#one ended poorly because they asked out my other friend after we went on one date

[bunches-of-lilacs]

gonna make 2024 my year, trust and believe

[maximumkillshot]

Home

Warnings: There are a lot with this one and it hits close to home. Mentions of S/A. The R word is used, sobbing, anxiety and mental episode. mentions of self harm, mentions victim blaming and slut shaming. MDNI. There is fluff spattered around.

Pairing: BangChanxReader

Characters: Bang Chan, Reader, mention of the person who S/A, people Slut Shaming and Victim Blaming. 

A/N:  Okay so this one is heavy. The things you are about to read have happened to me. I had a mental episode a while back. I wrote most of this during said episode. This is what I think Chan would do for his S/O if they went through and go through what I did. This blog has always been a safe space. I use my fictions to entertain as well as a platform to have safe conversations. If you need me as always I will hang around after drop.

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“YN?” Your husband called out to you. You couldn't hear him from the pressure of today. It created a seething pool of frustration and anger as you kneeled at the foot of the bed, wanting to pray, but now that you think about it the pain of being on the floor was a sweet torture in and of itself. 

Usually, anger like this wouldn't be a problem for you. You would go down to the basement and punch granite with your poorly taped hands, yes you were only a kid then, not knowing how else to get the anger out only stopping when you'd hear a crunch. Yes, that was the start of negative coping mechanisms, and yes you are trying to either bury that anger or let it consume you fast before Chris gets home. He's dealt with enough, we don't need to add on to it.  

Now you're no longer a child… as a matter of fact, you are now an adult, an adult with a hairpin trigger vaguely yet expertly disguised as comedic sarcasm. Depression that you don't remember not having… maybe when you were 8? You weren't sure. Not to mention a cast made of a myriad of physical and mental health issues…. Disabilities… and the cast of characters just keep growing! You have the medicine and the “coping techniques”, they called it, for success! Even those fail. 

Trying to talk it out just made you more angry, the injustice looking more and more ludicrous by the second. Okay, let's try breathing. Yeah no. That didn't work either, it just gave your brain more oxygen, so your brain went from quantum computer speed to Sonic the fucking Hedgehog. Oh… ok oh oh! Let's try soundboarding. You know, talk to people, not yourself. That ended in yet another game of useless catch phrases like “calm down” and “you shouldn't be thinking of that.” 

TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T FUCKING KNOW THANK YOU! Oh, and I almost forgot the “Your method of thought isn't changing because you don't want to change '' DO YOU THINK I AM POKED ALL DAY AND SAY TO MYSELF…

‘OH I WANT TO FEEL MORE LIKE SHIT… I KNOW LET ME RUN MY FACE INTO A BRICK WALL OF ANXIETY REPEATEDLY UNTIL I CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF ANYMORE.’

You reverted to hurting the people around you due to your anger and frustration, plus you darkened the mood, you've always been a multitasker. My friends were right. I'm depressing, I was only kept around because of my ex. That was before they kicked me out… because they didn't want to believe he assaulted me. You go back to that night often… 

“I didn’t want to do that, I felt icky” You told him after he came back from cleaning himself up in the bathroom, while you were left to clean the traces of himself from your own mouth. No aftercare, no thought about you. The ghost of a boy who used you, who was an on and off friend of almost 10 years…

“I know.” he answered with no emotion.

“Then… why?” You asked, your head cocked to the side.

“Because I really wanted it.” He puts his hand on your shoulder, “But I’m sorry you feel that way. Shit now I feel bad.”

Then it switched to those friends, on another night… “ I just don’t buy it. That DID NOT HAPPEN, I know him better than you.”

“I mean you did it anyway so you must’ve wanted it.”

You tried to explain that you were assaulted, it’s called coercive consent and it’s the most common form of assault. You were raped. You didn’t want to do it and he knew that but you wanted to make him happy. You tried to explain, to educate. They weren’t having it.This conversation at times whirls in your head. Making you itch to pull a trigger, do something to make the torture stop.

“You always overreact and you’re so annoying why don’t you just go the fuck away!”

“You’re so depressing just fucking go away! We only tolerated you because you are his girlfriend, just go the fuck away!” The intent in her voice. The reality. You trusted her most out of the entire group. She helped you emotionally… Now shaming you, blaming you.

Her boyfriend rendered you speachless when you called it what it was, it was rape via coercive consent:

“Oh I get the kind of person you are, you’re the type of person who gets felt up in the middle of the night by their significant other because they’re trying to get laid and you call it rape.”

You know the right method to take now, right… Yeah you do.

Isolate… process… torture yourself…cry… alone. Contain the monster, so it doesn't hurt anyone else… You're just a monster parading as a human. Don't forget it. This happens when you forget Y/N… stop being reckless. Always so fucking reckless… 

You started clenching your hands one over the other, wanting to rake the top of your hands until they bled, trying to ground yourself. Until subconsciously, you did. You rocked as you did it, trying to soothe yourself.

Sometimes you swear people don't see you drowning right in front of their fucking eyes. You know how to swim, you know how to get out, to scream, punch, fight. You want to swim, you really do. But you can only do so much in a rip current. The lifeguard sees you. But instead of helping they yell “PADDLE! JUST PADDLE YOU'LL BE FINE!” It's a different level of patronization. It just makes you want to let the tides swallow you. Because why fight when the waters are so warm?

“Y/N?!” Chris yelled as he saw your bag tossed haphazardly on the couch, never where you put it. He stopped and listened carefully. He thought back to the last text you sent him. “Shit hit the fan at work …I don't want to feel right now. I'll see you at home.” 

That middle sentence made his heart stop. He knows you… something was up. He tried texting you back, sending words of encouragement, calling, and leaving cute messages when you didn't pick up, and nothing was heard from you. As soon as he could get away from schedules he did. When he looked at the clock you had sent that message three hours beforehand, he never raced home faster. 

He knows what your mind does to you. He sees the battles every day. When he’d compliment you and you would look down, not shy, but contradictory. When he’d pick you up you would freeze and he’d remind you that you aren’t too heavy, that he loves you in every single way that you think is impossible to love you. He’d always encourage you to wear what you want, do what you want. He would caress every single curve, never being able to keep his hands off of you. Whispering into your ear in public as he tilts your head up gently after asking for permission. He’d kiss you so delicately in front of a sea of people. On the red carpet, on stage, it didn’t matter. You were and are his person, and he loved showing you off. He couldn’t win the war in your mind for you, but he damn sure would fight those battles with you.

He would fight away those negative thoughts, he’d wrap his arms around you and sing to you to will those images, the anxiety and fear away. Until those thoughts were rendered useless. He’d wrestle with them for control, as soon as he won your mind back he gave it to you. He reminded you that you are here with him for a reason. He adores you, and nothing would change that. 

It was something he promised you when he saw you breakdown while doing your medicines. You told him that you were ashamed of it all. All the illnesses, that you weren’t perfect and that you’d understand if he didn’t want you. He looked at you and helped with your medicines, learned about each of them, and their dosages. He was so gentle, smiling at you, wiping your tears. He looked at all the medicines and said, anything that keeps you alive is nothing to be ashamed of. You aren’t something to be ashamed of. He knows that sometimes you can’t hear him until he’s right in your ear. Now looked like that case.

You couldn't hear him calling out to you, your mind too loud, too vicious, bloodthirsty. When pain and self-deprecation are your main moods, all others seem like an abnormal concept. Something that is stolen, was it even real in the first place? You know one thing that was real… Chris. You hated being this… the medications, the constant fires in your mind, the barrage of hate aimed at yourself, of unbridled strength turned inward to rip yourself apart for no reason other than things piling up. He didn't deserve that. He deserves peace, the best… just like what he demands of himself, perfection. 

You got through the gauntlet at your job. People undermining your authority, people on a power trip of their own. Sending others to try to intimidate, embarrass you into submission… as if you weren't a bloodthirsty wolf that could snap any second, biting their heads clean off. “An Alpha through and through,” that's what Chris would say, “Even Alphas have to bite their tongue, Love.” 

That made you cry more because at this point you don't even know if your tongue is still existent, or if you swallowed the damn thing after you bit it off. Or worse… you still have it… but you lost your voice. You know that can't be it, we're too fucking stubborn for that.

But the hits didn't stop coming, traffic happened, then going to the doctor who said that the physical therapy you needed would eat into your personal time, your time to write, to cook for Channie and the boys, to spend time with Channie and the boys.. then you forgot the doctors note so you had to walk back in for it. Then you had to go home while you tried to talk about everything… and well now here we are. 

Even now you try to problem solve, try to nitpick at yourself, the person he loves so much. You collapsed more on the floor of your shared bedroom, cross-legged thinking of the ocean, the violent, dangerous, tumultuous ocean… something simultaneously so beautiful and scary. You want to say you are like an ocean, but you don't see beauty in yourself, only a beast. That's all we'll ever be.

Chris freezes in the hallway hearing a sob break loose from you. He hadn't heard a sob like that before, it chilled his core. How does he approach this? He sees the doctor's note thrown next to your purse… He was happy you were approved for physical therapy, you really were in a lot of pain daily from the muscle and tendon weakness, but he looked at the times…

He looked to the hallway, “Oh…Baby Girl.” He had one piece of the puzzle. He knew you loved to cook for him and the boys but this schedule meant you couldn't do that for the foreseeable future. You enjoyed seeing the boys eating, and staying fueled, knowing without that they'd opt for less healthy options. Then he saw the paper right under it. A typed log… a leger of interactions throughout your day… “No…” 

Right there, in black and white, was what you went through today, everything down to the sarcastic smirk your coworker had as you were barraged with pressure to break the rules… and you didn't break. He never would've expected you to. You are the strongest person he knows. Even under these conditions, Chris himself would break. In front of fifty plus people being berated, pushed to do something you knew you couldn’t do. 

Right at the end of it was a line, written in plain ink by hand. “Vacation not given as described by supervisor. No week off.” With tear stains smudging the ink. 

Chris started walking down the hall to the shared bedroom. As he walked closer he heard you mumbling as you sobbed. Things like “stop crying” and “it's nothing.” But one made him freeze right before he opened the door, “Chris is going to worry. You already take too much from him, get it together so he won't worry. It’ll hurt him. Stop hurting the people you love. You’re a monster.”

That made his eyes sting, you were worried about him above all else. He slowly opened the door and you couldn't find it in you to look up. You knew who it was. The aura you know and love, like salve on the holes you ripped into yourself. The small steps were only weighed down by his sneakers as he slowly spoke. 

“Hey…Baby Girl?” The tone was even more soothing. We don't deserve that. “Can you look at me please?” You just shook your head. Too embarrassed at the shambling mess you are. The real you that you hide. 

Before you knew it you saw two big hands undoing the laces on his sneakers, shortly after he toed them off. Slowly he sat in front of you groaning “Oooooookay criss-cross applesauce it is…” making you smirk as you wiped your nose with the inside of the collar of your shirt. Finally, as he settled he said “aaaaaughh” with a big puff of air… 

You just tucked your head into your chest as you hid as much as you could. He waited for a few minutes, until he said, “We can address what happened in a few minutes. But you need to know. You don't take from me.” 

Your tears kept falling as you listened, his tone calming the raging currents in your mind.

He looked at the engagement and wedding band on your left hand. He watched the tears fall, he saw the holes in you. He wanted to lunge at you, take that emotional knife away from you, smother you in affection. Hold you, his heart burned for it. Needle and thread ready to patch you up. To heal you.

 He spoke softly, “You are my everything, Y/N. You aren't a burden, a disappointment, you aren't a chore, the only thing you took from me was my heart, but you had that before I even heard your voice. The second I saw you… I gave it to you. I don't want it back either.” 

You hiccuped breaths as you listened. He scooted a little closer and he put his hands out, palm up into your vision… asking for your hands. That was when you realized you were scratching at them again. 

You unfurled them from one another, hissing where one nail was slightly deeper, the tiny droplet of blood following soon after.

He looked at your hands, humming in the back of his throat, “One second.” He didn’t want to show it, but he was worried. You feel so much and he just wants to be there to hold you, to love you. 

Then popped up and left. He came back with a first aid kit, “Oooooookay heeaarr we goar again... criss-cross.” That made you giggle the tiniest bit. Chris always loved to hear your laugh. Your laugh is infectious and it always never fails to brighten his day. He knew he was making progress.

You couldn't see it but Chris was smirking at your tiny cute form. And hearing that little giggle made him want to channel Changbin and squeal at the cuteness overload. 

“Okay my Koala Bear… hands.” When you both had started dating, he noticed you always hung on to him. You explained that he was warm and you were always frozen, especially in the colder months. You asked if it was okay for you to hold on to him like that. Internally he was trying his best not to giggle like a school boy at the prospect of you holding on to him like this naturally. He looked at you and said, “It’s no problem, you just remind me of a Koala Bear, so cute and tiny. Can I call you that? My Koala Bear?” And you nodded blushing. Since then, you’ve been his Koala Bear. 

You presented your hands to him wincing at the stretch of the new scratches and he said “So tiny… so cute. Okay tiny sting” he cleaned the bigger scratch and put a bandage on it, and checked the rest. Once he deemed it all good to have your hands back. He kissed them then returned them to your lap. “Thank you for letting me clean them.” 

You nodded and hummed. The voices slowed down. They always slowed down around him. He always was your safe place. Like home base in a baseball game. If you made it there, you’re safe. You’re home. That thought made you sad, surprisingly. How are you safe with only one person? You should have security in yourself not in someone else. Your brain was waiting to start assaulting you again. 

“Is it loud in there?” Chris asked. You've told him about all of this before, this is the first time he's seen it this bad though. The voices, memories attack you. You explained to him that sometimes your brain will do this, you try to hold it back but sometimes it just can’t be helped.

“Mhmm”

“People don't help… right?”

“mhmm”

“Can you tell me what's going on in there?”

You told him. Some.. not all. You also told him about that pesky intrusive thought about your ex and your friends. 

His body went rigid as he said, “No… they're the ones that are wrong, not you. Your ex…” He wanted to choose his words carefully. He knew that you blame yourself at times. The memory of you explaining why you were hesitant to go further when you were dating. He assured you there was no pressure. That he loved you for you, the rage boiled in him and it still does because you were never at fault for this. Especially when you trusted that asshole enough to experiment with him. He was going to be your first for everything but after what he did. The trust was gone, rightfully so.

Chris continued, “He took advantage of you, and coerced you into consent, that is not love. That is not okay? That is sexual assault. The way that your friends acted was disgusting, the way he acted was sub-human… You are not depressing, you are one of the most beautiful, talented, funny, caring, loving people I have…” his voice gave out and he cleared his throat, “You are one of the most amazing people I've ever met in my life. I love you so much and I know you feel like you're a burden on me but being with you has been the most amazing thing I've ever experienced.”

He tilted your head up and you let him, he had tears in his eyes as he said, “You have never been nor will you ever be a monster.” Your tears picked up as you looked into his eyes. You could tell, Chris doesn’t lie. He’ll tell you the truth. His tears started falling as you leaned forward, reaching for him, needing contact. When you saw him you needed his warmth, you need him to heal you. You were losing hope, faith, everything as you watched the holes in you. Seeing him holding the needle and thread. By holding you, being with you, just being himself, it heals you. You whimpered, “Need you…” As your tears switched from self-hate to desperation… you needed him and he could tell. 

He untangled his legs and scooped you up, cradling you in his arms as he rocked you petting your hair back, “You are my inspiration, my eternal love, you are the best part of my past, my present, and my future. You are the future mother to my children, the woman I'm going to grow old with, my forever and always. You are my Y/N, and I am never going to let you forget who you are and why I love you, okay?” He started crying, shielding you in his chest, protecting you. Stitching you together as you heard his heartbeat. You cried on him, relieved that you were with him.

You pulled back from him nodding. He tried to kiss your lips but you said “I'm all snotty” and he giggled. Leave it to you to be worried about snotty kisses. You looked so adorable, cheeks and nose red, nose running, tears stopping, the twinkle coming back into your eyes as he looked at you. 

“Are you denying me my snotty kisses?” He giggled as he said “Okay fine. There's no snot on your forehead” he pecked your forehead, “none on your cheeks”, and laid another peck, this pattern continued for any expanse of skin he could get his lips on as you giggled at him and his barrage of affection. When he stopped he wiped your nose with his sleeve and he kissed you gently on the lips. He savored moments like this, being able to heal you, to pick you up. He looked into your eyes as he said, “now I am thinking I’ll draw up a bath for us and I’ll give you a nice massage. After that we order take away, from your favorite place, then we watch something, Hm?” He looked at you for an answer as he kept wiping tears.

You nodded and gently, he placed you back where you were and went to get the bath ready. You'll always have hard days, but those days turn into amazing nights with Chris. Your home.

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[wonderland-smile-stories]

~ Chapter 1. 04 ~

I apologize in advance for any spelling or grammar mistakes and how poorly written this fanfic is. English is not my first language and together with my dyslexia ass things can go wrong I'm sorry.

My head was bobbing to the music that was playing through my headset while I was finishing doing the dishes. The rest of the day went by normally. Nobody was weird and everything was just normal.

Normal is all I needed right now in my life with not too much stress.

I turned around to grab something from the counter when my ears began to ring. Grabbing my headset I took it off thinking it was that, but it was still there.

"What the hell," I mutter when it got louder before completely disappearing.

Great, put that on the list with the other things I have.

My phone went off that was on my couch making me snap out of whatever that just was. When I grabbed it I saw that it was Ji-su. She asked if I could come to her apartment because she wanted to let me hear something that she made for a song we were working on. I typed yes, but also said I needed to change first because I was still in the clothes I wore to work.

I took a grey long-sleeved shirt from the chair that I had in my room slipping it on before taking the black dress with spaghetti straps from the door where it was hanging. Taking my phone from the counter I walked to the door and put on my black covers.

The moment I walked out the door something felt wrong. The air was so thick that it almost was hard to breathe. I could feel my stomach turn telling me that something was off. I had had this feeling before. Every time I walked into the orphanage and it was so quiet I could feel that something was wrong or something bad would happen.

Most of the time I would be right because quickly afterward there would be a fight in the orphanage where someone would be in danger and whatnot. I'm pretty sure I developed it because I have had to be in survival mode my whole life there. I always had to look over my shoulder making sure I was safe.

Quickly I just shrug it off telling myself that it's all in my head and that I'm safe here. I came around the corner where the elevators were and saw Eun-hyuk standing there.

"Hey, going to work?" I asked grabbing his attention.

"Yeah. You?" He asked pressing the button for the elevator.

"I'm going to hang out with a friend that lives upstairs." He nodded looking away before talking again.

"Do you know how Eun-yu paid for her lessons?" I gave him a confused look.

"Why would I know that?" I asked with a laugh at the end.

"You two hang out a lot and I'm pretty sure you're the only one she talked to for the last couple of months." A frown came to my face at first, but then it hit me.

She told me she quit her lessons, but I guess she doesn't want him to know that. I didn't want to lie to him because he was also my friend.

"Eun-hyuk you are putting me in a tough spot here. If I tell you I would betray Eun-yu's trust, but I also don't want to lie to you. It's like asking to choose between you guys," I said scratching the back of my head.

A chuckle left his lips while he looked down before looking back up at me.

"I admire your loyalty to my sister and my friendship. It makes you a good friend, which she needs because she hasn't had one in a while. Maybe you could keep her out of trouble as well." I was happy that he understood what I meant.

"Do you also need a good friend right now? Seeing how you're always working and stuff. I haven't really seen you do other stuff than that," I admitted looking down while playing with my hands.

"You already are a good friend to me." He answers after a few seconds of silence.

I look back up at him seeing him smile at me.

"You're a lot over at our place and you don't ignore me like Eun-yu wanted you to do. We have fun conversations about old video games we used to play or really serious once when you have to wait on Eun-yu because she disappeared again." I let out a chuckle nodding my head.

I can't count on my hands how many times Eun-yu had disappeared in the evening. It always results in a worrying Eun-hyuk standing at my door asking if I know where she is. Most of the time I help him go look for her or try to call her because she would answer more likely to me than him.

"I'm happy you think about it that way," I answer truthfully.

"Can you just do two things for me?" He asked and in response, I nodded my head.

"Can you take care of her when I'm not around? She has the habit of getting in trouble and she needs someone to pull her back when she's going to do something, well stupid." I laugh knowing he was right.

After knowing her for a few months I know her ways to do it.

"The second one?"

"Can you tell me when she did something dangerous even if she asks you not to?" A frown came to my face while I bit on my lip.

If it were my sister I would be worried too and I would be happy if someone could tell me if everything is already with her.

"Yeah, I can do that."

He smiled at me before looking at the elevator.

"That's weird."

With a confused look, I looked at him.

"What?"

He looks up and down the elevator door before answering.

"The elevator isn't here yet. It should have been here a few minutes ago." Because of the talking, we hadn't noticed that any sound or movement was coming from behind the elevator door.

Looking to my right I saw what was wrong.

"Look, it's under maintenance. It's the stairs for us today." I look back at him and see him letting out a deep sigh putting his hands on his neck before looking back up.

"I guess you're right." I let out a laugh while we began to make our way to the stairs.

"So how are you doing lately? Are you still having those nosebleeds?" I didn't intend to tell anyone about it, but a few days ago I was over at their apartment in the evening because Eun-yu wanted my help with something.

When suddenly my nose began to bleed.

A lot.

I was used to it by then, but they weren't. I tried to stop it at first with the tissues she had in her room, but when she saw that it didn't stop she yelled for her brother who came rushing into the room because she never yelled for him. She yelled at him to do something pointing at me which he did. Having a brother who got into medical school is always handy. The bleeding stopped, but I fainted quickly afterward.

I woke up the next day in Eun-yu's bed with her looking down at me. The first thing she said was that I scared the shit out of her before asking me if I was okay. Of course, after that, I had to tell them about how it has been happening for a few days now, but that I have no idea why and that I'm okay.

Eun-hyuk wanted me to go to the hospital and let them check if everything was alright, which I quickly said no to. I don't really like people touching me. It brings back bad memories.

"I'm actually fine. I haven't had a nosebleed or fainted in a day or so now." Which was a miracle because I had them a lot.

"That's great. If it would have lasted any longer I would have taken you myself to the hospital. It could have been something really dangerous." It could be, but it's over now. It was probably related to stress. Seeing how the last couple of months have been before and right after moving here.

"Ooooh, does Lee Eun-hyuk care for someone else than his sister? Eun-yu was wrong and you are a human with feelings and not some super smart robot someone had created to annoy her." I laugh teasing him.

He tried to hide his smile, but I could see the corner of his mouth move.

"Honestly, that is probably one of the more friendliest things she has called me." I laugh nodding at him.

We said goodbye to each other when we finally reached the stairs, both going different ways. Before I took my first step up I turned around yelling his name.

"Eun-hyuk, she isn't in any danger."

A frown came on his face not knowing what I meant.

"Her lessons. She didn't do anything stupid so don't worry about it."

I began to walk up the stairs hearing him chuckle before walking down.

I know that Eun-yu is adopted. She had told me that a few months ago. It was one of the first times she opened up to me. She had shown me a picture of them when they were little with their parents. I knew their parents had died in a car accident, but she hadn't told me that it was because they were on their way to her ballet performance that she begged she could go to.

She talked about how she was an orphan and that now she had made Eun-hyuk an orphan too. I had tried to comfort her, telling her that it wasn't her fault and stupid shit like that happens. I tried, but she didn't believe me. Maybe that was the right time to say that I was one too, but I didn't want to talk about my problems when she had just opened up to me.

My feet stopped walking when I came to the fourteenth floor. The door was open, but the thing that made me stop was the smear of blood that was on it. With slow steps, I began to make my way to it. Did someone get hurt here? I haven't heard anything unusual when I was home.

Carefully poking my head out the doorway I try to see if someone was there.

There was only silence which made things worse. The bad feeling in my stomach returned the moment I stepped a foot into the hallway. Everything seemed normal until I almost slipped on something. Lifting my foot from the ground I saw more blood. I looked up and saw that it was a trail.

Someone who was hurt must have come through here. I bite my lip debating whether to just turn around and get the guard, but then the thought of him being exhausted came back. Taking just a look never hurts someone. If someone is hurt I just call someone for help. Walking beside the blood trail I began to follow it.

The smell of metallic became stronger the more blood I found on the floor. I halted in my tracks when my ears began to ring again. It wasn't like the last time. This time it hurts my ears making me cover them with my hands thinking that they will begin to bleed. It lasted a few seconds before it died down.

Slowly I moved my hands from my hands afraid I would see blood, but there was nothing on them.

"What the hell?" I mutter out taking deep breaths.

My body spun around when I heard a sound from behind me. It sounded like someone was in pain, letting out a low groan.

"Hello? Do you need help?" I was about to make my way back from where the sound came from when someone stepped from behind the corner I just come from.

It was a girl, that was for sure, but the rest of her body was kinda hiding in the shadows because the light above her was broken.

"Hey, are you okay?"

A loud squeal came from her before I heard her voice.

"I'm so hungry." To my surprise, it sounded like the girl I bumped into today.

"Uhm, I don't have anything with me?" I said confused.

I didn't know if the blood was coming from her because she was so hidden in the dark, but when my eyes traveled down her hands I saw something dripping from her hands.

"So hungry."

She took a step forward, making me take a step back not trusting the situation at all.

My eyes widened when I saw her completely now. Her face was covered in blood around her mouth and nose. The blood was definitely coming from her. My body completely tensed up when I saw her hands. They were completely covered in a grey tint that was underneath the blood together with some black vines going up her arm.

I even think that her nails seemed longer than normal humans.

"I'm hungry."

I took a few steps back when her croaky voice came out.

"J...just stay there." I managed to get out my lips.

The girl let out a groan taking more steps forward. How can this be real? She doesn't look human at all. Is she pranking me because of earlier?

"I....I'm sorry I called you a bitch!" I yelled out taking faster steps backward.

My words didn't seem to go through her. My feet stepped on something crunchy, making me stop walking scared I stepped on something she had killed. My body froze completely when she began to charge at me with a loud chilling yell.

I braced myself for what she would do to me when there was the sound of a door opening beside me, a second later someone grabbed my arm pulling me away just seconds before the girl could get to me.

Previous Chapter ~ Next Chapter

——————————————-

Hey guys! I hope you guys are liking the story so far! A lot more chapters are coming! I’m going to update this every other day! So it’s going to be a long ride on this one!

[modanisgf]

DAYLIGHT , HANNI PHAM

note— it’s 3am so not proof read sorry 😭😭

☆ pairing(s): student hanni pham x reader

☆ warning(s): a bit of angst, bad writing

LOVE, a word that was foreign to y/n before she met hanni.

y/n liked to believe that love wasn’t real, every romantic relationship she had ended poorly. even her parents relationship had failed.

so what made her believe in it again?

TAPE ONE , THE MEETING

08/23/18

hanni pham, the day she walked into y/n’s first period as a new student would be a day the girl would never forget.

she remembered it well too well even, hanni had walked in nervously and in a rush but still looking as pretty as ever.

“y/n are you okay?” danielle, y/n’s friend asks.

“yeah.” the love struck girl responds simply.

danielle giggles quietly at her friends actions watching as hanni tried to find a seat.

“hey can i sit here?” hanni asks, her voice soft as she was still rather nervous.

“oh yeah, of course!” danielle responds smiling.

“thank you.” hanni says smiling back.

y/n swore she felt the world pause as her and hanni made eye contact. they stared at each other for a bit before y/n looked away embarrassed.

“so what’re your guys names?” hanni asks trying to move away from what had just happened.

“i’m danielle!”

“y/n.”

hanni nods, “i’m hanni.”

“nice to meet you.” y/n says smiling sincerely.

hanni was caught off guard by this, ‘her smile is so pretty.’ she thought smiling back at the girl.

the girls only got closer over time even becoming friends with others, expanding the group.

though as time went on hanni and y/n’s feelings for each other grew.

and they couldn’t keep denying it.

TAPE TWO , WHAT IS LOVE?

11/27/21

“dani?” y/n calls out to her friend, who turns around to face her.

“hm?” danielle responds.

“what is your definition of love?” y/n asks.

“love is a feeling of affection for someone or something, there’s different types.” danielle says, “like you wouldn’t love your family the same way you love a romantic partner y’know?” she finishes, y/n nodding.

“so how do i know if i’m in love with someone, like romantically?” y/n asks softly, embarrassed to be asking her friend this.

“i mean whenever i have a crush i just feel really giddy around the person. my heart usually beats faster, or i get flustered.” danielle explains.

“so what exactly do i do if i have a crush on someone?” y/n asks finally.

danielle knew this was coming, she was glad it was finally happening.

“you confess. in my opinion it’s better to take the risk i guess, you never know if the person will move on because of miscommunication or something.” danielle says.

“okay, thank you dani.”

“anything for you, y/n.”

TAPE THREE , CRUSH

11/28/21

“hanni!” y/n yells, walking faster to catch up to her friend.

hanni turns around after hearing her name her heart melting as she sees y/n walk towards her. y/n had changed up her appearance a bit, seemingly that she had got her hair done and put makeup on.

“y/n?” hanni asks as the changed girl finally stops in front of her.

“i need to talk to you.” y/n says grabbing hanni’s hand and dragging her elsewhere.

hanni for sure was blushing now her mind still not done thinking about y/n’s new appearance. she looked so good, how could hanni not be stuck on it?

the two finally entered an empty classroom, y/n shutting the door behind them. they made themselves comfy before y/n took a deep breath.

“promise me you won’t hate me?” she asks.

“y/n i would never hate you.” hanni confirms, flustering the girl in front of her.

“i’m not really good with words when it comes to being romantic, so i’ll be as straight up as i can.” y/n starts, “hanni, i like you a lot ever since we met i felt different around you and i wasn’t exactly sure why.”

“but now that i am, i’ve wanted nothing more than to be yours. so will you allow me to?” y/n finishes, preparing herself for rejection.

not even hesitating, hanni leans in kissing y/n softly the two not pulling away until they needed air.

“so.. does that me you’ll be my girlfriend?” y/n asks teasingly.

hanni rolls her eyes playfully, “y/n, i would love to.” she smiles sincerely.

y/n flashing her same smile back from the day they first met, making hanni’s heart melt all over again.

“I ONCE BELIEVED LOVE WOULD BE BURNING RED, BUT IT’S GOLDEN.”

[canirove]

Rice, Rice, baby | Chapter 12

Previous chapter | Next chapter

Masterlist

“Oh, Alex, hey” I say after bumping into him. “I wasn't expecting to see you at work today. Don't you have the other shift anymore?”

“I do, yeah. But they asked me if I could cover for you while you were sick, and now the whole schedule is a mess.”

Oh, yes. Because I've been sick with the most horrible cold known to human history mixed with the worst stomach bug ever. My mother constantly told me that I was just overreacting, but I felt so poorly I thought they would have to take me to the hospital and that that would be the end. That I would leave this world without trying the rice. Because that hasn't happened either.

When we moved from St. George's to Tottenham training centre, Declan didn't come with us. The doctors checked his hamstring again and decided it was best if he went back home to rest since he would not be fit enough to play the next game, which meant that we didn't see each other again.

Then while he was out for the next couple of games with Arsenal, and like happened last time he was injured, he basically ignored me. Kennedy told me that it probably was because he loves football so much that when he can't play, he doesn't feel like the best company and just wants to be on his own, that James had done it too. But that annoying voice inside my head kept telling me that I had done something and he was ignoring me on purpose. 

After that I got sick, was in bed for like two weeks, and now here we are. It's been a month since the last time I saw Declan, and the most we've done has been send each other a couple of texts asking how we are and if we've recovered.

“Then are we working together again?” I ask Alex.

“Until they fix things, it looks like it, yes” he sighs. Great. He still hates me.

“Liv, this just arrived for you” one of our coworkers says. 

“Oh, thank you” I say, taking the small bouquet of red roses she was carrying. 

“Sorry for being so mia, I will make it up to you. Are you free Saturday night? DR” Alex says. 

“What…” Oh, shit. He's reading the card that came with the flowers. “That's personal!” I say, snatching it from his hands. 

“It fell from the bouquet and when I picked it up I couldn't help but read it” he shrugs. 

“Yes, of course. You couldn't help it” I reply, rolling my eyes.

“Is DR who I think it is or are you dating Daniel Ricciardo now?” he chuckles.

“What?”

“Liv, are you still seeing Rice despite basically everyone telling you it is a mistake?”

“We are just friends, Alex.”

“Now friends send each other red roses?” he laughs.

“Whatever.”

“He's a football player, Liv. He is bound to break your heart.”

“You don't know him.”

“And you do? C'mon. The moment he meets another girl he finds hot he will move on and forget about you. Or the moment he manages to get between your legs. Has he done it already?” 

“Fuck you, Alex” I say, slapping his face as hard as I can and walking away, taking deep breaths to stop me from crying. Stupid twat.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

Are you free Saturday night? That's what Declan's note said. And what did I think it meant? That we were going out for dinner or something like that, that we were going to have that date. But he had other plans, because he was playing on Saturday night.

“I want you to come to my game against Newcastle” he says over facetime.

“I don't think that's a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I don't support Arsenal.”

“But you do support me, don't you?”

“Yeah, I guess” I shrug.

“Then come watch me play, Liv. If I score I will dedicate you the goal, I promise.”

“And do what, a L with your fingers or something?” I laugh. 

“For example.”

And now here I am, at the Emirates, a stupid smile on my face while I clap with everyone else as the players thank the fans for their support. Because they've won, and they've done it thanks to Declan's goal.

The game was the worst. Newcastle spent the 90 minutes provoking the Arsenal players, the referee only showing them yellow cards when they were the ones getting fouled. And when it looked like it would be ending with no goals, that Arsenal would be dropping points and leaving Manchester City alone on the top, the ball got to Declan and he shot.

I'm pretty sure the whole stadium held their breaths (me included) as the ball left his foot, all eyes on it as it moved past all the Newcastle players, the goalkeeper not managing to stop it. And when it hit the back of the net, we all screamed at the same time. The fans, the players, Arteta and his team. Everyone. 

He had done it. Declan had scored and won the game. And did he remember about the celebration? He did. He searched for me in the stands and did a L over his chest. Over his heart. Cheesy? Very. But I loved it.

━━━━━━❃━━━━━━

“Ok, so you stay here and get changed, and I'll be back once everything is ready.”

“Aren't you going to tell me what have you planned?”

“Nope” Declan smiles, kissing my nose and leaving me alone in his garage.

After a little make out session in his car once the game was over to show him how proud of him I was, we made it to his house, where he had planned something special. Something that he wasn't telling me about, and that for some reason involved me wearing the same clothes I had worn during our last night in Paris, having to get change in his garage because I couldn't see just yet what was inside the house. 

“It'll be worth it, you'll see” he had told me. 

And it better be, because putting on a nice dress between cars that cost three or four times what mine does is, to say the least, an experience.

“Are you ready, Liv?” Declan says, slowly opening the door.

“Yep.”

“Great. Then let's go” he says, offering me his hand. “Paris is waiting for us.”

“Paris?” I ask with a confused look.

“Paris” he smiles as we step into the house. 

“Oh my God, Declan!” I gasp.

“Do you like it?” he says, hugging me from behind and resting his chin on my shoulder.

“I love it.” 

He had recreated Paris inside his house. He had printed photos from all the places we had visited during our trip and put them on the walls of the corridor that lead to the living room, including some of the ones we had taken together or of each other. But it didn't end there. Because inside the living room, he had recreated the restaurant where we had been that last night, candles and everything. He even had something like a live video of Paris at night playing on the tv to look as if those were our views.

“I wanted to make it up to you for that night. Give it a second go and make it as special as it was supposed to be.”

“Declan, this is… I… I don't know what to say.”

“Are you speechless?” he asks while moving to be in front of me, one of his hands caressing my cheek, the other on my waist, pulling me closer to him. 

“Totally” I somehow manage to reply. Because my heart is beating faster than ever, the butterflies on my stomach are throwing a party, and my knees are threatening to give up any moment now. 

“Good” he smiles before kissing me. 

That kiss was the first of many that night. Kisses that after the most perfect dinner, would lead us to his room. To our clothes scattered around the floor, to him making me feel things I didn't know were possible.

“Do you want to keep going?” Declan says, brushing his nose against mine. “This time I'm ready” he says, moving to open a small box sitting on his bedside table. 

“Oh my God, Declan. Who keeps his condoms in a Louis Vuitton box?” I laugh.

“I do” he smiles.

“What if one day someone comes in, opens it thinking it is a jewellery box, and sees that? Like, your mum, for example.”

“She'll probably be glad to know that I am taking precautions” he shrugs.

“You mean that you are taking precautions now.”

“Better late than never, Olivia” he grins.

“I seriously can't believe you chose to put them there” I laugh again. “It is so tacky.” 

“It may be tacky, but here you are, in my bed, completely naked, and waiting for me to make you moan my name. Again” he smirks. “Unless you want to stop, of course.”

“I mean, that box is giving me the ick but… No. I don't want to stop here. I want it all. I want you, Declan” I say, my eyes fixed on his as I say those last words. 

“I want you too, Liv” he says before kissing me.

[lagomoz]

Mu’s understanding of relationships

 Analysis dump, this time specifically about Mu’s view of relationships. I don’t think she has any idea what a normal relationship is or understands how social attachment works for most people. For her, everything is transactional, and she assumes it works like that for everyone. A friendship is giving and taking and nothing more.

As far as we know, Mu has never had a true friend. She’s had “friends”, but it was never an actual bond. Before the bullying of Mu started, her friends still hung around Mu for a material benefit. We can see them fawning over her wealth and being offered expensive lipstick from Mu, along with the protection of the queen bee of the school. In return, Mu gets people to provide her “honey”, as well as people who will do what she says.

Mu consistently refers to these people as her friends, or at least former friends, despite the fact it doesn’t seem like either of them actually liked hanging out together. It was mutually beneficial, but not born of an actual connection. Mu defines friends simply as “Someone who properly listens to what I say.”

When one of the bug girls stops providing honey, Mu pushes them over. They’ve stopped fulfilling their end of the bargain. If her friends don’t give her something, then they’re not friends. As far as Mu knows, everyone else operates the same way, and she’s not entirely wrong. Her friends do abandon and turn on her when she stops benefitting them. She doesn’t understand selfless loyalty because she’s never experienced it.

Still, I do believe she cared about Rei. She sings the lines “I love you” while chasing after her, reaches out to her, and clearly is very affected over her rejection above everyone else involved in the bullying. Mu’s murder was an impulsive move in a fit of emotion, and I doubt she would have felt so strongly over someone she didn’t care about. She just didn’t know how to deal it. 

Mu comes from a pampered background and probably never had any interpersonal conflicts like this before, let alone one as extreme as the bullying she went through. Nobody ever taught her how to properly deal with things like this. All Mu knows how to do it to be the queen bee and whine when things don’t go her way until they do. Her whole life she’s been in control, so when she looses that control and can’t wrestle it back no matter how much she cries and begs, she panics.

In the first voice drama, Mu tries to get Es to like her so she’ll be seen as innocent. She says “All I have to do is gain your favour, right? I’ll listen to what you say! So, what would you like me to do?”, calling back to her saying that a friend is someone who listens to what you have to say. She instinctively starts trying to make herself likeable and worthwhile to hang around to gain something (in this case, an innocent vote).

Despite this, moments after, she shows genuine concern for Es (she also worries for Es’ health in the second voice drama), asking about their odd behavior and speech without any obvious gain to her, then panics when they start freaking out. When Es snaps at her for it, she grows defensive - it seems every time she’s tried to be genuine to the people around her, it’s gone poorly for her.

Once Es calms down, she falls back on her standard view of relationships. Mu flat out says “So, in other words, I should just become someone you’re fond of. And, if I do that, you’ll forgive me, right?” and “Prison guard, you’re human as well, so… I’ll do my best. I’ll figure out what kinda person you’re fond of.” 

She’s not wrong, either. She was forgiven in After Pain for showing her more pathetic, pitiable and weak side, but now that she’s become more abrasive she’s getting largely guilty vote. She’s getting punished for her personality rather than being what people want to see once again.

In the second voice drama, she becomes less desperate for Es’ approval because she doesn’t think she needs it anyone. She doesn’t have to be likable anymore because she doesn’t need something from the person she’s trying to endear herself too. “I know now that I can get whatever I want if I ask for it, so I don’t need to be so on edge anymore.”

Her relationship with Haruka operates the same way. They both provide each other what they crave - attention and validation for both, a mother figure for Haruka, and someone to always listen to her for Mu. Because of that, they’re friends. There doesn’t need to be anything more. If two people have something to gain by being friends, what more is there to it?

When Es questions her, directly asking if she wants something from Haruka, she asks if Es has any friends. When they say no, there’s this conversation, which I find really confirms Mu’s unhealthy view of relationships. “Friends aren’t like that, you know. Rather than using each other for something, we just get along because we’re comfortable around each other. That’s all.” “Haruka-kun is really nice! He accepts anything I say, he listens to anything I tell him. For me, that’s really comfortable.” 

“And that’s...friendship?”

“What do you mean? Of course we’re friends! Haruka-kun is happy with it, so it only has benefits for both of us!”

“...isn’t that just exploitation?”

“Exploitation…? Um, I don’t really understand, but… I do help him pick out clothes in return, and I recently gave him a hairpin I didn’t need anymore as a hand-me-down!” “I don’t think it’s a relationship that anyone could have a problem with!”

To Mu, her relationship to Haruka is perfectly normal. She’s confused when Es questions it, and insists this is just how friendship is. She says nothing about how they feel about each other, only the ways they benefit each other and that they’re both happy with those benefits. There’s nothing about Haruka as a person, only what he can provide her, and Mu talks about herself the same way. She only points to her giving Haruka material gifts, direct favors and that he’s happy with what he gets rather than them actually liking each other. It’s not important to how Mu thinks of a friendship.

Mu knows about Haruka’s suicide threats, and seems excited about it. To her, it’s a show of devotion, that he won’t turn on her so easily. If he’s willing to give her something like that, then they’re really friends. I don’t think she want Haruka to die by any means, but rather that she doesn’t understand how a normal person would respond to something like this. It’s Haruka’s choice, right, so what does it have to do with her?

“That made me happy… It made me really feel our friendship!” 

“You know about it and you’re not trying to stop him?”

“Why would I? Haruka-kun says he wants to do it, so there’s nothing I can do, right?”

“But you’re calling him your friend.”

“Isn’t it exactly because he’s my friend? Isn’t friendship about letting your friends do the things they want? … Are you about to tell me “that���s not what friendship is”? Then what is friendship? You’re together because it’s beneficial for everyone involved, aren’t you?”

She directly says she thinks friendship is because it’s beneficial. That’s her understanding of friendship. To her, Haruka’s suicidal behaviors are his own personal choice and you’re not supposed to interfere with what your friend wants to do.

I think part of this comes from her own suicidal thoughts in the past. When Mu was at her breaking point, desperate and about to seriously hurt herself to try and escape the bullying, she reached out to Rei. She grabbed onto her, pleading and crying for help, only to get brushed off. Nobody helped Mu when she felt this way, so she has no reference for what help would look like. 

TL;DR: Mu’s never had a friendship without exploitation and unhealthy dynamics but doesn’t understand this isn’t how it is for everyone, leading to some of her worse behaviors because of this skewed worldview from her past experiences

[another-heroine]

Friends to lovers for Katya & Lann ❤️: 10. getting physically close during the denial phase. IMAGINE KISSING AND FREAKING OUT SAYING, "friends... kiss. right?"

friends to lovers heart fluttering moments

Another episode of IT TOOK ME FOREVER BUT THERE WE GO

CW: Act 4 Quests, Angel Path

Lann acknowledged his limitations. Not in front of Daeran, of course, but deep down in his soul, where his weaknesses should be. For example, there were a lot of words he had no idea what they mean: mellifluous, eidetic, tintinnabulation, and so on. But at least he knew what boundaries were.

Something that Nenio apparently chose to ignore every single day.

They were back to the Nexus, after the last stroll in the Abyss has taken its toll from the team. He stood further from the fire, taking care of his bow and making more arrows. It was late and many already had said they good-nights and went off sleep.

Then he listened to a familiar giggle, one he hasn't heard since Galfrey sent them to that ominous place.

"She what!?" Seelah couldn’t believe that. Her whisper was a little bit higher than she expected.

"I know, right." Ekaterina nodded. "She simply asked me to take off my clothes because, by her research, some friends do that!"

"Oh Nenio." The paladin wiped her face. "What she gonna ask next?"

"I'd rather not to think about it." The Commander grimaced.

Lann frowned. What that nutty fox was doing? He overheard she abording some of the Nexus' people early, but had no idea what was going on. She was too unpredicable. Like when she asked him to take off his clothes because she wanted to make an anatomic drawing of a mongrel.

The monk scratched his chin, nervously. He would never understand.

"Then I explained her that not every friend do those things," the druid told, like she was talking about a toddler. "Kissing and sleeping together many times are related to partners."

"Do you think she really understood?" Seelah asked and laughed afterwards, when the Commander shook her head.

Lann frowned, trying to focus on the arrows. Uplanders were curious, too. Instead of giving rats or pelts to their significant other, they used to give flowers, chocolates and wine.

And about the kissing part... Nobody among the neathlanders were familiar to that. He recalled poorly his parents' relationship, his father was not fond to show physical affection, but his mother was, always hugging them, tucking their hair and kissing their foreheads.

"Hey, how are you doing?"

Ekaterina approached, bringing him to the present.

She sat next to him, sorting the materials he was using. Lann always made a mess while was creating anything. It was good to have someone tidy around.

"Almost done," he lied. The mongrel got distracted eavesdropping her conversation about Nenio and her experiments.

"I'm not talking about the arrows, you know?"

He stopped and glanced at her. She was serene, observing him with a subtly smile.

Oh, if a look could kill, that one could lift any curses he ever had.

She has found him at the Bad Luck Tavern after their encounter with Savamelekh. He would be lying if say he remembered exactly what they talked about, but the feeling that she also cared about him lingered.

"I'm getting better." He nodded. "I... still feel ashamed for making you worry, but hopefully I'll recover from that too."

The woman hummed, "Glad to hear it."

His throat was dry. Lann muttered, "Also, if you need anything, I’m all ears."

"Oh, not at all. I... just want to make you some company." Her eyes darted to the floor. "This place is oddly cold. And empty. Even I'm feeling uncomfortable with it."

Lann took a deep breath and put his bow aside.

"I told you that I will fight for you until the end, right?"

The aasimar looked at him, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

He had no idea either. But he wanted to say something epic, breathtaking, romantic. Like those cheap novel books in Mendev.

"Well," he cleaned the throat. "Keep you safe from the cold and the emptiness are also part of my goal."

First, she looked at him up and down. Then she arched a brow. "Do you wanna sleep with me?"

Uh, oh, Nenio, there was your biggest rival. Lann felt both warm and cold blood abandoning his face.

"No! I mean, err, yes? But not like, uh..." His hands waved in the air, like he was trying to weave the time-space and come back to the moment when his mouth was pretty shut.

Ekaterina covered her mouth, muting her laughter. "Calm down, I’m joking with you. Though I don’t have any objections."

Lann looked at her in panic. Was that an invite or a joke? She leaned her forehead on his, and the mongrel couldn’t take off his attentive eyes of her. They have never been that close until that very moment.

"Friends kiss... right?" The words tripped.

"You tell me."

Lann felt her lips pressing against his, and like a magical trickery, she found her way in.

[mueritos]

As someone who’s been through multiple therapists and psychs, you’re super not wrong about these people bringing their biases to the table. I’m lucky enough that I

1. Was an older teenager

2. Had friends who had had decent mental health help already

3. Already kinda suspected the shapes of what was “wrong with me” and

4. Had an innate sense of “no that seems like bullshit” before I went in with these people.

The first therapist I ever saw met me as a 17 year old alt girl, and when I tried to talk to her about thinking I had anxiety issues she cut me off before I was done explaining and told me I was self diagnosing, that was causing my problem, and we wouldn’t “entertain THAT” any further.

The second therapist I ever saw met me as a 18 year old trans guy, pre-everything, during the pandemic. She listened, but she had no experience with the trans community and I had to teach her everything about anything I wanted to talk about with regards to that. She was nice, but she couldn’t help me. She didn’t know how.

The third therapist I ever saw met me as a 21 year old young man. She figured I had everything sorted out already. I didn’t. She never tried to change her mind or delve deeper. At this point I couldn’t afford to waste my time, so I asked to be recommended to a psych and she said sure. After that we didn’t talk.

The first psych I went to was very kind, and absolutely did not do his due diligence. I came in with a shiny recommendation from a therapist (that he didn’t verify), so he all but handed me the medication with no explanation and I only ever spoke to him over the phone after that. It was a low barrier to entry but the medication wasn’t right and I didn’t know I had other options. He made it seem like I didn’t.

The psych I’m seeing now put me on a medication that reacted poorly with my inhaler because she didn’t cross check if they would be any drug interactions. I came back and asked for a different medication. She was going to put me on a different one, and then I asked her to check if there were any interactions with this one. Turns out there were severe ones. I ended up going with a different medication, it seems to be working. It would probably work better with help from a therapist, but I don’t have the time or money for that right now. And quite frankly I’m tired of trying to convince people to help me when I have to explain what I think is wrong with me for them to listen. Only for them to decide that I’ve already figured it all out and they don’t need to try.

So uh. Yeah. Lots and lots of stories from me and my friends about clinicians of all age and experience ranges that go from horror stories to just disappointing and unhelpful. Some of these people had been practicing for 20-30 years and they STILL weren’t any better at empathy or not being horribly biased.

first of all holy shit it really fucking sucks you had to go through all of these terrible experiences while accessing care you deserve and need. i'm not surprised these terrible interactions happened, and I can't even be disappointed considering the bar of standards is in hell. The "better" experiences a lot of folks have with clinicians align with your second therapist. They are clinicians who just genuinely have no worldview outside of their own, but are receptive to new information...they just have no drive to learn how to apply new frameworks of ways of thinking to expand their worldview and guide their clients. The worst is literal malpractice, ableism, and violence against clients.

a lot of people who go into the mental health field don't actually have the skills related to active listening, empathy, or curiosity based out of humanity. I say this to a lot of people in the social work program, but social work is the same pipeline as mean girls who go into nursing--it's just full of the girls who were not smart enough to go into nursing that decide to go into social work. Same breed of mean girl seeking power over others, just different contexts of public service.

the only hope i have is in the new generations of mental health clinicians who are BIPOC/queer, anti-carceral, disabled themselves, and who are mentally ill as well. I feel more solidarity with my neurodivergent peers in my program who can barely finish an assignment on time than I do with the white women who have never experience hardship in their lives. Not to say neither of these people can't experience easy or hard times in their lives but man....seeing the roadblocks in some of these people's worldviews, empathy, or conceptualizations of other people's struggles is fucked up.

the mental health field is just another medicalized, over-policed, and racist institution that wants to shove people back into the workforce ASAP. we are in hell!! but just know there ARE people and groups and orgs out there that are dedicated to radical work and will name all the hypocrisy, pain, and oppression that exists in working in this field.

thank you tho for sharing your experience and input. I can only hope that your experiences moving forward are positive and liberating for you <3

[the-obnoxious-sibling]

Hello,

I found your takes very interesting and I would love to discuss them a big more.

Your analysis of the Shanksbuggy break up is really great based on what we have (Buggy pov of what happened) but I also want to add that they are teenagers that just saw one of the most important person in their eyes died. Obviously they're not in the best position to have a very clear discussion about future and it's even worse if you add to the mix the tendency of Buggy to jump to conclusion and the love of mystery of Shanks. And I also think in a way it a discussion about grief and mourning and how different people have different reaction to it.

I also have some hypothesis about why they changed their opinion about separating each other because they don't have the same dream.

- The first one is what happened quickly after their discussion: Buggy eating the devil fruit. The fact this incident is what Buggy uses as an excuse to explain his hatred of Shanks is obviously now a lie to himself but there is probably a part of true in that this incident changed their relationship and makes them more codependent due to Buggy's inability to swim while living on a boat. There is also probably a discussion to have with the quite weird relationship of Roger's crew and devil fruit (The fact that no one except Buggy have one).

- The second one is the circonstances of them leaving the crew. When discussing their plan, they speak about Leaving the crew and building something in a way which is very similar to a child leaving their parents house to go study or work. It's an active decision. (Even if Buggy's action at the time is closer to a teenager running away than a future adult ��). But that's not what happened in the end, their departure from the ship is a decision which is forced on them and with quite a traumatic end. It willmakes sense then that they stick to each other.

- The third hypothesis is that they become teenagers and they went from best friends to lovers.

(Sorry I did end up writing a lot) 😅

hello! don't apologize for writing a lot, i am a big fan of writing a lot myself! …as you’ll see in this post. >>;

and you're very right, these are good points to bring up that i haven’t really gotten into before. grief, and the ways their circumstances changed (or might have changed—as you’ll see, i’m not totally convinced about one of your hypotheticals) after that first conversation. let's get into it!

grief.

the context for their fight, and the grief they must be feeling in that moment, is definitely worth taking into consideration. there's something of a truism that you shouldn't make big decisions in the first six months to a year after suffering the loss of a loved one, because during that early mourning period you simply aren't thinking clearly. you may make hasty, impulsive decisions that you'll regret later, or the additional stress of attempting to take action while emotionally burdened will cause things to go wrong. it's better, we tend to agree, to wait.

if buggy is asking shanks to go to laugh tale right now, that’s a textbook hasty decision, and one likely to go poorly if acted on. (i’ve stated my opinion to the contrary in tags before, but that is just my opinion.) and buggy’s rejection of shanks’ offer also seems impulsively made! a knee-jerk reaction to getting an unexpected response, that could also be the influence of grief though buggy is pretty impulsive in general so who knows.

in contrast, shanks deciding not to go to laugh tale ‘for now’ can be seen as recognition that it would be better, smarter, to wait.

at this point, i’d like to point out that we don’t know what life was like for buggy and shanks between dropping oden off at wano and this conversation in roguetown. as far as we know, nothing of significance happened after the roger pirates disbanded—emphasis on as far as we know. we don’t even know if buggy and shanks spent those months together, or if they met by chance at roger’s execution!

all that to say: we don’t know what the status quo for these two looks like in this moment. is shanks asking buggy to come with him asking him to stay together, to continue as they have been, or is this yet another impulsive decision? are they both trying to take action too quickly?

i think this was definitely a bad time to be discussing these topics—but there might not have been another time available to them. we know there were a lot of pirates in roguetown that day—and a lot of marines, too. there may have been an urgency to this moment that we can’t appreciate right now, with the information we have.

changing circumstances 1: the chop-chop fruit.

i used to think it was curious that buggy was the only devil fruit user on the roger pirate crew, until i remembered what other crews around at the time were like. specifically:

whitebeard, himself a devil fruit user, is all about embracing weird outcast types and bringing them into his crew (and his family). so to people who were already devil fruit users, who consider becoming pirates because they’ve been shunned and cast out of their home and society, whitebeard’s gotta be the go-to guy. he already knows what it’s like! he must have extra measures in place to keep his sons from falling overboard! you’ll be safe with him!

kaidou, also a devil fruit user, loves getting devil fruit users in his crew. he’s not as friendly or paternal a captain, but if you aren’t interested in that energy—if you got yourself a devil fruit for power’s sake but found the downsides made it hard to be on your own—he’s a good option.

basically, i think most people who went into piracy in those days already in possession of devil fruit powers found themselves drawn to captains who had one too—understandably so, in my opinion. a ship where no one has a devil fruit, would they know how to look out for you? for all you know, they’re one of those superstitious crews who take the “ocean’s curse” line seriously! better to stick with someone you know has devil fruit experience.

buggy’s one of the uncommon few to eat a devil fruit after becoming a pirate. that whole crew was offered the opportunity to eat the thing, and he was the only one who dared—because the rest knew that it was a risky move at best, especially with an unknown fruit. the power you get might not be worth the cost, especially for someone who makes their living on the sea.

we forget this, i think because there’s so many devil fruit users in one piece, but devil fruits are hard to come by! we’re seeing a small sliver of the population who managed to get their hands on one and then managed to survive the downsides. that the roger pirates ever found one was a rare thing. they didn’t even know for sure if it was real when buggy ate it!

all this to say, i don’t know that i believe the chop-chop fruit changes much about the shanks-buggy dynamic, except in the “he betrayed me!!” angle it brings to buggy’s future grudge against him. (not that i think this is what buggy considers to be shanks’ real betrayal. it’s just the one he can talk about without revealing his roger pirate history.) so buggy can’t swim anymore! so what?! neither can whitebeard! shanks, you better not look down on me for this!! etc, etc.

now, how much of that would just be talk from buggy? (i.e., claiming ‘you better not look down on me, i don’t need your help’ but clinging to shanks’ arm the second a wave looks like it might crash over the deck?) probably a fair amount! but i don’t think that’s a significant change in behavior from buggy, his words and actions often disagree.

changing circumstances 2: roger pirates disbanded.

it is one thing to boldly claim as a child that you’re going to be a great pirate captain, and quite another to actually do it. it probably helps to spend years on a great pirate captain’s ship, to see how he does it, to eventually start to wonder to yourself, would i do it that way, if it were me in charge? but even then, when you’ve been quietly thinking about it, maybe announcing your intentions a few times, setting aside the most important things to take with you on the day when you finally leave, on the day when you’ll finally feel ready to leave—

all that is very different from being told that everyone is leaving. that you don’t have a choice about when to go. that there will be nowhere and no one to return to if it turns out you weren’t ready to be on your own after all.

as i mentioned earlier, we don’t know what the time after the roger pirates disbanded was like for shanks and buggy. were they relying on the kindness of near-strangers, people who half-remembered them as members of roger’s crew from their first trip through the GL? were they lucky enough to be the last ones let go, at a trusted island in that early part of paradise? did shanks have enough understanding of conqueror’s haki at that age to get his ship through the calm belt when the news about roger’s arrest went out, or did a ship traveling into east blue end up with a stowaway or two?

any way you look at it, i have to imagine being a teenager alone (or nearly alone) on the grand line must have been terrifying. who wouldn’t think back on childhood dreams of independence and wince at that poor child, who didn’t know how good they had it? after going it alone against your will, who wouldn’t cling to a familiar face?

circumstances change 3: relationship upgrade.

kind of in line with the above: after being thrown into the world alone, unexpectedly, who wouldn’t cling to a familiar face? or… more than cling? 😉 but seriously, i’m a bit of a pessimist about this hypothesis. i think it can make sense, it just also makes me sad.

because if shanks wants buggy to come with him because they’re romantically involved, i think that would make buggy less certain of his place in shanks’ life. crew is crew forever! even when you leave the ship, you’re still a part of its crew deep down. a kissing relationship, though… that can go away easy as the wind. if shanks wants him around to kiss, what happens if they stop kissing? does shanks stop wanting him around?

but also: does buggy want to be around shanks, if he only wants buggy around to kiss? isn’t buggy a pirate worthy of shanks’ respect?! didn’t he grow up on the same ship, learning the same lessons? why shouldn’t he be captain of his own ship?! why is he even kissing this idiot in the first place?!!

of course, shanks doesn’t mean it to come across this way. when he asks a buggy he’s involved with to come with him, he means that he loves buggy and would miss him if they weren’t on the same ship. but you know how buggy always hears the worst possible meaning to any sentence spoken to him.

[foxes-that-run]

2013 Haylor Timeline

Timeline Tag, or years, 2012 2014

3 January hair pinned up at restaurant in Virgin Islands. Harry's "might as well.." Tattoo first seen. Covered with Ferns now.

4 January - Taylor's blue dress on a boat. Harry bite bruise on his hip

6 January - Harry seen in NY

7 January -Harry back in London, date People reports that they broke up. Reports Scott swift told them to slow down.

9 January - Harry seen GQ dinner London. photos of Harry in Richard Bransons hot hub on front page after the break up. (I often wonder what the less famous people think now that they treated him poorly as a kid and he is massive now). Gordon Smart (1:12, warning he follows it with a bad anecdote about 18 year old H), who worked on media for One Direction, said in 2020 that Harry had said:

"Simon Cowell actually paid me to do some media training with them back in the day so I met them before they were massive and they were again really lovely kids. [...] I wrote a front page story about him sharing a jacuzzi with a girl on holiday and he told me it was bollocks and we still ran it, because we had a picture of him in the jacuzzi. It was probably totally innocuous and I really I'd like to apologize unreservedly to Harry for that because it was an error of judgment on my part and it probably tarnished our friendship."

Richard Branson also has gross sounding comments about this 18 year old that day.

10 January - made fun of his accent at Grammy's, Harry at nightclub London

12 January when asked, Niall says he listens to WANGBT, Louis says and Harry’s. 22 MV filmed.

15 January - one direction trip to Ghana for Red Nose Day comic relief

16 January - One Direction Tokyo, when movie scenes filmed

20 January - Harry in London

21 January - Taylor in London reports she saw Harry, Harry at friends house

22 January - Harry got the Butterfly and handshake tattoos

23 January - Taylor in Madrid before performing at the '40 Principales Awards'. H London

26 January Both at NRG Awards, 25 January Taylor posts Cannes Sunset situation. They both stayed in the Intercontinental Carlton Cannes Hotel.

27 January - Harry meeting with Simon Cowell Glasgow,

28, 30, 31 Jan, 1, 2, 4 , 8 Feb - Harry London, Leed 13 -16

1 February - Harry's 19th birthday. £5k tab, messy, wild party. Rumour that Taylor had booked a week in Italy which was cancelled

6 February - Savan Kotecha (WMYB writer) gave interview where he said 1D want to be write but can’t. Probably had left 1D already and doing press to build career. His last 1D credit is Happily. In 2017 praised (45 mins) Harry’s writing. In the later interview Savan also says he spent a year being sad after the 1D thing ended until Ariana came into work with him, (52mins) so that article may have been that he’d already left 1D. He said he was working on Emblem3 which may be the other bad project he talked about (released April).

10 February - Taylor at Grammy's, night Ed says inspired Tenerife Sea

18 February - Harry the Box Nightclub

21 February - both attend Brit awards - Taylor performs I knew you were trouble with Harry in the audience. In march she told the Sunday Times "Well, it's not hard to access that emotion when the person the song is directed at is standing by the side of the stage watching." She goes to an afterparty with Tom Odell and out with him the next night. Tom writes Country Star about Taylor and Harry wrote Happily about wishing they were together. Ed is asked if he would trust Harry around his girlfriend and he said “well he trusts me around his girlfriend so yeah I do. We’re friends we don’t do that.” Harry went on Nick Grimshaw from 6am a hungover.

23 February - 3 November - 1D Up all Night tour, start in Europe

7 March - Taylor sells Hyannis Point House at $1m profit

15 March - Taylor vanity fair article. Says Harry pursued her for a year before KCA, better part of a year after and it fell apart one night in London when he went out and he’s texting her to ask to see her again at the time of the interview. Pointed mentioned she was born in 1989, Easter egged wonderland, talks about Connor being 2 months and insignificant. Implies Harry was a rebound from JG and Connor was a Harry rebound. Says she’s looking for someone who is interested in her not her wiki page.

25 - 29 March - Harry in LA, then back to London

29 March - Taylor played “You're Not Sorry” in Newark. “I truly believe that when dealing with anybody you meet, you should start by trusting them. Any new friend you meet. Any new person you meet. I think you should truly believe the beat in them. And the first time that they tell you they’re sorry I think you should believe them. But then if they keep doing the same exact thing that they say they’re sorry for, that means one thing guys. That they’re not. Sorry.”- here. Appeared in Wonderland cover April 7, 2013

11 April - Louis says 'Taylor Swift' after Harry sings "I'm in love with you" in Little Things

18 April - Harry holmes chapel

20 April - TS on B stage song before “I Almost Do” in Tampa, FL. “everybody’s got like one, maybe two, I don't know how many you have, but at least one person in your life that doesn’t belong in your life anymore because maybe they hurt you or maybe it’s just over but you kind of want to call them sometimes. And you think better of it. But, you almost do it.”- here. Then a Red tour break till the 25th; One Direction tour break starting in Manchester till Paris on 29th. Louis stays in Europe,

23 April - Harry arrives alone in LA without the Peace ring

24 April - Neither Harry or Taylor seen. The day Harry got the ring

25 April - First day Peace Ring is seen. Harry has dinner with Rod Stewart, Rod then plays the Troubadour and Harry stayed at Rod Stewarts house. Taylor in Cleveland

28 April - Harry posts photo of sunglasses on beach. Taylor photographed in a gym in Los Angles. Wears the ring to leave LAX and there is an absolutely insane mob because he is there alone with no security.

29 April - Arrives in Paris alone, still wearing ring, described as a riot. The ring is in This is Us in Paris

April 30 - Taylor buys Holiday House Rhode Island for $18m cash

1 May - Everything has changed released as single

7 May - Harry goes on a party bus in Norway, photos of him drunk, with blonde and talks about party bus in interviews

18 May - Taylor posted rose’s with a Great Gatsby quote: “Just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer...“

19 May - Taylor said to fans, pointly "You are the longest and best relationship I've ever had" at BBMAs and that she only writes about ex's she doesn't want to see again. In the press room she said

27 May - Taylor wrote Wish you Would

2 June - Taylor attended a pre-show meet and greet at KYGO radio in Denver where David Mueller allegedly reached under Taylors skirt. In 2015 he sued Taylor who counter sued. It was not resolved until 2017 when Taylor won damages of $1.

June - September Midnight Memories written with Happily

12 June Taylor on Grimmy, he says Trouble is the “best song ever” 4 times at 11 mins. Best song ever was released 22 July. :)

13 June - Never Gonna Dance Again tattoo seen when Harry got off a yacht in Miami, seemingly drunk, he was underage at the time lyrics from Wham song "Careless Whisper" about regret for being unfaithful. Grimmy had referred to it in September when Harry sung the song on radio

16 June 2013 - Louisville - Harry was feeling himself during “Last First Kiss” and at the end was flirting with someone in the crowd, he mimicked pole dancing then he kissed his heart tattoo

22 June - Taylor and Selena getting ice cream in Mystic Connecticut, near RI.

28 June - Harry seen with Paige

29 June - Taylor gets a fans face paint on her neck that looks like lipstick in Vancouver, Gaylor 'proof'. 1D NY

1 July - Harry cross tattoo NYC stayed at the Bowery Hotel NYC

6 July - both play in Pennsylvania, Taylor has a week off after, unseen. On the 8th Harry was sick on stage.

20 July - Harry on Ryan Seacrest in Niall’s place and says the rest of the band went back to uk on their break but he stayed in LA.

22 July - Best Song Ever released.

30 July - September GQ cover story where they badgered Harry about how many people he’d slept with (two)

August 14 - Lover Journal: August 14, 2013, Watch Hill RI. Says she feels like a tiger in an enclosure, feels hunted, talks about paparazzi and cell phones. Also calls herself a rabbit, a flower growing in a sidewalk that is picked and how photos ruin a moment, online photos/comments and 'level of possession'.

25 August - VMAs, texting each other and shade, together at afterparty. Sang purple rain together at after party.

3 September - Harry tweeted 1975, Matty Healy told an interviewer that went from 4K followers to 15k in 10 minutes and they exchanged numbers and texted, made plans to meet up and he stood Harry up.

5 September - the 1975 cover WMYB in the live lounge

8 September - Taylor “"People think they know who I've dated and they just don't," "They don't know everything."

9 September - Harry badgered by paparazzi till he cries in London. They called him a womaniser. GQ Article where the interviewer bullied him into how many partners he had has (2)

10 September - Media that they had a heart to heart at VMAs

11 September - Harry Rose tattoo.

18 September - Harry at Pixie Geldorf’s birthday, with Nick and first time seen with model Daisy Lowe in photo pixie posted.

27 September - 1D sign another contract with Syco for 3 albums, they are each paid £10m.

28 September: On the anniversary of the Begin Again weekend in Paris 28 September- 5 October 2012 Harry tweeted: "We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall". from Australia.

5 October - Harry pulled a blonde out of the crowd and hung out with her that night in Australia

8 October - Harry tweeted Shania Twain is so good. Shania thanks him and invites him to her show in Vegas.

16 October - Harry talked about Shania Twain 'Still the One' on stage, Tweet Q's - what song would you like to listen to now?

17 October Harry cried onstage, (0:55) during over again Taylor seen with Alexander Skarsgard 3 days later

18 October - throws up on stage reports touring taking toll

28 October - Harry talked about Shania Twain 'Still the One' on stage again, What's the most embarrassing song on your ipod.

1 November - 1D, Katy Perry and John Mayer take photos backstage at a Japanese radio station in Tokyo. New Romantics was written about Taylor being sad her ex had gone to Japan with his new GF.

November -j14 article where Harry says ok to get back together with ex. Also reports Taylor is house hunting in London. Rumour Taylor was seen with Douglas booth.

13 November - Taylors first Victoria Secret show where she wears a union jack dress in NY and performed IKYWT. On 14th Harry in UK for Gemma's graduation, TS in NY for billboard awards.

18 November - Courtney Cox said she hung out with each of them at her house in Malibu

20 November - Harry has dinner with Kendall Taylor tweets ""I've listened to "Hold On" by @ColbieCaillat 45 times today. So on repeat. So important." on the 21st when dinner reported.

22 November - midnights memories release party in la with Ryan Seacrest

23 November, both at AMAs, gold dress. Kendall PDA reported but no record of it

25 November - Midnight Memories released with Something Great written with Jacknife Lee who also worked on Red.

3 December - Lover Journal - December 3, 2013, Sydney.

6 December - Harry leaves Kendalls hotel and they have breakfast. Lunch the next day NY. Harry is carrying notebooks and dressed that same as in the Spotify visual for Where Do Broken Hearts Go. Tabloids say not dating Kendall and he is texting Daisy Lowe.

11 December- Taylor ATW speech talks about songwriting like a message in a bottle, she mentions still love you and I’m really heartbroken

12 December - One Direction in Milan, record the Xfactor final interview with cushions on the floor.

13 December - Taylor posts a series of photos to IG about a rose garden party in Melbourne, Australia while on tour for her birthday. Many think 1989 will be called Roses. The captions made a sort of poem "Roses. Red Balloons. Pretty.... Sparklers. The best birthday I've ever had." Which could be a dig at Harry, Roses being common Haylor imagery, his tattoo and she famously said her 2012 birthday was her best ever when he took her to the Lakes. Harry's "better still be my winding wheel" tweet. Harry posts his Cannes photo December 14.

15 December - One Direction performs Midnight Memories on Xfactor UK Final and Harry arrives at Kendalls London hotel at 2am.

17 December - Harry, Ed and Taylor spotted together in Suffolk. Harry got injunction banning paparazzi from outside his home. Harry likely had moved into his current house. First confirmed at Ben Winston's with Morgan Spurlock in April 2012, Harry later told Rolling Stone he stayed there 20 months. He was seen house hunting in July and reports of his house were September 2012.

21 December - midnight memories MV filmed

Continue to 2014

[rainbow-crane]

How’s the DND campaign?

MY GUY THANK YOU FOR ASKING the murder session went extremely well!!! We ended up bringing out the PC's rival to emerge and kill him, teaming up with the NPCs that the party had wronged across the campaign.

Let me break it down for you: my player had two characters, Merack and Keni, who were childhood best friends, were also in love with each other. Merack was considered the massive screw up at the monastery they were raised in, while Keni was the star student. After an accident, Merack ran away, hence why he joined the party as my player's original PC.

Meanwhile, Keni also had a rival who was always trying to sabotage him named Calenes. A couple years or so before the campaign, he got her kicked out for sabotage right as she was about to surpass him as top student.

Across the party's adventures, there were times where they ruined the lives of those they encountered, whether they deserved it or not. In the very early game, they robbed a pet store and got the poor teenage clerk fired, citing unfair prices as the reason they were taking the rats from the store. Another time, they killed a band of pirates, with only one escaping as he watched his friends die.

When Keni came to find Merack and take him back to the monastery, Marco refused because of how poorly he was treated. The two of them had a massive falling out, and Merack went to go have a cry about it, as one does. At the same time, the party was approached by the pet store clerk (who they did not recognize) and half the party went with him for a 'pest control' job while the medic stayed with Merack.

The pet store clerk and pirate attacked the party, while the rival went to kill Merack, wanting to take revenge on Keni by ripping everything he's ever loved away from him. And because the party was divided, she succeeded.

It also meant there was a very tearful death confession, which is always great for drama

[viaravt]

Meowdy, y'all! I know I haven't been around for anything other than posting going live messages recently, but that's because I'm currently going through it... TW: sick and dying pet, loss, grief/grieving, terminal illness (cancer)

... I'm sure you can tell where this is going, and I doubt anyone will even read this, but my soul needs it to exist in the universe even so. I'll try to be brief, but I've always been a verbose bitch.

This is Copernicus. I named him after the ancient astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus, who discovered that the earth is *NOT* the center of the universe. And of course MY Copernicus knows this because HE is the center of the universe.

Copernicus quickly took on the nickname of "Pooka" because he was such a mischievous little brat

My ex and I got Pooka my first year of college, in 2005. The Humane Society said that he was roughly 1-3 years old at the time. Fast forward to about 4 yrs later and we adopted a kitten together, only to break up about a year after that

When that relationship ended, my ex took Pooka and I kept the kitten (who was named Arcturus, after one of the first stars to appear at night)

Fast forward another few years and that ex is going into the military. A mutual friend asked if I would like Pooka back, and I OBVIOUSLY said "YES!!!!" That was about 2014

Since then, Pooka has moved with my current boyfriend and I into about 5 different apartments. He has been my rock, my one constant in the sea of changing friends and partners (we're poly) and professions. Through all my mental and physical illnesses, Pooka has been my rock. My current partner, of course, has been as well.

July 28th, they started renovations on the apartment upstairs. This included using some chemicals to reglaze their tub. They didn't set up proper ventilation, so Copernicus, my partner, and our other cat Nugget went to stay with my partner's Dad.

When Pooka came home 3 days later, his eye was a little crusty and winky. We just thought it was him having gotten into something at Pops's place. When it persisted into the next day, we called the vet.

Many vet visits, uncomfortable tests, and anxiety later, we had a small answer - there is a mass in his face causing that eye to be unopenable. We get it punch biopsied - inconclusive, but there are some bad cells in there - squamous cell carcinoma.

We've started him on chemo, but the vet informed us under no uncertain circumstances that this is The End. Our goal now is to just keep him comfortable. The eye will never open again, and this aggressive cancer is what will take him out of my life.

There's so much more, of course, but a Tumblr post will never do a life justice.

If the Humane Society was right when we adopted him, that makes Pooka about 19-21 years old. I'm 37. That means he's been in my life for over half of it. I'm not sure what I'll do without him.

I don't want to know.

But I'm going to have to find out.

If you've read this far then you're either a hero or doom scrolling. Either way, here's an embarrassing clip of me poorly signing Hadestown and ugly-crying on Pooka. He always loves it when I sing.

[random2908]

A college... let’s say a friend’s ex invited me to hang out with her and meet her kid today. It was really interesting. Parenthood’s been really good for her; she was always a very low-empathy person but she’s trying really hard for her kid’s sake, to understand what their problems are and deal with them gently.

Her parenting was interesting, as she struggled to decide which external/societal/park/restaurant rules to enforce with her kid and which to let them flout, and how to explain her decisions. Sometimes she’d let her kid do something until I--or in a couple cases a stranger--told her they were significantly getting in strangers’ ways, like, people were tripping over them. (The kid is 6.) So then she’d tell her kid to stop, and she’d say it was because they were tripping strangers, but she had trouble articulating--and they had trouble understanding--why that even matters. (When we were in college together I don’t think she would have thought it did matter.) When they grabbed a salt shaker off someone else’s table at lunch she was able to grab on to “violating other people’s personal boundaries” but that was the closest to a success of articulation that she managed and the kid was dubious about it. Or she’d tell the kid not to do something because it was causing her sensory overload and the kid was not nearly old enough to be self-aware enough to understand what sensory overload meant. I had to make it about me, “hey, every time you bang your knife on the table, it hurts my head a little, could you please stop?” or, “well, we’re eating inside because after a long morning of being out in the bright sun my head is starting to hurt from it, so it just feels nicer to be inside.” and they were so eager to please me, their new friend, that they went along with it immediately as soon as it was about me instead of their mother. Even though the sensory stuff was obviously bothering her a lot more than me.

The kid was very sweet when given the opportunity! I was introduced at the start of the morning as a friend, and of all the people in our group I was the one who drove there with them, so when they needed an adult to cling to, they came to me if I was closer than their mother. They wanted frequent tactile assurance that I was there, usually in the form of resting their head against my belly (that’s how tall they were if we were both standing up). But they had a lot of trouble understanding why they were being asked to do things, didn’t want to do things if they didn’t understand why, and particularly had a lot of trouble understanding why when the answer involved being considerate of strangers. And toward the end, when they were tired and hungry, they were no longer able to listen to why (as inevitably happens with kids who are tired and hungry) and so were unwilling to go along with anything.

Anyway, I thought the contrast between “that sound is hurting me, your new friend, so please stop” working well and “please don’t trip strangers” working poorly was pretty interesting. I wonder if I could have leveraged that on their mother at 20 if I’d known to try that tack. I kind of doubt it, I kind of think that’s the sort of thing that works particularly well on a 6-year-old and particularly poorly on a 20-year-old. And I, at 21, mostly wasn’t willing to express the necessary vulnerability to attempt it anyway, in case it backfired.

There was one moment toward the end, on the way to lunch. They wanted to do their seatbelt, but it was a new car and the seatbelt was tricky, especially for small arms trying to reach down from a carseat. Eventually they got really frustrated and I reached back and offered to help, and they let me. Then they remember their ipad was in the trunk and undid their seatbelt again, only to be told it was a 6 minute drive and we weren’t taking out their ipad for that. So then they struggled to put on their seatbelt again, and I turned back to help them, and they started kicking. I got it on them again, after somewhat more struggle this time because they weren’t cooperating. As we got going my friend said she was proud of how hard they’d tried with the seatbelt, and when we got to the restaurant, they could share a milkshake. (Obviously to pacify the kid for the rest of the short car ride.) The kid screamed, “NO MILKSHAKE!!” So she was like, “ok, no milkshake.” When we parked at the restaurant, she again offered the milkshake as a reward, mainly to get the kid to come out of the car, and the kid responded the same. As she was unpacking the car, I asked them if they didn’t want a milkshake or didn’t feel they’d earned a reward. The kid, half-crying--the most visibly upset they’d been the whole day--said they hadn’t earned it. Neither she nor I really knew what to do from there; we knew what the kid was feeling, but no one from our parents’ generation would have even asked us that question, they would have just assumed we violently didn’t want a milkshake, leading to a meltdown because we did want a milkshake. As we walked to the restaurant she tried to tell her kid that rewards in life were never really commensurate to what’s earned--that she nearly always felt she was given either a lot more or a lot less than she deserved--so she’d learned it was best to take what good things you were given. The kid, tired and hungry, was unfortunately not in a state of mind to process this--but I thought it was a pretty good first stab at the problem.

[00towns]

two eulogies to female friendships

K

K and I were on the rocks for a while before our friendship passed, quietly and softly over an unreplied text message, the final nail in a coffin filled with six weeks worth of silence. It felt almost gentle; like laying an aging, suffering pet down to rest. I stopped uploading Japanese to English translations of the weekly quote from our matching planners, I stopped introducing her cat as mine to my students. 

I wasn’t sad. Our friendship hadn’t been good for almost a year, starting with a series of mutually terrible communications and oversteps when she started seeing someone new, who my general indifference towards would become intermediate annoyance and eventually settle on active dislike. It was a bad combination of my tendency to be critical of my friend’s relationships, and her tendency to be sensitive in matters of the heart, and our shared poor habit of telling each other all our thoughts. I moved eight thousand miles away, a trip happened, it went extremely poorly, we did our best to stay friends, but for all the work we had done to stay good with each other, it was the beginning of the end. Our text conversations kept devolving into arguments, which is funny in retrospect but was exhausting and pedantic in the moment. We kept saying we fought because our friendship was worth it; at the time I think it was, but it quickly wore down to a grinding, creaky halt. It was season six of a sitcom that had gone on too long. We had talked every day for probably close to five years. 

K and I had grown in different directions from the beginning of our relationship, although this had worked at the time. Once, I joked with my DC friend group that our other friends outside of each other were reflections of all the other elements of ourselves that we didn’t always bring to that group. K was that friend, with our shared hobbies and background, and being around her and her friends almost felt indulgent, like I was leaning into a part of myself that felt like the ease of high school friends, uncritical, grounded, unchallenging. In a way, I found comfort in the feeling of joining a hometown friend group because of my unconventional high school experience. They were never anything but welcoming, kind, and accepting, so quintessentially tied to Northern Virginia it felt like I was experiencing an alternate timeline where I grew up there. When I laid our relationship down to rest, I felt more so like I was grieving that hometown experience, people who I knew weren’t going to leave and weren’t going to change, exactly the type of people you come home to. Ultimately, I think this, too, was part of the death of our friendship; it was no longer working at a distance. I was changing, unsure of where I was going, and I wasn’t sure how to relate anymore to that brief, liminal desire for feeling at home. 

We hadn’t had any mutual friends before meeting, so it was shockingly easy to extract our lives from each others. The distance helped. Even my parents had seen the end coming from a few months out. I sometimes wish it had been harder – maybe the proximity would have healed things over naturally, or at the very least the door to reconnection would have remained open without either of us having to turn the knob. A strong point of our friendship was how much we liked each other in a vacuum. We were always able to hang out one on one, but it proved to be the thing that aided the end. Strangely, the messiest, most drawn-out ending led to the cleanest break.

2. R

My friendship with R ended almost not at all, which I am cruelly reminded of by our text conversations from late 2021. After six months of no contact, she had asked me a question about a store in our hometown, I replied, we caught up. She asked if I wanted to Facetime. I said sure, but I just started a new job, so I’ll let you know when’s best for me. I never texted again. 

R was the closest thing I had to a best friend, perhaps for the first time in my adult life. My high school best friends and I scattered across the world after graduation and had yet to spend any meaningful amount of time in the same city, another casualty of the international school system, so when I met R at school it was like spending time with someone in the first way that was familiar again – always being someone’s first choice, unspoken assumptions, a friendship that doesn’t need identifying. It was so easy to be good all the time, and the pandemic helped quite a bit. We were friends in a lazy rhythm of movie nights, takeout meals, lying in the sun, eating expensive pastries. I probably wouldn’t have gotten through the later months of COVID without her. We joked more than just a little that we were the same person, from our Myer-Briggs personality types, down to our interests, all the way to the specific tint of hair I took up first, then her, and a new hobby, which she took up first, then me. We were the perfect shade of each other, different enough to be interesting but similar enough to goad each other on. 

Ultimately, life returned to a sort of recognizable rhythm when I went back to school after three semesters of COVID lockdown. A few months later, R confessed feelings for me and I ran in the opposite direction – first by being what I can now recognize as slightly unforgiving, then by ghosting, which was extremely unfair. It’s one of the biggest regrets I have in the entirety of my early twenties, and I think I’m only now coming to realize exactly what about that made me run. I didn’t reciprocate her feelings, which is something that many, many friendships have moved past without issue, and is objectively not a problem. But I had projected so much of my personality and identification onto her as parallel reflections of each other that the notion of something unfamiliar that I had gone so long without knowing was scary, especially romantic feelings, which remain slightly terrifying to me to this day. It felt like something much, much bigger than it probably was, and came with too many questions that required a look inwards that I wasn’t ready to do at twenty-one. Seeing someone who I saw so closely as a version of myself struggling with the same questions was too much. All these reasons to stop being friends seem utterly unimportant in retrospect. 

I reached out a few months ago, and we had a nice conversation. It had been two years. She’s working towards the same goal now she was then, has moved in with a boyfriend, seems to be generally enjoying her life. She told me about what some of my friend-in-laws were up to. I told her about my move to Japan. I’m not sure what I reached out with the intention of doing, but my bid for connection was received with polite friendliness, arms-length interest, and closure. I’m not unsatisfied by this, but it’s a far cry from the way we used to know each other. The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

3. G

To be honest, I can write love letters to these friendships lost only now, in a particularly clear-headed moment of reflection, where I can recount objectively what happened and why. It’s taken me a moment to get to this place. But make no mistake, I’m extremely and constantly torn up over these friendships lost. I’m kept up at night by the silence; these people are the only reasons that I ever find myself itching to check social media over, the only things that can summon the type of hallucinatory anxiety I usually only attribute to my first year of college. Agonizing over what was lost sometimes feels like it takes up more of my brain than cultivating my living relationships. I don’t do much with this fact except agonize, too. 

What does it mean for me to have ended two once-incredibly meaningful relationships with Asian American women who I called best friends? Is this just what happens? Does everyone really experience the unique torture of the empty space left by a connection that used to be as natural as instinct? I asked around, more curious than anything if this specific experience of one’s twenties is supposed to be this excruciating, this exhausting, this anticlimactic. The answers I received were mixed, not in yes’s or no’s, but in varying degrees of sympathy (one person called me immediately to talk about it, one person reminded me to fill out a Google Form to vote for her startup before answering that yeah, kinda). The overall sentiment, polled from friends from a range of distances and relationalities, was like this: everyone loses friends in their twenties, this point isn't up for debate, it’s moreso that everyone is varying degrees of cut up about it. This is perhaps the answer that I least wanted to hear – to me, it’s a reminder that the locus of everyone’s emotional and anxious energy lies oriented in a different direction, focused towards different aspects of life both in and outside the self. There are some who feel the loss of a best friend like a phantom limb, there are some people who plow forward casting a spare thought or two every few months. That lost friends in particular are such a point of constant self-aggravation for me feels cruel; I’m doomed to spend my most anxious moments tormented over something that is defined by its absence. The torture is silence, the silence is the torture. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if we had fought, really fought like they do in /r/AITA posts or storytime videos, so at least I would have something to apologize for that doesn’t feel like an emotional self-immolation, something starkly black and white so that the terms of my prostration can have a closed start and end. Instead, I don’t feel much like apologizing for anything at all, or that I’m owed one, either. On the best days, these people who were once everything become just a passing thought. On the worst, they’re summoned at every turn, a spectral ghost trailing a few feet behind and screaming whenever I go too long without thinking about it. Is anything more unkind than indifference? 

When my suffering starts to feel too personal, like whoever built the social structures that scaffold life outside the self was designing a system specifically to rub up against my specific anxieties, I try to start reminding myself of what my problems sound like on paper. I lost touch with a friend. I’m a little pressed for money. I’m twenty-four and still not quite sure what I want to do with my life. These are so perfectly quotidian that I imagine that thinking of them objectively will make me feel better, like I’m B-plot in a show with a 20 minute runtime – these things will impact my character’s development over the course of the season, but for now, I can be soothed in the time it takes for a viewer to get bored. However, I don’t think that this is a particularly effective approach, because instead of reminding me that what feels like personalized emotional torture is actually normal, I feel instead like I’m particularly stupid for being affected so strongly by problems that are literally so normal that they could be on the Disney Channel. This has led to a weird ego-space where I both think I’m better than most people at managing my emotions, but I also think I feel my emotions more strongly than a lot of people, two conclusions that I have absolutely no evidence for besides the above. Objectivity, in this sense, has done little to help me out. In moments when my thoughts feel like they’ll swell in my stomach and regurgitate out of my eyes and nose, the reminder that I am just sitting on the floor of my own house isn’t grounding, calming, or centering; it’s deeply humiliating. I’m the person playing the game, and I’m also the person making all the rules. I am part of the reason that I lost these two friends, and I am ashamed to be suffering to this day from their loss anyway. 

In the aftermath of these two quiet funerals, I’ve become a connection junkie, addicted to reconnecting with old friends; yesterday, I scrolled months and months down my iMessage to see if I could find any unturned rocks, unpopped blue bubbles, unrung bells. I’m hooked on feeling like an adult, I’m hooked on seeing people I love being adults, like the overwhelming strength of my own nostalgia makes me a suitable messenger between who they are now and who they are in my head. I feel like I’m proving something to them as they live in my memories, freshly sixteen, or twenty-one, or moved. I present my harvest in hasty fistfuls, like a child showing off some strange organic matter found in the park. Look how things can be! Look how things are! It’s a vivid, hallucinatory kind of satisfaction, and has been so surprisingly loving. Distance and time have sweetened these types of connections – ones where there is no love lost, no posturing, no illusions about the type of people we once were, because we already knew each other then, and loved each other anyways. These, too, will never be the same as they once were, but they’re a reminder that most people from the past are not dead connections, just dormant ones. 

In the past month, I’ve reconnected with three friends that I haven’t seen in six, three, and three years respectively. This is both a long time and not a long time at all, which I take to be a sign of good friends. When we talk, I am both the person I was when we were the closest and the person who I am now, which has been somewhat of a difficult gap to bridge. I agonize over the worst parts of myself as a teenager, and wonder if the person I’m talking to agonizes over them too, which is in itself a very self-obsessed thing to say, and perhaps not very kind to them. I’m slightly sorry to these people, who I can admit that in part I am using as a vehicle for some exercise of my own self-reflection; they are a projection for my need to externally process. At the same time, I realize very clearly that I am somewhat putting my head in the sand in regards to what it can mean to connect with people. Returning to old friendships has been an incredible blessing; it has also been a sort of panic response to experiencing other losses. This, too, is unfair, and yet connection is so, so sweet. What I recognize is missing, however, between a rekindled connection and a close friendship lost, is the instinct. 

In Japanese culture, like most non-Western cultures, there’s no custom of saying something when someone sneezes. While there are a number of other set phrases for everyday happenings (leaving for work, arriving at work, eating, finishing eating, leaving work, arriving home, seeing someone else go to work, seeing someone else come home, seeing someone working, asking for a favor, receiving a favor…), sneezing has no steam as a social function. In my Japanese workplace, the feeling is exceedingly strange: when someone sneezes, I move to say something out of instinct, or maybe social conditioning, and find no equivalent turn of phrase in Japanese. I turn to them, open my mouth, and find myself without anything to say. It’s not that the words don’t come, or that they’ve slipped my mind; they literally do not exist. What stays, however, even when words fail, is the instinct, the scaffolding of an expression, the exoskeleton of an oscillating relationship to an entire separate cultural schema. Instead of saying bless you, I think consciously that I will not say bless you, because I am in a different cultural context than the one I was raised in, an iterative reminder that You Are Here. It’s much harder to unlearn an instinct than it is to develop a new one, but most of the time I manage to hold my bless you in anyways, reserving it for my English club kids who laugh whenever I say it. 

This is the rhythm that I think comes as close as possible to describing what it feels like to have lost a very close friend: I am moving through the world, constantly enthralled by its graces, and each time I am reminded of a friend, my instinct to experience their joy as mine comes as easily as second nature. The thought of their joy, their delight, their amusement at something becomes mine, because it was, for years and years, but isn’t anymore. I turn, open my mouth, and have nothing to say. The words do not come, or maybe they don’t exist in the new language I speak without them, an entire lexicon severed. I imagine I’ve lost a great deal of this lexicon already, because like languages, people are not static. With disuse, I can feel the words becoming more and more unnatural; everything is a reminder of someone but I can’t quite recall why. I am not associating this thing with you, because I am not friends with you anymore. This is the harder voice to silence. Part of my brain is frozen in time at the moment where we were when we stopped being friends, and probably will be forever. The skeleton remains. 

I haven’t spoken to R in a few years at this point, but recently developed an old roll of film that had a few shots of us with friends on a parking structure rooftop. There was at least a year of time between those pictures and the next few, taken outside of my parent’s place in Tokyo. We once talked about her coming to visit me there and stay a few weeks during the summer. The gap between those photos is part of that lexicon, too, evidence of the linguistic breakdowns of quarantine, our spiraling relationship, the indifference. It was a reminder – the same type of reminder that I’d like hope for this written reflection to be – that while now passed, these friendships were once sunny afternoons, grainy film, letters on brown paper, solid, ephemeral, vivid. The bitterness of the present reminder of a lost friendship does not detract from the sweetest gift that it once was to be able to summon a loved one at every earthly delight. This tangibility reminds me to not be ashamed of the size of this feeling, that to have experienced love that large at all is beyond words of gratitude. To K and R, I send my most private love from here to where you are in the world, just as earnest as it always was, and if you can remember, I hope you can feel it just as sweetly as where we left it. 

Thank you. 

P.S. This is kind of a morbid post to do this on, but I’m obsessed with one of J’s friends and so honored to have a reader outside of my immediate circle that I’m shouting him out, hi Kevin, can’t wait to meet you. 

ref:

우리 나름의 겨울 나는 법 | HOME (NOT) ALONE | 두 번째 이야기

thank you JJ for your sneeze anecdote! 

居場所 (いばしょ、i-ba-sho) a place where a person feels a sense of belonging and purpose resulting from the social relationships associated with that place.

[i-eat-worlds]

Alex & Friends Part 10: The Upstairs

Featuring an ambush, a hidden room, and my questionable knowledge of London’s geography.

cw: car crashes, little violence, minor injuries, thumbtacks used as weapons,

INSUPA’s London Center was far nicer and much larger than the one in Prague. Instead of a bland concrete slab on the far outskirts of the city, it inhabited an elegant metal and glass building on the Thames. After so many years in cheap apartments in questionable locations, she’d ended up back on the polished terrazzo floors of INSUPA. They didn’t really spend all that much time inside the building. It was more like a quick pit stop to pick up supplies for the safe house, and find Alex a couple changes of clothes, as well as some toiletries. She also took a small detour to the armory to outfit herself with several knives of choice. Only forty-five minutes after the group had landed, they departed for the safe house.

They split up into two sedans, one gray and one black. Sil, Eric, and Teri took the gray lead car, and Avia, Joseph, Alex, and Aarav sat in the black second car. The car ride was mostly silent, though Aarav groaned a little when Avia said they’d be taking Blackwall Tunnel to cross the river. Driving through the tunnel felt like it took forever. Every now and then, one of the bright orange panels passed by them, breaking up the otherwise monotonous tunnel. Aarav took the time to make some jokes about how poorly London’s transportation was designed. Avia agreed, stewing at the wheel when traffic ground to a halt. Eventually, they saw daylight at the end. However, when both cars emerged from the tunnel, climbing the ramp back to surface, something went very wrong. That was an understatement.

Things went to absolute, utter shit. A large SUV slammed into the back end of the gray car sending it off the road, over the sidewalk, and into a bed of ivy. Avia immediately slammed on the breaks. “We’re under attack!” She yelled. The car jolted forward when another car hit their back end. They’d been rear ended because of the sudden stop. Several people jumped from the SUV. Their heads were covered with balaclavas, and Alex noticed the purple glow that emanated from one of their hands earlier enough to loudly shout at everyone to duck. A blast of kinetic energy hit the car, shattering the windshield. “Go, go, go!” Joseph ordered.

Alex's hands moved like lightning as she pushed open the door. Another blast flew over her head, arcing over the open car door and landing on the pavement several feet from her. This one was green, and it sizzled into the pavement. As she drew one of the knives from her belt, a distressed yelp came from behind her. When she turned around to line up her shot, she found that one of her assailants had been impaled by what seemed to be thousands of thumbtacks. Avia was watching the downed attacker with an attentive eye. The second had been knocked out by Eric. Some sort of acid burn fizzled on his shoulder, but it seemed to be healing quickly. “Is everybody alright?” Eric asked. The group nodded their heads. Teri smiled widely, an empty bag in her hand. The thumbtacks must’ve been her. It was a smart idea. Aarav looked tired, Avia looked terrifying, and Sil looked surprisingly relaxed. Joseph looked concerned, but then again, that appeared to be his permanent facial expression. “We need to get out of doge. I’m assuming the safehouse is compromised. Anybody have shelter options?” Eric said, his brow furrowed in thought.

Aarav half raised his hand. “I know the owner of a pub in Woolwich. They’d probably let us crash in his spare room, o the books.” “Any other ideas?” Eric asked. The group shook their heads. Aarav was the local. “Get what stuff you can from the back of the car while I get a clean-up crew and medical unit out here. Five minutes.”

***

The pub that Aarav had suggested occupied a three-story brick building, the windows framed with gray-blue wood. The door was set back from the street, and above it a gold lettered sign advertised “Blue Oysters Pub.” In the window hung a Gilbert Baker pride flag. Bells jingled as Aarav opened the door, leading the team inside. The pub was empty. Alex was starting to question if it was even open when a person stepped out from behind the bar. Their face lit up with a smile when they made eye contact with Aarav. “Aarav! Long time no see!” they exclaimed, pulling him into a hug.

“Hi, Nyx.” Aarav said, hugging them back. “How’ve you been?” “Good, yeah. You gonna introduce me to all your saving the world friends or what?”

Aarav chuckled a little. “Everybody, this is Nyx, they/them.” Nyx gave a little wave. “This is Eric, he/him, Joseph, he/him, Avia, She/They, Teri, She/Her, and Alex, She/Her.” Aarav pointed to each member of the team as he said their names. “Nice to meet you. Take a seat, I’ll get you some menus.” Nyx said.

Aarav leaned in closer to them. “We’ll denitely eat, but is the Upstairs open for a couple of days?”

Nyx made a face, half concerned, half intrigued. “Follow me.”

Aarav turned around to his group, tilting his head to encourage them to come. They filled in line behind Nyx as they led the group to the back of the room, through a locked door, and up a twisting staircase.

“Welcome to the upstairs,” They said, placing their hand on the wall. A white glow pulsed through their fingertips, and then there was the click on something unlocking. Nyx pushed through the wall, revealing a secret room. It was moderately sized, with no windows, walls painted light blue. Their was, a couch, a table with some chairs, and two bunk beds tucked in the corner. They were well used, and they looked comfortable.“Wi-Fi code is on the table, as is the code for the alley exit.” Eric stepped forward. “Thank you for your hospitality, Nyx. How much do we owe you?”

Nyx smiled a little bit. “You’re friends of Aarav. Room’s free.”

“We’ll eat well, Nyx.” Aaron wrapped them into a hug. “Thank you.” Nyx smiled, planting a kiss on their cheek. “You're welcome.” Aarav ignored the blood rushing to his face as they left the room. Sil would never let him live this down.

Taglist: @pigeonwhumps

[expecto-kedavra]

The Healer pt. 3

note: Sorry this took so long. Some stuff went down in my life and I needed a minute. We back though!

Tbh this guy is kinda a filler episode. I still wanted to get it out there. Something is coming though! 👀

Pt. 1

Pt. 2

Pt. 4

Several weeks passed before Sebastian told us he wanted to find Anne. One night after class, he sat on his bed staring at his hands. "I apologize for taking so long. I'm afraid that even after she's cured, she'll still leave me." He had a point. Healing Anne's curse does not bring back Solomon. I didn't know how to respond, but luckily Ominis did. "She may not ever forgive you. We knew that before. All we can do is take heart that she isn't in pain, and in time she can heal her heart." He nodded silently. It had been several months since we visited Anne in Romania. While she missed her brother dearly, she was still hurt by his actions, and steadfast in her decision to distance herself from him. I decided to speak up. "Whatever happens next, we must face this together." We all looked at each other, the familiar words ringing in our ears and hearts as we fell asleep.

I was coming back from Quidditch practice with Imelda when Ominis ran up to me. "She responded." he said, out of breath. "Who?" Imelda asked, nosily. "Uhhhh, a girl- that i asked out- on a date?" he stammered. We had decided to keep our plans secret, as we didn't want the wrong person to find out. "Funny. What does Anne have to say?" Imelda said, laughing. "I...don't know what you mean." Ominis replied, doing his best to be stoic. "Oh, come on." Imelda laughed, eyes rolling. "All of a sudden your blindness is healed, and now you run up saying that you received an owl from a 'she', and who is a she that all three of us know is in need of healing?" I looked at Ominis. "I've got nothing." I confessed, defeated. Ominis sighed. "Not here. Come on." Imelda followed us, happy that she her nosiness paid off.

"So yeah, that's it." Imelda sat on the couch, eyes wide but not seeming all too shocked. We brought her to the Room of Requirement, as it was the most private place we knew, and told her everything. "Wow. Well, what did she say?" she asked, intrigued. I couldn't say I wasn't thinking the same thing. Ominis opened the letter, and read it. I was nervous. What if she had grown bitter? What if she didn't want the help? As my mind was filled with more and more possible negative reactions, I was relieved when he smiled. "She'll meet us. She's suspicious but she's willing." He looked up at me. "She wants to meet tonight." I was so excited, I picked up Imelda and spun her around. Had I been waiting a year to do that? Maybe. "Well then!" Imelda said as she brushed herself off, pretending to hide her blush. "When do we leave?" Ominis and I looked at each other. "What, you think I'm not coming? Anne was my friend too!" Imelda was stubborn, bossy and occasionally snotty, but she was also loyal, caring and deathly loyal to those she cared about. I could tell she was hurt by the fact that we would leave her behind. "It's only right. We told you everything, you deserve to come." I told her. She beamed. "Yes, I do." We planned on meeting at the fountain by the stairs in the Slytherin common room after curfew. As Imelda bounced out of the Room and I turned to leave, Ominis stopped me. "What should we tell Sebastian?" The dreaded question. I turned to face him. "He should know, but I hesitate if he wants to come with us." It was a hard question. I wanted him to come. Anne was his sister, and so much happened because of this damned curse. But I knew that she may disapparate as soon as she saw him. "You're right. He deserves to come, but should she be bitter, it could end quite poorly." I heard the pain in his voice. His two oldest friends, I knew he wanted her back more than ever. But he knew what Sebastian had done.

We found Sebastian as he was leaving the Great Hall, and told him of the plan, and confessed our fears of him accompanying us. "After all this time. I would like to come, but I shall keep my distance." he said firmly. I saw Ominis release the tension from his neck and shoulders. "Good idea. You should be there, but it's best we gauge the situation before we bring you into the conversation." He clearly wanted him there, maybe for his own sake. "All right then." I took over. "We're meeting Imelda after curfew. Then, we go to Anne." Sebastian stopped, confused. "Imelda?" he asked. Shit. We forgot that part. As Ominis and I tried to find the words, he shrugged. "Alright. She's cool." and walked off. Ominis and I shared a look of relief, and the three of us continued on with the day as best we could.

The day was agonizingly slow. I could barely pay attention. I was deep in thought when Professor Sharp's gruff voice bounced me back to Potions. "Well, MC? Where might I find a bezoar?" he said impatiently. We hadn't yet slipped him any miracle tears, and he was as sour as ever. "Oh, uh, from the stomach of a goat." Luckily, I was smart and adaptable. "Hm. Very well. Points to Slytherin." he grumbled as he made his way back to his desk. "I expect 14 inches of parchment on my desk by next Tuesday, detailing all major antidotes for poisons. Class dismissed." I decided that along with my report, I'd include a new antidote for him. I smiled to myself as I thought of his reaction. Eventually, sunset came, and the four of us gathered by the door, staying out of sight of the prefects sitting on the couch. "Ready?" Sebastian asked. I heard his fear. "Absolutely." Ominis said confidently. I knew he shared the same fears, but he was being strong for Sebastian. "Ready as can be." Imelda said happily. She was clearly glad to be included. "MC?" Sebastian asked me. I took a deep breath. "I'm ready. Let's do this." I ensured I had the potion in my bag, and we set off.

Anne's letter told us that she had been staying in London. Luckily, we had all recently passed our Apparition test. Since I used to live in London, I provided us with a photo as well as a detailed description of our destination. We arrived all in one piece, no splinching, even down to the fingernails. "Quite drab from the lovely scenery of the castle, isn't it?" Sebastian said as we looked out over the gray landscape of the city. Our destination was the top of the library my parents would take me to in my youth. After the time away, it was quite the change from the rolling hills and greenery of the Highlands. "Yes, I hadn't realized the world could be so...plain." Ominis said glumly. "Anyways, where to?" Imelda asked. "Anne said to meet her just outside the city, near some woods." Ominis said "It's not too far and we should be able to make it before-" But he didn't finish. In the blink of an eye, someone apparated behind Sebastian, grabbed him, and disappeared. We all ripped out our wands, but what could we do? "What just happened? Who the hell was that?" Imelda said, whipping around frantically, looking for our friend. "I don't know, I didn't recognize them." I could sense the desperation in Ominis' voice. A deep anger filled my chest. "I did." I said darkly. "Who was it?" Imelda begged.

"Ruth Singer."