#long while

[wolfjackle-creates]

Bring Me Home Arc 3 Part 2

Happy WIP Wednesday. Bring Me Home won last week's poll. But it was a close one! If you want a say in what I post next week, be sure to vote in this week's poll. ^.^

Story Summary: Danny's parents find out his secret. It doesn't go well. But he's not alone. His friend Tim Drake, better known as Red Robin, and the Young Justice will not let him suffer.

We switch to Tim's POV for this part.

Warnings: Aftermath of torture

Arc 1: AO3

Arc 2: First, Last

Previous

Word Count: 1.7k

-----

The instant Kon got the door to the lab open, Tim sprinted down the stairs. The first thing he saw was Jack and Maddie standing over a table, green ectoplasm, blood covering everything.

Then his eyes fixed on Danny. Danny, cut open and bleeding with a muzzle on while his parents looked at his insides.

He rushed forward, tackling Maddie and tearing her away from Danny. She screamed and fought back, landing one punch before Tim kicked her back a step. Then he pulled out his staff and landed a hard blow across her chest, forcing her further back.

Next to him, Cassie was taking care of Jack. He exchanged a quick glance with her and the two began herding the pair towards the wall. Away from Danny.

Behind him, Tim could hear Sam call out for Kon then a cry of pain.

“He’s still alive!” called out Kon. “I can hear both his core and heart.”

Tim couldn’t relax. Alive didn’t mean much. He put more force on his next swing of his staff, aiming for Maddie’s shoulder. But she ducked and twisted just right to get under the swing and move closer.

She slashed back with a scalpel, one still covered in Danny’s blood. Tim growled as he blocked it with his arm, the armor of his suit preventing it from reaching skin. He swung his staff again, getting her in the side hard then jerking up to hit her in the armpit.

He smiled in satisfaction when he dislocated her shoulder, causing her to drop the scalpel.

“You’ve got this all wrong!” she protested as she held her shoulder. “Jack and I are the good guys here. The ghosts, they’re all evil!”

Tim snarled. “The only evil I see here are the two so-called scientists who were torturing their own son!”

Maddie tensed at his words. “Don’t you dare say that. I’m trying to save my son from the monster that took his body.”

Tim swung again, aiming for her feet. Already distracted by the pain in her shoulder, the hit landed and she fell. He hit again and he felt her ankle break. Good, she wouldn’t be getting away.

“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up,” growled Tim.

Jack landed on the ground next to his wife, taken out by a punch from Cassie. Tim took the time to swing at him, too.

Again and again and again, he brought his staff down on them. Not stopping as they cried out in pain or as he felt more bones break under his blows. Until the time when he tried to swing down, but his staff refused to move.

He spun around, scowling, to come face to face with Cassie who had his staff firmly in her own grip.

“That’s enough, Rob. They’re down and they won’t be moving. Impulse and I will make sure of it. You need to go with the others.”

Behind her, Tim could see Sam fussing over Danny, still on the table. Bart and Tucker were at the computers trying to download as much information as they could. And Kon was staring right at him.

“Transport?” asked Tim.

Kon pulled out his phone to check. “Just arrived. Let’s go, Rob.”

Tim nodded. “Fine.” To Cassie, he said, “I want them in custody.”

She nodded. “Obviously. We all do. Impulse, Tucker, and I will take care of things here.”

“Then let’s go.” Tim stalked away from Jack and Maddie, refusing to look back. He wasn’t sure he could stop a second time.

Someone must have found a blanket and gotten it under Danny. All Kon had to do was touch the blanket, and it lifted up. Danny was held completely straight in the make-shift stretcher as Kon single-handedly used his TTK to carry him, Sam leading the way out of the lab.

The doors opened for them on the way out, Kon’s TTK again. And sure enough there by the curb was a nondescript van, engine still running.

Jazz got out the driver’s seat the instant Kon appeared in the doorway to open the back of the van.

“Bring him in here! I’ve got a bed set up,” she said.

Kon, of course, went first. But Tim and Sam were only steps behind him. Inside the van, the bench on one side had been fitted with a futon mattress to form a makeshift bed. Overhead, lights had been fitted to make sure the area was bright enough to see. Kon carefully laid Danny down then backed up so Sam and Jazz could move in.

“Keys are in the ignition,” said Jazz. “Get us away from the house, then let Sam and I patch him up.”

“You’ve got it,” said Kon who took his spot behind the wheel.

Tim shut the doors to the van and stood against the opposite side of the van. This was his first good look at Danny.

His friend was still in his Phantom form, but his jumpsuit had been torn and peeled away from his body. His chest was covered in so much blood he could barely see the wound, but the tell-tale y-incision was unmistakable.

Jazz and Sam were carefully wiping away the blood as best they could, using towels that had been neatly stacked in a box next to the cot.

Tim looked around until he saw an empty bucket. He pushed it towards the two girls. “Put the dirty ones in here.”

Kon pulled away from the Fenton house, aiming for their local out-of-town-limits rendezvous spot. “I can keep Danny from being jostled by the road. Don’t know if I can do the same for the rest of you if you’re moving, though.”

“Let’s not test it right now,” said Tim. “But we will be practicing that later. Never know when we might need it again.”

Jazz dropped her first towel and grabbed another. Her hands were shaking.

Tim knelt by her side and placed a hand on her wrist. “Let me. Right now we’re just trying to hold him together and I can do that as well as you can. He’s going to be just fine, I’ll make sure of it.”

“But I’m the one who trained with Frostbite.” Her voice cracked on a sob.

Tim grabbed the towel from her hands and used it to put pressure on Danny’s wound. “And I don’t need specialized training for this part of it.”

Jazz hesitated a moment longer, but with a last look at her brother, she spun and ran to the other side of the van. Tim listened to her muffled cries as he held the towel to Danny’s chest.

Sam shifted until their shoulders were pressed together and he leaned slightly into the touch. Neither said anything.

Soon enough, Kon was pulling off the road and the van came to a stop. The instant it did, Jazz was pushing her way into his place, two boxes in her hand. She opened one to reveal a large first aid kit, as well stocked as anything he had in his most-used safe house.

Tim took up a position at the foot of the bench and pulled out a small camera he had in his belt. He took careful pictures of all the visible wounds. Kon came up besides him and put an arm around his shoulder.

Jazz opened the second case, letting out a hiss of cold air and frost. Without hesitating, she put on two heavy duty gloves and lifted out what looked to be an ice cube.

Sam, meanwhile, was measuring out enough glowing green thread to cover Danny’s wound. Tim took another picture.

Jazz placed four ice cubes into the injury—one at the end of each cut and one where the lines intersected. Then Sam laid the thread over the wound. She muttered something and it phased into Danny’s skin without the use of a needle and pulled the injury together.

The glow faded slightly and if he didn’t know better, Tim would’ve thought they were regular stitches.

From there, they focused on cleaning off the remaining blood. The van was mostly silent—Sam and Jazz only communicating the bare minimum necessary to care for Danny. Even Tim’s camera was entirely silent, designed as it was for stealth.

As Danny was wiped clean, more and more injuries were revealed. Only years of bat training kept Tim standing and taking pictures. But his grip on the camera was much tighter than it needed to be. Kon’s fingers were digging into his shoulder almost painfully, but Tim didn’t say anything. Sam and Jazz were forcibly holding themselves together, but the odd hitch in their breath or tremble in their fingers gave them away, too.

A nasty burn spanning Danny’s left side was revealed. Tim clicked the camera, and Sam applied an ectoplasm-based ointment to it. Then Jazz covered the injury with a bandage.

The process was repeated time and again for each injury they discovered. But eventually, all the wounds were tended to. Once Jazz did a final look, she nodded with grim satisfaction.

“Superboy, could you use your powers to wrap his chest?”

“Of course!” Kon left Tim’s side to grab a roll of gauze and took up his own place at Danny’s side. All he had to do, though, was place the roll on the bed and his powers took care of everything else.

Tim wished he could do something half so useful. Next time Danny managed to get to the Realms, he was so joining him and getting his own lessons directly from Frostbite.

“Just one more thing to do,” said Jazz. She reached into the first aid kit and pulled out a small box. Inside sat a syringe filled with ectoplasm. She jammed it into Danny’s thigh and pressed the plunger.

Danny’s eyes flew opened and he let out a yell as his back arched off the bed.

Sam was already hovering over him. “Danny? How are you feeling?”

Danny panted for breath, but looked at her with a wry smile. “Pretty much the worse I’ve ever felt.” He looked from Sam to Jazz to Kon before meeting Tim’s eyes. “You came.”

“I always will,” said Tim.

-----

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I'm not an expert on emergency medicine, so I figured why not go the magical route?

Tim wishes he could help in a more hands-on way, but documenting injuries is important if you want to bring them up in court. No one knows yet if Danny will want that, but this way they have them in case they're necessary.

Tucker, Bart, and Cassie are remaining behind to bring the Fentons to JL holding cells. Tucker is the one who knows the Fenton computers best after Danny, after all.

All ready we can see some major changes from my original version. What else will change? And, more importantly, what will stay the same?

[canisalbus]

hi your art has for the longest time rendered me to utter shreds. nary a piece of me left untouched by the papershredder that ur blog is to my brain. what do you MEAN the thorny sickly looking one is getting held close to a warm chest at night what do you MEAN shopping in modern au together what do you MEAN reunion after 17 years sticking ur stupid snout into another mans neck I'm ILL . I'm ILL about this. and your art style is . ohhhhh. speechless your color work and line work is like honey and i am a stupid little ant getting lost in it

p o e t r y

[onsunnyside]

I read

Can i be punish me 💦anon please?

As “can i punish 💦 anon please” and i was like ooh what did 💦 anon do? Also poor baby protec them! ( do you have a 💦 anon?)

— 🍪

anon on anon violence 😔

[elodieunderglass]

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[prideprejudce]

this whole oceangate submarine fiasco has actually led to a lot of interesting talks and debates about the grey area of human empathy vs the inclination to recoil at the bizarre behaviors of the ultra wealthy and how people struggle with both ideas and is actually very interesting to watch play out in different types of people

[spearxwind]

I think it's sad that most people always think of bottlenoses as the "classic dolphin" since its the one that's always used for shows, and always think of dolphins as just straight grey when in reality there's so many varieties with so many different amazing patterns

Look at the common dolphin! They have a gorgeous X pattern and even some dull yellow/gold!!

Hourglass dolphins have gorgeous white streaks

Spinner dolphins have really pretty banding as well, AND they have a really sleek cute silhouette!

The atlantic spotted dolphin!!! Theyre spotted!!!!!!

and the pantropical spotted too!!

Dusky dolphins have a gorgeous airbrush look going on like straight out of a 2000s fantasy illustration

Striped dolphins sure have stripes!! How cool!!

And these I've shown you aren't even all of them at all, there are so many of them:

There's so so so many different types of dolphins people dont know about this isnt even all of them and some are SO gorgeous and underrated because people just dont know they exist so I'm here to fix that

[monzterzack]

you know what, i am right and im tired of pretending i am not

[ionomycin]

Maiden of Light

[suiheisen]

forget about elon musk vs mark zuckerberg. i need to see yoshiki fight elon musk.

update: x japan has released its first single in eight years. to further shade elon musk. this is a thing that happened.

[rcrisdraws]

Did you know horses can't pant? 🤔

[watcher0033]

Y’all, the Archive admins are made up of VOLUNTEERS. And they have been working for 12-13 HOURS STRAIGHT.

I better not hear any complaints when donation period comes around. OR ELSE.

cosplay by @woahchriswoah on Twitter

EDIT: How do we show appreciation to the volunteers? For me reading these deep dives on OTW issues u guys apparently it's been said multiple times that one of their objective statements is to have paid staff for ao3 and there's a surplus of donations they haven't used up or the other community solutions that needs to address. For those more financially literate feel free to analyze, snipe me or add to the discussion etc. linked here by deepa. They’re cool and these yearly analysis they did aint no joke.

But Seriously what can we do for these volunteers? The probable burn out from this entire fiasco would be no joke. @ao3org

[lonndoodles]

HEAD CANON: What if walking mushrooms sat on decaying corpses to get their nutrients. A useful tactic when they roam dungeon areas that aren't their typical environments and can't provide them food so this is how they adapt 👀 hufhufhfuf

alternatively:

[azuremist]

“Unfinished Painting” — Keith Haring

This painting was left intentionally incomplete. Haring began it when he was dying due to complications from AIDS, and knew he didn’t have much time left. The piece represents the incomplete lives of him and many others, lost to AIDS during the crisis.

“AIDS Memorial Quilt” — Multiple

This quilt is over 50 tons heavy, and one of, if not the, largest pieces of community folk art. Many people who died of AIDS did not receive funerals, due to social stigma and many funeral homes refusing to handle the deceased’s remains, so this was one of the only ways their lives could be celebrated. Each panel was created in recognition of someone who died due to AIDS, typically by that person’s loved ones.

“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres

This pile of candy weighs the same amount as Gonzalez-Torres’ partner, Ross Laycock, did. Ross Laycock had died due to AIDS-related complications earlier that same year. Visitors who see this piece are encouraged to take some of the candy. As they do so, the pile of candy weighs less and less, like how AIDS had deteriorated the body of Ross Laycock.

The SF Gay Men's Chorus

This photo was taken in 1993. The men in white are the surviving original members. Every man in black is standing in for an original member who lost their lives to AIDS.

“Electric Fan (Feel it Motherfuckers); Only Unclaimed Item from the Stephen Earabino Estate, 1997” — John Boskovich

After the death of his lover, Stephen Earabino, from AIDS, Boskovich discovered that his family had completely cleared his room, including Boskovich’s own possessions, save for this fan. An entire person, existence and relationship had been erased, just like so many lives during the AIDS crisis. Boskovich encased the fan in Plexiglass, but added cutouts so that its air may be felt by the viewer, almost like an exhalation. In a sense, restoring Earabino’s breath.

“Blue” — Derek Jarman

This was Jarman’s final feature film, released four months before his death from AIDS-related complications. These complications had left him visually impaired, able to only see in shades of blue. This film consists of a single shot of a saturated blue color, as the soundtrack to the film described Jarman’s life through narration, intercut with the adventures of Blue, a humanization of the color blue. The film's final moments consist of a set of repeated names: “John. Daniel. Howard. Graham. Terry. Paul". These are the names of former lovers and friends of Jarman who had died due to AIDS.

“Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) — Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Created by the same man who created the previous untitled piece, this piece was also inspired by his lover’s deterioration and death due to AIDS. This piece consists of two perfectly alike clocks. Over the course of time, one of the clocks will fall out of sync with the other.

In a letter written to his lover about the piece, before his lover’s passing, Gonzalez-Tourres wrote, “Don't be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, the time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit were it is due: time. We are synchronized, now forever. I love you.”

Please feel free to reblog with more additions

[allysketches]

"I loathe him. And, despite myself, I respect a worthy opponent...Which he isn't because he's a demon and I cannot respect a demon. Or like one."

decided to draw a small part of the bookshop opening deleted scene bc not one day goes by where I don't think about it 🥺 we lost so bad by not getting this one 😭😭 especially bc it contrasts the season 2 finale so well… I could write entire dissertations about it 🤧

[hansoeii]

Do you think of me?

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.