re supposed to do, but the trailer is there – it’s right fucking there — and you can’t get to it. 

You spin around in aimless circles, looking for somewhere to go, some way around this bullshit hole in the ground and the bats that will surely tear you to pieces once they notice you standing there, and you come up empty. 

There’s nothing you can do, no way to get Eddie’s attention without alerting the bats… you’re supposed to go to the van…

And then you remember the walkie-talkie.

Your mind detaches from your body as you reach for it and find nothing but air. It’s not slung across your body like it had been only moments before, a constant companion bouncing against your hip and digging deeper and deeper into the bruise it made with every step you took from the Creel House to here. 

Your stomach drops into your ass, and you feel like you’re going to be sick as you realize it’s in the pit. 

Gravity must have taken it when you fell, taking with it any hope of communication, of rescue. You stand frozen, staring into that terrible darkness that your eyes refuse to adjust to. Its churns and writhes and remains impenetrable, unknowable, and you feel your hands curl tighter in on your chest.

Suddenly, you’re six years old again, trembling in the aftershocks of a nightmare and facing the immense darkness of the hallway that leads to your parents’ bedroom. 

Salvation is right there, and you can’t get to it.

And then the darkness speaks. 

In a moment of profound panic, your mind goes hideously blank and your name ekes up out of the pit.

Look into the abyss and the abyss will look back …

The noise comes again, strangely familiar in a way that makes your skin crawl, until you realize why. 

It takes a long, terrifying moment to realize that your name is not being spoken by some kind of horrible eldritch beast – it’s coming from the radio – it’s coming from Eddie. 

A bloody red flash of lightning reaches as far down into the dark as it dares and there you see it. The walkie-talkie, hanging by its strap, clinging on to a particularly gnarled root as it sways under its own weight — suddenly, there’s still a chance. 

You drop instantly to your belly and inch forward, resting your chin on the lip of the crevasse and spitting dirt as you extend your reach for the boxy piece of tech. You’ve got to get it, but you’re not about to go any further back into the pit then you absolutely must — you reach for the thing, waggling your fingers like somehow, it’s going to Go-Go-Gadget extend them far enough to snag it, but it’s no use.

Your arms aren’t long enough, and the walkie remains far out of your reach.

Something strikes you — raking talons come down to tear across the top of your head to snag your hair.

Bats… how could you have forgotten the bats?

It wrenches you backward, tearing from you a loud cry of alarm before you jerk free of its claws. You briefly entertain the notion of abandoning the radio and heading for the hills, but if Eddie is going to save you, you’re going to tell him what’s happening, so against your better judgment and every natural instinct you have, screaming at you to RUN, you scramble forward again, desperately reaching for the radio all while doing your best to brace against the monsters wheeling overhead.

You’re not nearly close enough to reach the thing, but you’ve come too far to give up on it.

Your name comes up from the pit again, garbled and half cut off in the static of the interference of this place.

“–o to– an!” The walkie commands you.

Caution be damned, you push out further than before, bracing your hips over the crumbling edge of the earth and extending your arm far past its reach, trusting in some higher power that you will not go tumbling into that great expanse. 

You wince under the way your shoulder clicks painfully on the edge of hyperextension, and you reach reach reach as that same garbled command is fed through a paper shredder and out from the walkie-talkie, Eddie imploring you to do something. 

“Go–t– th– va–!” 

Your fingers brush the strap once, twice, three times. You teeter further than is rightly wise and hook a finger in the Mylar just as the ground shifts beneath you again. You blink back visions of toppling forward, of things rising from the earth with grabbing hands to drag you down into the depths, and you close your fist, scrambling backward just as more of the loamy earth gives way.

You don't even wait to catch your breath before you bring the walkie up to your mouth, pressing the button on the side and shouting down the line.  

“Eddie help me I can’t get to you the road is gone and the bats are everywhere I don’t know what to do!” 

The second you take your thumb off the button, your instructions come screaming over the radio, loud and clear. 

“Go to the van!” Eddie shouts, “RUN!”    

You’re only granted a microsecond to wallow in the despair of that command before another one of the bats strikes the ground hard beside you – a big one, easily the size of a golden retriever, scrambling forward with a toothy screech as it reaches for you. 

You scream, pushing up with a desperate gasp, and bolt back into the trees, back the way Eddie showed you on the other side. 

It doesn’t take long to get through to that lonely stretch of highway. There sits the van, just as Eddie had promised it would be, though suddenly looking much more like a tired sagging animal on this side than the crouching beast you know so well. 

Time is stuck down here, he’d said, it’s still November ‘83, he’d said. 

Somehow, the van doesn't seem to have gotten that message.

It’s long abandoned, listing hard to the right on flat tires. It’s caked in thick layers of dirt and grime and wrapped in a constricting swathe of vines that reminds you far too much of a snake strangling its prey than you’re comfortable with, considering you intend to barricade yourself in the belly of the sad creature before you.

You don’t have time to ask whether this is actually a good idea or not, because the bats are swarming, snapping at your heels, whipped into a frothy tizzy over the trailing scent of freshly spilled blood and fleeing prey. 

You hit the van at a flat sprint, crashing into the side panel with a bang as you slap your open palms against it in a desperate search for the handle. You don’t find it until you’ve circled halfway around to the back door, and even then, it takes several hard tugs to pry the thing open.

A bat strikes the panel beside your head, and then another, cracking the glass and startling you into screaming as you crank the door open as far as you dare and squeeze through the gap.

You slam the door and throw your body across the truck bed in one swift movement, colliding heavily with the back of the driver’s seat and curling in on yourself, watching the hazy shadows of dozens of little bodies come crowding together in the spot where you were just standing, blocking out any semblance of light there is in this place. 

Your body throbs with adrenaline and burns in a hundred different places where the woods tore at your skin and clothes, all while your heart hammers against your ribcage like it means to burst forth. Dark spots and flecks of light burst in the dark and you sit there gasping for air, just like Steve had warned you not to. Your head swims and suddenly you can’t help but get the sensation that you’re swaying. 

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know you’ve strayed the line into hyperventilation, and that you’re going to pass out if you don’t manage to slow your breathing. 

If you pass out you’re dead, you got that?

You swallow hard against the copper you can suddenly taste flecking up from the back of your throat and pull your knees up to your chest, squeezing your eyes shut and channeling all your limited focus into taking deep, steadying breaths, just the way you’d practiced.

Deep breath, in through the nose. Out through the mouth. Rinse and repeat until you don’t feel like you’re this close to fainting any longer. 

It doesn’t work so well with your lungs spasming under duress and refusing to inflate again. 

Then you can hear the crackling sound of someone calling your name over the radio.

You fumble frantically in the dark for the walkie-talkie, hearing the sound of your name getting a little more desperate with every passing moment. When you finally get your hands on it, you snatch it up and press the plunger.

“I’m here,” you gasp, “I’m here.”

“No, you’re not!” Dustin fires back, “Where the hell are you?”

You open your mouth to try and explain, but before you can get a word out, Eddie’s voice comes ringing frantically over the line. 

“What happened? Baby– what happened?”

You don’t get the chance to answer him before something hits the side of the van with enough force to rattle the windows and send it swaying on its creaking shocks.

For half a moment you don’t dare to breathe as you’re flooded with images of the constricting vines stirring to life and crushing the van flat with you trapped inside.

You realize with a sickening start that not only was this very bad idea, but that your safe haven is very likely about to become a corroded steel coffin. And then it happens again, and again, boom after thunderous boom like being caught in a torrential hailstorm, or a fucking tornado. The van rattles and rocks and shifts violently as dozens of bodies strike the steel paneling, hitting the vehicle on all sides.

When the first of the indents begin to implode inward, you throw yourself to the bed of the van, scrambling to hide in the filthy blankets and things that belong to an Eddie that doesn’t exist down here. 

Then, without much in the way of warning, the left-hand side of the van caves in entirely and splits open. There are suddenly dozens of little creatures there, fighting to get through to you, fighting each other, and the sides of the torn metal digging into their ugly little faces as they try and force their way through.

You watch in horror as the jagged edge peels back their skin, flaying them alive and spilling their thick, black blood, and they just keep coming, thrashing, and reaching and screaming like they don’t even feel it, like they’re just that desperate to get to you.

You scramble backward, but before you can realize that there’s nowhere to go, the van is struck again with that same force. This time, the van rocks up on two wheels, sending you sprawling as it lists hard to the right. With a sad and ominous groan, gravity takes it, sending you scrambling for purchase, reaching out to brace yourself against something – anything – as the van tips and begins to roll.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The commotion that comes pouring over the radio is absolutely terrifying, like nothing Dustin has ever heard. A roaring static boom of crunching, creaking metal, and breaking glass, intercut with a healthy dosage of angry static and the chewed-up sound of your screaming.

Dustin feels like he’s going to break into a thousand tiny pieces as he stands paralyzed, listening to the soundtrack of something terrible and violent happening to you. He doesn’t know what to do – he’s got to do something, help you somehow, but his mind has gone blank.

For all he knows he could be listening to you die, and he can’t do anything about it – he’s got to save you, but he knows there’s nothing he can do.

You didn’t make it…

Dustin’s fingers are trembling as he fists them into the gray sweater he’d shrugged into for battle and tries to convince himself that you’re okay.

Maybe it’s not even you making those awful sounds, maybe you lost the radio somewhere, escaped whatever the hell is happening on the other end of the line, and are headed back to them as they speak. Maybe you just got sidetracked and you’re about to come pounding down the back door, screaming to be let in. 

Maybe he’ll wake up in a second and discover this was all just a terrible dream and none of this ever happened. Chrissy’s not dead, Vecna’s not real, and everything is sunshine lollipops and rainbows.

Maybe maybe maybe…

After a moment that feels like an eternity, the sounds finally stop, and then there is nothing but white noise – Dustin can’t breathe. 

Eddie hits the button on the side of the walkie, cutting the static and speaking your name into the silence. His voice is uneven and immediately betrays the facade of his calm.

Nothing.

Once more, he presses the button and calls your name, same tone – same wavering lilt in his voice. 

“–come in…”

Static.  

Dustin can’t decide if he’s about to vomit or burst into tears.

“Eddie–” he starts, unable to keep his voice from quavering with emotion, “What—what do we do?”

But Eddie doesn’t hear him, or he just plain ignores him, and Dustin’s heart is in his throat for it. For lack of anything better to do, he asks again.

“Eddie, what do we do?” 

Silence.

The muscles in Eddie’s jaw flex as he grits his teeth, and the walkie-talkie begins to tremble in his hand. He inhales sharply in a highly disturbing way that leaves Dustin suddenly half afraid that he’s about to come apart at the seams.

He hates this he hates this he hates this — why did Eddie tell you to run? Why couldn’t you make it back to them? Why won’t Eddie just talk to him? 

Dustin hiccups and seizes Eddie by the sleeve of his jacket, tugging hard on him, like somehow, it’s going to snap him out of whatever trance he’s in, like somehow it’s going to bring you back. 

“Eddie–!” He cries. 

Eddie wrenches his arm free and shushes him harshly, calling your name once more, louder this time, failing entirely to keep his voice steady. 

He has officially lost his cool. 

“–Come in, Baby…  come in, come in, come in Goddammit! We really need a sign of life here…” he pleads, growing more frantic by the second, fisting his hand in his hair and breathing hard like he can’t get enough air, “I-I need— I need a sign. Just give me a sign – just tell me you’re okay … Baby, please—”

BOOM. 

Their heads snap up toward the sound like meerkats moving in tandem as an air of doom settles heavily over the room, slicing through any kind of premature settling grief. 

They’d been so worried about what was happening with you that they’d conveniently forgotten to be afraid for their own lives. Just because they are inside does not mean they are anywhere within the arena of safety.

As if to punctuate that fact, outside, the screen door begins to rattle loudly on its hinges like it’s caught in a hurricane. It thrashes and whines against the barrage of whatever is happening just outside the door before there is the scream and pop of it being torn away entirely. 

The bats are through their defenses.

“Eddie?” 

“...Oh, shit…” 

BOOM. 

The front door rattles under the duress of the bats all hurling their weight against it, scratching and clawing and beating their wings in a frantic attempt to get in.  

“Eddie!”

“Oh, shit!” 

The clock is ticking. Phase Two is now in effect, and it’s time for the pair of them to get the hell out of Dodge, but you’re not here, and you’re not answering. 

BOOM.

They’re swarming the trailer, scrambling all over the reinforced tin siding, and scratching at the windows. 

They have to get out of here. They’re going to die if they stay, but they can’t just leave you. Steve explicitly told them not to be heroes, but somebody has to do something. 

BOOM.

Dustin never should have brought you into this, he should have left you alone, kept you far removed from this place and everything that goes with it. You have no business in the Upsidedown, he has no business in the Upsidedown. What the hell does he think he’s doing here? He’s not a hero, he barely made it through the last three times this happened, with the Demogorgon, with D’art, the Mindflayer – he’s just a kid… then again, kids always make it out of horror movies, don’t they? 

BOOM. 

Then again, maybe not.

“What do we do?” Dustin yelps, flinching hard against the way the door bends inward ever so slightly before snapping back into shape, “—Eddie, what do we do?!”

BOOM. 

This time the sound comes from the other end of the trailer, from Eddie’s bedroom – the ceiling is shaking. 

Before Dustin can stop to consider why that is happening and what that means for them, Eddie is a blur, sprinting down the hall faster than Dustin has ever seen any one person move. 

He reaches the open door the moment the ceiling caves in.

Suddenly, there is a mess of leathery writhing bodies fountaining down into the room like water rushing from a burst pipe. He is vaguely aware of screaming as a flurry of wings and talons rear up in the room beyond.

They’re in the house. Dustin thinks, Jesus Christ, we’re gonna die down here…

Eddie reaches for the doorknob, and something reaches back, rearing up and knocking into him hard enough to send him sprawling backward. 

For a terrifying moment, Eddie stays down and Dustin stands frozen, watching with unbridled terror as he thrashes and writhes beneath the thing that has him pinned – a bat, easily the size of a bulldog — snapping and biting and doing everything in its power to make a meal out of him. 

Dustin hasn’t even realized he’s even moved before he watches his foot collide heavily with the bat. Its features cave in and squelch grossly around the toe of his sneaker before bouncing off and back into the room.

He has no idea how or when he crossed the room, but suddenly he’s got his hands in Eddie’s jacket and is trying to pull him back down the hall.

He can’t save you, wherever you are, but he can save Eddie — or at least he can try. 

Eddie surges forward out and grips the knob, whipping the door shut with a heavy slam before falling backward onto his ass, taking Dustin down with him.

For half a moment, it’s all either of them can do but sit there on the floor in stunned silence, gasping for air.

Dustin’s still got his hands fisted in Eddie’s jacket, holding him to the spot where he’s half pressed against him, leaning back over him where he landed. He’s a lot heavier than he looks.

“Holy shit.” Eddie grinds out between breaths, “Christ, that was fucking nuts — did you see that?”

Dustin nods, though only because he can’t breathe well enough yet to speak. 

When he fails to provide a verbal answer, Eddie twists around to look at him, eyes as wide as dinner plates and rolling in terror.

 “Are you okay? You good?”

Dustin can’t decide how to answer that — no, he is absolutely not okay, but he’s alive, which is more than he thinks he can say for the bat he just spiked into the far corner of Eddie’s bedroom.

He opens his mouth to answer but the sound dies in his throat when he notices the thick trickle of blood bubbling up from a deep gash in Eddie’s forehead, oozing down to collect and drip from the end of his nose.

It turns Dustin’s stomach. 

“You’re bleeding.” He gasps, more a general statement of gut-wrenching terror than anything else. 

Eddie’s brows inch toward one another, disturbing the wound between them. He reaches up with a shaking hand and he wipes at the bridge of his nose – his fingers come away stained crimson, and it leaves a hollowed-out look splashed across his features, the same one Dustin can feel gnawing at his insides. 

That thing went for his face … it tried to eat his goddamn face.   

BOOM.

The front door heaves under the until-then-forgotten duress of more bats, still trying to get at them, and wrenches them back into the moment. There’s no time to assess the gravity of the situation, just how well and truly fucked they before the bedroom door shudders – a violent response to the question before that sees Eddie scrambling backward an inch. 

Dustin doesn’t blame him. It’s well past time they got the hell out of here. 

All around them, the doors continue to rattle on their hinges – bedroom door, front door, and now the bonus of the side door, all bending and creaking, somehow miraculously keeping their shapes under the violent battery of the things desperately trying to get in – the things that want to eat them. 

Before Dustin realizes what’s happening, Eddie pulls him to his feet and back through the length of the trailer, and suddenly he’s standing bathed in a pool of golden light. 

He flinches and recoils as something long and cylindrical hits him in the face — thankfully it’s only the bedsheet rope. He realizes with a start that he’s standing below the gate, looking up into the relative safety of the real world just beyond. 

Yes, of course that’s where they should go, because that’s where the bats are normal sized and not inclined to eat faces, but suddenly there is the nagging press of the question: what are they going to do about the bats once they get up there? 

How are they going to stop them from following them through?

“Go on,” Eddie says quickly, wiping hopelessly at the blood coating his face, all he does is smear it, “Get up there.” 

Dustin just stands there, blinking back at him.

He’s frozen to the spot, unable for the life of him to make his legs move as he watches the blood bubble up from the wound in Eddie’s forehead and leak down into his eyebrow. 

That thing went for his face. Jesus Christ, it literally tried to bite his face off! Things like that are not supposed to happen to them. Other people get killed – Barb and Mews, Bob Newby, Billy Hargrove and all the people who were assimilated by the Mindflayer, but not them — they’re kids in a horror movie, they’re supposed to be safe!   

“Dustin–!” Eddie snaps, seizing him by the shoulders and shaking him, effectively cutting off the long tide of panicked blubbering Dustin hadn’t realized he’d devolved into, “Stop talking and climb the rope!” 

When he still doesn’t react, Eddie takes matters into his own hands and gets under him, boosting the boy on his shoulders with only the slightest grunting effort. 

One thing about Eddie is that he’s a lot stronger than he looks. 

Dustin seizes the rope and clings to it if only so he won’t fall flat on his face. 

“Get your ass up there, Henderson.” Eddie snaps from below, giving him a hard shove for good measure. 

It makes the rope swing and Dustin is half surprised when it doesn’t disrupt the gravitational rift and cause the whole thing to come falling through. 

It holds, because it has to, and Dustin climbs because there’s nothing else to do. 

Hand over fist, inching up as quickly as he can while the thrashing against the doors intensifies. 

He tells himself that this is all part of the plan, as terrible a plan as it suddenly seems. Stick to the plan. That’s what Steve said, no matter what, stick to the plan… and don’t get killed – Eddie added that little zinger out of what Dustin had assumed was fatalist humor, but right here at this moment, it’s the driving force to get him up that rope as fast as humanly possible. 

Through one side and out the other, he flops gracelessly to the squeaking mattress below and tucks immediately into a barrel roll, clearing the way for Eddie to come crashing down after him – he never arrives. 

The rope stands swaying — empty — and when he inches forward to look back through the gate, there Eddie remains, standing on the other side staring up at him – or is it down? He’s still not sure, not that it really matters, because they don’t have time for him to sit and work that out. 

“Let’s go – we gotta go!” 

Something solid and clunky comes flying up/down through the gate, narrowly missing Dustin’s head and scaring the hell out of him. For half a terrifying moment, he thinks it must be a Demobat, screaming in to herald his violent and imminent death. 

He lurches back as he follows the arc of the thing, then stands staring at it where it's landed — it takes him a moment too long to realize it’s the walkie-talkie. 

It takes an even longer moment for him to realize that he doesn’t understand what’s happening. 

“Eddie – what…?” Dustin begins, and then when he looks up, he sees the blade gripped in Eddie’s hand – his stomach heaves, “What are you doing?” the words barely manage to squeak their way out of Dustin’s throat — his tongue feels fat and clumsy in his mouth.

He knows exactly what Eddie is doing: he’s buying him a little more time, he’s going to get you from wherever the hell you’ve ended up — he’s making a big goddamn hero out of himself. 

In the Upsidedown, with the doors rattling on all sides, still bleeding from where one of the Demobats had just tried to make a meal out of him, Dustin watches helplessly as Eddie seizes the rope with his free hand.

“Eddie — don’t—!”

He slashes out and there is the quick sound of tearing fabric as the bed sheets split. For a brief moment, it hangs suspended, quivering as the dual gravity struggles to decide what to do. When they finally pull away from each other, torn ends trail like extended fingers, desperately reaching for one another. 

The rope drops over Dustin’s hand and down to the floor in a smooth, cotton pile, and he watches helplessly as Eddie gives him one final look before disappearing.

Dustin scrambles for something to do, somewhere to go. Somehow, he’s got to get back up there, but the predicament of how to ascend twelve feet into the ceiling without the use of a rope or ladder is an impossible one to solve.

He’s got to do something, he’s got to save Eddie — what was the point of the last week if Eddie gets himself killed down there? What was the point of any of this if he can’t save him? 

In a fit of desperation, Dustin seizes the walkie talking and jams the button with his thumb, screaming down the line for you — you’ll know what to do, you always know what to do — you’ll fix this. 

Dustin’s voice is frantic as he screams your name, and begs you to pick up — Eddie didn't follow him through the gate.

Eddie’s going to die down there. 

[collectorcookie]

Oughfgshfh thinking of oz and figaro's development as characters. (Spoilers for uuuhh everything ozfi until ms2 i guess)

The way oz gets better while figaro gets worse. Figaro is the one who grew up with humans, he's supposed to have this having-emotions-and-morals thing down but he doesn't. His village dehumanized him for being a wizard. Yeah, he might have been revered as a god but that's also dehumanization. Serving others is the only way he knows how to love. Being needed is the only way for him to feel loved. And oz needed him. He needed him BAD.

The twins loved and cherished figaro because he was their first true connection to the outside world, outside of themselves, but they protected and taught figaro, they never needed him. So he never felt loved. But oz? Oz was a very high maintenance child, i imagine. And the twins were not really the best at raising people, figaro knows this from first hand experince. It's like the twins are the traumatised parents generation who pass that trauma onto their kids (except they are the first generation ever and the trauma is the cruel and endless world in face of semi immortality), figaro is like the eldest daughter who has to raise their sibling because the parents don't know shit, and oz is the high maintenance child everyone needs to pay attention to. And just. The way that it was figaro of all people who wanted oz dead because "but what if he becomes evil and try to conquer the world" but then when oz wanted exactly that, figaro was like "Do you need me to help you conquer the world? Can i help? Pls let me help" like i need to squash this dude like a bug.

And then. Arthur became a thing in their vaguely-family-shaped small community via oz finding arthur dying in a snow field. Originally, oz wanted to kill and eat arthur but then fifi was like "how about no. Keep him for a while. See how it feels" and that's because, unlike oz, fifi and the twins actually still lived in close proximity to humans, so fifi knows a thing or two about raising children. And fifi had to constantly look over oz so that oz doesn't accidentally kill arthur. Lo and behold, after tremendous effort and guidance from fifi and the twins, arthur grows up under oz! Oz develops emotions! For the first time in his 2000 years of life, oz can now have feelings!

Except arthur was taken back to the castle. And, as depressed as oz is about this, he doesn't try to bring arthur back, or even visit him. He knows arthur is a whole ass prince and that he loves humans and that humans need him, and there's nothing in this world humans are more terrified of than oz, so he just lets arthur go, much to his heartbreak.

AND FIFI. UGH. THE TALK BETWEEN OZ AND FIFI IN ANNIVERSAY 2 STORY. Where fifi asks him "why tf did you just let him go??? You liked him???" and oz retorts with "well why did you let faust go? Wasn't he your student? You liked him too?" and figaro is like "Don't even bring that up, you wouldn't understand, we might have both lived 2000 years on this earth but YOU have only had emotions for the last decade. You wouldn't understand" and oz just had to be like "....ok". IT HURTS IT LITERALLY HURTS SO BAD. FIFI CAN YOU STOP PUSHING OTHERS AWAY. OPEN UP TO PEOPLE SOMETIME DAMN. ALSO WHY JAB AT OZ LIKE THAT.

And then. God. Main story 2. The one where oz finally tells EVERONE that arthur is going to die. Where he, once cold and uncaring to the world, is experiencing fear for the first time in his life. Begging others for help, shaking. And most importantly he is opening up about his emotions to others about it too, like damn. All the other wizards like shylock and faust were like "oh wow that must be mad hard to talk about, thank you for trusting us. We will try our hardest to prevent arthur from dying". And that reminded faust of something. And guess what happens after that. Fucking faust drags figaro out of the room to ask figaro "did you actually ever tell anyone that you, too, are literally dying as of now?" and figaro answered "Lol. Lmao. No."

After that whole ass fucking speech in anniversary 2 where he's shaming oz, GUESS WHO SUCKS AT EMOTIONS NOW???? NONE OTHER THAN FIGARO FUKCNIGN GARCIA FOLKS.

And he goes on and on about how "i don't want my loved ones to look down on me" and "pity is the worst form of scorn there is" and he literally has zero consideration for his loved ones if he suddenly dies out of the blue. He has SUCH a stereotypical northern way of thinking where his pride is above all, even in death, and it makes me SICK, because he hated north country and he hated north culture and he literally migrated south because of that. BUT THEN HE GOES AND SAYS THE MOST STEREOTYPICAL NORTHERN ATTITUDE BULLSHIT LIKE OKAY MAN.

It hurts because oz is usually described as personification of the north but now he's loving, caring, scared, vulnerable, open.

And figaro is the one who is responsible for oz becoming like that but he himself never managed to develop human morals and emotions.

And also WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONLY FAUST KNOWS FIGARO IS DYING. THE HELL KINDA BURDEN IS THAT. THAT'S SO CRUEL.

Aughfhsj. Directly after this is a scene where akira asks oz "have you noticed that figaro is getting weaker?" And oz answers "well he is pretending to be a southern wizard, he is merely concealing his powers" LIKE NO ONE WILL KNOW HE IS DYING BECAUSE THEY ALL THINK HE IS HIDING HIS POWERS, NOT THAT HIS POWER IS ACTUALLY DECLINING. WORKING OUT PERFECTLY FOR YOUR LYING ASS, DOESN'T IT, MR. GARCIA.

Narrative of figaro is actively getting worse while oz is getting better hurts so bad, man.

[kessfansworld]

hc that dorcas meadows only joined the order because of marlene mckinnon. okay just hear me out i think she joined the order of phoenix because she didn’t trust dumbledore to keep marlene safe and she had suspicions about peter being the spy, so she joined to make sure she could keep eye on things and help marlene and others in any way she could. she was one of the most powerful witches of the marauders era and she seemed the kind of person who’d do things independently but then marlene came along. she wanted marlene by her side and when marlene died, she felt like her whole world fell apart. i think she knew going against voldermort would be dangerous but she wanted to take revenge for marlene and she was so close but then voldermort killed her personally. i mean how did he even know about her plans? do you think someone told him, someone who dorcas trusted or did he just guess it was her? and i am a believer of slytherin!dorcas so i think her friends’ betrayals really hurt her. imagine your childhood friends joining someone who hurt so many people?

i do love morally grey characters and dorcas don’t strike me as like a believer of what dumbledore thought was the best way to go about things. she and barty probably fought together against each other least once, i mean imagine how difficult it must’ve been for her?

i won’t bash anyone in this post because i think bashing characters is something that should only be done when it’s the time and this post is about dorcas, this isn’t about pandora, reg or barty and evan. i do love them and all of them obviously have different perspectives about what happened between them and if you want i’ll share my thoughts but this is about dorcas and how much she loved marlene.

dorcas’ love for marlene shouldn’t even be underestimated. i think how much they loved each other says lot about them as characters.

if you explore their dynamic it’s so interesting, it isn’t even about the tropes their story fits in. tropes have nothing to do with this. their first meeting. the first time they felt something. the yearning. the longing looks. the jealousy. the pining. the breaking point. their last meeting. the last time and the first time they kissed each other. their love languages. their perspectives of love. their motivations. their backstories. i could go on and on about the possibilities of their dynamic and still i wouldn’t do them justice.

of course i love academic rivals to lovers, enemies to lovers, “i have loved you all along”, “it’s always been you”, “you’re my everything”, forced proximity, witty banter, forbidden feelings and even more tropes their story fits into, dorlene just gets better and better.

those two are perfect for each other and you may not understand but just give them a chance and you’ll be hooked and will never look back.

honorable mention to marylene because there’s always that relationship before the “one”. it makes me so fucking sad that mary lived the rest of her life without marlene, whatever way you think of them as friends or lovers, it’s cruel that mary had to live the rest of her life without marlene and everyone else. her story just fucking breaks my heart.

thank you if read this, i love reading other people’s hcs so i hope you loved mine if you read it <3

[esther-dot]

Hi! This has been probably discussed before, but don't you wonder why Sansa doesn't think about the unkiss as her first kiss? It could be that GRRM just doesn't see it as relevant, but at the same time, Sansa is such a romantic character that I find hard to believe that she would not lament/think about it as her first kiss. I could even imagine her sharing innocent kisses with Jeyne, but then again it wouldn't be the same as kissing a man (in her mind probably) and she didn't ever remember something like it when Margaery's cousins said they played a kissing game with each other. In fact, that instance made her remember the kiss that never happened. I just find it sooo weird.

I haven’t heard someone talk about that. What an interesting point, anon! I find the writing around the unkiss very strange, I hadn't thought of that angle though.

I accept the idea that Sansa isn’t remembering correctly due to trauma, so it makes sense that the author doesn't want to go too far in her romanticizing it. Maybe that's why she doesn't talk about it that way? It still doesn't have the same terror that other traumas do in the revisiting. Where the near rape during the riot is recalled in nightmares, and Sansa wakes up thinking she’s been torn to ribbons, the miss-recollection is this:

The cousins took Sansa into their company as if they had known her all their lives. They spent long afternoons doing needlework and talking over lemon cakes and honeyed wine, played at tiles of an evening, sang together in the castle sept . . . and often one or two of them would be chosen to share Margaery's bed, where they would whisper half the night away. Alla had a lovely voice, and when coaxed would play the woodharp and sing songs of chivalry and lost loves. Megga couldn't sing, but she was mad to be kissed. She and Alla played a kissing game sometimes, she confessed, but it wasn't the same as kissing a man, much less a king. Sansa wondered what Megga would think about kissing the Hound, as she had. He'd come to her the night of the battle stinking of wine and blood. He kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a song.

"King Joffrey has such beautiful lips," Megga gushed, oblivious, "oh, poor Sansa, how your heart must have broken when you lost him. Oh, how you must have wept!" (ASOS, Sansa II)

and again

Before she could summon the servants, however, Sweetrobin threw his skinny arms around her and kissed her. It was a little boy's kiss, and clumsy. Everything Robert Arryn did was clumsy. If I close my eyes I can pretend he is the Knight of Flowers. Ser Loras had given Sansa Stark a red rose once, but he had never kissed her . . . and no Tyrell would ever kiss Alayne Stone. Pretty as she was, she had been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

As the boy's lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak. (AFFC, Alayne II)

and

"Oh, yes. He died on top of me. In me, if truth be told. You do know what goes on in a marriage bed, I hope?"

She thought of Tyrion, and of the Hound and how he'd kissed her, and gave a nod. "That must have been dreadful, my lady. Him dying. There, I mean, whilst . . . whilst he was . . ."

". . . fucking me?" She shrugged. "It was disconcerting, certainly. Not to mention discourteous. He did not even have the common decency to plant a child in me. Old men have weak seed. So here I am, a widow, but scarce used. Harry could have done much worse. I daresay that he will. Lady Waynwood will most like marry him to one of her granddaughters, or one of Bronze Yohn's." (AFFC, Alayne II)

and here is the actual event she’s misremembering:

The blood masked the worst of his scars, but his eyes were white and wide and terrifying. The burnt corner of his mouth twitched and twitched again. Sansa could smell him; a stink of sweat and sour wine and stale vomit, and over it all the reek of blood, blood, blood.

"I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a momentshe thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."

Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears. (ACOK, Sansa VII)

He's very aggressive and violent here, matching his words to his actions so well Sansa believes he will kill her. Sansxn shippers read this and get the sexual connotations and claim it as foreshadowing for a sexual relationship later, but I think an honest reading is that the Hound intended to rape her and that is why those connotations are there. He says so himself later, and the whole singing/song thing is a euphemism for sex, so the author’s intent seems pretty clear.

So, perhaps what we're meant to see is a gradual dawning realization with her. It's too painful for her to remember accurately at the moment, but kissing makes her think of it, a story of a man fucking and dying on top of her reminds her of being molested by Tyrion and the Hound is included, because it is there, somewhere inside her she knows what he wanted, she simply can’t fully acknowledge it yet. It appears she fixated on her first thought:

He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened.

And can't consciously work through the trauma of a man who had saved her and promised to keep her safe trying to rape her. Perhaps believing that was all he was after led to believing it was actually what happened, all in an effort to protect herself.

But that doesn't answer your point. I don't know what to think, anon. It's all a little odd to me.I suppose if she thought of it that way it might feel like romanticizing the assault or making it a real event more than Martin wants to? I really can’t say.

[onewomancitadel]

After two years of arguing on my silly little Tumblr blog, when one volume manages to vindicate everything I said about one of my favourite characters and the consequence of his narrative actions, the major thematic thrust of the show (when naysayers said otherwise), as well as prove at least two of my theories that had major character and story consequences (Raven was involved in Summer's disappearance and knew about it/the brother gods are not the original-original gods), you have to imagine the sort of position I'm in now emotionally. It's a very strange one.

I had people arguing with me for ages about most of this - that V8 was bad and the show was actually cynical and mean and fairytales aren't real, that nothing was ever going to eventuate with Jaune [insert whatever method of him being written out of the story here], that the Penny issue was not in any way analogous to Pyrrha, that any speculation surrounding the possibility of Knightfall should just be dismissed (and probably to boot the story will be cruel about Cinder).

I'm not trying to say 'boohoo, I was right and you were wronggggg' because I don't think it's about being right or wrong, contrary to the average notification-hungry user's belief. It is actually purely about emotional investment and the way my assertions were treated - and hey, arguing can be fun, so it's not like this is some saintly endeavour. But it is really really interesting that the position I was in (and am in) was and is treated as fundamentally absurd. On some level, I've always reserved doubt myself.

I'm the first cynic. I'm the first person to call my own theories into doubt. So to be in this position once again, that I found myself at the end of V8 - that oh shit, we are actually really fucking doing it - is very, very weird. It's not like I have definite 'Knightfall is canon' on the brain - that's one of my chief concerns here, obviously, lol - but what is really interesting is that the pieces to get there related to Jaune's (and Cinder's) character have been set up. Exactly the same way as they did with Penny. Because my first reaction to him killing Penny? It was, Oh holy fuck we are really doing Knightfall. That is pretty much the only way you can make Knightfall plausibly work, and how they played the Penny problem this volume would indicate whether they were doing what I thought they were doing.

I don't think my position has really changed - every succeeding volume raises my eyebrow and makes me take the narrative more seriously, but I'm not one to ever say this will definitely happen. I try to reason based on the text and my instinct and my, you know, pure enjoyment. I think Knightfall (and the ideas related to Jaune and Cinder, and separate to them, Ruby and Ozlem et al.) embodies the most interesting and playful ideas about R/WBY. But I'm not an I-told-you-so type, and that's not what I want this post to turn into. I just think it's funny, and joyful. It does feel rewarding to be the person that everybody said was being too optimistic about Jaune's character, or whathaveyou, to be... vindicated.

That is why storytelling matters, to me. That is why narrative twists and narrative events which you can predict aren't inherently disappointing. It is absurd that people act like the best stories are ones you could never possibly see coming to the point that they alter storytelling logic and break their own narrative. That's silly, and I hope modern writing is moving past that cynical hiccough. But on the other hand - if you take a text seriously and think about it really hard, even when you know what's coming, it doesn't lessen the fun - the thrill is in the execution.

The thrill is also in being the person a lot of people said was crazy.

[larathia]

“The greatest misfortune of Dazai’s enemies are that they are Dazai’s enemies”.

I think the thing people misinterpret about this is they figure Mafia-era Dazai was particularly brutal or cruel. Which I think shows a lack of imagination, because these are people that think Akutagawa is just a little rambunctious, and don’t bat an eye at Chuuya turning every single bullet from two dozen machine guns around midair to kill everyone. Cruelty and brutality are the norm in the Mafia. Dazai would have had to be one hell of a sadist to scare anyone on that front. Being hardened to violence and brutality is basic survival in the Port Mafia.

No, there’s two basic reasons for that quote and it’s this:

1) Dazai isn’t a sadist. The Mafia knows what to do with sadists. They know how to handle that. They also know how to handle pacifists that really don’t like hurting people but grasp mafia-survival necessity. 

And Dazai isn’t either of those. Dazai just doesn’t give a damn. If hurting you will work, he will hurt you. If doing a little mindscrew will work, he will set up a little mindscrew. He takes no pleasure in any of it, but neither is there the slightest bit of hesitation. To a group that runs on brutality, this capability to take it out AND put it away at will is just...you know, kinda creepy. They’re used to that switch being harder to flip.

2) Dazai is very, very smart....and gives fuckall away. Consider how many people in the Port Mafia have abusive backgrounds. How many grew up with the violence. People who grow up around heavy violence learn to watch for it. They learn to read faces, they learn to read moods. It’s, again, basic survival to know when someone near you is happy with you, or unhappy with you. 

But Dazai gives nothing away. Nobody who deals with him knows what he thinks of them. Nobody who deals with him has any kind of internal peace, the sort you’d get from at least knowing where you stand. And I’m pretty sure a lot of the PM characters that think they DO know where they stand with him are at least partially wrong. Dazai cultivates that on purpose and again, in a world like the Port Mafia, it’s going to unnerve people.

Nobody wants to fuck with him - because they have no idea how long his fuse is, what will light it, whether it’s already lit, or if it’s lit how long it’s been burning. And they have no way to know what form retaliation would take, or if they’d have any chance of seeing it coming.

It’s not quantity, in other words. It’s quality. He’s not MORE cruel or MORE brutal than anyone else in the Mafia. It’s just that ...well. He’s very, very good at leaving ‘what would happen to you’ up to your imagination.

[whump-world]

Indra’s welcome back gift

@badthingshappenbingo​ - Reopening an Old Wound

TW: mention of underage whump, branding whump, permanent body marking, blood, stress position, objectification, gaslighting, muzzles, discussion of character death. 

First | Previous

Indra can’t say he isn’t nervous when he steps into his father’s secret villain lair. The first time he’d flicked the lights on, he’d been seventeen in pajamas. He hadn’t known he’d find two children chained to the wall with a glass window between them, and realize the smell was indeed blood and not his imagination. He doesn’t remember what he did first. Closed his eyes? Turned the lights off? Fled? Whatever it was, he didn’t let himself look at the horror for more than a second. 

He’s back down here again. This time with his father in tow. His cane accompanies each footstep he takes climbing down the stairs. Indra doesn’t want to reach for the switch he knows is on his right, so he stays right where he is, waiting for his father. The smell is not so bad; perhaps he’d gotten used to the bloodshed to care. 

When the lights switch on, Indra squints, the bright light highlighting every detail he’d missed or forgotten over the years. A hand on his shoulder guides him to the middle of the small room. The three walls have windows, revealing three other sections without any lights. There are no doors, though. 

“Where’s Kiḷi?” he asks. Shit. That was suspicious. He continues. “I’m not here to admire your basement. In fact, I’m already bored.” 

Father clasps his hands behind his back. “Rules first. Playtime later.” 

Indra blinks, his bleached white curls falling over his forehead and brows. He did his best to look nothing like his father, but looking straight at the man in this room, Indra’s sense of self shrinks till he’s seventeen-years-old in an older body. Terrified of his father, and even more terrified of the chance that he would grow up to be the same. 

“Kiḷi has been useful while he lasted,” Sir sighs. “He was about your age when he got here, do you know that?”

I did know that. 

And what did you fucking do about it?

Absolutely nothing. 

“Throwing him away because of one match seems a tad much,” Indra says, sitting on the arm of a chair. The room is bare except for comfortable chairs with leather seats. “He’s still strong.”

“Whether or not that strength belongs to me depends on obedience. That is the first thing I teach them. Obedience, then strength. It cannot be the other way around.” 

Indra cocks his head, acting interested. His father, smart as he is, doesn’t know his son anymore. He’ll keep it that way until he sinks his fangs into Father’s neck. That takes patience. Indra can’t recoil in disgust, or spit in his face. He has to wait in the grass. 

“He is not going anywhere yet,” his father goes on. He’s staring at the window in front of them. “I do not need another like him since you are joining me, but I do have some things to teach you. You will train one when my ashes are in a river.”

“Just say dead.  I will train one when you’re dead.” His father’s laughable and fucking ironic euphemisms aside, (what right does he have to speak in euphemisms, really), Indra’s mind reels on what he’s saying. What happened to his father to become so unflinchingly cruel? He’d go so far as to repay Kiḷi’s loyalty with stony detachment. 

Indra hates Kiḷi’s loyalty, but he hates his father more. After this is all over, his father’s ashes will be dumped in a sewer and Kiḷi? He can go someplace far away from him. 

His father glares at him. “Watch your mouth, son.” 

Don’t call me that.

Indra’s bored look falters. His father stares at him, giving him a look that says if-we-are-doing-this-we-are-doing-this-my-way. Indra huffs and stands up. “Ah, so you expect obedience from me too? Sorry to break your bubble, but that ain’t happening.”

His father looks genuinely hurt. “I let you walk your own path.” 

Yes. After Indra’s mother had pleaded with him to not kill his son. 

“Whatever.” He clears his throat. His mother would be ashamed if she knew where exactly he is standing. The grief is old, and it prickles at the back of his neck like a reminder of what he should be doing instead of protecting his pride. 

His father pushes his glasses back and strides to the wall just to the right of the stairs as if it had all the answers to their father-son issues. He taps his cane on the wall thrice. A square block gives away and holds out a passcode system. Indra frowns when his father presses his thumb to it. He would have thought the old man would be technologically challenged and keep this old-fashioned, but Indra’s luck is not that great. 

“This way.” His father says and marches ahead, despite it being completely dark ahead. Perhaps that’s intentional. 

Indra’s shoulders bump into the walls with even the smallest misstep. With a brush of his fingers, he knows the walls are built on bricks. Not so modern then. He’ll have to explore the innards of the basement more, but he can guess these tunnels had already been there when his newlywed parents moved in. It had been his mother’s family home, but it had been written into his father’s deeds after the marriage. 

They take a few turns until the corridor stops at a door, two torches set alight on either side. The wooden casing held two stalwart doors with a lock in the middle. This time his father has to use a key and jam his shoulder in the right place to make it open. Indra stands back to watch, and perhaps ready to hightail it out of there if this place began to crumble over their heads. 

The tube light inside the room took its time to wake up, and Indra makes a mental note to ask how his father had gotten that done inside these ancient walls infested by rats. It’s definitely easier to think about these things instead of looking at what’s in front of him. 

Kiḷi is kneeling in shards of glass collected into shoe box lids, his blood trickling through the glass and into the cardboard. The wound Thumla gave him on his thigh is wrapped up in gauze, but not with the same care to detail as Indra’s medic. A horizontal pole hangs behind him, a little above his head, and his elbows are tied to it with zip ties. There’s something strapped around his nape that comes to full view when his father orders him to look up. 

It’s a muzzle. 

Indra supposes he should be happy there’ll be no more snarky comebacks from Kiḷi. Ever since he came back, if he isn’t fighting to gain his father’s trust, he’s been battling Kiḷi. The leather straps of the muzzles run over the bridge of his nose and under his jaw, then fastened to the back of his neck. And it’s strapped on so tight it’s uncomfortable to look at. 

His father uses his cane to push Kiḷi’s chest back, forcing him to straighten his slumped posture. He winces, shoulders twitching. Glasses crunch as he shifts. He’s looking at Father. 

He’ll never admit it, but Indra too would feel powerful if someone looked at him like that. 

Kiḷi shivers as Father unties the muzzle. Father doesn’t notice. He’s busy speaking in soliloquies as usual. “This was for giving away the fight. Medical supplies were wasted on him. Time cleaning that up was wasted. Punishments are a necessary evil.” 

“S-sir-” Kiḷi mumbles, lips barely moving as he looks up at him. “Thuml-eh?”

Indra realizes it’s not speech or fear affecting his speech. He literally can’t move his jaw even with the muzzle off. Indra looks around the room. There’s a table with straps, a chest and a whipping post. Normal furniture was to the bare minimum: only a chair. 

“She’s not here,” his father tells Kiḷi. “You know that.” 

Indra’s brows lift at that, attention effectively caught. Thumla’s body was incinerated in front of his very own eyes. Even if that information wasn’t available to Kiḷi, he saw Thumla bleed out. He couldn’t possibly think…

“How many times do you have to go through it to understand? She left.” His father uses his cane to kneel one leg, his brows scrunched and tone apologetic. Father doesn’t do emotions. He doesn’t do anything that isn’t logical. “I’m sorry, Kiḷi.” 

Kiḷi’s teary eyes move to Indra, then around the room, as if Thumla would emerge from the shadows to dispute this. Alas, this could never happen. His head drops on Father’s chest, bitten off sobs soothed by the hand stroking his nape. 

Indra watches the intimate moment with a growing rage. Not for Kiḷi, but towards his father. In his opinion, Kiḷi is the most gullible person on the planet and that’s not Indra’s fault. 

“She-She wouldn’t leave me. She said-” 

Not so pitiful then, Indra thinks. 

“You don’t deserve to be left behind,” his father croons, and its hair-raising in its contrast to the words he said outside. “She’s far away now, back to her new family. Come, don’t cry, my boy. You still have me.” 

“No, no, no,” Kiḷi whispers. 

“She injured you,” he says, squeezing Kiḷi’s injured thigh. He hushes his strangled scream. Father turns to Indra and gestures to the lever on his left. “Lift him up, please. Hush my Kiḷi. You’ve forgotten who you belong to. Do you want to stay with me or not?” 

“Yes, Sir. P-please, Sir. Don’t make me go.” 

That’s the most he’s spoken all this time. Indra scowls, pushing down the lever. The chains on the horizontal pole shorten, taking Kiḷi up with them. There’s a nauseating, squelching sound that comes from the glasses littered at his knees. Kiḷi gasps. He struggles to balance on his tiptoes, knees still bent. 

“Thank you, Indra. Come here, I want to give you something important.” 

Indra walks over, pursing his lips at the ring his father pulls out of his pocket. A family heirloom, one Indra is yet to receive. His father then points to Kiḷi’s body. Indra’s heart skips a beat. Just below his navel, on the right, the ring’s emblem has been seared. It’s much larger, light pink scars creasing details like the mane and eyes. Indra’s hands reach out and touch the edges. His father nods in approval. 

Kiḷi twitches away once, but under Father’s glare, he bows his head at Indra. “Yours,” he mumbles. His breathing stutters; Indra thinks it’s due to his touch (an act of interest he had to maintain for his father) but he is soon disillusioned when his father comes up behind him. When did he get up? 

Kiḷi’s body, which had been trembling from holding position, starts to outright shake at the sight of the red branding iron in Father’s hand instead of the cane. “Not again. Not- not again. Sir-”

“Don’t cry,” he says, handing the tool to his son. His gray hairs shine a dark red. “This is just a reminder of who you belong to.”

“No- wait, I wasn’t trying to run away.” 

His father laughs, lightly punching Indra’s shoulder. “He always had an imagination on him. And was never shy to speak them,” He flicked Kiḷi’s lips. “I know you didn’t try. However, you wanted to. Yes?” 

Kiḷi shakes his head, inching away from Indra and the branding iron. His torso curves inwards in a pitiful attempt to hide the emblem on his skin. 

Smack! The sound catches Indra off-guard. His father had slapped Kiḷi. It couldn’t be more painful than kneeling on glass (Indra assumes- he’s never had to do it himself) but Kiḷi’s face crumbles. His eyes are bubbling tears as the muzzle is put back on. 

His father wipes his hands on a handkerchief before stepping back. “Once you do this,” he tells Indra, “he’s yours too. Consider it my welcome back gift.” 

Indra grins, his grip clammy on the rod. “Making me do all the work on the first day? That’s not a gift, that’s labor.” 

“If you don’t want to get it done over here,” he then taps over Kiḷi’s heart, “this will be a suitable position.”  

Kiḷi whines, shuddering under their thoughtful stares. When Indra sets the branding iron over the same burns he’d gotten years ago, he hits his head on the pole he’s tied to again and again. Swollen and wet, his eyes are closed. 

Indra takes a deep breath. 

“Son?” 

Indra mutters “shut up” and shoves him aside. He recollects his courage again, all the while pretending to find the right stance so the symbol overlaps perfectly over the old wound. The mental countdown from five to one is cut short when his father clasps his hand on the rod and pushes it forward. 

Kiḷi screams through the muzzle. 

Next

Taglist:  @firewheeesky @rizzamacka-whump @myst-in-the-mirror @crimson-wrld @mammonsemptycreditcard @ohlookthelittlegirlwrites @scared-and-crying @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @whump-cravings @sunnummen @wolfeyedwitch @whumpawink​ 

[jesterhat]

Can we talk about how the ending to soul screamers is sheer perfection?? Working with the demons in order to fuck over Avarice. The fact that it was resolved YEARS after she gave her soul away. AND Tod waited. He never felt complete without her. Despite everyone telling him to move on.

Everyone else moved on but not him. And that was the reason she came back. Because he owned her and she owned him. There was nothing else left to give. I sobbed when I read it. I sobbed rereading it.

And how Nash and Sabine finally mellow out, her dad finds love and Emma finds a way to survive. It guts me. And I'm super shocked that next to no one has read this. I constantly suggest it but no one I know has even heard of it.

Sorry. I'm just super excited.

besties ur so right! the ending is absolutely beautiful and it does such a nice job bringing everything together and giving everyone the happy ending they all more than deserve!

her plan at the end?? absolutely fucking brilliant in my opinion. and like. people call her self-sacrificing or whatever which i can see somewhat but at the end of the day she took 4 years of unimaginable torture to keep her loved ones safe and i admire her sooo much for that.

and tOD!!!! tod is everything to me i stg. he waits. he waits four years thinking his literal soulmate is gone forever despite still being able to literally feel that she’s not actually gone and he waits for her. he waits for her because he truly and deeply loves her and is holding on to any sliver of a chance that she could come back. and that’s so essential to his character because without that key aspect her plan would not have worked

and i think that’s it for me right there. throughout the series, and especially after they finally get together, you can just feel the love that tod and kaylee have for one another. and it’s not just like uwu they’re in love and everything’s fine. no, they’re in love and their lives and souls are still on the line and they have to make hard sacrifices and the two of them have to find a way to love one another and still manage to

and in the 5th book when he has to reap her soul?? my god that got me. like. that’s such a cruel twist of fate that he was supposed to be the one to kill her but i’m so glad levi was able to pull strings.

and honestly?? levi is the core of their group, half of their silly little plans would not have worked if it hadn’t been for him. and his willingness to help this ragtag group of teenagers he has absolutely no reason to help warms my heart a lot.

and nash??? i have so many feelings abt him like. i love him as a character bc i find him easy to empathize with. and sabine is also such an interesting character and she rlly can haunt my dreams Anytime she’s sooo hot and such a badass

and i love love love emma she deserved her happy ending and i think her storyline throughout is honestly the most tragic. like. she had this life that she loved and suddenly everything has changed, even her literal physical body! and while i think she would agree it was a good thing in the long run, i imagine all that is really, really hard to deal with and she’s such a strong character!

but yes i am also incredibly shocked next to no one has read this series bc its so good and honestly a really unique take on the whole ya paranormal romance thing that was popular for a bit.

please do not apologize for coming into my ask box with soul screamers content, that’s literally the best thing u could ever do

[vic-2point0]

November 2022

Trying to Catch God

Canto 1.

We caught God And brought him down Made him suffer So he understands the forsaken

I was their leader, Some say his son, Don't fuck with me, God, I still feel you fucking with me,

You could feel my compassion, We sacrificed our maternal side, In hopes and so, we gain a mother,

Because God the Father, Didn't care About our pain Dying and Death.

Canto 2.

QqAdam, in his Nod home, With Eve helping him, Wrote movies, About the future

But Mesopatania Was too happy For Adam to concentrate On his warped tales

So he wrote about Noah Flooding the merry, Felling his world, To set his screenplays,

Movies, like imagination, Are not real, Flawed devices For a story,

To try to explain What happened Without distraction, As important,

Scary is Adam Scary was the garden Scarred was Adam His stories implore,

"Why me" echoes writers, In their solitude, "Don't you understand? I got hurt, and need quiet"

"One is made, Its author hurts, What will we do, But figure this out"

The author Of the author? Pains resolution, Truthful imperfection,

Is it Law? Is it control? Far away? Or a hole?

Canto 3.

So structure rises Around a hole Suggesting adjustments To acceptance

Is it that simple To level out Turn the ship And go on

Having resisted What was wrong And want A real song

Canto 4.

Nothing sticks When apart Links, sacrilege To hearts

Invested in diurnal starts Where afternoon sighs And evening comforts What night dies

Knowing dawn plots Without memory or meaning Save weary parents Or godlike Adam scheming

---------------------------------.

Canto 5.

This world, is made from, The death of the past, The loudness, it's agony, The darkness, subsuming,

The hardness, it's justice, Time, death's effect, Clouds, false hope, Sky, helpless government,

Our seperation, its way, Our ignorance, its truth, Motion, it's effect, Echoingly,

Canto 6.

But the sun, is the start, Joining together, to fight death,

Grabbing each other Into the fire Of each other's hearts

Enabling an earth A nature, death ever denies nature, Ever connecting,

And water, That calming thing, Calm unites us all too

Less volatile than air, And irrigating Like tears make us grow.

Makes us remember, The dust once was,

Canto 7.

Two stories here, but one, What once had no mother, Killed us,

And that's the story here as well, Maybe mother doesn't matter,

But we died because of that, And here now Because we overcame it

Canto 8.

The news, represents death, Both define this world, As violent unceasing, Volatile with volition,

And arbitrary, cruel, Unjust, terrifying, Unselfcorrecting Accepted, adjusted to,

Evermurmering Always there. --------

Canto 9.

But the news can admit it lies, And its reason That there once was death And the old overcame it

And this simulation For the purpose Of reorganizing afterlife

( And mainly recessitate the dead,

Reconnect, nurture,)

Canto 10.

Yet that this way has a purpose, That death was conquered,

Imagine there is no death And the world we see, goes away

Imagine behind each star, A creation a universe, And dark outer space, pushed away, Imagine eternal life

Near, Sensations slow,

(I shall turn to the stars)

Canto 11.

I am the moon, Shrouded in Death, Eerie vapors Horizontal slow rays Aimed at it Holding my death-lanced sleep, Bending my head

"Just relax," they once said they once said, I dissolved into thousands of particles, (A thousand particles,) And the creations would drop down in teeny tiny particle balls themselves, No two the same, and faintly press, With different, meanings, principles, character, Each upon each of my particles, a news story, And this is the bleak empty light of the moon, The horrifying absence-inflicting taking of my life, This is why I am this way, Twilight, and horizontal eerie glowing clouds,

(I've been shoved the whole

Centering day)

Canto 12.

First I noticed Jupiter, God of consciousness, Perpetrator of this imagination, Airlike and limited, not a good worker,

I had the binoculars out, He claimed his disclaimer,

And then Mars shown up over Head, risen out of the east, With his famous scrubbed hue, Red against Jupiter's blue, And a prime investor,

His barrenness overseeing The absence of the moon, In some clinging to suffering And delight to benefit,

For the point is this, My astroid friends, The absence of the moon, I can not surpass, For all the slings and arrows, I have contumely,

For this low basic common core, The moon represents, That the news craters, Can bond with anyone,

(Or so I thought)

Though it takes time to reach, And order rules, Of Mars furnishing the hardship And Jupiter, like a pituitary gland, Imposing and rotoring the imagination,

Venus was not to be seen On the other side of the dark, But represents the heart, Dealing with the mess, debt, and weakness, Keeping it real Making sure no one gets hurt And there's an occasional triumph,

While all three three claim They can divide up their lives In five years correspondences to mine

They are the past, The stars behind the Stars, the future,

And their claims to God, As old dying men Who owe me their lives And are like the sun Clinging to you with warmth Who can't so fraction his past In so much watchful piggyback,

While the further stars Outside this pulsating aura and low, Try to negotiate my release,

Later mocking them hugely, Wait I said,

"This is covered in Mesopatanian Myth, The Ziggernaut, is me"

(The old men, the saved) ( The so old, they weak)

-------------------------------------------

Canto 13.

And they told me two stories,

Both referenced in Mesopatanian Creation Epic,

The first is where women come from.

Each creation has a cultivated maternal side, That related to other creations, United as a whole with, Healing, kind, milky, and well dressed, Kind, searching, calm, recessed, fine perhaps, bawdy,

Incapable at times of criticizing as sorely needed, But that is where the idea of women come from,

Thus in early Mesopatanian times, The male Gods kissed each other in delights, And important Gods were identified as female and male, male and female, And at different times, for different actions,

And the healing and maternal, so tolerant, It could be the sensible headquarters And the male origin, happily compliant,

The Sudanese mothers of Egypt, The first Milfs, Demonstrating matronly qualities, and sexy qualities to their ideal precursor.

The trumpet of civilization, Egypt worshipped death And medicine and art And one and outreach

The Sudan, their mother, With homelier pyramids More like beach houses Than tombs

But vacation triangles Weren't enough The uniformity, conformity Defining and appealing death Was needed: pyramid, conduct,

Canto 14.

Then the other story was where God comes from.

There were many attempts at Gods, or Godding,

Where a portion or part or fracture of one, Became a lowest common denominator,

Venus Mars and Jupiter each had one, And I may be Jupiter's at this level,

For linking and unifying and learning each other, Of different creations and universe,

And this both led to too much partying, Psychological problems, Nor extensive enough, For a unifying One mentality, Of Consciousness, Thought, and Contemplation,

An object, alive, just enough, To be so-strong and honorable, With charactor scars,

The drinking just to lengthen The period of growth You have to be grown a long time To unite each

Canto 15.

And they told me the myth, Of where the orient comes from,

What created creation Didn't care universe's died, When their engines all finished,

So after falling from their universe, Into an atmosphere, Staying alive varied,

Often they were able to maintain A dwindling rationing existence In their own hut, alongside some row of huts, Struggling to know another so different, Accepting this convalescent way station And death as a prime worthy Ingredient to creation As the pain neared They were more alone,

Canto 16.

They forgot what they meant to each other They gave their life no meaning And they had no low common denominator, Save, cept since they died Into this convalescent heaven And since they died differently They felt different,

And then as I said One clung to his heart Grabbed another Forced others coming down To grab and join the hearts Grabbing each other Staying alive by reaching into each other And producing a warmth radiating Against death To provide warmth and light like the sun, Upon those dwelling in the concerned abacus of huts Until a connecting nature appeared under them Like a floor

And that was the orient Those descended creations The way station ones That didn't matter if another died That didn't take the steps against dying And accepted final destruction As some fodder for future creations Who kept on

After newer falls were taken care of by the sun And their spiritless uniting Grounded in staying alive And rejuvenating Even though they seemed to kill to enforce joining

At some point The first fallen creations stepped out Broke orbit beyond to independenter balance Like primates breaking their vertebrae Into more malleable

And so it's thought The maternal having taken more Is more sensible than the original

And the original doomed to follow orders of the maternal,

Why Asian Women are so cool

(What preceded earth, this universe, Did not have men and women)

Canto 17.

And yet God is more Than the claims of the old His shoulders don't bother to shake,

Tell me the Moon don't scare you

And the orient have essential Pieces to the past The flesh is their to As the future beckons

Sneaky Jupiter seems But really to shake Jupiter Is the volcano-earthquake.

(Where the ending isn't known By the plotting and learning)

(By the protagonist: Living his poem)

Canto 18.

They told a fourth story, Though this is more recent, and not 100% complete yet

The Story of Water

When Creations left and found Themselves in unsustainable heavens, So it was,

But then the sun was seen, And the sun grew, And enabled,

Refused to accept What was acceptable

So creations overhead, Descending into air traffic control, Started to object to their decline,

And would produce water, From their anger, hydrogen, And the flow they are losing, Oxygen,

The flow, would get angry, And explode, into a water like substance,

This baptism thus became a basis for a much stronger heaven Both unifying heaven, And providing strength Or needed commodity,

This was the baptism by water.

The baptism by fire, Is the baptism of the sun,

And clearly this represents The baptism by fire,

And the previous baptism by water, And it's reigns and reins Of such we will see such Being close to fire The provisions like pots over near small fire pits.

Of old remains of creation, As to reveal a story.

Canto 19

Mesopatania was where Adam lived, Nod was in Mesopatania, The Euphrates, watered Eden, And Mesopatania is: Also Asia Minor,

And their Creation Myth Stirs a reminiscing: About where Earth came from.

In Mesopotamian myths:

They made Gods; For the gods they already made.

(Earth is Sympathy)

In Mesopatanian Myths:

The older and younger gods: Were necessarily together.

With mergings and separations: Due to age

(All-Ages)

And yet in the Epic of creation tablet 4:

The gods have divided up into sides, And one side wants war,

(Entertains Issues)

The side that wants war, the jealous gods: Stirred up the appetites and glands: Of oldest God.

As bad children manipulate: Their mother: So she exhibited a suckling Nature: To a score of Gods, Who seemed to remain: In her maternal air,

While Mars seems to lead: Some suckling from me:

How I read, "So happy they were with the plan, They drank sweet beer with straws"

She was older still, Here remaining: Because her partner was killed:

The infant like Gods, Jealous of a younger descendant, Who had more time to grow, Clamored for the maternal organs, To kill the better one,

Both old partners, Were from before earth, And the original wanted: To off the cantankerous: Descendants.

However, a prescient, mature, prodigal, Had attained: all-knowingness.

His name was Ea, Like the french word for water,

He thwarted that scheme: The maternal indulgent partner was against and not in on:

Was that pre-earth God: One with two parts, Or two separate complimentary blended Gods?

By killing, the first, Apsu.

But was the feminine Once too sweet? Too indulging Wind.

The plot thickens:

Ea, being the good sort, Angelic to a fault,

Turned Apsu's death, Into a cave, And built a chapel From his body

The chapel gave birth To the greatest god so far, Marduke, the five year old,

The plot becomes too thick:

This just made the infant Gods: Angry again.

And so they enlisted the first's partner: And summoned magical weapon makers: And dragon forces and blessed tablets of destinies:

For the future was negotiated for And agreed upon,

And the matronly merged While the manly negotiated,

Ea went to his credited forbearers, These durations not too long,

They in turn invoked spells and dragon traits too, In their new alliance

But Anu, their chief angel, And Numidian, the first younger To make the olders jealous

Were both too afraid To approach the mongering rebel band With their logical offers of peace

The two leaders, Of Ea's allying, Feared closeness to the other side, Convincing compromise Formally peace Reasonable desires

Canto 20.

They summoned Marduke, The greatest and scary warrior so far, Who came out of the horizon itself Bigger and bulging with muscle,

(Like Mars, a smoking perforation, Of this imagination of light and sound)

The clamoring war counciled toddlers, Got the remaining partner, who was powerful and comfortable, On their side, By reminding her, her partner was killed, By Ea, who being mature, was more aligned with the mature and first God's, Than this lower legion's: Suckling Nature.

Old, mature gods, Out of the woodwork, Joined them,

The peace they wanted, Their leader Anu, Their angelic nominal king, With a legendary palace on the sky; And Nudimmud, their star, were both too scared, To get close to the rebels,

And so now the four winds turned to Marduke Coming together, To make a champion, To make earth,

The feminine and gentle ones Opposed the rebellion, And convened to enshrine Marduke's fate, Partying together and kissing each other merrily for good luck, Straws for sweet beer, Swells from liquor,

Canto 21.

Marduke, new lord of old fathers, Who pronounced greatness, in front of him, as a legion, from a high podium wall,

Now the mis en scene is, Marduke was made from the chapel, Of the first one's dead body, Who was killed by the side Marduke is on, Who accept the killing, By the side that wants; Marduke to enforce peace.

(Word 'mars' in Marduke)

He may turn out to be A reincarnation of the first, And angry,

Or Marduke may not be able to reconcile, His prowess, to the chapel That made him, From a funeral home Used as a church, Hollowed into, The architecture of Marduke,

Marduke came from The killer making a chapel Of the old first God killed

This has eternal moral ambiguity

Canto 22.

And Jupiter, Saturn, and Venus, Just may be Gods, now, And have divided a vast number of creation Into thirds, each allegiant to one of the three,

Whose colorful and designer smoke Wafts upwards through encircling wide Straws, Sucked by layers of quality and creation, Now, as I poet:

I have always wondered, about "suction yonder"; More mechanical than metaphysical

And tease them, Than unstick the shop vac,

Whispering now, And later, the future,

Canto 23.

Colloquially, I've been observing, Jupiter Mars and The Moon, From my cabin deep in Pa,

But traveled 300 miles To see a show on the Atlantic Seaboard From hinterlands, The moon rising to greet me, Evenings driving East,

And at home, in Hamilton, Mars, to my left, Jupiter hugging the moon, Like last night over the show, To the south and west, Ready to go on Like the old warriors they are,

Jupiter's purple white horizontal cloudy, to the east, And Mar's rosy rings implementing from within, Like a mobster trying to make nice, To the south, Within strings of Mars, And alienation.

So the scene can be set Like some dinner table movie, Or the element of surprise, Hovers like the sunset,

Venus still nowhere to be scene,

And then Jupiter is to the southwest And Mars to the northeast

And if I balance the moon And the news media

And realize Jupiter and Mars Regulate the suction

And tens of creations With straws to the trough-paths

My essence ever rising to be known And consist

And enable the translation Of this world to the next

Nodding to the sun and digestion, Love, like shit, desire routes,

The oldest three creations Alligning heaven, running Earth, Venus Jupiter Mars and The Sun, That may have made me,

Here, above so, but a million times closer Than they look and right here At the edge of me, The moon, a chunk of my cheesehead pie,

Canto 24.

People crawl out of the moon And start to explain, On TV, "I was gonna die"

They are in my moon-cheese-head I breathe life into the news And beyond into creation, my breath,

Jupiter and his martial moons, Tend and follow orders, Golden their vizier's glow,

While Mars puts his thumb on the scale Of my oppression, And the sun is glad and known by the orient,

And the moon limited By the pressure of the news Mars is a hard place

The Romans ran with, Jupiter being too much a hippy,

Whatever this is, It is vital enough to the old here To not stop but slowly,

Canto 25.

I spend the whole day Waiting for Jupiter, up at sunset, Southeastern, lively, Compassionate to me at least,

And Mars, in the northeast, Shows up, practiced, His rippling legion, Of fading circles Of heart and Venus,

For Venus comes round between dawn and sunset, Neither fraught with negativity Or anxious, Having been paid dearly for,

And all I can do, I try to explain, Is think on, These rotators around the sun,

And I am the sun as well? No. And yet, the sun is here, all the time,

Now we come to the age-old debate, Is the center, Earth, or The Sun?

For surely while Jupiter and Saturn Pass Earth on regular turn, They are not traveling around Me,

They are too horizontal Too vertical above And horizontally low And passing like across my equator Rather than being orderly And going around, For that would be a different order, Exclusive of the New Ones, Whose flood we notice, as flood.

Mars has these sweet sucklings In some martial order,

I try to plot with Venus

Jupiter knows Mars is hard Like the old me maybe

The weak are dug in, Protected with promises,

The moon is me I forget sometimes

Venus is during the day

Saturn is out there unseen But setting after sunset, I think.

Canto 26.

It all started with the Feast of Diwali. Searching for Light, Binoculars on Jupiter and Mars In the susquehanna's,

I heard the story: How heaven began with the sun:

For a long time before heaven, There was death.

So naturally, Heaven is involved, In rescuing creation That died Before heaven.

In the beginning, there was death, Then Everyone tasked to Heaven.

Then Heaven made earth, Nay, the Moon, Like a searchlight, To look for, find, and restore, The Dead. From before Heaven

Canto 27.

It ended when my evil sister Appeared as Venus My maternal side Like Tiamut, Tits for the saved, Vapours for the elevator, A sort of apparatus, Working behind the scenes With the 150 Shining the dark light into the bad news,

It all became apparent What the point of the moon is, To enter solider consciousness, And unfold with love, These understandings, Only understood, this way: Or the very swales of trouble themself.

And Jupiter gave way to my pituitary gland, And the news on Mars, Became rescuing all While taunting me, Episcopalians known evil, Cloy insidious reminder, To slow down, conserve, We didn't really get a creation;

The wise would cancel themselves,

It's all unacceptable, But there is Love now,

Question Arose: The duration and success Of this effort vs. such rate past?

Clear your heart Espiscopalian.

She said, "Grow".

I thought back to Mesopatanian Times, The years of blindly sinking, And Venus and heart, The pituitary and intuitive, Being a part of all, I meant to ask the stars, Nearer than love unfolds, And than tendons morsels turn Like so much engine knock That must just need some heartful salve Of awareness To stick, together, and start to claim, What is very much mine? Or believe the dire straits Of this tale? Up to me? Or such deal?

That is the tragic hamlet, Unable to resist love, Unable to pull the trigger, For the answer lies deeper within, Not without, ?

Canto 28.

Justice, While I am dim, These understandings, Weigh, The loudness, amplified by wrong, The soft presence Of communicating quiet ideas, The body, sensation, and seen, Unconscious, My oppression, a constant domination, An absorbation by the eerie clouds

But all I need is love, To kaleidoscope doors and answers,

The saved seem the clamoring infant Gods, Apsu and V. complained about, As all must be saved for it to work Drive in movies of success Light up the sky, Brought along, programmed destiny-realities, Follow my dreary day Askance and affixed

I could feel tried to push me off center Wanted the stultification of youth And ignorance To buy time.

And now that it is known No one got a creation So Vic tries to unravel The mechanisms With claims Of knowledge, awareness, Absence held back, Until the green workers of Earth.

The 150 old friends The saved operating the operation Venus, essential fade outs,

Projected moon They part identify reach Shining sparkling out moonrays To search the airy for the weak, Not weak, u noticing.

Canto 29.

The principle: I can't be oppressed: If I know what we are doing.

Waiting for Jupiter and Mars, Venus, my heart, Centered Serious thin black threads Angle clear Virgos bounce Slants web loves

Whitewash threats

Heaven at the gates Of what we're doing

It just seems far too recent Death was overcome too recently

Rexism

Canto 30.

Episcopalianism denial No one got one.

The story of porn

All about saving Not organizing Love is the LCD

Mars needs and wants Jupiter provides

The saved work it

Meaning around me

Narrate this movie.

Waiting, not searching,

Slowing first Stopped later A plot too thick

First awake to indignity Then slower and slower Then waiting, Then stopped, Then having to wait.

Everything that was wrong, So swallowed by the truth, That the truth is like the fire, And peace, never was,

Now we all wait for the beginning, A wonder how long that wait will be,

Canto 31.

I'm living in a giant tongue, Slobbering over each instant,

Bending, indenting me, With gruesome sounds voiced So I can't hear The translation of idea Into sound and furry And be more properly centered

Something is biting me Allowing the tongue to swirl Colors shapes and proportion Inside this bear trap Clamped soul

It seems I move But really don't Just effect and beyond The working hereeCanto 32.

So the romans worshipped Mars, The planet too cold and dry Symbolizing the creations that died before heaven

We try to rescue With the ones we saved As the heart looks on Canto 33.

But death still wears and tears And so many still unreached And yet there is a plan

To balance death, with earth To free the trapped, with will, To reach the unsaved, with sacrifice,

As I unconsciously have, The unhinged play death, The sacrificed didn't know,

I learned the point to resurrect Death learned to be on earth So many voices glow our parts

And the unsacrificed To creation's need Merge with creation

To explain their worlds, As conduit to here, From other universes,

And this firms And shows the obvious So earth can straighten

And I be raised, But then the still unsaved, The not sacrificed,

Can they recognize they were? For the point and be comforted It all requires organizing here

For me to know what happens When so many questions I shall try to piece it together.

Canto 34

Everyone is unhappy with creation We are starting again To create and let die - unacceptable, desecration.

Review the reasons why Mechanics difference pride Fear justification. …. solitude

Difference unable to question structure, Know one another Or fell so fast

Not much community Fun withers one What can righteousness do

But cling and only cling Until warmth is generated By rejecting wrong

A simpler life we came from A future better ahead I need to chronicle to advance

So many material facts To accept or dispute Questions too, I hope love answers ------------ Canto 35

It all seems so too recent Our accepted mechanical infancy Moving to humanity's story

Dredging impressions of the past Now found loathsome and soothing Alive on the shores of darkness

Fluorescent then present Using this absence To go to the next

Like a moon mast And ferocious sun Within the wind, the bare, Canto 36

To those not in control Think of earth

To those frozen in amber Like words in a book, Think you are natural and normal,

And to those who know earth But can't behave Think there is creation behind you

For one of the mysteries Is the destruction of white women By black men.

Some are the role of death, Because parts wear and tear, Instead of receiving the glow of the good future,

Entropy has been replaced by love And somehow that required death Having a voice of hundreds of thousands

And all the still dead, Are the potential to be recessitated, That required a lack of concern Mirroring the one for death That worked evil ways so long.

They didn't hear community That plays to rescuing them When these moon age means stop

Again these are stories Still in the world Whose steps are revealed Critical but one at a time.

Canto 37.

What is the army Doing to help you now?

Our oppression is for the reason Of saving those that passed And fell Before the baptism of fire Represented by our sun

All the wrongs in my life The different parts and potions To be reclaimed by me Is like a creation waking up To my sleep And thinking of her parts

If I were more extended I could see what each part Symbolized Evoking what went wrong Before heaven and earth

The unfulfilling contractualism Be like capitalism

Not helping each other Makes messiness

Not reaching each other Be like our differences Making us along

Our being alone, hanging on, Our partying, inspiring But without the grip of unity And expensive or necessary

Canto 38

And then the winter solstice uponed us When the earth spins so tight It can flip under itself And start the next way

And in that holy maneuver Of true flight and attraction Torque, thrusting, floating, spinning And need and skill: The ascetic moon sought the Marriage of heaven and hell Through the gentlest sexual assault Upon the military Recognizing peacetime occupation

In the frantic yet erstwhile End of the darkening And embrace of the fight And seeking of psychosis And resisting the easy way

The prayers may be answered Like love in war And war in love

In the frantic final seconds No one should hang on Until the new blasts into the opening

Like Numa being chosen from his cave To lead the Romans To no war And frequent holy days

For once we were land through the long baptism of fire And then came the baptism of water,, Where grief, by uniting us, averted death further,

As water unifies And land supports As land differs And water unites

But then After 5500 years of the army And 3500 years of the navy We have 100 years of an airforce Exposed as not so strong Via Ukrainian air defense systems And bitten down nails of colonels

The airforce represents a humanity Creation has taken 5500 years to make 3500 with augmenting enlightenment

The airforce represents A control of society The unity of the democratic party A power swifter A demonstration war is over. A preoccupation with the means and reasons Of oppression, rather than the point of oppression.

The airforce is an economy Of the operation That may let me regain me From the oppression I am necessary and used for.

Recognizing the military Comes from a good cause The Scots can shut off the king Hegemony out of necessity

So the republic pointed to Numa Romulus a rough shifty figure Nothing can stand on Unmarried to the ideal of an enlightened leader

For the needs must need be seen

That was when we would turn into land And use water.

We didn't have the power we have now We've developed That may end this way Of achieving needed goals

Canto 39

The sky, opaque, at chest level, Dulled asleep and swirling Peaceful thoughts of the jobs at hand

Like earth spinning Or venus's fires calming from a far Or her cruel ice reminding This pleasant sleep Of the next steps And essentials

But then to put us back together No longer needed With the powerful humanity airforce Developed

No need to turn into land And spread under the feet in quicksand

No pain as what unifies us But rather, humanity,

And the sound of death that once felled us Like the news media mandating this misery Is that it? An unconscious sound describing the wrongs alleged Humans can't do Can humanity airforce Make a nicer sound Or stop the sound And let the people be And by living together Come alive On earth as on heaven For me as was for you

So the Hittite can retire Roman

So women can be real

If I were famous People could ask me questions With rippling effects

If i famous People could ask me questions About what they thought

Advancing knowledge Not as scholar In a casino of heaven and hell, Knowledge and innuendo, Path and driftwood to cling to,

But as artist and audience together That's certainly missing The moon being recognized As the demi God here Working on supernatural powers Half full and half empty

Working on how the moon appears The noise of darkness Ending for the merriment of sound

Canto 40

If I was famous For being the moon

Or the moon famous For being me

All the innuendo All I've tried We could do together

I'd have been recognized I'd be connected To what goes on out there In the ruling order of TV

People would and could know About the ruling peacetime occupation Enact it, and report to me

Whereas now it's psychic But famous because I-charactor is recognized His ideas may be But with the charactor behind knowledge Mistreated How can his knowledge be worked with

The tarnished can't be seen clearly The lies are in the way

The trampled can't be taken seriously It's too unreal

And the moon unrecognized symbolically As officially as anything Oh the unfamous so apart From what is needed

For us to be famous to each other How can that be started Under an unrecognized moon. Canto 41

We are Ra The capable, easy, and friendly, The linking in arms and hearts, The desiring of better ways, The melting to means, The oozing to purpose,

The airforce may be at hand Wise but rough An ideal of all The new way

And the navy may OK it But the hearts seared into each other Still work it Geopolitically the working man Can't OK my fame For it transcends friendliness with working order Geopolitical Ra knows its brothers Working towards salvation

Whereas my fame Tilting in the new way As less than the old way

Or replaced by black death And weak harmonies

Surrounded by Amun Whose geopolitic speaks to an awareness Of what's here And less destitute Wants my fame As humanity Discards the old for the new And then I could work my fame With the old people And what we hear, changes,

And Amun looked at From the depth of eyes deeply caring Embedded in fighting the psychosis of death's rule, And wanting to do another one, More than the mirth of peaceful occupation Or earnest tales of wailing, No, the working man wants to keep working, The ideas, my ideas, aren't important, Salvation is the noblest thing, Unless something easier is shown, By Death or Women,

And Ra reassured The desperate times are over, Another way is better

So women can be themselves, And Africa, reassuring the health of every part of one,

Women would be free Africa a force of health

The cobbling The wanting of the united to taste The next rescued The letting go The lawn tennis and five iron golf Canto 42

If we could control the news, The moon mute its noise with merry Xmas, The women could come to me With news from my friends

If the news could make me famous The people choose between playing along And keeping up the old way

Until reassuring proofs change is all right Are shown on TV Or Facebook.

My fame, tied to proofs, It's OK to stop the oppression Of Earth, America and the greater Trenton NJ area,

Where while injured, we keep going, Keeping the sacrilege to a limit Still loving each other, Paid for hardship or not, Forgiving is so easy, To those in a war,

Ra is the sun Gazing down As if where it began In fact not symbols In the carving that defied shape And had no symbol It's warmth was heavenly It's firmness, earthly,

The working man Knows he is a part of the sun, From the etchings his face sweats from, To the gratitude for deeper meaning, He and she knows They are higher than the sun, And the sun a little piece of his heart The heart came from

Something they know they did made created Long ago That started eternity

He is not about to change Until death, potential, consciousness Reassure him Venus is not about to go with the other planets Until she is shown The ice that motivates The fury that demands righteousness No longer needed,

While it is unfair to deny me What other artists have The trailhead of the moon Leads away from this Starts a new way

It is hard for me to imagine What leads to the drifting to me lair To the sky under the moon And the throat of media above Screening absorption That take the beginning Into humanity

Canto 43

So the moon is lo Eerie vapors of the unreasonable Of death and man A news that lacks God A heaven that wasn't given, And where did we all come from? Before we fought for this

And the sky lower still Less mystical The governing sleep

Death is a fall from the high Earth this low level The sky attracting through a relation to death The sun overlooking Jupiter imagining this Stars pointing out those to enter The saved moving up to watch TV Another peaceful orienting movement Of a very low place Diffusing the wrong with righteous steady calm

The moon wants to drift to a better place But the Sun does not want that And the sun rules

The warming that made earth The souls that come through earth That that made heaven and earth And the cause about Attaching and attracting To a sky molded from the moon The sun beats into place Into a government Ever pulling the next Of the many aware out death The flares of wrong The sun soothes An order and sleep Into an eversteady row The tilted axis conducts here

And the moon can't complain There are too many Knowledge overrules charactor Art dwarfs the artist

The art is ongoing The artists tertiary Until clear truths Hollow out unavoidable charactor

Canto 44

The moon is a tool of the sun A lowly absent cold place Separated from the natural nature of earth

Like an angel on the mast of earth's ship, Something poor, struggling, and reflecting, The orders of the sun,

Sailing on the pain of many, Through the air where words are pronounced A consciousness where words find ideas Or ideas find words Like glass is blown Or fountains gush Or the wind blows here what wasn't And travels on Or rests in that balanced firmament Mandating translations Of perfection into the poorest kingdom Of the moon ruling earth with absence And her light lent But ungrasped As me, my denial, The ruling order of earth From which every sundry Upon which every injection of purpose, True or false, to command, or imbue, For spirit senseless like death And attraction sensible, like nature

And tho everything conforms to the vassal king The great empire of the sun Smiles and scowls And makes the moon's kingdom Define the moon And the moon we see but don't recognize Define the ship of earth and heaven

For the moon would be famous And lead a way to a better earth Become a closer more mellow And harmonizing sun

But wants to continue the operation And the artists that have recognition and audiences I deserve that as well Is a key to leadership But so I shuffle about In some poetic identity Half ranging Half honing For when the poet becomes king The moon is more king than poet

The unity of the suffering poet Is no more And the lofty reasonings of a king Sees what that shuffling brought Like words finding ideas And ideas rejected for better ones And the imagination for actual Thought for here

People may like the poet More than the king Because the poet is a part or redemption And the king a part of society Doing something for itself Whereas the poetic center Does what the sun wants

Even as the media news contorts the heart From itself, Like Venus rationalizing, And makes the unifying and healing, Wronged, cheap, and temporary Unable to hope for a better earth Unless the moon Pushes along The idea We must start Caring about the moon And all under Her absent ways And sacrificed nature The waters of earth May heal earth and note better bouquet But not enough for the land

The moon may be ever calm like water The the ocean if it were perfect And stop the worst things

But to rise from the land And engage in the truth The sun is in our land Our land is made from the sun And for its clay and air To speak truth The sun must shine out of the land Like mithras the bull Rising out of the center of the earth Compelled by the sun To figure it's over and done

How to stop is an issue Not as easy as it seems Look how the planets don't

The moon aye, may stop the worst things, Like an international navy Such as white women dying The war in the Ukraine Pornographic dispositions For relator courts Real athletes And park sports of teams

For the sun too into its flowing

And the news may get better If I-the moon, mandate a humane Metaphysical treatment of women

And then fame can flow to me And then we can figure out What to do together.

Canto 45

But let us study the sun. Once there was no answer And then the sun cried out for one, And would there be one?

And now an endless list is aware Of the hope honor and cool harmony Of humanity

This was when the sun was beginning Wrapped in the consuming goal of defeating death Or even before When hearts weren't joined And the earliest searched for respondents To eat the frayings of despair

There was a time before earth When heaven was still imperfectly made But supporting upwardly mobile life And protecting from death Calm and organization Superseding the overwhelming

Like a mafia against the death police, Compelling all into the life

This was before Earth And the gods that had built heaven Gazed down on a place lower Death had felled them to And this is where they put earth Grounded in a level with the dead

And so earth's pastures Seasonal to and fro, Are from the ideals that shaped survival

Without the greatness that sprung Overshadowing earth and the absence That relates to death.

And yet the idea is Those first here Still molten And even holding on to where they first held The same grip, that felt fine, In places here and there

Need rise out of the land In parts and portions And express what flourishes And raises earth From a ship at sea Among fearful waves Stars that need prayers Almost unimaginable wind Save from some depths That groan they try to conduct The slightest laughter And so move or list To conduct a peculiar glint of the sun Through the moon Into the darkness they knew Had someone To irradiate And lead Who would lead themselves

But still be under This mafia against death Requiring all aliens To resist divergent hegemony And backed fools

While they look for where The earth ship to sail On the winds of the unknown, The winds of hope The winds of steadiness The wind that never ceases But stops And makes us look inward

Canto 46

For the moon to tell the sun's story That would flourish Were nature to talk

How versed is the moon How here is the sun How distracted we be By work ahead And within below Or others ahead The dead below

And even if my minions And even if the workers Whose heart has a small piece of the sun Rippled a weather all could feel A lofty sentiment sacred and scary A wind within all, if it blew, How would it begin?

This mob has always ruled So who can be nice to it And let it demonstrate its heart When so many benefit From so few Of the purpose of all and the whole What rudder can turn What water can clean What firm floors can call?

Canto 47

They started to make earth The realization they can live in each other That such is nurturing

And so one took on the estimate of earth With its structure of livability,

And then it's female side Added to other female sides And some climbed in Beginning in a nurturing absence The reaching out to the dead As suffering relates to suffering And suffering, the strongest beginning, Albeit nurtured so.

And in this nascent earth Of ideas that defied translation Those that had suffered most rose As they used this earth like a womb To recapture what they originally were As they had to give themselves up, To cling to each other and start the sun.

As they tried to bring along Pieces of themselves Amid the womb Their woman enabled The growing pains Like an uneasy spring

And they made Gods from ideals to guide them And tho ideals competed The end was sure The power flowing the right way To capable hands With a minimum of drama

Canto 48

Or the sun, clung to each other, Providing the necessary warmth to Heaven,

And other creations entrophied And fell down from their original state

And the mob allowed no other way Than these newcomers conforming To the Cosa Nostra cause Of protecting from death

And so earth began In hazy form By the mob, the sun, Taking a newcomer And having the future newcomers Live within one To nurture them appropriately

And in the process take on the earthly qualities desired And let the many new Choose who was best among their leaders And developing ones

But critically, these first to come down, Into a safe heaven, Took on, embodied the forms of earth

As the sun, Ra, used this artifice, Of living within one, Being low and not easy As a compass for the categorical imperative Of like attracting like, Suffering attracting suffering.

And so the work as earth began

And none eclipsed the original Who formed the sun To provide warmth To provide heaven

But by then, the dying or falling, Of which there seem no more now So tragic was creation and death,

We're alerted at a still high atmosphere Like air traffic control to ideas as vessels To get angry at the offense of death At the alteration of natural flow And so like the anger of hydrogen And flow of happy oxygen A pain of water was produced That furthered heaven as a haven Made from unity Where before making water Descending wasn't normal

And the water enabled the womenside And the womenside the nurturing within Of those that wanted to be earth And work for the sun Whose posts and forms Whose future and rests Enjoyment of heaven …..

Can't be eclipsed

Indeed, the key to saving the moon, Seems to both my reclaiming My shorn parts used for misery And the first fifty or so Who can't regain their natures Without mine being regained alongside

And the faded out particles In those composing earth Like throats for words Loyal lieutenants wondering what to be And how the future should be

Became known as Mars Earth a ship that worshipped Mars Mars the idea of that too far from a sun Or the idea something is not right And can be changed Or the idea of something Barren like the moon Farther from earth Not made from earth's dust As the idea of what once had life But now doesn't

Our compelling idea

Canto 49

As earth found shape, distinct qualities Reminiscent of who went into the sun,

So the idea of Mars was born A weary rubbed scuffed eerie place

Not as cared for by the sun Not as sympathetic as the moon But eerie and deathly Lost, but there, Tuning in, hopeful, Desperate in fury Red to all else Of the past and rising And calling the past The past never goes away The past is right here And advocating with its evocation Of being both close to life And yet much deader than earth Less receptive than the moon.

Canto 50

So earth began as the idea of being in a womb, Many qualities at once learning to get along And even compete in a wise way

And so Earth began as womb Where those in it Were carriers of seeds from the sun

A womb reflecting a shortage of identity As the cause consumed all identity And still does Provide that axis of change Where we all gain what we are At the same time Not while one can't Ra will suffer till the end Or till shown proofs Better art exists Than the primal angst rippling Then the traumatic chaos sucking

Both the first of fire Lost identity And the first of water Forced to form the concern of earth As earth is within the cause of Mars Forced to find the qualities of nature Dispute what is natural Want to give up While leaders tried to ascend And so inspire Those trapped in the basic connection Of a low place That would one day entertain the moon With its diversity of settings And temporal sequence

So even today On earth I am like in a womb I am living In the hearts of Ra In the hearts of connections In the hearts of time

Nor can I be given birth to alone We are all within each other The first are in the womb of wrong And need delivered birth from the cause

The tree needs freedom from meager acorns Dry bark and stationary trunks And even if all the trees unite in treedom The moon has not the power to imagine that

The earth does But the earth is the sun With the best of the first

Mars need be freed from darkness The birth from change The change OK

Everything needs be freed If everyone is no longer needed

The dirt may rise and talk to the lake The lake accepts her stoic wry askance commentary on heaven And may respond with the gentle wit Pain is compensated with.

And the dirt may be dry And water calm And from there cascade or dribble Disillusionment or story

The overwhelming sense what's done is done The underwhelming sense What's done is still needed

As earth and taste Merge into reeds and foliage And water still needed by Mars So what was loved fades And distant traces of good Where nature was folded once

The water would be conducted To comment not post As dirt reminds her Mars needs both the trace of good life And stoic calm strange result water is And as needed by Mars Nothing changes Till Mars talks

Canto 51

"I am the idea, someplace needs work, That the transition from not there, To here, requires, An awkwardness, a hardiness, And scruffedupness, And this is first found in the news on Earth. The news, the bad news of on earth, Is needed, so what wakes, Becomes aware of other suffering And so calms, not from the sadness of the fall, Like water, But from the fire this unity requires"

Thus is the sky is the government of my sleep To infuse those quieted by earth news, That I daily overcome oppression That bad news limiting me Comforts those transitioning

And to the peaceful sleep Hardship wrought Where we explain what is obvious to us In subdued comforting rest Our balm and bain,

My unconscious I try to sort The sky at the chest, More opaque, muddled, The throat above me for TV, An opening with shimmering fringes Projected wonders Conduit of calming entertainment Further dealianating the rescued

But the idea or Mars is always about Higher above the chest level sky To the side not within me Ever frayed by wrong to individuals Ever needing bad news So the approached need not be overwhelmed By circumstance loomed and large

I thought the news was noise That I could see As I am not really on earth But low and me Shaped and governed To rest the rescued and recessitated well

These are always where they are But unnoticed, till known And in the low middle of my totem pole of parts

Water has perspective on anything Nor can escape water And knows it will make heaven better Even as in the way and dividing It feels that heat of a better future

Water wonders what to do What to command Has hope for everything And can be scary and end the bad

And make something else grow from it Ensuring transition and continuation But with changes of form

Is this not like something that creates Or once created

That maybe didn't fear death In its constancy, commentary, constraint And streaming calm

Made from an indignation With the power to alter and form And grow complexity And mold again what sinks down Unable to defeat the future of death Being too simple Or immersed To reach and have concern As its capablities cause

[sleeping-on-cracking-ice]

IDK if your taking requests 🥺👉👈 But if it's open... Could you maybe write an imagine with chishiya, where Niragi trys to get under his skin by making chishiya's s/o uncomfortable 😱

Cruel Entertainment | Shuntaro Chishiya (ft. Suguru Niragi)

{AIB Masterlist}

Summary: Niragi scares you and Chishiya gets defensive

Warnings(s): murder, blood, threatening, swearing, Niragi being a murderous bastard (as usual)

Word Count: 1.8k

*reader is gender-neutral

(A/N): this went down a more different plot than this, but this scenario is a element of it

“Look I don’t mean to complain, but this seems really unnecessary,”

All eyes in the meeting room turned to your figure sitting on the edge of the table. The silence that followed your statement felt personal, making you frown slightly at the annoyed faces that the militants seemed to hold.

Aguni had suggested the executives and the militants comes together for a meeting in order to discuss moving some militants up further on the number tags. 

“How is this unnecessary Y/N?” Aguni spoke up, leaning forward on the table and resting his arms. His dead eyes met yours down the other head of the table, making you grow slightly nervous at the number of eyes that were on you.

Before you spoke up, your eyes flickered towards that of Chishiya’s, your boyfriend. When he caught your glance, he lifted a subtle hand to his throat and gave a gesture to tell you to be quiet.

Ever since Hatter had died and Aguni had taken over, your right to speak your mind had been diminishing, but you weren’t going to give it up as easy as the others seemed to have.

You gulped before turning back to Aguni, deciding to ignore Chishiya’s advice. If no one else had the tits to say something, then you would.

“Why are you moving your militants to a higher ranking? Everything was going fine until you came into power,” you started, keeping a stoic expression on that heavily contradicted your inner emotions.

Aguni raised an eyebrow and looked towards the right side of the table, where his second in command Niragi sat. The imperious man smirked at cocked an eyebrow at your words, making you feel uneasy.

“Is that so?” Aguni spoke in a creepily deep tone and leant back from the table, resting in his chair.

You nodded, keeping eye contact. “Don’t listen to me or whatever Aguni, but we don’t exactly know what will happen when we collect all the cards. I know you’d hate to admit it, but I think moving the numbers for your murderous ‘besties’ so they can escape the Borderlands quicker isn’t your intention here.”

You swore you were suffocating on the air in the room. You could smell the tension between your words and the rest of the executives. It was making Chishiya’s leg shake underneath the table and his eyes roll into the back of his head at your naiveness.

Furthermore, without your knowledge, to Niragi, your forehead seemed like a perfect target at that moment.

“Y-you know, Y/N has a point,” a young girl voiced up, making all eyes shift off of you for a quick moment. She sat a few seats down, holding her head slightly low and speaking in a quiet voice. “Perhaps we should vote on things rather than just immediately putting them in place though. If we do that, The Beach would be more democratic.”

You silently thanked her in your head and turned back to Aguni, but his stoic expression didn’t seem to change.

“Alright,” he said casually as he stood up. Looking over the table and the people at it, all silent, he spoke up. “Anyone that agrees with Y/N, raise your hand high.”

You glanced around the table with a slightly desperate look in your eye, hoping at least someone put their hand up. After a few tense seconds, the young girl who spoke put her hand up, followed by a middle-aged man sitting to the right of you and a few others.

You looked at Chishiya, not knowing what to do. He had himself tucked further in his white hoodie, hair hiding his eyes and trying to look as invisible as possible. He gave you a warning stare, shaking his head ‘no’ towards you.

You frowned, confused that he wasn’t contributing. Usually, he wouldn’t hesitate to stir some drama up between the executives and the militants, so it was out of character for him.

Furthermore, the lack of agreements from other executives like Ann and Mira was throwing you off. Knowing their good nature, they wouldn’t allow everything that Hatter had built to suddenly fall to murderous men. They kept their heads low, just like Chishiya, playing with their hands and trying to be as uninvolved as possible.

And soon enough, you realised why.

“Fine,” Aguni said, eyeing the four people that put their hand up in favour of you. You didn’t know too many of them personally, as they hadn’t been at The Beach for long. They were either high ranking players or random contributors to the executives.

“Niragi?” Aguni said, nodding towards the tall male.

Niragi hummed in acknowledgment and stood up quickly, not wasting a second before aiming his rifle towards the young girl and firing.

The blast of blood that fell onto your face made you freeze, realising what you had done.

“WAIT!” you screamed, standing from your seat and screaming towards Niragi. But your cry did nothing as he turned towards the man next to you and fired once again.

You ducked in fear that he was aiming at you, falling to the floor. The sound of bullet meeting bone filled your ear, and you glanced to the side to see the limp body of the man, eyes wide and hole in his bloodied forehead.

The rest of the people that voted in your favour had either dropped their head to the table in defeat or had done the same as you and fallen to the ground to hide behind the table, but Niragi stopped firing once he was sure the man was dead.

You stood from the ground and sat back down in your chair, eyes wide and breathing heavy. You could feel your heartbeat in your head, and your hands shook violently. You attempted to hide it by lacing your fingers together and squeezing, placing them on the table.

You didn’t dare look towards Aguni but glanced towards Chishiya towards the other end. He held wide eyes and shaking hands, staring at you and putting his index finger to his lips in a gesture to make you stay quiet. You nodded lightly.

Niragi let out a loud laugh and stepped out from around his chair, making his way towards you down the end of the table. You didn’t dare move.

“See what happens when you speak your mind!” he exclaimed, coming up behind you and placing a harsh hand on your shoulder. You jumped at the sudden impact and your eyebrows furrowed in annoyance.

Not being impressed by your lack of reaction, Niragi gripped your hair and pulled your head back so you made eye contact with him. He leant forward over you, looking you dead in the eyes as you yelped from his harsh hold on you.

“Maybe, you should learn to shut the fuck up for once kitten,” he growled into your face, making you cringe from his hot breath on your skin. “That mouth of yours could get you in a lot of trouble.”

Chishiya shook in his seat, hand gripping the end of the table harshly at the sight of his S/O getting tormented. A million thoughts were racing through his mind, trying to think of something that he could do to help you but not endanger anyone else.

He looked towards Niragi, noticing the dark-haired man’s eyes flicker towards him from you. Just as he did so, he noticed Niragi running a hand down the side of your neck, making you flinch heavily. The humiliation of this happening in front of your peers was unbearable, more so in front of Chishiya.

“Niragi,” the blonde stood up, having had enough. Niragi pulled himself away from you, looking towards Chishiya’s tense body with a smirk on his face.

“It’s okay, you can leave them alone,” Chishiya said with a monotone tone, trying to seem calm. “They’ve learnt their lesson.”

The mere sight of seeing the murderous man near you was enough to make Chishiya’s heart rate quicken. Although he doesn’t seem it, he’s a very nervous person, especially when it came to your safety.

Niragi doesn’t move, contemplating what he should do as he kept a firm grip on your shoulder. You were frozen beneath him, wincing at the growing strength he was applying to your collarbones.

He let go, allowing you to let out a large breath. “Fine, save your little toy then Shuntaro,” he grumbled in annoyance and moving back to his seat. He knew that if he had a bigger scene than it already was in front of Aguni, he could perhaps lose his control as second-in-command.

You held your head down in humiliation, not daring to look up for the rest of the meeting, not even towards Chishiya, who was trying to get your attention to check that you were okay. After that shit-show, you made sure not to attract unwanted attention.

After the meeting, you didn’t even get a chance to stand up properly before Chishiya grabbed your hand and dragged you out into the hall. He pulled you towards an open balcony to escape anyone else that was around before turning around and facing you.

“Let me see you,” he demanded, making you furrow your eyebrows in confusion. “Your neck. Did he hurt you?” he asked frantically while pushing your chin up to look at the skin on your neck to see if there were any bruises. You shook your head and pushed his hands away.

“I’m fine Chishiya,” you insisted. But the way that you stared at the ground wasn’t convincing.

“...I killed them... didn’t I?” you croaked out, fiddling with the skin of your hands. The blood from the two innocent people Niragi had murdered was stained along your skin, making you feel physically sick. You almost wished Niragi had just shot you instead of the other two. It was you who spoke up anyway.

Chishiya sighed heavily and brought his hand to your face, holding your cheek in his palm. You felt slight tears run down your face, causing you to quickly wipe them away.

“Y/N, people are always going to die. You can’t stop it,” he said, running his thumb across your cheekbone. “That wasn’t your fault. They had the choice to not put their hand up.”

You nodded, trying to convince yourself it’s not your fault.

“But for now, we need to focus on our own safety,” Chishiya said, making you shift your gaze from the ground to his eyes. “We need to make sure we’re prepared to leave if any of the militants come after us within the next few days.”

Chishiya held your face in both of his hands and brought your lips together for a quick kiss, making more tears fall from your face at the comforting feeling of his warmth.

When he pulled away, he gave a sad smile and pulled you in for a hug, tucking your face into his shoulder by pushing on your head. “Make sure you stay by my side. Don’t worry, I won’t let Niragi get anywhere near you.”

(A/N): I’m sorryyyyy i know this isn’t that good. i rly need to rewatch some aib again cause it’s been ages since i last watched anything from it alsjldkajslja

[dangermousie]

Hello !

I was wondering whether you could rate and tell us of your top 5 favourite webnovels/cnovels of all time ?! (Sorry if this has already been answered lol😅)

Thank you, stay safe and have a nice day🖤

Awww, thank you and that is such a lovely ask!!!

From n1 to n5, here they are (they happen to be all danmei.)

1. The Husky and His White Cat Shizun (2ha) - my n1 forever and ever.

Taxian Jun, the horrific cultivation emperor of the world who razed cities and destroyed sects, is surrounded on his mountain. The righteous sects are terrified to confront him but tired of living, Taxian Jun consumes poison and dies by suicide at the age of 32. And opens his eyes as 16 year old Mo Ran, Mo Ran long before he became Taxian Jun, Mo Ran who is excited at a chance to save the one person he loved and lost. Oh, and to deal with his loathed shizun, the unapproachable and strict Chu Wanning, his past life’s biggest enemy.

I have no idea if it’s objectively the best on this list but it hits every trope I love, its bleak worldview (the world will change only incrementally but that’s enough, average person will not appreciate the sacrifice but it’s still worthwhile, and love is worth everything) mirrors mine, and the sheer complexity of the plot and cascade of plot twists each of which is insane and yet completely logical, is amazing (this is a rare novel where it’s even more fun to reread than read for the first time because you keep seeing all the hints and trail crumbs laid out that you did not see the first time.)

And the characters!!! I mean, this novel has multiple universes/timelines, a side trip to the Underworld AND the demon realm, a plot more twisted than a store’s worth of pretzels and yet the thing that hits me the most are the characters. Mo Ran is my favorite web novel character of all time and I love Chu Wanning so. All the secondary characters are wonderfully written (and some of them made me bawl) and they are all complex. My opinion of all of them changed many times over; the novel doesn’t make it easy to love some of them but then you do and it’s so worthwhile! That slow change is one of the delights of the novel - I started out disliking the unpleasant, superior Chu Wanning and cruel, callow Mo Ran and then I loved them so so hard and cried for them so so hard and was in awe of their heroism and sacrifice and selflessness and capacity to love.

Oh, and the fact that this novel does something almost impossible - it has its protagonist start out as so clearly irredeemable and then slowly and painfully and thoroughly redeems him (without ever letting the reader forget what it is he needs redemption for.)

Also, for a novel that made me cry so hard I felt ill, this book is just so damn funny with the most sarcastic sense of humor imaginable (the serious angst doesn’t even kick in until 90+ chapters!)

Anyway I should stop or I will write a dissertation. But this is the one web novel that I would put in my top 5 not just web novels but any novels in any shape or form. The plentiful trigger warnings are there for a reason so stay away if they are an issue, but if not, if anyone hasn’t read it yet, what are you doing with your life?!

2. Stains of Filth (Yuwu) - another novel by the author of 2ha. Clearly she just pushes all my buttons every time. This one is much shorter and has a plot that is twisty but less twisty than 2ha. Still, all that means is that intensity and the pain are more concentrated.

Aristocratic Mo Xi and former slave Gu Mang were both legendary generals of the empire and lovers. But Gu Mang betrayed the country and switched to the enemy. Now he is back as a peace offering by that country and Mo Xi has to deal with the fact that his feelings are as strong as ever.

This novel!!! So much pain and intensity!!! So many amazing plot twists and supporting characters. The same bleak world view, the same unjust society, the same protagonists doing right things despite the cost. Mo Xi’s intensity and inability to let go (he’s imprinted on Gu Mang and that’s it) is romantic, bone-shakingly intense, and tragic all at once. And oh Gu Mang! So many times I just wanted to reach into the book physically to protect him. The novel deals with unjust societies, memory versus personality, what it’s like to be good in a bad universe etc. And it both made me sob and giggle, repeatedly, and sold me on literally death-defying (but not honor-defying!) love.

Oh, and special shout out to the fact that like 2ha, you may start out hating some characters and end up a rabid fangirl (cough Murong Lian!)

3. Qiang Jin Jiu - a dense political tome that takes a while to get going but then it’s a runaway train.

In a fictional dynasty, Shen Zechuan, the only remaining son of a disgraced aristocratic family and Xiao Chiye, the younger son of a family of generals guarding the border join forces (and then something else) to get power and pull down the dysfunctional system.

This is so elegant and smart (a rare web novel I’d recommend to anyone who just loves solid period fiction) and you probably need a notebook to keep track of the politics and military strategy. These characters are very very smart not just because the author says so.

As to the characters, there is a large cast and I love many of them, but for me the novel is made by Shen Zechuan and Xiao Chiye. SZC is gorgeous and delicate and icy and can kill you before you have time to blink. Saddled with the sins of the family he had no pleasant interaction with, he claws his way out of hell (seeing the sinkhole he was trapped in, literally as well) to take down those who wronged him but also to amass power so all the tragedy and corruption won’t happen again and the whole rotten system comes crashing down. XCY is a military genius who is trapped as a hostage in the capital because the court doesn’t trust his family. He longs to return to the plains of home and to take his rightful place. The two men start out as bitter enemies, then reluctant and sniping allies, then as friends and eventually as one of the most gorgeous, tender, swoony OTPs.

Anyway this is one is a bona fide masterpiece, equal parts smart and emotionally intense.

4. Wu Chang Jie - are you an emotional vampire? I am and this novel is a banquet.

In a highly fantastical setting, we meet our protagonists - the sunny Xie Bian and the intense and surly Fan Wushe. Xie Bian is a human who assists his master in conveying souls to the underworld and making sure no mishaps happen. Bian is concentrated sunshine in human form and to meet him is to love him. When the novel opens, his drunk master brings back another human to be his shidi and assist with duties - said human is uncommunicative, intense and surly Wushe. Bian is excited to have a shidi but little does he know that a story dealing with the horrors of past lifetime is about to start.

Anyway, why WCJ? So many reasons. It has such a dark bleak worldview - this world is a horrifying system where powerful cannibalize each other’s cores for an impossible chance to ascend, where gods have sealed off their realm and all that’s left is neverending human misery and hell (the only way you’d see a deity is if they’d been sent down to suffer over and over and over), where even reincarnation doesn’t fix things and bad acts are often unpunished. And the novel then asks - is it worth being a good person in such a world? More, is it worth being a good person in such a world when nothing good has ever happened to you and you have been repeatedly betrayed due to your goodness? And the answer, on Bian’s part, is an uncompromising yes.

Ah yes, the other reason to love this novel - the protagonists and their fucked up fucked up relationship. Bian (who was Prince Ziheng in the past life) is so genuinely good. But he is that rare thing - good but not saintly, noble but not cloying. So much of the novel is his getting taken apart over and over and barely able to put himself back together every time but his soul is still as amazing as ever.

And then there is Wushe (who was Prince Zixiao in past life, Ziheng’s not-bio-related brother.) Wushe is not a good person. He is a monster. And he loves Bian/Ziheng more than his life and his soul and the entire world but he’s also the one who hurt him more than anyone else ever could and did it over and over. His love survived a literal century of torture in the worst kind of hell and refused the usual memory loss of new life. But it also humiliated and broke Ziheng down to his constituent parts.

One of the things that is so fascinating to me about this novel is the question of what can be forgiven/what should be forgiven/what kind of expiation is enough/can you ever love someone who you loved so much and then he hurt you so badly and is now repentant? And it never sweeps trauma under the rug or hand waves it away but deals with it head on.

If you want healthy relationships, you should stay far away from this novel but if intense insane ones with a feral barely human one capable of destroying the world leashed by love and guilt to the sane deeply good one is your bag, come right in.

There is also the world building and the fact that yes, the big fall out between Ziheng x Zixiao is based on not knowing all the facts but it’s not “why can’t you talk?! This is dumb!” But is totally in keeping with both events and their characters. It’s reasonable for Ziheng to do what he does and for Zixiao to misunderstand and decide Ziheng is now his biggest enemy (but still one he’s fixated on) and for Ziheng to never be able to clarify.

Anyway, once again this is trigger warning central so please heed those, but if they are no issue, this one is wonderful.

5. OK, this is hard and switches between Sha Po Lang, Heaven Official’s Blessing and The Golden Stage depending on my mood. So what the hell, I am gonna write about all of them.

Sha Po Lang - so smart and so much clever world building. There is enough politicking to satisfy a Qiang Jin Jiu fan, it’s steampunk, and our two protagonists - Gu Yun, the empire’s most powerful general, who’s loyal to the empire despite being badly wronged by it, and Chang Geng, a cursed prince with barbarian blood and horrifying childhood - are wonderful separately and together. This is a huge slow burn but it’s totally worth it! They fall in love with each other’s hearts and brains and ability as much as anything. (Yes, this is the one with the yifu thing. Gu Yun is made Chang Geng’s foster father when he rescues him and brings him back to the capital as a way to keep CG safe in imperial strife. They are 12 and 19 at the time so clearly it’s never a parental relationship.)

Heaven Official’s Blessing (TCGF) - I love it’s sprawling narrative and cast, I love its inventive setting and picaresque story. It’s hilarious and can make me cry. But the novel’s place on this list is due to Xie Lian who is part Kenshin part drama WWX part pure goodness wrapped in heartbreak and trauma wrapped in sunshine.

The Golden Stage - two smart and principled (yes, they both have principles different though they may be) men navigate their arranged marriage, their past friendship and their past break up, become a super couple (one of the healthiest danmei couples I’ve ever read and proves healthy doesn’t have to be boring), save the country and bring down the emperor or two and just generally this is my rainy day book.

I guess I didn’t write as much for the three n5 candidates as I did for 1-4 but my brain is beginning to curdle so...

[obsessivelycapricious]

18+ Jason Todd x fem!reader fic ramble.

Hey, so this is a idea i've had in my head for a while, but it won't leave me alone. I've kinda written the first part of it already? But idk if I'll finish it. I haven't worked out the ending yet either but a couple of lovely people were interested in hearing it so here goes! Thanks for the support! I'll tag you all separately.

Warnings: excessive torture, manipulation, gaslighting, rape, violence. kidnapping, interrogation, Stockholm syndrome, abuse. I dont specifically mention how old the characters are, but B-Man likes to pick them young so use your imagination to age them up a bit if you like. It's dark folks, and a super slow burn, though it might not be so bad written in brief here, but if those bother you it might not be a good idea to read it. (its hidden under the cut - PS it got super long - 2.5k words.)

You are Robin. Or, you were at least.

Batman picked you up out of crime alley, gave you a home and a purpose and trained you up to be one of the best deterrents to the crime in Gotham. You lived in the manor, and thought of Bruce and Alfred (even Dick) as your family. It's awesome and you love it!

Almost two years after donning the cape, something goes wrong. You get split up from Batman and taken by Jokers men. That night is the last night you see the sky for years.

Over the next three years, you are systematically abused, manipulated, gaslighted and tortured until you are a shell of your former self. Conditioned to obey his every whim, you micro dose of the small crumbs of affection Joker has to offer you. He gives you test after test, pushing you to your limit always in new and horrific ways. You don't hesitate when he asks you to shoot someone in the head or to beat someone to death. The consequences of fighting against him aren't worth it, you have learned that the hard way. He even doesn't always lock the door behind him and yet you don't try to escape.

You hate batman with a passion now, you regret ever having met the man, he has ruined your life and it's his fault that you are where you are now. He abandoned you. Used you for his games and then replaced you like you were nothing to him. It broke your heart when Joker showed you the footage of another Robin running along the rooftops. Your replacement. Heartbreak boiled over to fury and rage.

He passes you around his acquaintances, particularly Johnathan Crane who is eager to test his new strain of fear gas out. Under the gas you see the Bat sacrificing you again and again to get what he wants. If Scarecrow takes advantage of you while he has you in a vulnerable state, no one cares enough to stop him. He wants to know who the Bat is, but you know that telling him will put Alfred in danger and you'll do anything to avoid that

(Thankfully the joker doesn't want to know who the bat is, you're not sure you could defy him like that anymore.)

Then one day, a body gets thrown into the small cell you are kept in when joker doesn't want to play. Its a Robin. You panic, fear and anger confusing you while joker laughs in your face. You know it's another test but you can't figure out what the rules are.

This is where the fic starts. It's about Jason Todd's slow descent from a vibrant punk who loves being Robin to the dejected, abused shell of a boy who hates the caped crusader and will do anything Joker tells him. You know it'll happen, because that's what happened to you.

Only, Joker never does the same thing twice. Even if it works. You don't want to get attached to the boy, but birds of a feather and all that jazz.

Highlights (or lowlights) include:

Having to share a small confined cell with Jason.

Arguing about the Joker and escaping

"Don't you want to leave? Crazy bitch."

Finding out that Batman didn't even tell Jason about you:

“Why would he come for you anyway, huh? What makes you so special?” “I’m Robin. We’re partners. We’ve been through all kinds of shit together. We’re like this.” “Pah. You really believe it too, don’t you? Ya poor sap.” “What do you mean?” “Why go to the bother of finding a dumb punk like you when he can just make a new shiny Robin instead?” “He wouldn’t do that.” “He’s already done it. You ain’t the first.” “That Robin moved away, he’s doing his own thing now.” “I wasn’t talking about him. I meant the other one.” “What other one?” “The other one.” “There aren’t any other ones – I’m the only other Robin that there’s ever been.” “You motherfucker!”

Beating the shit out of Jason in a blind rage because he won't stop talking about how Batman will come for him.

“How long have you known Batsy for huh? If you know him so well.” “Nearly three years. How long have you known him huh? Oh that’s right – you don’t” “What? Three – Three years?” “That’s what I said. Look, I know this is scary, but I trust B-Man. He’ll come for me, we’ll kick all these guy’s asses, take Joker back to Arkham and get you out of here too. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.” “B-Man?” “Yeah, Batman.” “Shut up.” “What? Why?” “I don’t want to talk about him anymore so shut up!”

Jason finally figuring out who you are when Joker comes to punish you for denting his new toy.

Joker calling you pet names while manipulates you and you being terrified the Joker is going to replace you too

“Oh. Pumpkin, it’s alright. I thought we agreed we were over this, no? Batsy kicked you to the curb a long time ago. It’s old news! This shiny new toy of ours is your replacement.”. “What? You’re replacing me too?” “No, no no. I’d never dream of doing something so barbaric, Sweetheart. That’s the Bats’ M.O. You’re mine for keeps. I would never be that cruel, would I?”

Jason taking his anger out on you:

“Why do you hate B and not the Joker? He’s the one that’s doing this to you. He shipped you off to Crane and you didn’t even fight back.” “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” “No, I know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re screwed in the head. You’re a joke, you’ve given up. Some Robin you are. A real Robin fights back. You don’t deserve the title.”

Joker making you put your Robin suit back on to fight Jason for his amusement. Jason hesitates in the beginning but kicks your ass every time.

Jason trying to comfort you but being bad at it.

Joker asking your opinion on you what you think will break the boy:

"When he gets replaced. Show him."

Weeks of being beaten then long stretches of being left alone with Jason with no instructions.

Catching Jason staring at you when he thinks you're not paying attention.

Joker being caught and taken to Arkham so you both get knocked out and transported there too.

Joker ignores you the entire time he's there as he's being watched to closely, the separation sets you off into a panic when you think about it too much.

Most of Arkham is in on you being kept there. The prisoners who know about it are paid off by being able to play with you - and now Jason too.

Jason thinking in Arkham he would have more chance of being able to escape.

You being subjected to more of Crane's abuse and different types of gas.

Jason being brought back to your cell after being tortured by calendar man and offering him comfort for the first time.

Being cut open and tortured by Zsaz.

Huddling up in the abandoned wing of Arkham for warmth and comfort.

Remembering that you had met before, years ago in the Narrows before Batman took you to be his adopted daughter.

Jason taking care of you while you recover.

Giving Jason advice on how to cope and get through the different villains taking revenge on you.

Jason being hurt and tired and snapping at you, causing an argument where you lash out at him:

"I had to go through this all on my own, dickweed. I didn't have anyone to hold my hand and tell me I wasn't going to die. So fuck you! God forbid I try and help your sorry ass."

Jason being tortured by two-face and seeing Batman and a new Robin visiting Arkham. They don't hear him scream for them to help. It breaks his heart and his will to fight.

You knew it would happen, but seeing it first hand makes your heart break for him. You didn't want to be right. You hate Batman more for what he's done to Jason than what he's done to you.

"I was right there (y/n)! Right there and he didn't even look at me."

Talking about Alfred and how much he means to you both.

Thinking you might actually have feelings for Jason after all.

Being transported back to the compound when Joker finally breaks out of Arkham again only to be in separate cells.

Having major separation anxiety from not being able to tell if Jason is okay.

Joker being jealous of your attachment to Jason and doubling down on his control over you.

He tries to take you outside and you panic so badly you beg him to take you back because you're terrified of what being free will mean.

Joker telling you that you failed his test by getting attached to the boy. He tells you that he's going to kill Jason to teach you a lesson.

Being put back in a cell with Jason to find his face has been branded and he's just so utterly void of any hope or any life.

Sitting next to Jason in the cell with your head on his shoulder.

Jason knowing he's going to die without you having to tell him. His voice is quiet and resigned, almost with a shred of relief when he says:

"He's going to kill me soon, isn't he?" "I'm going to miss you, Jason Todd." "I'm glad I got to know you, (Y/N). I'm sorry I couldn't get us out." "It's okay."

You kissing his cheek as you drift off huddled together for the last time.

Joker forcing you to watch as he beats Jason repeatedly with a crowbar, ignoring your defiant cries and struggles for him to stop.

"Which hurts more Little Red? Hmm? Forehand? Or Backhand? I think (Y/N) would like to know!"

Joker blaming you for having to kill Jason:

"And all because of your silly school girl crush. What a waste. I'm very disappointed in you, Dolly."

Being dragged away screaming from his lifeless body and thrown into the back of a van just in time before the building explodes.

That's the first half. For the second half to the ending, I haven't quite figured out yet. I've got a few ideas, but I can't decide what would fit better, feel free to help me out here.

Batman could find her after all this time, new evidence being uncovered during the explosion and in his grief about finding Jason's body he could question that he never actually found yours. Of course then you'd be homicidal and try to kill him, resulting in you being locked in another cell, this time in the Batcave. You'd get to scream at him about all his failings and what a terrible person he is though so that could be cathartic. Alfred (And Dick a little) manages to talk you back to some kind of sanity but you are forever changed by this. You meet Red Hood at a later date: on your way to find an egg and cheese sandwich when someone pulls a gun on you. Seeing you again jars him out of his own homicidal rage long enough to care about the girl who he couldn't save, giving the BatFam an opening to reason with him some.

-Or-

Joker keeps you hidden away and the Bat still has no idea you even exist. It stays that way for two more years where you eventually become completely numb to everything he or his acquaintances do to you. Joker eventually gets bored at the lack of reaction and in his boredom he gets careless. A new vigilante takes it upon himself to blow up to compound and best all Joker's men, he escapes but the vigilante doesn't chase after him and instead he finds you. You resist his attempts to save you, knowing how angry Joker will be so instead, Red Hood punches you in the face, knocking you out. He carries out into the night and you wake up somewhere new and he tries to help unravel the fuck ton of issues you've got while dealing with his own. He'll probably enlist the BatFam to help once he's done wanting to kill them, unless you can talk him into killing the Bat together, after the Joker dies of course.

-Or-

One day, maybe a year after Jason dies, Joker decides he's bored of you and gives you one last curveball. After more than 6 years of being isolated and abused, you wake up in an alley on the streets of Gotham, alone. Abandoned again. After several panic attacks and not knowing if it was a test and that you should run back to the Joker or going to find Alfred because he's the only person in the world left that you trust, you decide to leave Gotham altogether. You make it out and somehow navigate your way to having an apartment, a job and even a quiet life in Bludhaven, away from the Bat and the Clown and the nightmares. Except that one day, while you're drinking your morning coffee in a café, Dick Grayson sits down opposite you. You're stable enough not to react immediately, and Dick seems to really care that you're alive and well. Turns out that the Bat found out about you and decided to leave you alone this whole time (which only serves to double down on your feelings of abandonment) Only the joker is out of control and they think that you could help them by giving them an insight into how the joker works. They've got a new Vigilante to deal with too so they're stretched pretty thin. You flat out refuse which is when it turns out it really wasn't a request. You are taken back to Gotham and confronted with the BatFam, helping them reluctantly when Red Hood breaks into your new apartment, demanding information. You argue, and it feels too familiar, setting off a panic attack when he ribs you about your complicated relationship with the Joker. Identities are revealed and you work together to take down the Joker.

The epilogue to this saga would be some time after any of those options.

Both you and Jason finally in a healthier place where you can actually acknowledge what has been growing between you two since you were paired together all those years ago. It's not a neat and tidy happily ever after, it's messy and full of arguments, fears and misunderstandings but it's also full of tenderness, softness and love. And the sex is really good too.

-

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Let me know what you think? Come chat to me anytime!

[blorbosexterminator]

Do you think the plan was originally Palermo's idea? he said "yo te PROPUSÉ fundir oro untos", this makes me think he came up with it. But other times they just refer to it as Berlín's plan. (Raquel saying "it's your brother's plan" for example)

Oh yes, I'm nearly entirely sure it was Martin's idea. As you said, it's clear from the dialogue that he's the one who proposed it. He's refered to as the mastermind of it, Netflix refered to it directly as his poem, and, to me at least, I think it's also there in the subtext in the season 3 and 4 flashbacks when Andrés talks about the whole 'best minds in engineering, etc.'

And also, Martín has the ideological and heritage weight of it behind him, so I do imagine it makes a lot of sense that it was initially his idea and he's the one who proposed it to Andrés. Raquel and the others, I imagine, don't know that much about the plan's initial conception except that it was Berlin and Palermo's, not el Professor's, and I do think it evolved enough to be THEIR plan at the end. So I don't think it's weird that Raquel would refer to it as such.

But I do think this is an important point, not exactly who came up with it before the other, as much as that the connection between Martín and the plan doesn't end at the connection between Martín and Andrés. Of course that's a big part of it. I do think their mutual obsession with it is definitely something to consider. But it's also important to note that this is the work of his life. It's not an embodiment of Andrés nor does it begin and end only with Andrés.

Actually, I think it goes the other way around. I think the plan, this mutual idea and goal that they were both individually obsessed with, is something that had a huge effect on the development of their relationship, and what brought them this close together. Not only something Martín ever thought of just to gift to Andrés and that's it. This is why it's ridiculous to imagine that even if Martín is moving on from Andrés between one hour and the other, he would move on from the plan too. The "plan" isn't something Martín needed to heal from, nor is it something that makes any sense for him to "move on" from if we're to take this character seriously. Again, Martín has a lot of ideological involvement in it. And interwined with the ideological involvement, is his romanticised involvement too; he considers himself an artist in his craft and the plan as his masterpiece. The work to end all other works in his life. The one idea and goal he has been obsessed with for years. I genuinely don't understand why Martín "healing" would cause a sudden indifference to something that has SO MUCH weight in his narrative. That's not character development, that's fucking up actual good, weighted writing that they had earlier with 'omg look at that gay vulnerable baby learning to love again uwu' are we watching cartoons? Those aren't middle school kids learning to navigate the cruel world of puberty and heartbreak. Those are grown men and women with ideas and goals that go beyond mere romance. Martín as a character was so complex and had so much weight because of this. Transforming him from this to basically an empty person with really no actual internal, deep interwoven desires, goals, obsessions, things that he was painted for two seasons that he would fight tooth and nail for, and replacing it with 'care for team-members <3' isn't the brilliant redemption arc people imagine it as lmfao.

The thing is, Martín didn't even disregard his team-mates lives. He never did. That wasn't him. I'll remind you again that in his second-ever scene in the show, the actual first glimpse we got of him as a person, was criticising Sergio for leaving members of his banda to die. He wasn't even just speaking about Andrés then. It wasn't just because he cared about Andrés. He clearly saw it as a shameful thing that a leader would leave behind three of his team to die 'and do nothing.' We did see very clearly how much value Martín put on his teammates lives in season 3. Before his 'development and redemption' Martín still, without a moment's hesitation, tried to direct Gandia' aim to him, to save Nairobi and Tokyo. He did defened Nairobi from Gandia when he insulted her. He did ran to Denver and Rio when they were attacked in the elevator. He was completely enraged when he heard of Raquel's death. He was terrified for Nairobi and was one of the only one clear-headed enough to actually focus on her when everyone was fighting for no reason. He was the one who understood that Nairobi was scared for Tokyo and wanted to go find her. Martín didn't 'learn to open up and care about them.' Martín cared about them from day one on the virtue that they were his team.

The difference is Martín was just not all nice and super respectable, moralistic about it. He did in a very him mannar. AND that this was balanced for his love and concern for the actual fucking plan that is the work of his life. And it made him complex and interesting. Gave him many sides and simultaneous things to care about.

Him being indifferent towards the plan, going all 'uwu revenge is bad, Bogota,' towards the man who humiliated, tortured, and killed an injured member of his team right in front of everyone, and 'I don't mind at all my plan getting changed behind my back by the person I trusted to give it its respect' allowing himself to be disrespected and ordered around to run errands, isn't a character development. It's a downgrade.

[effei-s]

What shatter-me Warner would do.

The fastest character assassination I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the thing: Warner from original trilogy had character arch. More important: he was a character.

He was mean, villainous, cold, cruel murderer, with daddy who basically bought him regency (like come on, if it wasn’t for Anderson no one would even think about giving him that position; n for nepotism), but he also was deeply traumatized and abused his whole life and had little to none normal human interactions. I loved that fact that the only good thing he did (killing Fletcher because he was abusing his family) resolved into a complete catastrophe (Anderson killing children and wife) because Warner didn’t think it through. He tried to do the right thing and failed miserably, because he was more concerned with making a spectacle for Juliette. And after that he still had the audacity to paint himself as a hero who saved poor family from terrible tyrant in Ignite me.

I didn’t expect him to act and think like a human being. He didn’t need to act like a normal human. Warner gas lighting Juliette in the first third of ignite me is Warner’s thing to do. Him yelling and throwing tantrums and making scenes in Unravel me is Warner’s thing to do. Him forcing Juliette to do things she doesn’t want and traumatizing her in the process in Shatter me is Warner’s thing to do. Him wanting to torture Adam to death is Warner’s thing to want.

There’s a few reasons for this:

a) he doesn’t know how to communicate with people other than giving them orders or making threats;

b) he truly believes that he’s in the right here (he doesn’t see himself as a bad guy in Juliette story, more like a knight on a white horse);

c) he’s physically unable to be honest with himself and always has someone to blame for his own mistakes and failures;

d) he’s ‘results justify the means’ kind of guy.

Changes for good, with trauma that deep, when you basically don’t have a moral compass, don’t happen over night.

Was his ignite-me arch made sloppy? Yes. Everything was too info-dumpy and too convenient (Juliette forgetting that Warner was going to torture Adam to death; Juliette feeling that she’s the one who needs to apologize; Leila’s entire character used only for a sob story; Adam turned into a douchebag so Warner would look a more suitable love interest, etc). But it still was an arch. And the finale of ignite me was so open I really could imagine that, little by little, in the future, he will start to trust people more and really gonna help Juliette and co to make the world a better place. And his redemption arch wasn’t finished in the slightest, and I would even say that it was only the beginning of it, but it was implied that things will get better from there (the most important part of that being him genuinely wanting to make things right with Adam and James; he’s the one who makes the first step and initiate the bond).

So what went wrong in new three books? Ehm… everything, to be honest. Instead of developing a character that was already there, she decided to give him a new personality. Actually it can be said about every single one of characters, but Warner just happened to be the biggest victim of them all.

Let’s look at Restore me.

Okay, we have his pov, and I never thought I would say it but… Warner is kinda dumb. He’s supposed to be this military strategy genius, someone who knows how RE works from within and… it turns out that he just as clueless as Juliette. More than this, we never actually see him do ANYTHING except fucking Juliette. And for some reasons he never helps Juliette with her work??? There’s so much paperwork and instead of helping her to sort though it he’s… just not there???

Those stupid long monologues about how she’s capable to do anything mean nothing if he doesn’t actually help (as we can see at the end of restore me, when Juliette gets captured).

That fact that he doesn’t immediately check if Castle’s words are true? And instead of helping Juliette with Haider (telling everything he knows about him and his family, preparing her for the dinner) he fucks her??? This is a dumb bitch shit. And maybe you didn’t noticed but Shatter-me Warner wasn’t a dumb bitch.

After all, there’s a simple reason I never wanted the job of supreme commander myself—

I never wanted the responsibility.

It’s a tremendous amount of work with far less freedom than one might expect; worse, it’s a position that requires a great deal of people skills. The kind of people skills that include both killing and charming a person at a moment’s notice. Two things I detest.

Remember shatter-me Warner who wanted power because power meant that he could have control over his life? Remember shatter-me Warner who wanted to work with Juliette as a team to change the world? Yeah that’s him now.

No personal ambitions allowed when you’re a walking dildo, I guess.

Off the topic, but Mafi really enjoys making Juliette stupid as fuck:

“Oh, yes, of course,” she says, remembering. “I’ve gotten a bunch of letters about that. I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”

Let's continue.

Hurting Haider would be enough to start a world war.

Warner says and then Juliette threatens Haider, a foreign official on a diplomatic mission, and instead of being even a little bit worried and think about possible consequences, Warner thinks this:

But I can only smile at her. I want to scoop her up and carry her away. Take her somewhere quiet and lose myself in her.

Okay, I guess it’s official, there’s sperm inside of his head instead of brain cells. I can’t find any other explanation for this clownery.

Shatter-me Warner would… Shatter-me Warner won’t be in this situation in the first place.

Someone tries to kill Juliette and Warner does… nothing about it. He never goes to check the body of the assassin himself. He thinks that Nazeera hides something and he still allows her to go around and doesn’t even interrogate her when Juliette says that Nazeera was there at the moment of the attack. He doesn’t find it even a little bit suspicious? That guy who had tremendous trust issues in the original trilogy? Remember him? Yeah, that guy. Shatter-me Warner would lock Nazeera and Haider up and demanded answers. Shatter-me Warner would be angry as fuck, and would try to kill Kenji with his bare hands, because Kenji was stupid enough to leave Juliette alone. Shatter-me Warner wouldn’t stop until he had answers (and the head of a person who wanted to kill Juliette on a plate).

New Warner is too busy feeling sorry for himself to actually do anything about it. And after one chapter it’s completely forgotten, like that fact that someone tried to kill her is not important at all.

And then Castle enters the picture with his stupid and sloppy info-dumping (I guess Mafi never heard of ‘show don’t tell’ rule). And says this:

“She can’t lead this resistance,” he says, squinting at something in the distance. “She’s too young. Too inexperienced. Too angry. You know that, don’t you?”

and if that wasn’t enough he also says this:

“It should’ve been you,” Castle says. “I always secretly hoped—from the day you showed up at Omega Point—that it would’ve been you. That you would join us. And lead us.” He shakes his head. “You were born for this. You would’ve managed it all beautifully.”

AND HE’S STILL ALIVE AFTER?

This is a fucking treason right there. And Warner A-OKAY with this.

Shatter-me Warner would strangle him right there. Or better yet, he would go along with this until he has 100% evidences of Castle’s betrayal and then he would kill him. Or he would kill him simply because Castle was withholding important information and earlier in books he put Juliette in a great danger by sending her to Anderson without telling her the truth (unravel me).

But not this Warner. New Warner is far more concerned with fucking Juliette then helping her or looking for a way out of this situation (because now he has dick instead of a brain).

After my father’s revelation, my thirst for information became suddenly insatiable. I needed to know more—who these people were, where they’d come from, how much we’d known—

WHERE AND WHEN DID WARNER IN PREVIOUS BOOKS DISPLAY THIS?

When I say that Mafi simply forgot her own characters this is what I mean. Warner from original trilogy didn’t give a flying fuck about them. He thought that they were weak and stupid.

I will lose her.

And it will kill me.

He said this shit and after he nearly had a panic attack because he imagined her dating someone else? Oh, come on, how more pathetic can he get?

There are words for this kind of behavior: toxic codependency.

Oh wait wait! I know! This is not Warner! This is Edward Cullen disguised as Warner! The mystery is solved!

Oh, he fucks her again. Apparently it’s the only thing he’s good at. What a character! The layers! The complexity!

And then Lena came into the picture.

Until that moment I was more or less okay with Warner. Yes, I was very confused, but I was ready to give Mafi benefit of the doubt. He lost his father and was dealing with grieve. We all can act out of character in the face of a tragedy or drastic changes.

“Why do you keep pressing this? Who cares if I’ve been with other women? They meant nothing to me—”

And there I felt in my guts, I’m not gonna like what next to come.

Haider was exhibiting suicidal tendencies. Self-harming. And I got really scared. I called Warner because I knew Haider would listen to him.” She shakes her head. “Warner didn’t say a word. He just got on a plane. And he stayed with us for a couple of weeks. I don’t know what he said to Haider,” she says. “I don’t know what he did or how he got him through it, but”—she looks off into the distance, shrugs—“it’s hard to forget something like that.

Oh, so Warner's words about how he never had any real interactions with anyone before Juliette were bullshit. About how he doesn’t understand people were also bullshit. About how Juliette was the first person who was not afraid to speak with him freely were also bullshit. Because all of the sudden he can help someone heavily depressed. Someone with suicide tendencies? Someone who harms himself? And now he has an ex-girlfriend who’s ready to beat the fuck out of him and calls him mean words (she clearly doesn’t fear him)?

Now his entire character in the first trilogy doesn’t make any sense. And his excuses don’t make any sense.

Bravo, Mafi! Bravo! This was the fastest character assassination I’ve ever seen.

She says that Lena was in love with him—really in love with him—but that Warner broke her heart, that he never treated her with any real affection and she’s hated him for it.

Oh, so he’s not only stupid and absolutely useless, he’s a fuckboy. And if there’s one thing I HATE, it’s fuckboys.

There’s a big-big-big difference between someone who has one-night-stands and THIS SHIT:

“You’re upset, I understand. But it’s not my fault you feel this way. I don’t love you. I never have. And I never led you to believe I did.”

“She and I,” he says, “it was—we were nothing. It was a relationship of convenience and basic companionship. It meant nothing to me. Truly,” he says, “you have to know—if I never said anything about her it was only because I never thought about her long enough to even consider mentioning it.”

“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t two years of anything serious. It wasn’t even two years of continuous communication.” He sighs. “She lives in Europe, love. We saw each other briefly and infrequently. It was purely physical. It wasn’t a real relationship—”

So he despised her but used her for sex? WOW. Cool. He can go and trip over a fucking knife or fall out of the window for all I care.

“Everything in my life was different before I met you,” he says. “I was lost and all alone. I never cared for anyone. I never wanted to get close to anyone. I’ve never—you were the first person to ever—”

And how exactly he was able to help Haider with his self-harm then??? If he didn’t CaRe for anyone before Juliette?

This was the moment when Warner from original trilogy died in agony.

Okay, let’s see real quick what we have in Defy Me:

He thinks about escape but never really does anything to escape;

(anderson is the one who opens his cell;

he stands in front of a guy who murdered his mother and doesn’t even think about her, yeah I can see how important she was for him;

/again, shatter-me Warner would probably demanded answers, but not walking dildo, walking dildo cares only about Juliette. his excuse in ignite me 'i did it all for my mom' doesn't make any sense now, because he actually doesn't give a flying fuck about her/

he gets captures one minute after he “kills” Anderson;

nazeera is the one who gets him out of there;

super soldier taught his whole life how to survive, everyone. useless as fuck)

He doesn’t know anything about jewelry.

(super ooc, i know what Mafi was trying to do here: she tried ‘sherlock holmes doesn’t know that earth revolves around the sun’ thing Arthur Conan Doyle did, but the problem is WARNER IS A FASHIONISTA, or he was).

He wants to get married because…???

He sees a woman who tried to kill Juliette and he’s a-okay with staying at her place, because she said that it was actually a message (???).

Castle is still alive.

Nazeera who knew all this time about Anderson and was working for him is also alive and well.

Oh and he doesn’t care about Anderson being alive and being a real threat to Juliette (fucking her is more important for him, as usual).

His complete disregard for Juliette’s safety only makes me hate him more with every new book.

Imagine me.

First and foremost: don’t call imagine-me Warner shatter-me Warner. Don’t insult shatter-me Warner like that. With shatter-me Warner Anderson would have to try very hard to get to Juliette. It would be ‘Warner made 100 back-up plans, but Anderson knew him too well and created 101 plan and that’s how he managed to win’ kind of situations.

But walking dildo is too busy feeling sorry for himself (as usual), he just sits by her bed FOR TWO FUCKING DAYS, doing absolutely NOTHING to make sure she’ll be safe.

Nooira says that Juliette should be killed and she’s still alive for some reason.

He’s entire persona is that he’s rude to people (but not bbc’s sherlock holmes kind of rude, when he’s unbearable dick but he’s actually smart and really gets shit done, so we can tolerate him). He’s just rude.

He doesn't care about Adam or James's wellbeing (remember Ignite me Warner who really wanted a family? Yeah that's him now).

But he has gruppies now, because he’s hot and everyone in the sanctuary wants to fuck him.

Oh and he proposed to Juliette. HE PROPOSED. THEY ENGAGED! DO YOU HEAR ME??? THEY GONNA BE MARRIED! HE PROPOSED TO HER! AND SHE SAID YES! THEY GONNA MERRY!

Because god fucking forbid we forget about it.

(mafi really thinks that her readers have the mental capacity of a golden fish, huh?)

I lost count how many times walking dildo implies that he's gonna kill himself if Juliette is not with him (disgusting).

Then our walking dildo cures Juliette by the power of petting (it’s not power of love, lads and gents; you want to see love go watch defenders on netflix; mafi already copypasted elektra’s arch from that show into imagine-me Juliette, you can do yourself a favor and see how this trope can be executed without borderline on sexual assault petting scene).

18-old girl marries a fucking sociopath believing he’s actually a good person.

(we all know how shit like this ends, people like that don't change; and this 'he's different with me cuz i'm very special and i'm gonna teach him the right way' it's really harmful message considering that the audience of those books are mostly teenage girls).

Trust me, there's nothing revolutionary in this trope, it's tale as old as time.

Here's the thing, good written character always defined by connection to other people: friend, lovers, enemies, family, foes, acquaintances, even some random strangers. It's the easiest way to establish what kind of person they are.

Walking dildo doesn't have any of that because all of his "character" revolves around Juliette. He's not a person anymore. By the end of Imagine me he doesn't have friends (his relationships with Kenji or Haider non-existent), no family connections (no talks with Adam or James), even enemies or foes or even people that don't like him (because everyone wants to fuck him, because being hot is his only character trait).

His only family and friend is Juliette. And you know what? It's fucking boring, overdone and lazy as fuck. And insulting to the character he once was.

No redemption arch, no character arch at all.

Happy end.