#she's legit a head length taller than them

[vixletserenity]

Friendship dynamic @skullkxd

[thornbushrose]

I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with this fanfiction. I found an outlining structure that seems to be working. So here's another excerpt. I'm at 24,000 words so far, and it's maybe a little more than a quarter written. I think it'll be novella length when I'm done. If I could write chronologically instead of hopping all over the place, and if I could write a finished chapter without having to just burp out a first draft and then refine it later, I'd start posting for reals, but alas. You will have to wait until I'm done.

Now, if you were a beta reader, I could make exceptions. Just sayin'.

Also, I don't have a working title yet. I hate making up titles.

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This chapter is about what Birdie gets up to after a hard day of work at the orphanage.

=====================

That night, Birdie was the last one to arrive at her meeting. She mounted the ladder to the balcony around the ancient water tower and noted sourly that even her pet raven, Harbinger, was already there, perched on the railing, begging for snacks from the others.

Near the ladder, Victor lounged with his back to the water tank, wearing sweats on his long legs and a ridiculous purple cape over his narrow shoulders, and eating an ice cream cone. “Hey Birdie,” he said nonchalantly. He probably expected Birdie to be impressed that he’d gotten all the way up here with an ice cream cone. Birdie actually was kind of impressed.

Vic’s cape had Chinese characters embroidered on it, which Victor claimed were enchantments, though Birdie highly doubted his Vietnamese family had taught him to read Chinese. “Hey Vic,” Birdie said. “Edna Mode says no capes.”

He scoffed. “Edna Mode can kiss my ass.”

“You mispronounced ‘kick.’” Birdie slid past him to join Louis and Lore sitting against the water tank. “Hey, nerds,” she said.

Louis made a finger-gun salute and said, “Reporting for duty, Nerd Leader.” He was dressed in Daredevil red and had a protein shake in his hand. He always had some kind of health food or other, but he never seemed to lose weight. The pudge around his chin and muscles was deceptive, though. He taught Taekwondo and could probably bench-press Birdie.

Harbinger hopped down the railing, following Birdie. He clacked his ridiculous beak, as if to remind her that he was hungry. Birdie wasn’t buying it. She had fed him plenty at home, and she knew he ate during the day when he was out.

But Louis eyed him suspiciously. “Remind me why a cute little muppet like you has such a creepy bird?”

Birdie shrugged. “Do I have him? Or does he have me?”

“You know I ain’t smart enough for philosophical questions like that.”

Birdie gave him a skeptical look. “Wasn’t your SAT higher than mine? Look, he just showed up in my apartment after the Battle of New York. I don’t keep him locked up. He stays for the free food and the lulz.”

Louis kept frowning at Harbinger. Harbinger ducked his head and croaked, “Nevermore?”

Louis said, “I don’t think he’s actually a raven, you know.”

Birdie sighed. “You may be right. But damn if I’m going to ask him about it.” She plopped down between Louis and Lore.

Lore smirked. She was taller and curvier than Birdie and had her hair in a hundred little braids this week. She had smooth, deep brown skin and tonight wore a purple hoodie and leggings and high-tops that made her look like she might be about to pose for an album cover or something. She had been Birdie’s best friend since high school, and had just returned from the Marines. Now that Birdie thought about it, Lore could probably bench-press her, too. “How’s the blog going, Vic?” Lore asked.

“Same,” he sighed, his voice slightly bitter. “No legit sightings.”

Louis said. “Maybe he’s on vacation or something.”

“For four months?” Lore asked. “Don’t you think he has a day job?”

“I’m just not buying that he’s dead,” Louis insisted. “Heroes don’t die.”

“The other supers said he didn’t make it out,” Birdie said, opening the small bag of peanuts she’d brought. “You don’t believe them?”

“That’s only a rumor. Somebody’s cousin’s neighbor is an emt who overheard them,” Louis said. “I guess I just believe in Daredevil, you know? He’ll come back when we need him.”

“What, like King Arthur?” Vic laughed.

“There’s already been an uptick in crime in Hell’s Kitchen,” Lore said. “We need him.”

Birdie tossed a couple of peanuts to Harbinger. “Two of our boys got caught selling meth last week.”

“Whoa,” Lore said. “Where were they cooking it?”

“That’s just it. They weren’t. Someone was supplying them.”

“Who would do that?” Vic said. He sighed. “I believe in Daredevil too. That’s why I’m keeping the blog open. But wherever he is, I don’t think he’s there by choice. I just hope he can come back someday.”

“He’ll be back,” Louis said. “He’s done so much for the Kitchen. He wouldn’t abandon us now.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Vic pushed himself to his feet. “And on that note, let’s get this meeting started.” He tossed the last bite of his cone to Harbinger, and stood in front of them with his hands folded behind his back. “The purpose of this meeting is to create a name for our group. The list, Louis.”

Louis pulled a piece of paper that looked suspiciously like a drugstore receipt out of his pocket and read from the back of it. “Power Players.”

Lore laughed. “Sounds like a boy band.”

“Did the rest of you get powers?” Birdie asked. “I thought I was the only one.”

“Okay, next.” Vic turned and paced across in front of them.

“Crimemasters?”

Birdie winced. “That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“No,” Lore said firmly. “Next.”

“Hell’s Kitchen Crime Fighters, to be abbreviated as HKCF.”

Lore narrowed her eyes. “It sounds like we’re going to make fried chicken.”

“No,” Birdie laughed, wagging a finger. “That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You guys don’t like anything!” Vic complained.

“And before you ask,” Birdie said, “DD Fan Club, or Daredevilitos, or whatever Devil-themed idea you have, is not okay either.”

Louis looked deflated. Everyone sat around for a moment, silent.

“I kinda liked Daredevilitos,” Louis muttered.

Vic spoke over him. “We can’t be vigilantes without a name. What will the news guys call us? How can we make a hashtag?”

“How about ‘The Parkour Club’?” Lore said.

Birdie tilted her head. “Easy to say. Actually describes who we are. No cheese detected. I like it.”

The boys looked unconvinced.

Birdie said, “Okay, raise your hand if you’re too scared of Lore to contradict her anyway.”

Lore giggled, burying her face, and smacked Birdie’s shoulder. The boys reluctantly raised their hands. Birdie gleefully joined them.

[seasonofthewicth]

Rowaelin Month - Day 5

prompt: I accidentally hit you with my car

extras: “You didn’t think you’d be able to get rid of me just yet did you?”

cw: language?

word count: 1.6k

--

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Aelin is aware she’s yelling.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” The guy is definitely yelling back so at least there’s that. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You just hit me with your car!”

Okay, so the attractive man yelling in the middle of the road might have a point.

“That was an accident,” she yells right back as she clambers out of her car. She rests her hand on the top of the bonnet, satisfied when there doesn’t appear to be any damage. That scratch across her front bumper was there way before today.

The man’s hands waver around his sides as he gapes at her. “And yet you still haven’t apologised.”

He sounds incredulous, which to be fair, is probably understandable.

“Oh yeah,” she says distractedly, running her eyes along the rest of her car just in case. “Sorry about that.”

The man barks out a surprisingly sexy, dark burst of laughter and it’s what finally drags her eyes over to him.

He’s tall, standing way above her as he watches her with a slightly shocked expression on his face. His hair is a shade of silver she’s never seen before, it’s not grey, definitely silver and she’s intrigued. He’s also built as fuck, his inked biceps bulging in his t-shirt as he brushes off his jeans. Jeans that cling to deliciously muscular legs. Aelin could certainly have run over someone less interesting.

He’s shaking his head as she reaches him, having sauntered over with a hand on her hip, and she’s delighted to find she has to tip her head fully back to look up at him. His eyes are very green this close up.

“You’re sorry?” he says, his tone full of complete bewilderment.

“I’m getting less sorry by the second,” she says with a shrug.

She doesn’t expect that to be what does it, but the bewilderment drops and a reluctant smile begins to crawl onto his pink lips. Aelin can work with this.

He shakes his head, but the smile stays. “You’d better watch it,” he says and his tone has changed too. The whisper of a threat has her pulse beginning to speed up.

Aelin puts her hand on her hip. “Or what?”

He runs his tongue over his bottom lip and Aelin is very aware of the motion even though this whole thing is fucking ludicrous. “You’re a bit of a firecracker then, hm?” he asks.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Aelin is insane, she decides and it seems this guy is over it. The smile she’d been enjoying so far is gone, wiped clean and replaced with an angry scowl. He’s still hot.

“No,” he states simply, and oof. “What I’d like is for you to not have run me over with your car.”

Aelin doesn’t speak for a few seconds as she reassesses her strategy. Somehow she really thought she’d turn this whole thing around.

“Think it’s a bit too late for that,” is what she settles on.

He looks to the sky, the motion highlighting the length of his throat and the thick muscles of his shoulders. It’s a pity really that this started how it did, she can think of a whole list of things she’d do to this man if he gave her the time of day.

Then he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like fucking childish and that train of thought has crashed and burned.

She raises an eyebrow because she knows what this expression normally does to men. He doesn’t back down, which is kind of getting the train back on the tracks. But no.

Bastard, she says with a flick of her brows.

He narrows his eyes. Brat.

Neither of them speak, and Aelin pours her efforts into the stand off instead of getting lost in the deep, forest green of his eyes. She can’t ignore the thrill running through her at the challenge this guy presents, her blood heats and a smile creeps up of its own accord.

Then he shakes his head and turns to leave.

“Do you not want my details to press charges? I can give you my number,” she calls as he begins to walk away.

He turns and hits her with a look of pure bewilderment that has her flipping the bird and storming back to her car.

Whatever. Next time she hits someone with her car she won’t be so polite.

She hasn’t been to this bar before, it’s on the other side of town to where they usually go out, but it’s closer to Elide’s new office so she suspects they’ll become regulars soon enough. Her friend’s text had come through only an hour before but it takes Aelin time to perfect her look. She’s almost there when another text comes through from Lysandra.

Are you coming or what?

Almost there, she types back as she thanks her Uber driver.

Lysandra’s reply pings almost immediately. Well hurry up there’s fit lads here and they’ve actually got good chat one of them legit got hit by a car today lol.

If Aelin wasn’t Aelin she’d have probably stumbled. Instead she lets out an almost silent groan and debates immediately ordering another Uber home. How many people do you think get hit by cars everyday? She’s hoping the number is high. In the least bad way possible.

She’s not sure what she did to deserve this—apart from hitting that guy with her car—but she’s a grown up she can face it and she pushes her way into the bar. She spots Elide and Lysandra easily and yep, that’s some silver hair and broad shoulders squashed against a dark haired guy and another blond.

This could be fun.

“Excuse me,” she says as she slides into the booth next to him. It’s a tight squeeze and his hand comes to her waist to settle her, the warmth of his fingers sinking into her bare skin. “Hi, great to meet you guys. I’m Aelin,” she says with a grin, daring this guy to kick off.

His gaze flashes to hers and his fingers tighten at her waist as his brow raises. “You,” is all he says.

“You didn’t think you’d be able to get rid of me just yet did you?” The corner of his lips quirk and she’s totally winning him over. She nods at his friends before turning to Elide and Lysandra. “Sorry I’m late, was really busy hitting this guy with my car.”

Lysandra and Elide blink as her announcement drops until his blond friend lets out a cackle.

“That was you?” he asks.

“The one and only,” she grins, holding out a hand for him to shake. “Aelin.”

“Fenrys.” He shakes her hand, a mischievous smile dawning on his handsome face and she likes him already. “I don’t know how or why it happened but thank you. I don’t think you understand how much it has made my life that you hit Rowan with your car.”

She laughs and feels the hot guy’s—Rowan’s—fingers tighten again at her waist. She glances at him and he realises his hand is still there at the same time she does and he pulls it back, resting it on his thigh. Right next to hers. She can get that hand to her thigh by the end of the night.

Aelin shrugs. “I think when you wander around in the middle of the road there’s always a chance. Look.” She turns to Rowan ignoring the soft laughter from the group.

“I wasn’t wandering around,” he says, his tone softer than she’s heard it so far. She likes the way his voice sounds when he’s trying not to laugh too. “There was a bird in the road I was trying to save. I’d much rather you hit me than the bird.”

Certain parts of her pulse at his revelation. Animal activist does it for her apparently.

“Okay,” she says, flicking her eyes across his truly handsome face. His green eyes are intense and they’re flicking across her face too. “I really am sorry I hit you with my car.” Another snort from Lysandra and Rowan’s dark-haired friend. “I would love it if we could move past this, it seems my friends are keen on you and your friends chilling with us tonight. Let me buy you a drink, make it up to you?”

She fixes him with a genuine smile, none of the flirty front she’s put up so far. Her offer is genuine.

The corner of his lips curl, like he wants to smile and Aelin sees it, her own grin breaking into something bright. He breaks, a low laugh tumbling over his lips as he shakes his head and Aelin giggles. She likes that sound.

He looks softer when he smiles too, the harsh line of his brow transforming into the crinkles by his eyes. “Okay,” he says and his accent curves around the word. “You can buy me a drink to apologise.”

“That I can do,” she says with a pat to his thigh. She can feel the thick muscle hidden beneath the denim and she may or may not run her hand down the length of his thigh as she slides out of the booth.

“Aelin,” he says, catching her hand in his as she turns away. He stands too, still delightfully taller than her. “I’ll get you a drink too.”

“What for?” she laughs. “You didn’t hit me with your car.”

He smiles, a confident curl of his lips, and squeezes her hand before he leads the way to the bar. “I’m hoping it will get me your number.”

[jericholeader]

@nock-and-bolt​:

Hello! Sorry for taking so long to get back to you haha and I appreciate the info—I think I know what post you’re talking about (red line across when they’re all standing roughly in a line at the start of the Freedom March chapter?) But that’s also not foolproof and since we have legit no absolute answer on it I just went based off what we do know (i.e. about the actors). Though, considering the Markus-Simon and Williams-Lambert differential yup that’s not the best basis either. 🤷 So everything is up in the air lol but yeah, I’d def appreciate if you have a better screen shot that can directly compare characters’ height! (ik the one I referenced isn’t the best cause some of them are standing closer to the “camera” than others, some are slouching/on shifted weight than others, etc.)

No problem. Take as much time as you need. <3 I hope you don’t mind me making this a new post. I wanted to be able to post some screencaps I cropped without risk of tumblr eating them for breakfast.

... Yep that was my post. ;) I’m the one who made the post with the red-line and the screencap. 

And actually if you’ll take a look here, comparing (with a straight line) where they are standing, Josh is farther forward, making him appear taller. But Markus and North are standing nearly equal, with the exception that North is turned. She is standing fairly straight as is Simon. Markus’ head is turned. Simon is about a half of his foot length back, making him appear, possibly slightly shorter. But still, I think this is a good base line. North -> Simon -> Markus -> Josh.

There are not any good sequences in the game aside from this where Simon is present to compare. There are virtually none where they are standing in a line, except this one, where Markus is not farther forward (unless someone is able to discover something with a free-cam tool; I’ve played the game 18+ times and screencaped it for Markus content and haven’t found the ‘perfect’ cap for this, but)

At the least, due to Simon standing about a half-foot length back in that cap, Markus and Simon are nearly identical:

The only reason I brought this up, is to clear up confusion that Markus is shorter than his friends. Headcanon is headcanon, and if people want short!Markus, more power too them, but canon height for him bears out that he is at least as tall as Simon and only shorter than Josh.

[luluwquidprocrow]

i know their names, i carry their blood too

originally posted: august 13th, 2018

word count: 19,681 words

rated: teen

beatrice snicket, lemony snicket

family, angst with a happy ending, VFD, assorted original vfd characters, assorted canon characters repeatedly mentioned, one small girl going through a lot of unpleasantness, most of the time by herself, attempted kidnapping (legit vfd recruitment in action), also one small girl trying to avoid a decent amount of trauma and loss

summary: A man has come back to the city. Beatrice Baudelaire, eight years old and miles away, is trying to find him.

opening notes:

this fic relies pretty heavily on the beatrice letters, and there are a few references and one code that will make a lot more sense if you’ve read all the wrong questions and the unauthorized autobiography!

title from the crooked kind by radical face

.

Beatrice learns early on, at seven and with a bare ankle because they said they don’t require the tattoo anymore, that if she turns the doorknob slowly and lifts it up at the same time, her bedroom door doesn’t stick when it opens. At eight, she learns if she stays close to the hallway wall, avoids the places where the floor groans under her feet, especially in the spot in front of the chaperone’s room, then she can make it in absolute silence to the staircase. The stairs are trickier—most of the steps have warped over time—so she wraps her hands tight around the banister and inches along the edge until she stretches out a tentative foot and finds the smooth carpet of the ground floor rug under her socks.

At almost one in the morning, everything, every overstuffed armchair and faded green wall and well-stocked pantry, is smothered in black shadows. Beatrice doesn’t mind. She can still find her way around. She had walked around for a week with her eyes closed to prove a point a few months ago. (The point was that she could tell anyone by their footsteps, which she could. The result was that she could navigate the entirety of headquarters in the middle of the night. She knows every creak in every floorboard and what everyone’s shoes sound like now.)

A proper adult might ask her if she’d like a light on so she can see a little easier at one in the morning. A proper adult would probably think she’d be afraid of the dark, after everything that happened. Then again, a proper adult would probably not have put her in this situation to begin with. She’s not entirely sure. She’s only known a few proper adults in her life, or people older and taller than her to the point she considered them adults. She hopes she’ll know at least one more.

From the report a volunteer smuggled to her during dinner in the mashed potatoes—and from the confirmation from another volunteer during dessert, waving his spoon through the air at her—and from the further confirmation from the chaperones standing in a corner with their heads together and mumbling not very quietly at all—a man was seen. Far away, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings in the city. A man they tell stories about, a man no one seems to know for sure, a man who might be a detective, or has had that printed on an office door at one point or another. A man who hasn’t been seen in a long, long time.

“That’s him,” Beatrice had said.

“How do you know?” a volunteer had asked. “You’ve never seen him either.”

Beatrice hasn’t, but she thinks she’s allowed to make an educated guess here. A niece should know her own uncle, even by rumors. And she knows him like she knows the back of her hand, or the floorboard underneath her bed she stashes the picture and the ring under, or the books she’s read in the middle of the night when she was supposed to be asleep, the ones they tried to hide from her so she couldn’t read his name. She knows.

(One of the older chaperones told her—or muttered disparagingly in her direction after Beatrice asked the same question for a whole hour one day, because no one would give her a straight answer—that she has the analytical eyes of her mother and the stubborn streak of her namesake and the brazen attitude of her uncle. Another one told her later, a little more kindly, that she looks like her father when she reads, quiet and studious. So, she knows.)

Her backpack is a heavy weight on her back as she creeps through the downstairs rooms, her shoes gripped in one hand and a letter almost crumpled tight in the other. She’d written it after dinner, tucked away in a corner of a room that no one ever looked in (the bathroom closet, of course), the typewriter across her lap and the news still fresh in her mind. She tapped her fingers against the keys. How should she address the letter? Because she’d have to send a letter. It was only polite, after all. But calling him uncle outright might be a little too much, a little too soon. Dear, she typed, for a start. Dear—physically distant relative? Closest living relative? The person she had to find, because he could help her find the people most important to her? This had to be perfect, and Beatrice knew it would be, but she still had to think—

Dear Sir, she settled on, with a small, pleased smile.

That was when she’d heard the voices from outside in the hall, filtering through the bathroom door.

“This can’t be good news,” said a chaperone Beatrice never liked. “He’s a wanted criminal, isn’t he? And I heard he was responsible for that other fire a few years ago, too. What if he comes here?”

“How can we trust someone like him?” said another one that Beatrice had almost respected until that moment.

“It’s probably not even him,” said a third voice. “There’s been too many people with his initials showing up over the years. With any luck, he’s dead and gone.”

Beatrice frowned, mostly in anger, because that was such an awful, rude thing to say about someone. She knew it was him. There was no way it couldn’t be. But the chaperones had a point about the initials, and it made her think of something else. In case the letter went astray, because the mail could be so unreliable, especially so far from the city, she should preface it with something, shouldn’t she?

I have no way of knowing if this letter will reach you, as the distance between us is so very far and so very troublesome, she’d written, proud at how professional she sounded. And even if this letter does reach you, I am not sure it will reach the right person. Perhaps you are not who I think you are.

But she’d learned one important thing here, and that was that you had to be certain, because you might be wrong. So at the end of the day, it was merely a pretense, a formality. There was nothing she didn’t know for sure, because she was certain.

My name is Beatrice Baudelaire, she typed, with a fierce determination and her head held high. I am searching for my family. Then she’d known that she was going to leave.

Beatrice squints up at the grandfather clock in the corner of the main room, trying to see the time through the shadows. If she cuts it too close she’ll run into the chaperones doing their middle-of-the-night check on the neophytes. She has to be out of the building before it comes to that. The ground floor of headquarters is silent as a grave right now, as dark as one too, and she steps close to the couch where the floor won’t talk back to her as she makes her way to the heavy ivory front door, washed grey in the dark.

She knows from experience—from carefully watching and listening—that the door is locked (silver, outdated, the kind from the old hardware manuals Beatrice has extensively studied in the dead of night) from the outside, the volunteer who locks it then running up the fire escape and back inside through an upstairs window. But the quickest way out is always the easiest way in. She puts on her shoes and takes off her backpack, unzips the latter as slow as she can, and feels around for the thin red ribbon.

She shifts her hair, shoulder-length and blonde with a curl at the very end, away from her face, and ties it back securely with the ribbon.

An older volunteer had given her a lock pick the previous week after Beatrice helped her solve a word game—there’s no way she would’ve been able to get one otherwise. The chaperones almost always seem to know when someone’s doing something they shouldn’t, considering how much else they miss. Beatrice takes it out and gets to work, moving quickly and quietly, listening for the barely audible tick when one of the tumblers releases. One of the chaperones laughs upstairs, a disembodied thing in the darkness, and Beatrice grips the tools harder so she doesn’t jump and drop them.

The lock clicks sharply, the door easing open with a heavy creak. Beatrice freezes in place, straining her ears, her breath still in her throat. She’s sure someone had to hear that.

Something creaks upstairs.

The floorboard outside the chaperone’s door.

Beatrice snatches up her bag, squeezes herself through the gap and outside, and pulls the door shut behind her. She runs down the stone steps two at a time and doesn’t look back.

Ten blocks away, when she’s sure no one is looking, Beatrice drops the folded letter into a public mailbox.

The only train out of town leaves at five in the morning. Beatrice gets to the station with plenty of time to spare, and easily memorizes the route she’ll have to take to get to the city. It’s a long one, so she sits down on one of the benches and counts out her change. She digs the ring out of her bag, the heirloom from the island Sunny had given her that Beatrice had hid from the chaperones, and tries it on different fingers until it stays and doesn’t slide. Then she waits, tracing the low ceiling beams with her eyes, swinging her legs back and forth.

She knows just what he’ll be like. Not too tall, keeps to himself, intelligent. Sensible, maybe a little tentative, a little worried. His books made it sound like he’d been through a lot, after all. But she’s not too concerned about that. He’ll talk to her, because she’s his niece, and she’s read everything he’s written, and they have a good deal in common. They both like big words, long books, and could take or leave the sea.

She has one picture of him, of the side of his back and a corner of his face and one hand, or the side of the back and the corner of a face and the one hand of a man Violet and Klaus didn’t know, but a man Beatrice knew couldn’t be anyone else. There were three other people in the photograph—the uncle she’ll never meet, and the Baudelaire parents.

Beatrice hadn’t meant to take the photograph. It was their photograph, Violet and Klaus and Sunny’s, the last thing they had of their parents. But she thought it might be the only glimpse she’d get of her uncle, especially when she’d only known about Jacques, so she would sneak it out of Klaus’s commonplace book when he wasn’t looking. She’d wonder who the other man was, since that was before she knew. And she’d meant to put it back, but—but there hadn’t been time.

Violet and Klaus told her her mother had blue eyes, and so did Jacques, and she has them too, so she knows she’ll see the same shade of blue in his eyes, another link between the two of them. Excitement flutters around inside of her like a million wonderful butterflies, and she can’t help but smile. Not only is she going to find the family she lost, she’s going to find the family she didn’t even know she still had until a few months before. Beatrice can’t think of anything luckier.

There’s not too many people on the train when it comes into the station, so Beatrice picks a windowseat all to herself, pressing herself close so she can see everything passing by. She doesn’t want to miss a single thing. She swings her legs again, heels kicking the seat, and waits for the train to start moving.

“Aren’t you a little young to be traveling alone?” the woman across the aisle asks. She lowers yesterday’s evening edition newspaper and gives Beatrice a pointed stare behind her thick-framed glasses.

“No,” Beatrice says.

“You seem a little young,” the woman continues.

“I’m short for my age,” Beatrice says.

The woman gives her another look, specifically at her feet, and then looks back up at Beatrice with a raised eyebrow. She ruffles her newspaper imperiously and disappears behind it again.

Beatrice swallows, her shoulders pulling in. She makes a point to stop swinging her legs and sits up straighter. She keeps at it, even when the woman gets off at the next station and she’s by herself on the train.

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she jolts awake at a flash of light across her face. It flickers jagged on her hands, lighting up the seat beneath her, bright and blinding white. She looks around frantically, expecting to see rain and bending wood, to hear the roar of crashing waves, before she remembers she’s still on the train. There’s no lightning on a train. It’s just the sun streaming in from the window. She watches with wide eyes as it creates patterns on her arms and her dress, then tears her gaze away and stares hard at the faraway houses outside the window instead, clutching her bag in her lap. Beatrice thinks of big words (pietrisycamollaviadelrechiotemexity surely counts as a word, and she spends ten minutes testing out pronunciations), long books (Anna Karenina is long, and she can probably still read it even though she already knows the central theme), and anything but the sea, until her hands loosen and her shoulders drop and the sun is high enough that she can’t see it.

Beatrice had first found his name buried in old reports, in thirteen files jammed into the back of a drawer, down in the basement at headquarters when someone had asked her to find a flashlight. She found a bat instead, clinging to the rafters, and it blinked at her with big, black eyes. Beatrice blinked back, because she knew all about all kinds of animals, especially the ones the organization trained, and she didn’t mind bats. Then it fluttered down on top of an old filing cabinet in the corner.

Beatrice wandered over and picked out faded letters that spelled Baudelaire on the front. Eager, because no one at headquarters would talk to her about Violet or Klaus or Sunny, or answer her questions about where they might be, she yanked it open and found files and files with a distinct cursive signature ending each one—Lemony Snicket. And her stomach had twisted up tight, because she could hear Klaus like he was standing right behind her, telling her the name Kit Snicket.

Kit Snicket, Beatrice had echoed.

That’s right, Klaus had said, smiling. She was your mother.

Beatrice knew all about her mother. Violet and Klaus and Sunny had told her her mother was a good person, a volunteer, someone who had helped them, and they had helped her. That was how Beatrice was born. And she knew all about Jacques, because they’d said the same thing about him. But they’d never mentioned a Lemony. She knew better than to think he was her father, because she knew her father’s name, too. Dewey Denouement. They’d said his name only once, and she’d repeated it over and over again to herself. Beatrice didn’t know who this was.

She read through them all in the dead of night so no one would bother her, because Beatrice knew they were watching her, closer than they watched the other neophytes. She tried to find the four volumes she’d found hints at in other files, although she never managed to pin them down. But the thirteen files told her enough. They confirmed that Violet and Klaus and Sunny were still out there somewhere, just like she thought. They confirmed their stories, although with other details they hadn’t said or had relayed differently—but Beatrice had never doubted what they’d told her to begin with.

And they confirmed that Lemony Snicket was her uncle, and he was alive.

All of Beatrice’s hopes became real, became fact. There was someone else out there, someone who could help her. Someone who was family. Someone who could help her find Violet and Klaus and Sunny. Someone who knew the whole story too.

So then she just had to wait. She had to wait, and learn, and sit through someone telling her how to make a meringue when she knew full well how to make a meringue, and how to pick a lock and how to define a word and the right way to escape a burning building. She had to keep waiting until the right moment came and she could leave and try to find him, try to find them all. And Beatrice would know when it was. She was Beatrice Baudelaire, after all. She knew everything now.

Beatrice spends three weeks switching trains, eating greasy sandwiches from the vendors hanging around in the old, dingy train stations. Sunny wouldn’t like any of the sandwiches at all, but Beatrice has to make do with what she can. No one talks to her, so she doesn’t get a chance to try out any of the other things she’d thought to say after she spoke to that woman. I’m visiting a relative. I’m in a special program. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers? She’s a little bummed about that, because she practiced the perfect eyebrow raise in the hand mirror she took from one of the chaperones, but it’s really for the best. She doesn’t need to be sidetracked.

Instead, she listens to how the trains sound smoother and sleeker closer to the city, watches how the stations get more impressive. She takes pamphlets from each station until she has a neat collection detailing train mechanics, local restaurants, and sometimes, if she finds one, the smallest books she’s ever seen. Beatrice sits in the hard station seats and flips through them while she waits for her train to come in. Mostly they’re books she’s read before, but she thinks they’re cute, being so tiny. She’ll show them to Violet and Klaus and Sunny, and her uncle, too. She knows they’ll enjoy them.

A voice mumbles indistinct static over the loudspeaker. Beatrice finishes her sandwich, puts the latest brochure in her bag, and gets on the next train.

The train station in the city is enormous, bigger than headquarters. It certainly looks as old as headquarters, but a little more distinguished, with a solid white floor and an endlessly high ceiling. Beatrice would be able to appreciate it more, she thinks, if there wasn’t so many people, all bustling past in a flurry of suitcases and elbows. None of them spare her a second glance, not even when she climbs up on top of one of the curved benches for a better view of the entire station.

Whenever Violet couldn’t figure out how to fix an invention, or Klaus couldn’t figure out the meaning of a sentence, or Sunny couldn’t figure out how to change a recipe, they would take it apart and look at each individual component before continuing. The same principle works for a city, Beatrice figures. A city is just a collection of streets, one right after the other, and all of them go somewhere. It’s not too hard to find out where, especially when you have the right map.

She finally spots the map display, drops back onto the floor, and goes and grabs every single map available. She squeezes her way through the crowd mobbing around the exit and emerges out on the city street into a sudden deluge of bright lights and noise. Beatrice blinks until it all evens out, all the traffic lights and towering buildings and the people, hundreds and hundreds more of them. She swallows, presses herself against the outside wall, and takes a moment to watch everything.

It’s strange. The ocean was vast, and they rarely ran into anyone out there, and headquarters, tucked away in a small town miles from the sea, had only about twenty neophytes and a handful of teachers and chaperones. But the city is full of jostling bodies and constant sound, like the whole world rushing around her, a storm that doesn’t stop. Beatrice thinks she might be scared, if she wasn’t so systematic about it. You can’t be scared if you know everything. It’s just different, is all it is. She reminds herself to breathe and thinks it’s just different.

Beatrice spreads the maps out in the park across the street, holding the edges down with rocks so they don’t blow away when the breeze kicks up. Everything is marked on the maps, every street and building and corner store, and even the best places to see certain birds. One map includes Nine Dreary Buildings to Avoid on Your Lunch Break, which is absurdly specific but exactly what she needs, and Beatrice hunts them all down with a careful eye and a black pen. All nine buildings are within a few blocks of each other, clustered in the center of the city. She’ll have to go through all of them, just to be sure. Klaus taught her it was good to be thorough. She puts the rest of the maps away and starts looking.

The first two buildings are too short to have a thirteenth floor. The third building looks like it was condemned years ago and no one bothered to do anything with it. The fourth building has so many floors that Beatrice loses track when she stands on the sidewalk and tilts her head back to try and count, and she looks through the directory inside the doors but doesn’t see any mention of her uncle’s name (or a pseudonym, or an anagram, or even just a suspicious blank space).

The walk to the fifth building takes the longest, because Beatrice has to find a path around the construction being done on seventh street, and takes ten minutes to wrestle with the map and figure out which street she’s on when she winds up in a dark alley with a lot of cigarette butts and one very noisy pigeon who tries to steal her map. The sixth building has the suspicious blank space on the directory, but it’s on the fifteenth floor. The seventh and eighth buildings, when she manages to find them, were mislabeled and wind up being two different diners, one of them even across from a completely different train station. Beatrice admits that they’re still pretty dreary-looking and uncomfortable, especially the latter one. She certainly wouldn’t want to eat at a place called The Hemlock Tearoom and Stationary Shop. That’s just tempting fate a little too much.

The ninth building proclaims itself to be the Rhetorical Building in faded but still distinct black print on an otherwise grey building, with a tattered brown awning over the glass double doors. It’s definitely tall enough to have thirteen floors—Beatrice counts twenty rows of windows going up the side. She bites her lip and scans the directory. Her heart leaps when she spots the little card for an office on the thirteenth floor. The name scribbled out, but whoever did it used a faded black pen and didn’t do that good a job, so she can still see the very clear L at the beginning and the S somewhere in the middle. She bites her lip around a smile.

This is it. This is her uncle’s office.

Beatrice pushes the doors open and takes a cursory glance around the lobby, and finds the inside lives up to the dreary reputation too. She wouldn’t have put so much sagging grey furniture and scuffed flooring and wilted potted plants in an office building. She ducks down as she hurries past the front desk so the bored receptionist doesn’t see her, vaguely wondering what it is about the building that her uncle likes so much to have an office here, and heads up the staircase. She can ask him when she sees him. She can ask him everything when she sees him, although everything is just one single question, but it’s everything to her.

The thirteen floors pass in what feels like a matter of moments, and Beatrice breaks into a run when she gets closer to his office, bursting through the doors onto the thirteenth floor. She darts from door to door, looking for the right number, wood creaking under her shoes, and almost barrels right into a panel of old, frosted glass on a door halfway down the hall. The only writing on it says DETECTIVE in peeling letters, which is exactly what she expected. Beatrice grins and knocks a few times, bouncing on the balls of her feet. When there’s no answer right away, she tries the doorknob.

The door is unlocked.

Beatrice tries with everything she has to contain her excitement, but it still comes through in her shaking hands as she turns the doorknob. “Hello?” she calls.

She comes face to face with a cloud of dust. Beatrice coughs into her fist, waving her other hand around to disperse it, and looks up to find a cluttered, but empty office.

Beatrice frowns and walks inside. The blinds are shut tight over the windows, so she eases them open carefully, letting in just enough light to see, and the office still doesn’t have anyone else in it. She checks under the desk, and out on the fire escape, and even under the papers on the walls, but there’s no reasonably tall man with her eyes waiting for her. She huffs out a sigh, her shoulders falling, but then the papers on the wall catch her attention. She looks closer.

They aren’t just papers—there are photographs mixed in, pictures of people she’s never seen before, and pictures of places, cities, hotel rooms, at least one rental car office, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and two separate theaters, and newspaper articles and pages ripped from books, all framing a humongous map of the city and surrounding areas, bigger than any she picked up at the train station. The papers are connected by a thin red string, wound around tacks and marking pins and what looks like an old bottle cap for a soda Beatrice doesn’t think sounds very pleasing. The middle of the map has more recent ones, polaroids dated a few months back of steep, rolling hills, a note paperclipped to one, neat typewriter type proclaiming it could be possible, underlined in a smooth, even blue pen. There’s a path marked beside them, curving through a wide and unlabeled space in the map.

That must be it, she thinks, nodding to herself. He’s not here, and she could be more upset about that, but she can’t be when now she knows exactly where he went. He’s pretty obvious for a detective, which makes her smile around a laugh.

She turns to the desk, which leans a little to one side, papers and a typewriter balanced precariously. A strangely-shaped paperweight sits on top of a stack of papers, and Beatrice mentally runs through every single animal she knows but can’t find a match. It looks like a snake or a worm or an eel, only with too many teeth.

Beatrice clambers up into the chair behind the desk, settles herself, and looks at the typewriter. It’s an old model, but well-cared-for, with shiny keys and a brand new ribbon, almost like it was waiting for her. Beatrice rolls in a sheet of paper, and then runs her fingers over the keys. She’s sure he won’t mind.

Dear Sir, she types. I am writing this on the typewriter in your small, dusty office, on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings of the city.

I am leaving this city, only hours after seeing it for the first time, to follow your path of yarn and pins. I am heading for the hills…

When she leaves his office and starts hunting through the bus schedules for an idea of how she’s going to get to the hills, she realizes, with an exhilarated jump of her stomach, that it’s now March 1st. She’s been nine years old for a whole day.

On her last birthday on the boat, which Violet had radically modified before leaving the island and on the journey after, Sunny made her a cake. There were no candles, because none of them ever used a candle, at least when Beatrice was looking, and Violet and Klaus read her favorite story, and everyone got icing all over their hands and faces. Beatrice can just barely hear the way they all laughed. There’s a thin fog over the rest of the memory, one that strangles the excitement out of her. She can’t quite recall what the weather was like, or what she wore, or what flavor the cake was or even what the story was and especially how close it was to the day where—

Beatrice clears her throat and looks back at the bus schedules. She doesn’t think I have to find them. She thinks I will find them.

Beatrice takes one look at the sandwich counter in the bus station and resolutely decides she’s too hungry for another sad, uncomfortably greasy sandwich, and she needs a much better option. She takes out her map and backtracks to the Rhetorical Building, because the closest diner is on that street, right across from the office, between a tailor shop and a building shaped almost like a short, squat pen. For a city that on the whole is a lot more dreary than she thought it’d be, the diner looks bright and welcoming, with soft lights in the windows and cheerful blue curtains. Klaus taught her to be aware of her surroundings, so she makes sure she looks at everything when she steps inside.

The diner isn’t very big, but it’s clean and well-kept, with tan booths against either wall, a line of square tables right down the middle, and a counter blocking most of the kitchen from view. The pictures on the walls are all framed and organized in neat rows, and Beatrice’s gaze moves quickly from the few pictures of an ocean and a group of people in front of a boat to the other ones of cityscapes, and then to a completely blank piece of paper with #47! scribbled in the lower right corner. She looks to the other side of the room and finds a tightly-packed bookshelf near the counter. She thinks Klaus would definitely approve.

She climbs up on top of one of the counter stools and smooths out her skirt, and then sees a tall man standing behind the counter, flipping an oozing sandwich on the grill. He looks at her with wide eyes, surprise clear on his face, but then he smiles, so genuine she could’ve just imagined the shock. Beatrice thinks he looks a little like a movie star, with that thick red hair and easy stance.

“What can I get you?” he asks.

“I don’t have much money,” Beatrice says, because Violet always taught her to be honest. Sunny taught her to lie, but she thinks Sunny would like this man too, if she saw that sandwich.

“Not a problem,” the man says. “It’s on the house. What do you like?”

“What are you making?”

“The best grilled cheese you’ll ever eat in your life,” he says, and he slides the sandwich onto a plate and sets it in front of her. Then he puts a napkin and a glass of water beside it and smiles expectantly.

It is the best grilled cheese she’s ever eaten in her life. It puts the millions of sandwiches she ate at all those train stations to shame. When the cheese pulls when she takes a bite out of it, she knows that Sunny would love this sandwich. It seems almost unfair to get it for free. “Are you sure it’s okay?” she asks through a mouthful of toasted bread and mozzarella and a hint of pepper.

“Tell you what,” he says, wiping his hands on his apron. “Have you read anything good lately? My friends and I are always looking for book recommendations.”

She wishes she could get everything in life with a good book recommendation, because that sounds like a great system. The last book she’d read had been back at headquarters, so that she would understand a certain code, but Beatrice liked it a lot anyway. She was told it was a classic too, and she knows lots of adults like it when you read classics. “I read a book about a girl who goes out to dinner with her family,” she says, “and cracks an egg on her forehead. Not at the dinner, in a different chapter.”

He laughs. “A friend of mine liked that one when we were kids,” he says. “She went around trying to crack an egg on her forehead too, made me go through a whole carton of eggs.”

“Did she do it?”

“She sure did. Got egg all over my aunt’s diner in the process, but she looked me right in the eye and told me it was worth it.”

Someone else sits down farther down the counter, and the man walks off in their direction, leaving Beatrice alone with the grilled cheese. But he comes back, a curious look in his eyes. “So what brings you to the city?” he asks.

She thinks this is the question where she shouldn’t be entirely honest. Beatrice sits up straighter in her seat, trying to pull the sandwich apart into smaller, more dignified bites, the cheese oozing. “I’m visiting a relative,” she says.

“A relative?”

“A relative,” she says. “That’s all.”

“Do you need any help?” he asks. “I know this city like the back of my hand, and I’d be happy to—”

“No,” Beatrice says. “I know what I’m doing.” She finishes the last of the grilled cheese and wipes her hand on the napkin. “Thank you very much.”

He frowns a little, like he wants to ask her something else, but then he settles on another smile. “If you’re ever in the area,” he says, “or you need anything, even just some good food, stop on by.”

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Jake Hix.”

“Beatrice Baudelaire.”

The only thing about the journey into the hills that Beatrice didn’t account for is all the open space.

The bus driver only takes her as far as a convenience store on the outskirts of the city, so Beatrice walks the nearby dirt roads out into the hills, stopping at the first sight of open, empty land. She grips the straps of her backpack, standing at the edge of the misty and faded earth spread out all around her, reaching on and on and on, sloping down at dangerous angles before disappearing completely in a thick haze. She swallows hard and stares even harder.

Beatrice focuses on the color. Even in late winter, it’s green, pale but distinctly green. They’re hills, not the ocean, with a horizon blurred white with fog and clouds. Nothing is a dangerous, roiling blue-black-grey, and the tall crests of the hills don’t move like waves, and nothing rushes through her ears like a scream, except the wind, which is much less thunderous than water. After all that, it’s almost silent, in the hills. It’s silent, and it’s not all that open, is it? There’s at least two scraggly little trees that she can see. Landmarks. Points of reference. She is not alone in the hills.

He’s out there, somewhere.

She starts walking.

Without the train schedules for something to keep track of, Beatrice isn’t sure how long she spends in the hills. Time passes in cool nights and cloudy days and an awful lot of grass with actually very few trees before, in a low valley in the hills, she reaches an encampment of about thirty shepherds. Beyond them, where she expects sheep, is an impressive collection of yaks. They might be the only people she runs into out here, and she’s starting to get worried, not so much that she won’t find her uncle, but that she’ll overlook him completely in all this space. The path on the map in his office was pretty vague. She’s going to have to ask them.

Beatrice approaches one of the shepherds. He looks like he’s the oldest, his wild and white beard tangling in the wind. He holds a thick, dark bell in one hand, his elbow propped against a sturdy walking stick, and watches Beatrice with startlingly cold eyes as she approaches.

“Excuse me,” Beatrice says. “Have you seen a man around here?”

“Depends,” he says. His voice rumbles like deep thunder, and it makes her flinch. “What’s he look like?”

Beatrice thinks about it. “Average height, not bald, fully clothed, answers to the initials L.S.”

“Oh,” the shepherd says, straightening up. “Him! He was here for a while. A strange one. Kept to himself most of the time. Stayed in that cave about two miles away.” He rings the bell, and the sound clunks and thunks against her ears. The yaks in the distance raise their heads and gaze in his direction. The shepherd, meanwhile, looks back at her with a raised eyebrow. “Seemed like he might have been waiting for someone, I thought.”

She feels a twinge of guilt and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She should’ve gotten here faster. “Can you take me there, please?” she asks.

“I don’t do anything for free,” he says shortly.

“I don’t have much,” she says, frowning, and it’s more true now than it was when she told it to Jake Hix. Between all the train fare and the subpar sandwiches and then the cost of the bus, Beatrice figures she has maybe seventy-five cents.

The shepherd bends down, sweeping a critical eye over Beatrice. When his gaze finds her hands, he points at the little band around one of her fingers. “That,” he says. “That would do.”

“Oh,” Beatrice says. She looks down at the ring, dull in the lack of sunlight. She’s seen it sparkle beautiful gold and red, the carving of the initial in the stone glittering brighter than anything. Something lost, something that was found again after so much time. Beatrice likes wearing it, even though she doesn’t always think about it.

But it’s not like it is a family heirloom, for her mother or her father or for Violet and Klaus and Sunny. It belonged to the Duchess of Winnipeg, and although it found its way through her family anyway, it’s certainly never really been Beatrice’s. She just thought that she’d be able to give it back to the Duchess at some point.

She slides the ring off her finger and holds it up for the shepherd. His beard parts in a smile, revealing awfully shiny teeth, and he snatches the ring up and drops it into his pocket. The yaks are closer now, and he winds his hand into the rope around one of their necks and drags it over. He climbs up onto its back and stares at Beatrice. “It’s a ride. You’d best get on.”

Beatrice pulls herself up behind him. She tracks the sun this time, over the huge shoulders of the shepherd, watching it dip through the sky as they ride.

“Did he say anything?” Beatrice asks at one point. “The man.”

The shepherd scratches at his chin. His elbow swings back as he does, jostling into Beatrice’s ear. “Something about a root beer float,” he says. “I’m in the mood for a root beer float.”

“That seems a lot to ask, in the hills,” Beatrice says, tilting her head to the side to avoid the elbow. “The closest diner is back in the city.”

“No, that’s what he said. I’m in the mood for a root beer float.”

“Oh,” Beatrice says, feeling her face flush.

“Well, there you go,” the shepherd says, some time later when he stops in front of a low but deep cave jutting awkwardly out of the earth. Beatrice thanks him, slides down off the yak, and makes her way inside.

There’s nothing much in the cave—just a few sheets of loose, stained paper, and a whole lot of bats, almost indistinguishable from the shadows. They squeak when Beatrice gets too close, so she leaves them alone in the back and focuses on the rest of the cave. A few sheets of peeling and faded flower-patterned wallpaper cling to the curved walls. A collection of wires sits near the mouth of the cave, and a lone light bulb rolls by her feet. The wind collects in the hollow at the center, making it drafty and uncomfortable. She pulls her sweater tighter around her.

From the shepherd’s words, she knew he wouldn’t be here, but it still stings to get all the way here and then find out he’s gone again, to find out she just missed him. But that just means she has to try again, try harder. That’s not a problem for her. She’s been through worse.

Beatrice rifles through the sheets of paper left behind. She picks out the least ruined one, the only mark a K by a ripped corner. She pulls out a pen and sits down.

Dear Sir, she writes. I have found you at last—but you’re not here.

She finishes her letter and folds it neatly. She didn’t bring a single envelope, and she looks around in her bag to find something else she could possibly trade for the shepherd to send her letter. She doesn’t think he’ll care for a sweater or her lock pick, and she needs them. Beatrice walks out of the cave, staring into the direction of the city. She can’t quite see it, but she’s sure it’s there, just as sure as she is that she’ll find her uncle when she gets back.

She starts to figure out how she’ll get back, because she can worry about the letter when she finds the shepherd. How long it’ll take to get out of the hills, where to catch the right bus, how she can find the diner—when one of the younger shepherds, not much older than her, trots over, tugging a yak behind him.

“The city’s a long ways away,” he says when he stops beside her, panting a little. “I think your best bet is this yak here.”

Beatrice stares at him, and then the yak. The yak yawns at her.

“He’s pretty comfortable,” the boy says, smiling. “And he’s got a good sense of direction. The best yak this side of the hills, I guarantee it.”

“What about the other side?” Beatrice asks.

The boy laughs. “No comparison at all.”

“Don’t you need him?”

He shakes his head. “I can make do without him for a while.”

He tells her he’s heard about a shortcut back to the city, through a mountain rather than the miles of rolling hills. Beatrice has never been on a mountain. When he points it out to her, an enormous shimmering outline through the fog, it’s the most amazing thing she’s ever seen in her life. It looks nothing like the ocean.

The mountain is dangerously uneven, but Beatrice has never been so high up before, and that and the yak make up for all the sudden dips and drops in the path. The yak seems to know where he’s going—she never has to keep him on track or nudge him along, and he always stops around sunset and lets her curl up against his side. Sometimes he stops in front of the occasional bush, and Beatrice makes sure she can identify the berries on them with what Klaus wrote in his commonplace book, and the two of them snack to keep up their strength, Beatrice making sure not to stain the edges of the notebook with juice fingerprints.

Sometimes she flips back, back to when Klaus was a few years older than her, to the page where she’d taken the photograph. She’d replaced when both the objects became hers. She likes reading what he wrote, the little bits of her family’s story, like he’s right beside her on this mountain even as he was trying to get through the Mortmain Mountains. Recipes Sunny put together, things Violet said, pieces of codes and books and memories.

The notebook was the last thing he gave her. He’d thrown it at her during the shipwreck, and she can still see that, plain as anything. The black clouds and the thunder and the lightning, the wood splintering up in a roaring crash under her feet, everything slick with the endless rain and the thick, dark waves, including the edge of wood keeping Beatrice afloat. Then Violet’s voice, shouting we’ll find you, I promise—

Beatrice pages through the notebook, staring at Klaus’s immaculate handwriting. “How much more mountain do you think there is?” she asks the yak.

There’s a lot more mountain, days and days of mountain. Beatrice promises herself that if she ever has to do this again, she’s bringing a calendar.

When she gets to the bottom of the mountain, the ground covered in rocks and patchy grass, still a ways out from the city but definitely closer to it than the spot where the bus had dropped her off, Beatrice isn’t sure what to do with the yak. She climbs down, dusts him off, readjusts her bag, and then watches him. The yak watches her. Then he yawns, turns, and starts meandering back in the direction of the hills. She figures he probably wouldn’t be the best yak this side of the hills if he didn’t know how to get back to the shepherd.

“Bye,” Beatrice calls.

The city is uncomfortably close when she gets back, full of a heavy, simmering summer heat. She wipes the sweat off her face and thinks she could also go for a root beer float right about now. But there's probably a lot more diners than dreary office buildings in the city, ones that will be harder to eliminate than the offices were. She's not even sure if he'll be in his office now either, after he wasn’t where he was supposed to be in the hills. The thought sits in a knot inside her, twisting up the more she thinks. She of all people should know where he is. What sort of person is she, if she doesn't know the whereabouts of her own uncle?

Beatrice winds her way carefully through the masses of people still crowding the sidewalks, as if they never left, like the same people from months ago have been standing around here all this time. She could pull out the maps, but she doesn’t see a place to put them down and look at them again. Beatrice finally comes to a halt in front of a square, stocky building, old pillars framing the tinted glass doors.

Violet and Klaus and Sunny told her about libraries. She doesn’t remember the one on the island, or the island itself, although Violet told her both were massive, and they didn’t have much of one on the boat, just a collection of books Klaus brought from the island. But Beatrice knows that a library is a sanctuary, a calm place, where someone is supposed to feel safe. She knows that her uncle considers a library all of those things too. And even if she doesn’t find anything, at least it’s probably air conditioned.

Beatrice heads inside.

The first thing she notices is that everything is so quiet. But not an unnaturally still quiet, more of a gentle, unobtrusive one, interrupted only by the occasional shuffle of paper. Beatrice understands with a rush what Violet and Klaus and Sunny meant. It’s like stepping into a whole world, one she could spend hours and hours in just reading, among the bookshelves and pale cream carpet and broad windows letting in a sunlight so serene that for the first time it doesn’t make her hands clench in fear.

Beatrice takes her time going through the library, taking it all in. She makes her way through aisle after aisle, down a staircase to the lower level. A short wall separates the little lobby near the staircase and the rest of the floor, and she follows it around where it curves to look at the room.

Her breath catches in her throat. Ten feet ahead, there’s a man standing in front of a glass case, his hands deep in the pockets of his suit jacket. Beatrice walks a little closer, staying against the wall, until she can see the plaque near the case, describing something about poetry and actresses and dedication to the theater. She can see herself in the glass, a distorted short reflection in a pale pink dress, and she smooths her hair on instinct. Beatrice looks up, and up, until she can see the sharp reflection of the man, blue eyes and dark hair and a suitcase beside him that has seen better days but still clearly proclaims the owner to have the initials L.S.

Beatrice ducks back behind the wall in her surprise, her hands gripping each other. What are you doing, she thinks frantically, her heart pounding and pounding. There he is!

But when she pushes herself away from the wall, her mouth open to call out to him, he’s gone. Her heart drops, and she rushes towards the glass case. She skims through the poem for a hint about anything, as he seemed to look at it with a great deal of concentration, but she stops at the line a word which here means “person who trains bats” because who writes a second verse with such an uneven rhythm, and there’s no way baticeer is really a word—then she hears quick footsteps thudding in the hall behind her. She turns and runs towards then.

Beatrice follows him outside, barely keeping up. He runs incredibly fast for a man of his age in this heat, whatever that age is. Beatrice knows it’s certainly much older than she is. She sees the edge of his hat, the corner of his suitcase winging around another street, and she keeps running. It’s him. She’s going to catch up with him.

She follows him to a nearby park, where she finds him yards away of her, almost collapsed on a bench, leaning to the side to examine something on the seat. Beatrice slows up. And then he’s on his feet again, strolling towards the lake. There’s something forced about his casual stance, and she picks up her pace, thinking somewhere inside that this is ridiculous. They’re both looking for each other, they’re both here, and she should just—

He bolts off, this time leaping with an unexpected agility over a patch of shrubbery, which Beatrice dodges around easily when she reaches it, tearing out of the park after him. Moments later, she sees him throwing himself into a bus one street up, disappearing completely when the doors snap shut.

Beatrice lets out a disbelieving groan, staring at the retreating bus. She can’t believe how difficult he’s being, or for what reason, or why he treats the city like a place he’s desperately trying to escape. For as much as he runs, he sure still seems to wind up back here eventually.

But now that she’s seen him, she knows exactly where he’s going. Where else would he go in the city, on this particular bus route? Beatrice has looked over all the maps, and she remembers exactly where to go. She wipes the sweat off her face, takes a breath, and keeps on going.

He still makes it to his office building before her. When Beatrice stops at the corner, clutching the nearby lamppost and gasping, the bus is already far down the street and he’s nowhere in sight. She swallows and heads for the Rhetorical Building.

The lobby is dreadfully cold and still dreadfully dreary, but she barely notices it this time. Beatrice bypasses everything and sprints right for the staircase, not even trying to hide.

It could be because she’s already run so much, but taking the staircase this time seems to take an eternity. She’s so sure she can hear him, wheezing a floor above her, and that pushes her forward when her lungs burn and her legs ache. She makes it to the thirteenth floor, flings the door open, and barrels down the hallway to his office door.

Beatrice tries the doorknob first, but it doesn’t yield. She pounds on the door for five whole minutes, and it rattles and shakes but no one opens it.

One of the doors further down the hallway opens, and a man sticks his head out. “Something I can help you with?” he calls. “I’ve never seen anyone open that door at all. Can I—”

“Thank you,” Beatrice says quickly, hoping she sounds more firm than out of breath, “but I have this under control.” The man shrugs and closes the door. Beatrice continues knocking and knocking.

Maybe you were wrong, a voice in her head whispers. Maybe it’s not him.

I’m not wrong, Beatrice tells herself. I’m not wrong.

She huffs out a sigh, drops her backpack on the floor, and pulls out the lock pick. She doesn’t want to pick the lock, but this is it, she’s not waiting anymore.

The lock springs easily. Beatrice jams the picks back into her bag, grips the doorknob, and hauls the door open.

The office is empty.

Beatrice gapes around at the office, almost incredulous. It looks different than it did before—the papers, notes, and photographs on the wall are new, linked by a thick blue yarn now. The typewriter has a sheet of paper sticking out of it, like someone was just there (and he was, he was just there, she knows he was). There’s a framed picture on the wall of a lighthouse. The curtains are different, stark white and clean and fluttering in the breeze because the window is open.

She runs over to the window, climbing out onto the fire escape. It’s distressingly empty as well. When she grips the railing and leans over to look down the rest of the stairs and into the alley below, she doesn’t find anything at all. She stands there a moment longer, just in case he reappears, her whole body coiled with anticipation. Then another moment, and another, and another after that, until the moments stretch into minutes and her expectations finally die like a doused fire. She pushes herself away from the railing, slides back inside, and slams the window shut. Beatrice glowers at it, then eases it back open. He’ll have to be able to get back in later.

She takes a look at the wall. Before, it was easy to tell where he was going. Now, Beatrice can’t figure out what any of the notes mean. They’re all scattered pictures of beach sand and close-ups of waves and an unsettling collection of curling, spindly things that look like dried seaweed. She catches a few glimpses of his handwriting, mostly just question marks, and some typewritten notes signed M. No matter how hard she tries, her eyes keep finding their way back to the pictures of the ocean, pearly blue and peppered with stark-white foam. Her jaw clenches, and she turns away sharply.

The desk has more papers on it than it did before, but no paperweight. Beatrice flips through them, but she doesn’t find her letters, or letters from anyone else. What she does find are lists of places she’s never heard of, most of them crossed off. The paper in the typewriter is completely blank, but she doesn’t feel like writing anything. She stares around the office, pointedly avoiding the wall, and tries not to feel too angry or too disappointed. It doesn’t work very well.

Beatrice walks back into the hallway and shuts the door behind her, frowning down at the floor. She follows him all this way, and she has him, they’re mere feet from each other, and then he leaves?

Maybe, she thinks, and then she stops, because she’s not wrong. It was him, it was, and despite how the decor has changed, this is the office she was in before. He was here, and then he was gone, and so there has to be a reason he’s gone now, a reason to figure out so she can track him down again. Maybe something came up, business, or an enemy, or maybe he was just hungry, or—or—

sssssssssshh.

Beatrice whirls around and wrenches his office door back open, staring desperately inside. But there’s still no one there. She shuts the door again and looks up and down the hallway. “What was that noise?” she says.

The door down the hallway opens again, and the same man sticks his head out. “Someone say something?” he asks, gazing at Beatrice.

“What was that noise?” she asks.

The man shakes his head. “I didn’t hear a noise.”

“I thought I—”

“It was nothing, probably.” He raises an eyebrow. “You know, shouldn’t you be in school?”

“Shouldn’t you be working?” Beatrice shoots back. It’s uncharacteristic of her, but she’s tired all of a sudden, and she doesn’t like how this bone-deep weariness feels. The man looks affronted, and he shuts his door with a loud bang.

She traipses downstairs, all thirteen floors. Beatrice walks past the old desk and the sad grey furniture and the limp potted plants and makes her way towards the front exit. She’ll just have to wait until he comes back, and she can do that across the street in the diner, where at least she can try to wrangle another sandwich out of Jake Hix. The grilled cheese feels like years ago, after trying to survive on the mountain.

Beatrice hears it again.

It’s a scuffle, or like a slither—the drag of a shoe, a split second brush against furniture.

Beatrice stops in the middle of the lobby, looking around. She only now notices it’s completely empty, the receptionist missing from her desk. A chill ripples down her spine that has nothing to do with the air conditioner. “If it’s nothing,” she says, “then what’s that noise?”

Something curls slowly around her left ankle, something like thin, calloused fingers, and then a hand clamps tight over her mouth. Beatrice gasps, the sound muffled by the hand. Someone heaves her up, jerking her back into a set of arms, wrenching her close to something dark blue and black. She inhales fabric softener and cotton but the color makes her think of salt and brine and she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe.

“When we drive away in secret,” rasps a woman’s voice in her ear, “you’ll be a volunteer. So don’t scream when we take you—”

Beatrice grabs at the woman’s hand with both her own. She drags it away from her mouth and manages to gasp, “The world is quiet here!”

The woman freezes. Beatrice lurches forward, tumbling out of her arms and onto the warped floor with a small shriek and a horrible thud. Beatrice feels horrible, with a red mark around her ankle and her whole body shaking as she stares up at the woman. She doesn’t understand, and that scares her almost as much as the woman. She hadn’t just learned the poem at headquarters, Violet had told her about it, it was something Violet’s parents used to say, but she didn’t—she hadn’t said—Beatrice doesn’t understand.

The woman—tall, in a thin, dark blue sweater, her hair massive and unruly and black—bends down in front of her. Beatrice inches back, trying to catch her breath.

She squints at Beatrice almost suspiciously. “Well, young lady,” she says, “have you been good to your mother?”

My mother is dead, Beatrice thinks in her panic, and then she forces herself to clear her throat and stop it. “The question is,” she pants, “has she been good to me?”

“You’re a volunteer,” the woman says.

No I’m not. “Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Beatrice Baudelaire,” Beatrice says.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “Baudelaire?” she repeats, scoffing. “Beatrice Baudelaire?”

Beatrice frowns. “Yes,” she says again.

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

“I do,” Beatrice says, blinking. “It’s the only name I have.” Which isn’t exactly true, but she’s never felt that Snicket suits her all that much. Beatrice Denouement, even, sounds like someone sophisticated, not a short nine-year-old girl with only a fierce determination to her name. Which is still Beatrice Baudelaire, no matter what this woman says.

The woman straightens up, her face cold, and then she seizes Beatrice’s hand and pulls her roughly to her feet. “You’re coming with me.”

Headquarters in the city is a lot different than the one Beatrice was in out in the country. The main difference is that this one is predominately underground, hidden under a two-story library on the corner of a busy street, and seems, from a cursory glance, like it’s going to be harder to sneak out of. They had to walk through a set of locked double doors in the back of the library labeled Secretarial Department, which lead to a long, tunneling hallway devoid of any typewriters, after all. It’s full of sudden dips and the occasional staircase and one long ladder that leads, when Beatrice climbs down it, to the sewers. She focuses hard on the layout, the curves of the passageways, the way the water drips, on the faded signs she can’t read hanging onto the domed walls, so that she’ll stop thinking about the churning in her stomach.

The path ends in another set of doors, framed in the darkness by flickering torches. Beatrice stumbles to a halt in front of them.

She’s sure that Violet and Klaus and Sunny, while they were on the island and on the boat, had to have used it. There were things Sunny made that could only have been made on top of something hot, even though Sunny always got that fierce, unreadable look on her face when she talked about what she could remember of fires. But Beatrice never saw it. She never saw flames jumping around each other, spitting in the darkness, smoldering orange turning into dangerous white-hot tongues.

Beatrice thinks of lightning and wet, foundering wood under her hands. She feels salt in her mouth again.

The woman shoves her through the doors.

The narrow hallways are bathed in cold, buzzing orange light, an unsettling color against the red brick walls and the hardwood floor. It’s almost claustrophobic, a maze Beatrice can’t parse even when she pays attention. They go up a set of stairs, their footsteps echoing in the silence, and then the woman steers her towards a door around the corner.

She catches a quick glimpse of the plaque on the door and its unnatural shine—vice principal—before the woman pushes her through it as well. Beatrice finds herself in a cramped, shadowy room, illuminated with one single lamp on the desk, where the outline of a tall man sits, hunched over what looks like a stack of papers.

It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the thin gloom hovering at the edges of the lamp. The shapes on the shelves along the walls sharpen. They look like tea sets, if tea sets were collections of just small, differently-patterned oblong jars, all topped with fragile lids, a handle on either side.

Beatrice swallows. She never saw what Esmé Squalor was so desperate to find. She wonders if one of the sugar bowls crowding the shelves around her is what she was looking for.

The man looks up and sets down his pen. “Who’s this?” he asks, his voice a low, heavy murmur.

“My name is Beatrice Baudelaire,” Beatrice says, before the woman can say anything.

The man raises an eyebrow at her, like the woman had, and then leans back in his chair. The look he gives her isn’t suspicious—it’s appraising. Beatrice shivers.

“Well,” he says.

They put her in a room down the hall and tell her firmly to stay put. It’s a windowless room with pale walls and only a few other students, all of them her age and sitting behind typewriters, and a particularly flatfooted and wrinkled old instructor, who starts sobbing when Beatrice tells him her name. He motions to a free chair with a long white handkerchief and manages to tell her that they’re writing business letters. He motions to the blackboard and tells her there’s the format. He motions to the typewriter in front of her and tells her, please, write a nice letter, and they’ll all make it through the day.

He shuffles away from her, back to the front of the room. Beatrice watches him go with a confused frown. She doesn’t have time for this—to be stuck here again, or to try and figure out what’s going on, or to try and reason what she’s supposed to say in a business letter. She drops her eyes to the typewriter. It’s not too bad, but certainly not as nice as the one in her uncle’s office. She presses a few of the keys to test them, and they stick and then stab back into the air with loud, fierce snaps, so much that she jolts back in her chair. He’d never give her a typewriter this bad.

Beatrice gets an idea.

She has to get word to him somehow. She has to survive, too, and she’s perfectly capable of doing that anywhere, although she would prefer to do it in a situation where she isn’t at risk of being accosted violently around the ankle at any given moment, among other things. It seems like her best bet to get to him is to stay here, and not wait, this time, but let them lead her to him. It won’t be too hard. This city and this organization are his. He’s here, in this room, and he’s here, in this city, and she knows she will find him if she stays here.

She gives herself a shake and rests her fingers on the keys.

Dear Sir, she types, one eye on the instructor, now leaning against the wall and wiping his face with the handkerchief. I am writing to inquire further on the matter we discussed earlier this year. I’m in my business letter writing class, which is taught by a flat-footed man so sad and unaware that I am certain he will give me an A on this assignment without reading anything but the first sentence of each paragraph. I could say anything here at all. For instance: a “baticeer” is a person who trains bats. I learned that in a poem I watched you read.

The instructor straightens up, still dabbing under his eyes, and wanders around the room, glancing periodically at the typewriters. Beatrice schools her expression into business-like thoughtfulness. When he comes by, he scans the first line of her letter, heaves an enormous sigh, and keeps walking.

After careful consideration, Beatrice continues, biting down a smile, I am pleased to enclose the following information.

The instructors confirm her identity after careful consultation with twenty different people, all of whom Beatrice has never seen before, and a series of photographs and files Beatrice isn’t allowed to see, all of them crowded in an office and staring down at her an hour and a half after Beatrice has finished her business letter.

They tell her it was very irresponsible of her to sneak out like that from the country headquarters. Beatrice does not tell them it was very irresponsible to have a lock so easy to pick and a headquarters so easy to navigate in the dark. She stares back up at them, tries to look appropriately chided, and hopes they’ll think she feels appropriately chided. What she does feel is cornered.

One of the adults standing towards the back, his face in shadows, scoffs under his breath. “Just like her uncle,” he says.

“Which one?” asks another.

“You know,” he says, waving a dismissive hand. “That one.”

“The dead one?”

“Aren’t they both dead?” asks a different voice.

“No, I’m sure at least one of them is alive—didn’t you get that message?”

“You know for a fact I haven’t gotten a single olive jar in three months, since someone broke my refrigerator—”

“For the last time,” someone sighs, “I did not break your refrigerator—”

Beatrice takes the opportunity to slip unnoticed from the room and into the hallway. She takes slow steps, listening to the little click of her shoes on the tile. The adults at the country headquarters had been secretive but easy to predict. The adults here, though—

She stops. She peers down, past the hem of her dress, and lets herself look at her left ankle.

It’s not that she doesn’t like it here, with this organization. They’ve given her a place to stay, and most of the volunteers her age were kind to her at the last headquarters. Most of all, she has vague memories of Violet telling her that people who read that many books can’t be all bad, that most of them were just trying their best, that they’d been noble enough in the end. But she’d said it with a curious look on her face that Beatrice can almost picture, like there was so much more Violet wasn’t sure how to say, like she still hadn’t figured something out, and it hurt to think about it.

That silence had carved out a worry in Beatrice, a hole she feels in her stomach now. She tries to imagine a permanent mark on her ankle, a tie, an anchor, bigger than a promise to be noble enough. She knows what Violet and Klaus and Sunny told her about what happened to them, and she knows what she’s read in the thirteen files, and she knows Klaus wrote in his commonplace book that the organization was their only hope. She knows there are a good many details that maybe they hadn’t left out when they told her their story, but maybe just hadn’t gotten around to telling her at the time. Beatrice knows about the hard choices between what seems right or wrong—and she knows the iron grip that woman had on her ankle. She knows about the circumstances that killed her family, her uncle, her parents.

Because she could be wrong, she has to be certain. Beatrice doesn’t like being wrong. She looks up at the hallway, the old pictures on the walls, the lack of windows, the flickering lights casting shadows around her, and tries to feel certain that her only choice is to stay.

With the considerable amount of volunteers in the city, Beatrice figures she’ll have to share a room with someone, but one of the adults takes her to a single room, off to the side, and tells her, once again, to stay there and not make any trouble.

It’s a simple room, with a bed, a closet, a desk, two lamps, and a bookshelf (already stocked, and she stops perusing it when she finds the book about the girl and the egg and the family dinner, because her hands start to shake). No windows. The walls are all solid stone, but the floors are wood, and Beatrice turns the lights off and stands in almost total darkness—there’s still a sliver of light under the door from the hallway—and tests out the places where the floor squeaks for hours. She memorizes the room, feels with her hands for catches or knobs or secret compartments and doesn’t find a single one.

The light under the door disappears. Beatrice, standing by the bed on the opposite wall, goes completely still. She listens.

After ten seconds, the lock on the door clicks.

After a whole three minutes, the shadow under the door still hasn’t moved. Beatrice swallows and keeps watching. She knows better than to try and pick this lock. They aren’t going to make getting out easy. Finding him might not be as easy as she thought, either.

That doesn’t mean I won’t, Beatrice thinks.

She fully expects to sit through their classes again, to tell the teacher how Sunny taught her to make a meringue, to relearn the same codes she learned from Klaus’s commonplace book, to listen to someone besides Violet explain the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light.

She doesn’t. Instead, she finds herself in the vice principal’s office again, early in the morning, although it’s impossible to tell in all the shadows in his office. She takes a moment to wonder where the principal is, but then the vice principal starts talking.

“You strike me as a young woman with a lot on her mind,” he says. “Someone very intent on her goals. And we value that here, you know. Commitment, dedication, loyalty. I think you—and the organization—would benefit the most if we assigned you to a chaperone immediately. There’s a place for you in this world, Miss Baudelaire, and I am most anxious for you to find it.”

Beatrice almost thinks he’s being incredibly nice, if it isn’t for the way his eyes glitter and the way he leans back in his chair, so slowly she barely notices until he’s staring down at her, almost pinning her in place.

Violet did teach her to be polite, but she also taught her to stand her ground. She swallows. “Thank you very much,” she says. “Do I get to pick my chaperone?”

“I’m afraid not,” he says, and he doesn’t sound the least bit apologetic. “We haven’t allowed that for quite some time.” The vice principal smiles. “It lead to some unfortunate events.”

Her chaperone is a woman named Marguerite. Beatrice looks through every record available and can’t find any positive proof that Marguerite has ever had a last name. What she does find out is that Marguerite spent her own apprenticeship working with the remaining volunteer animals.

She gets a letter telling her to meet her at the aquarium on the other side of the city, with just enough for the bus fare. Beatrice checks the letter over and over again the whole way there, but she doesn’t find any other hint about what she’s supposed to do to find her chaperone.

Beatrice wanders the aquarium for a long, uneasy hour before a short woman with chin-length, curly blonde hair catches her eye by the jellyfish tank. The woman gestures at one of the jellyfish. “I always thought they looked like clouds,” she says, in a soft voice. “I like to look at them when summer is dying.”

Beatrice bites her lip. She stares at the jellyfish and tries not to see them, tries to watch the reflections in the glass instead. Summer is dying. She always thought she’d be good at codes if she had to use them, but actually hearing them out loud just makes her uncomfortable. It could just be all the water, though.

“Well,” she says carefully, “summer is over and gone. And you can see clouds any time, you just have to look for them.”

The woman smiles, a surprisingly gentle smile, the lines at the corners of her eyes crinkling. Beatrice thinks she looks too young to have lines like that. “Marguerite,” she says, extending her hand. “You must be Beatrice.”

Beatrice shakes her hand.

“What sort of animals do you like, Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks away from the eerie blue glow of the tanks around them and says the first thing that comes to mind. “I don’t think bats are all that bad.”

As it turns out, the organization’s last collection of trainable bats is in the hills. The whole trek back into the mist, Beatrice can’t help but think her timing could sure use some work.

Beatrice and Marguerite set up camp in the cave, close to the shepherds and obviously very close to the bats. They pull down the remains of the wallpaper, and between the two of them, Violet’s inventing knowledge, and another piece of wire from Marguerite’s pocket, they rig up the light bulb. It casts a dim and hollow yellow light around the cave before it sputters and flickers, drenching them in a momentary darkness before lighting back up.

Beatrice gasps out of shock. The light bulb reminds her of the lamp in the vice principal’s office, something scary and unknown in a place that’s supposed to be safe. Fear grips her chest, and she makes an excuse to Marguerite that she doesn’t even remember and gets out of the cave as quickly as possible. She sits at the mouth of the cave in the darkness with her legs stretched out in front of her, her hands in her lap. Beatrice tells herself that hugging her legs to her chest would not be very mature.

Marguerite comes over and sits down beside her, not too close but not too far away. “Some children are afraid of the dark,” she says.

“I’m not,” Beatrice says, truthfully. Klaus taught her constellations, and Sunny made up her own, and Violet made a telescope so they could see them better. Beatrice knows there are beautiful things in the darkness, and she likes the quiet.

“It’s alright if you are,” Marguerite says gently.

Beatrice knows why Marguerite says that. It’s something a lot of the chaperones think. Some of the adults themselves are probably scared of the dark, even when they haven’t lived through a storm at sea. But she’s not. She’s not scared of the dark. The afternoon was when the storm started, and the dark was when the storm stopped, when everything calmed down. She couldn’t see anything at all, not the broken wood under her fingers or how alone she was, and she could breathe. She could keep floating and imagine Violet and Klaus and Sunny were still right there, telling her she’d make it.

Too much light is what frightens her. Too much light, like a jagged streak through the sky, lightning carving the boat in two, illuminating every fractured piece and the fear on Sunny’s usually calm face. The flashlights of the volunteers who found her, combing the beach for something else, the beams cutting cold white light against the sand.

“Beatrice?”

Beatrice looks up. She uncurls her fingers, which she only now notices had clenched tight into her palms. She swallows. “I’m not afraid.”

Marguerite smiles. She reaches over and squeezes one of Beatrice’s hands, just once.

“We’re going to be training bats to deliver messages,” Marguerite says in the morning. “It’ll be useful, especially all the way out here in the hills.”

Beatrice stares at Marguerite, and she hopes her incredulity isn’t too apparent on her face. She clears her throat and tries to think about how Violet would address this. “Are bats really the best to use?” she asks. “What about telegram wires, or even just pigeons, since they could fly at any time, or—”

“Sometimes we have to send messages at night, and bats come in handy for that.” Marguerite doesn’t interrupt her, just speaks patiently, reasonably, like making a point in a casual debate. “Sometimes the easier way can be more dangerous. People expect that more than something different.”

Beatrice isn’t sure if that makes complete sense. Marguerite definitely notices her confusion, and she smiles. Marguerite smiles a lot, but it’s never condescending. “It can be a little hard to understand,” she says. “I thought it was when I was your age, too. But it’s not a volunteer’s job to question, Beatrice. It’s a volunteer’s job to know, and to trust in what they’re doing.”

Somehow, it sounds right the way Marguerite says it, with her soothing voice. It sounds right, the idea of just knowing, since Beatrice is so certain in it anyway. She has to remind herself that they started this whole conversation about the absurdity of bats being used as a messenger system to counteract that. Beatrice has seen a lot of absurd things, because Violet told her about all her inventions over the years, and Beatrice isn’t quite sure how all of them worked but she knows that they did. But training bats, especially to deliver messages, just seems to take it a little too far.

“It’ll take a bit of time before we can train them that well, though,” Marguerite says. “Have you ever held one before?”

At the very least, training bats gives Beatrice something to think about. You really have to focus, otherwise they squeak too much. It gets easy after a while, once Beatrice knows how to do it. Marguerite is impressed, but Beatrice just tells her that you can do anything as long as you know how to do it.

Marguerite isn’t very talkative, which Beatrice appreciates. What she does say doesn’t always make that much sense, but she never pushes Beatrice or pressures her. She tells Beatrice stories about her own apprenticeship, the last of the volunteer feline detectives and what Marguerite’s own chaperone told her about the eagles. It’s the kindest anyone has ever treated her since Violet and Klaus and Sunny, and that makes Beatrice feel more comfort than she has in some time.

Beatrice is hunched over a notebook while sitting at the mouth of the cave, trying to figure out how to get the bats to follow the patterns of the yaks, because she’s sure that makes at least some sense, when the young shepherd who loaned her the yak last time comes up to her. Beatrice smiles at him, but she stops when she sees how nervous he looks.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

The shepherd bites his lip, looking over his shoulder at Marguerite, who’s examining one of the yaks in the field, and then motions quickly at Beatrice. “You forgot something,” he says.

Beatrice frowns. “What?”

He reaches into one of his pockets and pulls out a small circle. The weak sunlight catches on the slim gold band and the dark diamond set in the center, and Beatrice’s heart leaps when she can see the thin initial in the stone. He puts the ring in Beatrice’s hand and presses her fingers around it.

“I think you might be able to give it back to her, one of these days,” he says.

“Do you know her?” Beatrice asks, clutching the ring with both hands. “Do you know where—”

But the shepherd shakes his head, glances again at Marguerite, goes rigid when he sees the older shepherd approaching her, and then scampers away. Beatrice watches him go, until he’s a shrinking figure among the yaks and she can hear Marguerite calling her name. She lets herself wonder, for a moment, where the Duchess of Winnipeg is now, how much the shepherd knows, why no one can ever give her a clear answer. Then she reminds herself that none of that matters. She has all the answers she needs. She just has to get through this. She just has to get through this, and find her uncle, and then find her family, and she just has to get through this.

She slips the ring in her pocket.

She turns ten while they’re in the hills, which she only knows because she packed a calendar this time. She doesn’t tell Marguerite because Beatrice doesn’t want her to make a big deal out of it, because Marguerite would, and Beatrice spends that night staring up at the stars and trying to make up her own constellations. She connects lines and dots into books, wrenches, a whisk. Then, with her eyes shut tight, she tries to remember that last birthday. It was four or five years ago now, wasn’t it? And there was cake, she knows there was.

Beatrice forces her eyes open. What she remembers is Violet, tying her hair back with a ribbon as she worked on the boat; Klaus, adjusting his glasses as he read to Beatrice from a book; Sunny, talking cheerfully into the radio Violet had built. Everything else is all in pieces, a puzzle she’s losing the parts to.

I have to find them, she thinks, blinking fast. No. I will find them.

The first time Beatrice sends out a bat and it comes back, days later, with a message from one of the shepherds they’d sent out to expect it, she feels a lot more pride than she ever thought she would about training bats to be mail carriers. Marguerite laughs and sweeps Beatrice up into a tight hug, drawing her close, and Beatrice hugs her back.

In late summer, the hills still misty and chilly, they get called back to the city. Marguerite and Beatrice make their way back to the city on foot this time, through all the hills, no mountain. Beatrice sorely wishes she still had the yak.

When they get back to the city, Beatrice actually doesn’t see much of Marguerite. Marguerite tells her only that something is happening, but not exactly what. In the meantime, she tells Beatrice it’s for the best if Beatrice stays at headquarters, where she can write up the reports on training the bats. Beatrice figures someone would’ve had to write the reports at some point, so she doesn’t mind—except that someone seems to be watching her at all times, especially when she uses a typewriter.

Beatrice spends most of her time underground and growing increasingly frustrated, because it’s been months since she’s written to him, months since he’s heard from her, and he must be wondering where she is. He must be. She’s watched mail leave the city headquarters, and they never put a return address on anything. How can he write back to her if he doesn’t know where she is?

But he has to know. He’s been here. He’s in this city, and so is she, and wouldn’t he be able to figure out what happened to her, being a detective and all, or at least a man who has that printed on his door? He went through this too, he knows where she is, why does it have to take so long?

Marguerite comes back, and they go on assignments and scope out pet stores and parks and the occasional fancy restaurant, but Marguerite also lets her look in every single diner window they pass, and lets her linger on the street with the Rhetorical Building, even when the street is wildly out of their way. Then they go on less and less assignments, and she sees less and less of Marguerite, and Beatrice spends her time in so much silence that it starts to dig under her skin, a burrowing restlessness.

At night, she sneaks into the record room again. She isn’t sure what she’s looking for. Maybe the four files she couldn’t find at the country headquarters, or anything about her family, or anything about the organization. Anything at all about anything. And it’s not to find anything new, it can’t be, it’s just—it’s just to reassure her. He’s going to find her. She’s going to find him. They’re going to find her family.

In the back of the room, in a dusty filing cabinet drawer she has to pry open with two pens, she finds a thin, dark brown folder half-stuck under the back of the cabinet. Beatrice wiggles it out, flips it open, and sees the shape of a single piece of paper. She pulls out a flashlight from her pocket, steels herself, and flicks it on, squinting against the light.

It looks like a legal document, almost like a sort of deed, yellowed with age. Beatrice scans through it, and her frown deepens when she finds out it’s for a room in an office building, a room on a fourteenth floor, an office—an office in the Rhetorical Building, right above his. Beatrice grips the edges of the paper and reads further. Her heart stops dead when she sees a bold, imposing signature in red pen across the bottom of the page.

Beatrice Baudelaire.

She’s been in the building, but she’s certainly never tried to get an office there. This must be her, she realizes, reminding herself to inhale. This must be who they named her after.

Beatrice knows about Beatrice Baudelaire. She wasn’t just engaged to Beatrice’s uncle once, she was a person, a mother. She taught Klaus how to fence and how to throw a punch, and she taught Sunny how to scream, and she taught Violet how to stand her ground and be fierce and formidable. She could bake and sing and act, and she ate strawberries in the summer and danced with her husband to old records and took her family to the beach and read long books to them and did different voices for each character. Now, years later, here she is. A whisper in Beatrice’s ear, a gentle kiss on her forehead.

Beatrice Baudelaire sounds like she was a wonderful mother.

Beatrice shakes her head quickly and slips the deed into her pocket. It’s not like she thinks about her own mother a lot. Beatrice knows all about her anyway. Kit Snicket was a good person, a volunteer, someone who helped. So was Dewey Denouement. But sometimes she wonders, just a little, just for a moment, what things would be like if her mother was alive. If her father was alive. If they would’ve liked her. If they would’ve read to her, if they would’ve taught her things, if they would’ve liked strawberries or some other fruit and if they danced and if they baked and if they could act or sing. If she’d still be here, scrambling for the remains of her family. If she’d still see flashes of lightning when she closes her eyes, and the harpoon gun and fungus she’s imagined and the sandy grave at the far edges of her memory and the Baudelaires got their parents, didn’t they, if only for a while, how come she didn’t get hers, how could Violet and Klaus and Sunny do that—

Something creaks upstairs.

Beatrice slips from the records room, shuts the door, and feels her way through the darkness. Her hands find the banister of the stairs, and she creeps up them slowly, waiting for another noise.

The upstairs floor creaks for a second, and then stops. Then another creak, a little further down the hall, like someone’s taking long strides, trying to be light and quick. Beatrice heads up the rest of the stairs and sees the hazy outline of a shape in the darkness, one with short, curly hair.

“Marguerite?”

Marguerite turns, looking over her shoulder, still poised to keep going down the hallway. “Beatrice,” she breathes.

Beatrice hasn’t seen her in what feels like ages, although she knows it’s only been about a week. She walks towards Marguerite, and even in the darkness she can feel a heavy tension in the air. “Where are you going?”

Marguerite turns around all the way and bends down in front of Beatrice. “I’m sorry,” she says softly, “but I have to leave.”

Beatrice hears every word of that sentence perfectly, and somehow she still doesn’t understand it. She blinks. “What do you mean?”

“I was going to leave this with the vice principal for you,” Marguerite says. Beatrice hears a slight rustle, Marguerite digging in a pocket. She takes Beatrice’s hand and places something in it, a curved, spiral wire with a handle at the top. A corkscrew. “Something—something came up, and it’s not safe for me to be in the city anymore. I’m starting back for the hills tonight.”

“I can go with you,” Beatrice says, “I can—”

“No,” Marguerite sighs. “I can’t take you with me. I really am—so, so sorry, Beatrice.” Her voice cracks, and her hand settles on Beatrice’s shoulder. “There was so much I was looking forward to, so many things I wanted to do with you, but sometimes things don’t work out how you want them to. But you’ll be okay, I know you will. You’re brave and resourceful, and you’ll be a wonderful volunteer.”

Beatrice frowns at the slim outline of Marguerite’s face. Her fingers curl around the corkscrew, pushing it hard into her hand. She swallows and finds a lump in her throat, one she tries to breathe around. “But I—”

“Don’t worry,” Marguerite says. Her voice is still so gentle, but it doesn’t make sense with her words. Nothing about any of this makes sense. “You’ll know what to do, Beatrice. We all do. I know you will.”

“I know now,” Beatrice says quickly, “I just—”

“I have to go,” Marguerite whispers. The weight of her hand disappears from Beatrice’s shoulder, and then her face is gone, and Beatrice stands in the hall and listens to Marguerite’s progress downstairs from the distant creak of the floorboards. The sound of footsteps vanishes not long after, and Beatrice is alone. The metal of the corkscrew sits cold against her palm.

Beatrice listens, and listens, and listens, and hears nothing else.

Beatrice hasn’t cried in a long time. She knows she has—everyone does when they’re younger, and she can remember, through that fog, Sunny making faces at her to cheer her up—but it feels such a wrong thing to do now. Hot tears spill down her cheeks, her eyes squeezing shut, her mouth pressed tight so the rising whimper in her throat doesn’t escape.

It’s not as if she didn’t expect Marguerite to leave. All the chaperones do, eventually, and even if she had liked Marguerite she knew somewhere it wouldn’t last. She just didn’t think it would happen like this, so soon, that just like that she’d be gone, swept away from her. All the thoughts Beatrice tries so hard not to think come rushing into her—how much longer will this take, how much longer will she have to do this, how much longer will this feel, because she feels ten years old for the first time and so lost, still adrift in an ocean that could tear her apart as much as it could lead her somewhere safe. She wants to go home, but the only people who were ever home to her feel further away than ever. In a second, the despair and uncertainty she’s been running from overtake her like a crashing wave.

She thinks awful, vicious things. The Baudelaires are dead or they would’ve come for her by now; her uncle hates her and never wants to see her; her mother was a horrible person to die and leave her all alone like this; she’ll grow up like they all did, abandoned.

Beatrice walks back to her room, step by step. She shuts the door, and then sinks down and starts sobbing into her knees.

The vice principal calls her to his office the next morning. Beatrice sits in the chair in front of his desk, her hands in her lap. She’s shoved the memory and the uncertainty and the guilt of last night to the back of her mind, but it still flutters in her lungs, a light panic she tries to smother with each careful breath.

He seems to have acquired even more sugar bowls since the last time she was in here, and they tower above her on those whisper-thin shelves and make the office feel even tighter. A different item sits on the shelf right behind his desk, about the size of a milk bottle, and Beatrice stares at it. It stares back at her with a dark, beady eye, the long face and snout of an impossibly cruel animal, teeth bared and black. Then she notices—it’s only half of a statue, like it’s been cut down the middle, revealing a smooth, solid wood interior.

The vice principal himself looks unbothered, impassive as always. “It seems you’re without a chaperone,” he says.

Her hands tighten together involuntarily. “I’ve been without a chaperone before,” she says, and her voice only trembles a little.

He smiles. It is a thin and humorless smile, smug, and he leans slowly, too casually, back in his chair, his elbows on the armrests and his own hands folded neatly. She wishes he would stop doing that.

“You look like you want to ask me something,” he says.

Where is my family and when will I find them?

But she knows he won’t tell her. “What do you want to ask me?” she says instead.

The vice principal almost laughs. His eyes are dark and fathomless blue. “What did Marguerite leave you?”

Beatrice does not think of the corkscrew up in her room. But she has to say something, she has to show him something. She puts her hand in her pocket and finds the folded-up deed she’d stuck there last night. A deed for an office in the Rhetorical Building. A deed signed with an identical name.

She stares at the vice principal straight on. “An office,” she says. “On the fourteenth floor of the Rhetorical Building.” Beatrice pulls the paper from her pocket, unfolds it, and sets it square on his desk.

He stares at it, and then keeps staring at it, his eyes flicking over the paper as if looking for a loophole. When he doesn’t find any, his mouth thins, his jaw clenching. She’s never seen him with so much emotion on his face before.

“I’ll need a typewriter,” Beatrice says.

The next thing Beatrice does is get business cards. They say Beatrice Baudelaire, so no one will bother her about that, and then Baticeer Extraordinaire, because that’s the closest thing to an occupation she has right now, and then The Rhetorical Building, since that is the name of the building, and finally Fourteenth Floor, which is self-explanatory.

The third thing she does is go to her office. It hasn’t been used in a long time, so it’s empty and dusty and even colder than the lobby, and full of one too many spiders. Beatrice spends an afternoon cleaning the years out of it, and even repairs the radiator, Violet’s ribbon keeping her hair back from her face.

She sets her typewriter carefully on the desk, puts Klaus’s commonplace book in one of the locked drawers, puts the corkscrew in a completely different drawer, and then realizes she has very little else to put in the room. A business card taped to the door, some paper beside the typewriter. The brochures and books she collected from the train stations lined up on the little shelf on the wall. She keeps the Duchess of Winnipeg’s ring on a long chain around her neck so she always has it with her and no one else can see it.

She uses the back entrance so she doesn’t have to go through the lobby.

She stays awake in the office the first few nights, watching the window in the dark in case they try to come back for her, but Beatrice is left alone there.

Beatrice doesn’t know how old the building is exactly, but it must be old, because the wood creaks, and it creaks specifically and consistently in his office, right below hers, muffled but very distinct.

She finishes typing her most recent letter, pulls it out of the typewriter, then takes the corkscrew from her desk and sits down in the middle of the floor.

The wood parts, splitting easily into tiny spiral shavings, and Beatrice keeps twisting and twisting the corkscrew until there’s a reasonable hole in the floor and she can hear the creaking a little more clearly. It’s a small hole, not large enough to see through but large enough to put her letter through if she rolls it into a tiny tube, like she said she would. She throws the corkscrew back on her desk, grabs the letter, and starts to roll it up.

The creaking stops. Then the wood groans low, like he’s leaning on a specific spot, and she leans close and listens.

“Snicket,” says a woman’s voice.

Beatrice startles, jumping back with a slight gasp. She didn’t account for someone else, she didn’t think he knew anyone else, she didn’t think it wouldn’t be him pacing. She doesn’t know who this is.

“Did you always have that hole in your ceiling?” the woman says.

Someone replies. Beatrice can’t hear what he says, but the voice is a low murmur. That’s him, she thinks, biting her lip. That’s him

“You want me to come in here and find you buried under your ceiling one of these days?” the woman continues. “Don’t you think I deal with enough already as your editor?”

He says something else, something Beatrice still can’t hear.

The woman sighs. “If we don’t leave soon, we’re going to be late, and Cleo might just kill you.”

Beatrice waits until she hears the door close, and then sits for a few seconds in the silence, willing her heart to stop rocketing in her chest. She re-rolls the letter, looks down at the hole, and then pushes the letter through it and presses her ear against the floor. Beatrice can just barely hear it bounce off the ceiling fan, uncurl, and land open and waiting on his desk with the tiniest crinkle of the paper.

She sits back on the floor with a long sigh. She hopes she isn’t waiting too long, and Beatrice doesn’t do a very good job of squashing down the worry that she might not know how long it’ll take.

She waits a whole week and still doesn’t get a reply. No one comes to her door, no one tries to get in through the fire escape, no one leaves any secret messages anywhere, and she doesn’t hear anyone pacing in the office below her. She doesn’t hear the woman’s voice, and she doesn’t hear any sign that he’s in there at all. Everything is eerily quiet.

Beatrice goes across the street to the diner, because she figures being miserable but not hungry is better than being miserable and hungry. When she pushes the door open, Jake Hix catches sight of her from behind the counter and grins broadly. “Hey, Beatrice!”

She means to smile, but there are four people sitting at the counter, and all of them turn and look at her with interest. Two men wearing glasses who look like brothers, a sharp-eyed blonde woman in a cloche hat, and then the man in the middle, pale and staring at her with wide eyes. Beatrice looks back at him, suddenly breathless. Not just a mysterious figure she’s never seen, or one she glimpsed in the middle of a chase, but a real, physical person in front of her.

“It’s you!” she exclaims. “You’re here!”

They keep eye contact for a single, almost terrifying second—but then he clears his throat, holds up a hand, and spins around, putting his back to her.

Beatrice stands there, torn between disbelief and irritation. The other two men say something, and the woman rolls her eyes, gets up, pulls them to their feet, and herds them past Beatrice and out of the diner.

“Give him a moment,” the woman whispers to her, winking.

She doesn’t want to, she wants to go over and sit beside him and get right to things, but she picks a corner booth by the window anyway and sits down. She still has a good view of the counter from here. She swallows and tries to quell her anticipation. She wonders how long a moment is, to her uncle.

Jake walks over and gives her a smile. “What can I get you?”

Beatrice looks over his elbow at the counter, at the glass resting in front of her uncle. It occurs to her that she’s actually never had his drink of choice. She looks back up at Jake. “A root beer float.”

Jake smiles.

“And, could you please do me a favor?” she asks, unzipping her bag and digging around inside. “If I give you a message, would you give it to him?”

“Sure thing,” Jake says.

She takes out one of her business cards and turns it over.

Cocktail Time

I am sorry I embarrassed you in front of your friends. I only wanted to talk to you.

The waiter agreed to bring this card with your drink. If you don’t want to meet me, rip it in half when you are done with your root beer float, and I will leave and never try to contact you again.

Ideally, she doesn’t want to say that, to give him an out, now that they’re both here, now that she’s this close, but it’s polite. She figures he’ll appreciate that.

But if you want to meet me, she continues, biting her lip, I’m the ten-year-old girl at the corner table.

B.

Beatrice folds the card in half and hands it to Jake. She watches Jake walk back to the counter, lean in and hand her card to her uncle, watches him open it with shaking fingers. He reads it, but he doesn’t turn around and look at her yet. He takes a sip of his root beer.

Jake brings her her own root beer, and she drinks it and barely tastes it, her eyes still fixed on her uncle. She reminds herself not to swing her legs and settles for jiggling her foot against the smooth tile, a tiny little tap as she waits and waits and waits. She thinks of looking anywhere else, trying to remain sophisticated and calm, because this is it, for real, but she doesn’t want to miss a single thing. She curls her hands together in her lap, forgets about the root beer float. She counts out the seconds in her head, stops when she thinks it’s stupid, starts again when he pushes his glass away and looks at the note again.

Finally, he stands up. He refolds her business card and puts it in his pocket. Then he turns, and he faces Beatrice, coming over and stopping beside her table.

He’s just like how Beatrice imagined him, now that she can finally see him, instead of just across a crowded street or a library wing. Definitely average height, if a little bit taller, in a grey suit and tie, his hair dark, thin at the temples. He looks at her half-finished drink, and then slowly meets her eyes, and they are blue, the same blue as hers, the best color she’s ever seen, brighter than every dark and endless sea. The corners of his mouth turn up a little, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He sits down across from her and extends his hand.

“My name is Lemony Snicket,” he says, his voice deep but soft, just as she expected.

Beatrice smiles, and her face almost hurts with the force of it. She shakes his hand with both of hers. “Beatrice Baudelaire.”

Lemony Snicket takes her to the park a few streets over and buys her ice cream. She points out that they could’ve had ice cream in the diner, but he tells her that he would rather have their conversation away from where a journalist could come back at any second and faithfully record every single moment of it. Beatrice eats her vanilla with sprinkles and figures the journalist had to be the woman, with eyes like that, and then she watches her uncle. Her uncle, real and in person after all this time, after almost two long years of searching, finally beside her.

He matches her pace, which isn’t very brisk, but he looks like he could run at a moment’s notice. He keeps his hat drawn low over his eyes, his gaze lingering on shadowy trees and exits and every single discarded cigarette butt before moving away. He takes quick, economical bites of his ice cream (vanilla, caramel swirl, in a cone).

“Did you like my business card?” Beatrice asks. Her voice comes out a little louder than she intended, which probably explains why Lemony jumps.

He pulls her business card out of his pocket. “It’s very nice,” he says. “Do you like bats?”

“Well,” she says, “I think they’re cute, but that’s all. I’d rather not work with them.”

“Are you saying that you gave me a false business card?”

“You can put anything on a business card,” Beatrice says brightly, looking up at him. “Do you still have those ones that say you’re an admiral in the French navy?”

Lemony looks shocked, then embarrassed, and then takes an incriminating crunch out of his cone. He doesn’t answer.

Beatrice’s throat sticks a little when she swallows her ice cream. She ducks her head, her shoulders bunching up, and scrapes at the bottom of her cup with her spoon. He’s just a quiet person, that’s all, she tells herself, and she’d thought that before. That he doesn’t have anything else to say is just because—just because he doesn’t have anything else to say. That’s fine. They have more important things to talk about than bats and business cards.

She waits until they’ve both finished their ice cream and points out a bench for them to sit down on. She even makes sure it’s out of the way, under a tree, reasonably shady and away from prying eyes, if that’ll make him feel better. Lemony hesitates for a few seconds before he agrees, and they sit down. Beatrice’s legs dangle off the edge, and she holds her hands tight in her lap and reminds herself again not to swing her legs.

“You said you didn’t know where Violet and Klaus and Sunny were,” Beatrice says, leaning towards him, “in your research. That you didn’t know what happened to them after—” Her voice catches. “—after we, we left the island. But that was years and years ago. You have to know now.”

Lemony looks at her, and this close, Beatrice can see the lines around his eyes, etched into his face. They only seem to deepen the longer they look at each other. He folds his hands together, just like hers, and Beatrice bites down on the inside of her lip, her toes wiggling in her shoes.

“No, Beatrice,” he says. “I do not know where the Baudelaires are.”

Some of the air disappears from her lungs, and she gapes at him. “Well—then can you help me find them?”

Lemony sighs. “I have looked,” he says slowly, “but my associates and I have found very little. I do not know if—”

“But you have to know!” Beatrice exclaims. The corners of her eyes start to burn, and she can feel a sharp sting tightening her throat, because he was supposed to know, she was so certain, and he had to be too, so why? “You have to, you’re the only person I’ve got left, and I came all this way to find you, and you—you—” Everything comes tumbling out of her, everything she’s been pushing aside and burying down inside her since the shipwreck, every cruel thought and punch to the gut, every second spent waiting. She’s never talked this much in her whole life, and now she can’t stop, even with Lemony looking at her with wide, broken eyes.

“You left me all alone out there!” Beatrice shouts, her voice cracking. “I followed you for two years, all by myself, and I wrote you letters, and I followed you into the hills, and I stole office space to be close to you, and I did everything I could to find you, and you didn’t do anything!”

She wants to be angry. She wants so much to be angry, to keep yelling, to hurt him, but now she can’t stop crying. “I thought you h-hated me,” she sobs, rubbing at her eyes, tears sticking to her fingers and her cheeks. “I th-thought you never wanted to see me, ever. I thought—I thought—”

Something soft brushes against her wrist, and she lowers her hands and finds Lemony, offering her a handkerchief. “I did not, and I do not hate you,” he murmurs firmly, for a man as heartbroken as he looks. “I could never.”

Beatrice takes the handkerchief and wipes at her eyes. It doesn’t do much in the way of stopping her tears.

“This is an awful thing to say,” Lemony begins quietly, “but the horrible truth is that I did not know if it was you. I did not know if you were—someone else.”

Beatrice swallows thickly, curling her fingers around the handkerchief, clutching it in her lap. She knows what he means and it’s like a dull knife twisting inside her.

“And I know you are not her,” Lemony continues, “or my sister—although you do look remarkably like her—or an old villainess intent on exacting a stiletto-heeled revenge after all these years, or a morally grey woman for whom I still feel a great deal of sadness and guilt. I wondered, though. I think even the most rational mind will wonder in the depths of loss, even when it knows better. It is a wound that does not want to heal, or at least one that I believed could not. When I did know it was you, which I assure you was only within the last year, I—I did not know if I could help you.”

“Why not?” Beatrice asks, sniffling. She chances a look up at him, out of the corner of her eye, and catches a quick, haunted look passing over his face. He stays quiet for a little longer, as if figuring out the right words.

“I was afraid,” he whispers. “It is no excuse for what I did to you, but it is a reason. When I was a little older than you, I made a considerable amount of promises, few of which I managed to keep, and I told myself that fear didn’t matter, which was an admirable if incredibly incorrect stance to take at the time. And since then, very few things have gone right. I lost my family, my friends, the loves of my life, and everything I had, because of that fear. You can have the best of intentions, and still doubt, and still worry, and only realize much later that all you’ve ever done was wrong. I once said that people do difficult things for more or less noble reasons—but it is truly so much harder than that.”

Beatrice lets the words sink in. She thought she knew what it was like to struggle with a decision, to do something villainous to be noble. She thought she understood her uncle and her family—all of it—after everything she’d read, after Klaus saying that it took a severe lack of moral stamina to commit murder, after Sunny suggested it and the fire regardless, after Violet worried about Hal’s keys and disguising her and her siblings and all the other tricky things Beatrice remembers her worrying about.

He looks like Violet, Beatrice realizes suddenly. Not really his facial features, but his expression, just like when Violet told her the volunteers were noble enough. He looks as lost and worried about the consequences as Violet did that day. She feels that hole in her stomach again, that gaping uncertainty—that fear. Beatrice thinks of avoiding the lobby where the woman grabbed her ankle, lying to Marguerite in the hills, covering up her doubts with a vehement optimism. She thinks of every time she read about Lemony’s fear and all the things she didn’t understand until this second, all the things she still doesn’t understand, because there is still so much, so many secrets she could drown in, trying to find them all by herself.

“I put you in a great amount of danger by not stepping in,” Lemony says. He looks at her straight on, his eyes filled with tears. “I did to you the same thing for which I despised so many people, people I too was supposed to trust, because of my cowardice. I cannot apologize to you enough, and you do not have to accept it, Beatrice. I would not blame you if you didn’t.”

Beatrice sniffles again, her mouth wobbling, and watches him for a moment longer. “I don’t know,” she says carefully. She doesn’t like saying it, but it’s true and she has to say it. She takes a breath. “I don’t know.”

They sit in silence on the bench for some time. Lemony wipes his eyes at some point with the back of his hand, and Beatrice holds his handkerchief back up to him, but he shakes his head with a small, trembling smile and tells her to keep it. Beatrice runs her thumb over the handkerchief, each individual stitch along the hem, the afternoon breeze drying her face. She thinks, almost impossibly, that she feels a little less lonely. Not quite not alone, but just not as lonely.

“Although my associates and I have found very little,” Lemony says, “that isn’t to say that there is nothing to find. If you would like, I would like to help you find the Baudelaires.”

Beatrice’s head shoots up, her eyes wide. “Really?”

“Really. We can hope for the best, at least.”

“I’m good at that,” Beatrice says. “I—it can’t be impossible. Everyone thought finding you was impossible. But you’re here.” And he is, isn’t he? Despite his previous absences, here he is. It doesn’t fix everything, not immediately. But it can be enough for right now. Here he is. Here they are.

ending notes: 

i went into this fanfic with a pretty clear idea of where it was going to go, and then realized i’d need to pull out the beatrice letters so i could put them in this, and then did a lot of screaming along the lines of ‘i need to put a yak in this??????????????????????????????’ and ‘good job danhan you shot a hole through my characterization AND my timeline.’ so this vibes with maybe like, 85% of the beatrice letters. i did what i could. (and then this fic gave me so much trouble when i was trying to edit it. like, so much trouble. i only hope this all like, reads okay.)

but once i thought of ‘quiet lil child knows really so little about the world and has been through so much that she adamantly and somewhat optimistically clings to what she does know and that is challenged over time,’ i was reluctant to stop writing that. babybea is definitely her own person but she’s also definitely her mother’s daughter, so that girl is gonna be pretty tightly wound up and trying her best to hide it. i didn’t really buy her constant worry that lemony wasn’t who she wanted him to be while she was writing to him. because she does still have that bright but firm optimism of her father!! and i didn’t want babybea to be as rooted in (or as dependent on) vfd as her predecessors because she has to be the character to break that cycle. she has way more important problems than unattainable worldly nobility….and training bats.

[earthnashes]

LAST OF UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

I started playing the very second it was made available to play and just finished it last night at like 4 in the morning. And of course it destroyed me. I love this series man so much man. ;w;

SO! I don’t usually do this but I’m like, fuckin’ dyin’ to talk about it a lil bit so if ya have plans to play it, SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT. <:

-Aight so lemme just say right off the bat that this game is fucking. Gorgeous. The environments, lighting, visual design, the level design, everything was spot on. And don’t get me started on the CHARACTER MODELS. AND ANIMATION. Like bro that shit was lifelike in not just appearance, the characters emoted and carried themselves with so much life they felt legitimately real. They were all so unique too; characters had unique special ticks to just them (Like Ellie pinching her fingers when nervous or upset, or Joel standing taller and squaring himself when talking about hard subjects like he’s bracing himself for it, or Jesse giving his stunted headtilt when he talks) and expressed in a way that was just. Bruh. Aight I’mma stop but fuckin hell what they pull off with the characters in specific in LoU (both part 1 and 2) is just somethin’ outta this world.

-For anyone interested in playing it, the game is roughly 22-30 hours long if you’re just focused on the story, and much longer still if you take the time to explore and find all the little secrets. Some secrets include unique cutscenes and dialogue that are well worth the look; I haven’t found all of ‘em yet but I’m considering trying a completionist playthrough.

-Joel’s death fucking destroyed me. I’m in no way surprised he died, but it hurt regardless, just how quickly things went south for him and Tommy there. And ELLIE. FINDING HIM AND WATCHING HIM GET REKT WAS PAIN INCARNATE. Set the tone hella hard and I’m fuckin’ here for it.

-I’m not gonna lie I fully expected to dislike Abby given she rekt Joel, even though I figured it was for a pretty good reason before it was revealed her pops was the doc Joel killed. But damn. I really enjoyed Abby, a lot actually. From a gameplay standpoint I dare say I enjoyed her section more than Ellie’s since you were BLASTING ENEMIES with those fuckin’ GUNS of hers. And by guns I mean her arms’, jesus she was shredded. As a character, she felt a lot like Ellie from a different perspective and mindset, and I really appreciated the reflection the two of them had. Two sides of the same coin, basically. Also I really, really liked how killin’ Joel brought absolutely no peace to Abby at all, and you caught her beginning to regret it. And it kinda sorta acted as the catalyst to her shift in how she viewed the world. I think that’s a good portion why she latched onto Yara and Lev so hard. Perspective is everything, and there is always more than just one side of a story.

-In the same vein I had a blast learning more about Abby’s friend group, dynamics, how she lived, who she worked for and her past and everything. Of them all I think I liked Nora the most, but Mel and Manny were both reaaaalll close seconds. O:

-Speaking of, DOGS. DOGS DOGS DOGS. So many dogs man and you got to play with and pet them! Fuck yeah. That should be a rule in gaming; if you have a cat or a dog in the game, you should have a button to pet it. Also good gorl Alice is best doggy don’t fight me on this. uwu

-Jesse and Dina were the beez knees I fuckin loved them man. They were exactly the sort of folks I can see Ellie being best friends with. ALSO, this one isn’t major, but I really appreciated that there was no love-triangle here? Dina and Jesse dated, smashed, didn’t work out but they still remained good friends. Ellie’s first reaction to seeing Jesse is to confess that she and Dina kissed, and Jesse readily accepted the fact that Dina moved on (and he had too). It’s just refreshing. No bullshit love triangle there, just three people who really understood each other. Also jesus christ, I really didn’t want Jesse to die. Goddamnit. But I’m so glad they didn’t kill Dina too like, I was fully prepared to see her get fucked up. Base rule of LoU: anyone you like has a high probability of dying. ;w;

-BRO THINKING OF JESSE, ELLIE, AND DINA MADE ME REALIZE THE PARALLEL OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO MEL, ABBY, AND OWEN. Ellie’s triangle was essentially non-existent; no feelings of betrayal or anger, just understanding and love, like there was a deep-seated bond here that would weather anything. If Jesse had lived, I wouldn’t doubt he, Ellie, and Dina would have lived together to raise the baby together. Meanwhile Abby’s triangle had Owen seeming to unable to let go of the past he and Abby had together, that poor bastard was still in love with her, and how that supplemented the slow deterioration of all three’s friendship. I was sad to see Mel turn on Abby the way she did but like. I mean.  Dude was ready to leave Mel in the dust for Abby despite HIM GETTING MEL PREGNANT. Abby also kinda did drag everyone into this, even if it was of their own violation. Oof. Though it did feel like she was angry at both Abby and Owen equally, not just blaming Abby for everything there... or at least the romantic relationship part. Honestly probably one of the few times I actually enjoyed a love triangle in a story, or at least of this caliber.

-Isaac, the leader of the WLF? He was cool as fuck. I love how much character they packed into him without even showing him too much. Like there was a scene where Nora mentions she tried to question Isaac about Owen and she said “he gave her that fucking look and told her to drop it”. Hell, when he was talking to Abby, he isn’t that much taller than her but he felt like he outright dwarfed her with the way he carried himself and how they reacted to him. I love shit like that man. But anyway fuck Isaac. uwu

-Not gonna lie I kinda wish I got to see the leader of the Seraphites, but it was hella cool to learn that she had been dead already and how the Seraphites operated with and without her. I don’t think I found everything regarding that specific point in game, but it sounded a lot like a peaceful religious leader who’s words and teachings were twisted to suit the goals of corrupt members of the tribe. She was essentially an equivalent to Jesus, at least to the Seraphites.

-I honestly really loved all of the characters introduced but I have to admit that Lev and Yara were standouts. Yara’s one hell of a big sister, lemme tell you, and the lengths she went through to make sure Lev was safe really shooketh me. AND LEV. MY CHILD. MY SON. To those of you who are familiar with the LGBT+ controversy around the game, he and Ellie are what people are complaining about. Ellie because she’s gay, Lev because he’s trans.

Lev in particular was heartbreaking. His tribe were outright hunting him for who he was, as well as Yara because she chose to protect him. The mindset the tribe had was pretty much isolated to them though.

And jesus. That scene with him and his mother? Fuck.

-YARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA :( BRUH that scene pissed me off, fuck you Isaac, you bastard.

-THE SCENE. WHEN YOU PLAY AS ABBY. AND YOU FIGHT ELLIE. WAS SO FUCKING COOL. AND SCARY. Ellie man, that section really showed how efficient and smart she is. She legit tricked me a few times not gonna lie, like I thought she didn’t see me but she’d pretend she wouldn’t, only to ambush me with a FUCKING MOLY. Also the fact that the game outright says “hey uhhhhh you can’t actually take her head on, she’ll fuck you up in a heartbeat bro”. Welp. A really strange mix of horror and sadness and pride there. Hm. :/

-Mom!Ellie was so fucking sweet to see. And it made me catch a glimpse of hope that Ellie actively tried to soldier through for her fam’s sake. But she clearly had demons she had to confront and I’m angry at Tommy for disrupting her and Dina’s life, but it felt necessary. Still made me sick to my stomach to watch her go after Dina fucking BEGS HER TO STAY. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

-Speaking of Tommy, it was so sad to see how much he fell after Joel’s death. It really showed just how much he was like his brother though; underneath a gentle man is someone you best not trifle with, and is very familiar with doing horrific things to reach a goal. Because fuckin hell, Tommy is legit a badass. That sniper part was SO. COOL. Aaaaand terrifying. RIP Manny. :/

-Bro, I’m very curious to see more about the Rattlers but. They were fucked up in a special kind of way. There’s no telling what they did to those people they captured and enslaved. Seeing Abby in the state she was in after seeing her throughout all the game in tip-top shape was painful. That poor girl was literally skin and bones and... just beaten down.

-ELLIE AND ABBY’S FINAL FIGHT WAS SO SAD. I HATED (but I loved) EVERY SECOND OF IT. I was so scared Ellie had fully lost herself there, when she threatens an unconscious Lev to force Abby to fight, who at that point, very clearly didn’t want to. Honestly. Ellie clearly didn’t either, far as I could tell, but it felt like it was the only way she knew how to confront everything. Fight it, until you kill it, or you die. It also felt like Abby understood that since she was in Ellie’s shoes once upon a time.

-I don’t care what anyone else says I’m so happy Ellie let Abby go. I’m so glad she chose not to go through with it. For so long Ellie has been angry and resentful about a lot of things, and she never got a choice once throughout the majority of her journey. As much as I will 100% agree with Joel sayin “fuck this supposed cure, fuck the Fireflies”, it’s not fair of him, or the Fireflies, to just outright take that choice from her, that she didn’t really have one to begin with. She was justifiably angry with Joel and the moment she chooses to try and forgive him, he dies. Another choice stolen away from her. The fact that she chose mercy despite everything, and it was prompted by a memory of Joel, the very reason she was doing this, is profound to me. Like she finally understood why he did what he did, and why he said he’d absolutely do it all over again. Hell, she probably even reached the understanding that her and Abby really aren’t that different from one another in that aspect.

-Ellie returning to an empty home, with Dina and JJ gone, was heartwrenching. I fully understand why Dina left and she honestly had every right to, but it still hurt man. :C AND ELLIE. PLAYING THE SONG JOEL MADE/SUNG FOR HER. ALWAYS KILLED ME. But this instance in particular was something else man like fuck I balled like a baby. Especially when it was followed by the fact that Ellie and Joel were on the cusp of mending their broken relationship only for it to be ripped away man. Goddamnit.

-ELLIE AND JOEL DUET NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. FUCKIN HELL I love this game.

-----------------------------------------

So, this isn’t really a review more than it is me just sharing some of my thoughts on the game, but if ya want me to give it a rating? 10/10. If not a perfect score? At least a 9/10.

The Last Of Us as a series is one that’s moved me more than any other game I can think of honestly (outside of Telltale’s The Walking Dead), and just like the first one, LoU2 left me thinking about it for hours after. It’s thought-provoking, it’s compelling, it’s fun as fuck, aaaaand it’s made me cry like a baby a good number of times. I also really appreciate the fact that, in this game, they actually show the consequences of your actions. Like, they made you consider the fact that you aren’t just killing grunts to get to the next enemy or mowing through mindless drones. You’re killing people, who have lives, and friends, and families.

We got to see Joel for who he was: a very broken man, with a very dark past, who has done very horrible things in this shitty post apocalyptic world, but he is a father, and protective, and loving and thoughtful, who will do anything, anything, to protect Ellie. Blood or not, Ellie is through and through his child. But Abby only saw a monster, and could you blame her? He killed her father, and countless others, and she never got the full story. Just that a man came in and killed the entire hospital, put an end to even the smallest possibility of finding a cure, killed her dad in cold blood, and walked away no problem. And then it cycles right back to Ellie, where Abby becomes her monster.

It’s just some grade-A storytelling as far as I’m concerned, and I’m someone who usually prefers happy endings. LoU always leaves me feeling bittersweet but goddamn do I love this series. I’m kinda hoping for a DLC, to be honest? Like LoU part one, where you found out about Ellie and Riley. I wanna see what happens to Ellie; I get the distinct feeling she returns to Jackson and hopefully scrounges out some semblance of a decent life there, after confronting Tommy and (hopefully) making peace with Dina. But we’ll see! uwu

[just-jammin]

The Child

Word Count: 1731

Summary: A Child is chased a by a bunch of guards because They stole some food.

Sounds cliché, doesn’t it?

We’ll find out about that...

>> --^-- <<

No.

No no no no no.

Those were the thoughts that were repeated like a mantra in the mind of a Child, who was in the middle of... a pickle, for a lack of better words.

Enraged shouts ring out throughout the market as they chase Them, seemingly appearing no more than 12. The Child was trying to escape, struggling to carry handfuls of bread & fruit. Along with that, a sack that was almost as big as Them bounced on Their back, which was mildly inconvenient to Them.

Gods, They should’ve cut Their hair earlier. It was becoming longer, more tangled, maybe a bit curlier, but who fucking cares about that. The only complaint about Their golden-brown locks is how they get into Their line of sight frequently, occasionally making themselves enter Their nearly-soulless eyes as well.

Anyway, Their scrawny body was trying its best to carry the food, which might be as heavy as the Child Themself. When They finally exit the shaded area, the sunlight hits their olive skin, with some parts darkened due to prolonged exposure.

People turned their attention to the chase as guards continue to yell at Them, with added pissed off reactions from merchants when they knocked down a few of their products. The witnesses noticed that the Child was stumbling over their oversized stained chiton, but They recovered their footing quite impressively.

Their rhythm of breaths became shakier as sweat started to trickle down their round & fairly wide face. The expression on Their face is a mix of emotions. Fear, pain, maybe a bit of snark. You probably know how it feels to be tailed by adults that are much more capable than you are.

Murmurs start to come across the city. Some are concerned about the Child, some worry about the guards or the King himself, while others are obviously angry about the property damage (to be honest with you, that’s probably the most important thing to talk about right now /s). The bustling streets became more packed as They dashed through twisting paths. A vault over a table, sliding under passersby’s legs, the Child was pretty experienced in running away, even with damaged sandals.

Later on, there would be fewer ways to escape as the guards are closing in on Them. Of course, that meant more chances of inevitability in finding a dead end in an alley.

“Oi!” a guard called, “where do ya think yer goin’, rat?”

Pffft. A rat. Can their insults get any worse?

The Child let out a halfhearted chuckle before They turned around to face whatever’s blocking Their way out. Unfortunately for Them, They were one of the shorter kids, making Their supposed obstacles appear like towering statues to Them.

Well, that didn’t help the anxiety building up inside Their heart.

Having a closer look at the few guards, they were heaving on their scale-covered armor. At least, that’s what it looked like. Some tough leather was wrapped around their forearms & calves, with studs for probably decorative purposes. All of them had a spear each, which was now pointed towards the Child.

Backing up towards the wall, Their thoughts were a bit more astray than before. It was strange; they ranged from weird takes on whatever the other children talked about, to slightly traumatizing moments with Their family. The abuse, the shouting, the threats, all of that. The sequence of events occurred often, too, as they didn’t always succeed in doing what They’re doing now. After all, Their family is a poor one, they couldn’t even find jobs if they had the chance.

The guards’ death threats snapped The child back to reality for a while. All They could do was keep Their eyes shut, crouching & cowering in Their current position.

By now, They awaited for the Fates to cut Their thread at this very moment.

...

You know what, screw the suspense, ‘cause that didn’t happen.

They opened their eyes to see two children, possibly older than Them, tackling the guards & reaching for their spears. Only three guards were blocking Their way, so the dispatching was quick enough. And with the spears, they got the men staying on the ground by targeting their necks.

The other two children were visibly taller than the Child and stronger too, evident in the way they took the guards down. Some of their features were similar due to being siblings; they both had tan skin, messy black hair, & of course, first-hand experience in the streets.

One of them was wearing bandages around her head, with a single large bloodstain on it, implying that she had an injury recently. Her hair was tied up in a single braid, having more than a few fly-aways sticking out. As she pointed the stolen spear at one of the men’s Adam’s apples, her pale brown chiton on her athletic build flowed with the wind. A stern appearance was painted on her face, looking with disappointment.

The other one had his hair slicked back, but it looked more poofed than flattened. Cloth bandages were wrapped around his wide arms, which were good for bonking guards’ heads together. His equally wide build was clothed in a beige chiton, soaked with sweat & sticking onto his puffed up chest. The spears he’s holding were crossing each other, pointing to the sides of two men’s necks, hunching over them as he did it.

As he sneers towards them, his Sister faced the Child & mouthed a word to Them.

“Go.”

After realizing what she said, They immediately bolted away from the alley. This time, They don’t know what They’re running for. They don’t know where They’re going. Where to take refuge. Where to stop. Where to stay. Only escaping & a yearning for rest filled their weary mind.

A sharp turn led the Child into the heart of the city. It was filled to the brim with people, rich or poor, tall or short. Just a bunch of passing citizens navigating their way through the ever-bustling area.

They squeezed through small spaces, bumped on some people every now & then, and just generally had a hard time, but that didn’t stop Them. In fact, what motivated Them to do all of this even more was the indignant calls of the guards, now freed from the Siblings’ grasp.

Still, Their aching legs never stopped. Their quick breaths never wavered. Their passionate drive never burned out.

Unfortunately, a gruesome contact with a granite column on Their face stopped them abruptly.

aGH, FUDGE-

The Child fell on the hard floor, having them emit a grunt due to the pain on Their ass. Letting a couple of tears roll off Their cheeks, They sat there for a bit till They saw some red stains on the column They bumped on.

They were surprised for a while that They brought their hand to cover Their mouth, but They felt something dripping on Their hand from their nose. Bringing Their hand out, They saw blood.

Blood that was slowly trickling down from the side of Their hand through Their palm.

Using the same hand, They put it on Their nose & felt it painfully shifting with every touch. A few more tears drop on the ground as They stood up & assessed Their situation at the moment.

The sack was a bit flattened because of the impact it had on the ground, and the handfuls of bread & fruit were now scattered near the column. The Child could hear the men’s shouts from afar, which were slightly unintelligible if it were for the distance between them.

The guards got closer & closer, They were now hearing one of the men yelling, “WHERE DID THE CHILD GO?!”

This time, They’d heard & witnessed the civilian’s reply.

The civilian in question shakily pointed towards Them & stuttered, “Th-There! He r-ran by the Temple!”

Wait... the Temple?

When They stepped a bit further from the column, They saw a row of identical columns beside it. Under an angled roof was intricately-crafted & colored designs of the Gods, heroes, and myths. They could only identify some from overheard conversations, but They know that they’re myths nonetheless.

So yeah, They’re in a Temple. Great.

Along with that, They also noticed a young woman nearby, maybe in her 20s. She was wearing a pale pink ankle-length chiton on her fairly average build, with her fair skin almost blending in with the Sun. Her auburn hair is in a braid, which is beautifully wrapped around her head. She seems surprised, & she’s questioning Their situation by the bloodstained column.

The Child started trying to gather up the fallen food & shoving them into the sack, with a rather large loaf of bread in Their mouth as they hurry up to finish Their task. Some more tears fall down as Their eyes were stung by the sunlight.

However, the woman approached Them & started helping, though she picked up one of the fruits for herself. When They noticed, They gave her a suspicious look, but then They shrugged & got back to Their business.

Huh. She guessed that They were doing a casual good deed. Nice job.

The guards’ dirt-grinding footsteps became louder with every second wasted, so the woman tapped the Child’s shoulder & gestured for them to go in. Having nowhere else to hide, They followed her inside the tall wooden doors of the Temple.

They were immediately greeted by a humongous pale golden statue, which depicted a naked woman standing on a seashell, with her chest & groin covered by bejeweled imitations of swirling water around her. After a good look at it, They concluded that They were in a Temple dedicated to Aphrodite, which was a shock, to be honest.

Sure, They grew up in this city, but They haven’t been downtown that much, so the reason for the sheer awe in Their face was pretty legit.

After a few minutes of admiration, They shook off from their daze & tried to call for the woman, but to no avail. With a deep sigh, the Child continued to process Their surroundings, gazing on the shining tiles & more carved columns.

They weren’t sure what to do now. They’d pray to her, but They weren’t sure how it worked. They didn’t pass by any temples when stealing for Their family, after all.

Filled with fatigue, relief, & overall confusion, They dropped to their knees.

And so, the Child prayed.

[nad-zeta]

Match up ^o^

May I request a Match up, please?

I’m at the part when I have to choose a route and I honestly don’t know/care. So I decided why not let some lovely internet stranger choose for me? Who do you think I would pair the best with?

I also noticed how much effort and detail you put into these so I decided that it was only fair to try to put in just as much effort in requesting. Or maybe I am just extremely vain so blabbering on this much about myself comes naturally (I also wouldn’t be too suprised if this were the case lol). Either way, I apologise for this getting so long. And without further ado, let’s learn about yours truly. Uh, yay?

I will start with my physical appearance because that’s easiest.  

First of all, I am rather tall for a woman. Pair that with the fact that I constantly wear boots with 8 centimetre or greater heels and I almost always cap out somewhere above 182 centimetres (that’s 6 feet in American). So yes. I’m not exactly the approachable type, on the account of my height and near constant resting bitch face. I always look pissed off at something (and to be fair, I usually am).

I am a brunette with boring brown eyes. Nothing of note there. 

I prefer to walk on my toes, for whatever reason. I also have great posture when I walk and these two factors always make it seem like I am floating. I’ve been told that I always seem very confident and self-assured. Which is complete bullshit because 90% of the time, I am winging it. 

I am a dancer (of sorts. More on that later), so I am rather slim and toned. This is literally the only aspect of my physicality that I am actually confident in. The rest of me can burn in hell for all I care. 

I am also very touch adverse. I hate the feeling of skin touching my skin it grosses me touch. However. There are a select few people in this world that I accept and enjoy hugs and cuddles from (and who I could snuggle with for hours). If I let anyone cuddle me that means I trust said person unconditionally and feel extremely comfortable around them. It’s essentially the ultimate statement of trust.

Onto personality.

If you can’t already tell, I have about as much dignity as a wet cat. I while I certainly do have an ego, it can be kind of difficult to bruise. Publically, I am absolutely shameless and don’t give two shits about what others think. 

I have a tongue of steel and can rapid fire the most atrocious insults and comebacks when provoked. I’m known for my venomous sarcasm and biting wit among my own circles. I have a line for nearly every single situation so one-liners have become my thing. Which works out for me because I am a huge flirt.

I’ll flirt with pretty much anyone regardless of gender, I don’t give a crap. To clarify, it’s not because I am an attention whore (okay, yes. I am a complete attention whore), it’s because I am a theatre kid so excessive eye contact and sexual jokes are kinda where I thrive. I am also not afraid to get questionably lascivious with my flirting if someone tries to out-pace me. I never blush, I never falter, and I never let anyone know that they got the better of me. It shows weakness. 

Despite my salacious façade, I am not inherently a sexual person. As a matter of fact, I am quite the opposite. I don’t experience sexual attraction (kudos to my asexual humans. I see you). This has rendered me practically immune to all charm, crushes, and sex appeal. It makes my life a lot easier, in my opinion. I don’t get too attached. I also enjoy messing around with the egos of fuck boys. 

As mentioned earlier, I am an attention whore. I love showing off because I crave validation (this could point to some deep seated insecurities about myself that I refuse to acknowledge…. Ahem). Being on stage as where I thrive. And yes, I am a dancer, as I stated earlier. But I am not your conventional prissy ballerina. I am a circus performer. More specifically, I’m an aerialist. I have covered trapeze, contortion (I am unnaturally flexible), lyra, and silks. It’s a lot of fun almost dying every day and finding bruises in the most questionable places (if you cant already tell, I am an adrenaline junkie. I took karate for the first dozen or so years of my life and have recently been searching for more weapons combat classes because apparently I don’t have enough bruises already).

I am not easily impressed. And I don’t give out compliments very often. And that includes myself. I can be unnecessarily hard on myself at times… most of the time. But then again, who isn’t? 

As for the side of me that isn’t stark-raving mad, I am usually a pretty objective person. While I have no qualms with discussing emotions (both mine and friend’s. I am a great listener and actually give pretty good advice when it comes to dealing with intense emotions). I tend to avoid letting them interfere with my logic. I look down on those who allow their emotions to dictate their actions. It makes them needlessly reckless. 

I am typically a pretty chill person. When I am among people I am unfamiliar with, I tend to stay quiet and try not to rock the boat too much (again, I won’t hesitate to unleash a severe tongue lashing upon any poor soul who happens to rub me the wrong way… Or just happens to exist. I don’t take shit from other people and I hate it when others try to control me. (I don’t play rough, I play smart). 

I really enjoy reading, writing, or drawing quietly. I can’t stand loud and excessive noises or people (parties, screaming, concerts). I am a true extroverted introvert. I love being the center of attention and chatting, but I need my alone time. People are exhausting to deal with. 

Because of my aversion to loud sounds, I tend to avoid typical dance parties like the plague. While I am very good with mingling and partying in general, I can only keep it up in short bursts before I have to retreat somewhere quiet. This is also the reason I greatly prefer the nighttime (if I had a choice I would sleep all day and only frolick around at night. I just love the dark. It’s comforting in a weird way). I also love the night because that’s when I get to sleep and just peace out on life. It’s kinda like non-committal dying.

I am near constantly on hyper-alert so I am not easily startled. When I do get startled, I have a tendency to squeak, yelp or growl. These noses are purely reactionary sounds but for whatever reason, my friends think that they are absolutely adorable and will go to great lengths to startle me just to hear me make them.

To counteract my friend’s malevolence, I have learnt to be super observant, especially when I feel threatened. Usually, I am caught up on my own world and thoughts. I have an imagination so powerful that I can trick my brain into feeling false sensations such as an extra limb or falling. I much prefer to spend my time in my head rather than our boring reality. But if I feel threatened, or think that another attack is imminent, I instantly become hyper aware. These moments of lucidity enable me to make certain observations others would otherwise be overlooked (for example. I was able to tell when my professor lost her wedding ring due to the discoloration around her ring finger and the habitual and near-constant worrying she did at it. I offered to help her look after class ^.^. I admittedly felt kinda smug when I saw her surprise.) Ironically enough, I like to refer to this mode of thinking as “Sherlocking”. I can be quite the detective when I really try. 9 out of 10 times my friends will come to me when they suspect infidelity, I am pretty good at digging up dirt. 

However, I have to make the conscious decision to do this, usually when I am trying to figure someone out or manipulate them into liking me. So this isn’t constant and usually I go about my day like everyone else, blissfully unaware of my surroundings.

Uhh, there is probably more I could cover but this is getting very long as-is and you are probably forcing yourself to get through my seemingly eternal ramblings. So I am going to stop here and go grab myself some food. 

Best of luck to you,

-November

Hi there love!<3 you sound like such a cool interesting person! ^_^ Hehehe I probs took so long with this match up that you already chose a new route lol! Anyways thanx for waiting soooooo long for this and I hope ya enjoy it love ^0^ ^_^

I match you with……………………… Masamune

Honestly, it was between Masamune and Mitsuhide for me lol but i eventually decided to go with Masamune 

The first time Masamune sees you, his eyes go wide in awe, like wow you are one tall fine lady! He has legit never met anyone so tall. After you were named as chatelaine, you stayed behind with some of the warlords to chat and get to know them better, you are after all going to be seeing their faces every day for the next 3 months. 

Right of the bat, Masamune is howling in laughter at the fact that you are way taller than Ieyasu. You, Masamune and Mitsuhide basically tease the poor porcupine for a solid 20 minutes. “My my I never expected such a scary-looking little mouse to be so bubbly and friendly.” 

Oooh, this boy just stared a war of wits. Today day was a good day cause your tongue of steel was rapidly firing witty words and sarcastic remarks at the resident kitsune. He almost couldn’t keep up, almost. Masamune was just standing there watching the whole scene unfold, you truly were going to be a lot of fun! Masamune decided to test out that tongue of steel of your and started firing some flirty pick-up line, while unbeknown to him you are the queen of one-liners, and have no shame when it comes lascivious flirting. Masamune, of course, never backs down from a challenge, and he was determined to make you blush. The conversation got so heated that it made even Hideyoshi blush on your behalf. You simply laughed and fired another one of your pick-up lines.

After the little chat in the hallway and a massive speech from mama bear for talking about things that were not PG13, cause of the kids *cough* Mitsunari *cough*, you and Masamune become quick friends. He had never met a woman before that was immune to his boyish wild charm, and handsome sexual appeal. Masamune was definitely popular with the woman, not as popular as Hideyoshi, but he was definitely a fuckboi. As surprised as he was, that his normal antics didn't work on you, his ego wasn’t dented one bit, it just made him more determined to get to know you. 

Masamune definitely finds your flirtatious nature attractive, especially when you managed to score the two of you free sweet bun just by flirting with the shop owner, he was, even more, shook when the shop owner was a woman, your flirtation truly knows no bounds. The two of you would spend loads of time together, just going out for tea and sweets while getting to know each other. TBH although Masamune would never admit it, he found it refreshing that you weren't just his friend simply cause he was hot or cause you wanted to climb in stations but because you actually liked him as a person. You and Masamune definitely made an unstoppable team when it came to banquets. The two of you would team up and start teasing everyone there. When you two cuties are together its always a good time with loads of laughter and banter

Masamune discovered that you like him, was an adrenaline junkie. He loved that he finally had someone around that would do stupid shit with him just for the thrill of it. The two of you would go out on adventures 24/7 jumping down waterfalls and hiking up cliffs. The two of you goofball would also dare each other to do the craziest shit. Like one-time Masamune dared you to jump off the castle’s roof onto your balcony, and you freaken did it, no questions asked. Or like the one time you dared him to put his head in Shogetsu mouth, mind you the little cub was now grown into a full-blown tiger

One day you and Masa went to go watch one of Mitsuhide’s undercover performances. The three of you were investigating a shady daimyo in one of the nearby provinces. The three of you disguised yourselves as performers and joined a circus troop as their new dancers. You were so excited, the stage is where you truly come alive. You had promised Masa to show him something that would shock/surprise him after he gave you the grand tour of  Azuchi. Today was the day, you had kept your dance and performances a secret from the two men, and now it was finally time to show them what you can do. You had 3 different performances planned. The first one was contortion. To say Masamune was shook would be an understatement he never knew anyone could be so freaken flexible, like wow. Your next performance was aerial dancing, his blue eye gleamed in delight, watching you move through the air so gracefully. If he wasn’t sure before he was sure now, this boy loved ya. But what really took his breath away was when you trapezed through the air, he was absolutely mesmerized at the way you flew through the air doing back-flips and other cool ass tricks. Masamune loved the look of pure joy on your face as you performed and after the show, you explained to him that you were a theatre kid back in the past. Mitsuhide definitely took note of your skills, and since that day you now accompanied him on most missions that required him to disguise himself as a performer.

Masamune loved everything about you at this point. Your overdramatic introvert/extrovert personality. The way you walked. Gosh, he loved the way you walked, it looked like you were an angel floating around wherever you went. He loved your banter and one-liner for every situation. And most of all he loved your hyper-alert side. Boy did he love to come up behind you to scare the crap outta you just so he could hear you squeak, yelp or growl. Like he lived for those adorably cute noises. And you somewhere along the line had fallen in love with the big idiot. He was always coming up with new fun adventures to go on or new fun things to do. He was one of those few people that could actually keep up with your banter

What was he most impressed with you may ask, well you Sherlocking skills of course. One day there were rumours of some super shady daimyos visiting Azuchi. Word on the street was that they were planning on stealing Mitsunari report to make the poor angel look bad. Mitsuhide was away sorting out some other plots and schemes, so it was now up to you to use your skills, to save the angel. You used your detective skill to gather evidence, and since your inner circle knew you were from the future, you were planning on catching them in the act and filming them for evidence. Masamune was always up for an adventure, so he acted as you own personal Watson. The two of you hid while watching the whole scene unfold, once they left the room the two of you came out. “What do you think they are going to do with the report lass,” he asked while his blue eye gleamed in delight. “Hmmmmm, I believe they are going to burn the evidence in the forest” you replied in your best British accent. Masamune couldn’t help but laugh. The two of you made your way to a secluded part of the forest and spotted them making a fire. Masamune looked at you curiously “How did you know they were going to be in this exact spot.” “Elementary, my dear Masamune.” He couldn’t help but burst out in laughter you really were a super fun kitten. Unfortunately for the two of you, they heard you guys laughing behind the trees and before you knew it, the two of you were surrounded. One of the men had a sword right at your throat ready to cut you open, that is when you shocked them by not backing down from the fight, you hit the sword away with one of your own gifted to you by your dearest one-eyed dragon. “ Point that sword at me one more time and i’ll slash your Achilles’ tendons, and TBH given the medicine situation of this time, no one would know how to fix your injury, so I hope you like hobbling around on one leg for the rest of your life cause that is what will happen.” These men were shook; meanwhile, Masa was next to you howling in laughter, “She’s not joking boys, this lass delivers on her threats.” You had never seen grown men run away from a fight so fast. You and Masamune picked up Mitsunari’s report that had fallen on the ground during the commotion and walked back hand in hand

You didn’t really like skin touching skin, but TBH you definitely like the warm feeling of Masamune’s hand warmed around yours. The two of you had come to fall in love with each other, and it wasn’t long before you two cuties entered into a relationship. Despite both of you being adrenaline junkies, both of you also loved your quiet times. Often you would sit together in his manor each doing your own thing. You would read and write, and Masamune would sit at his desk pretending to work (Cause admin is so freaken boring). 

The two of you would have the best time together during banquets you loved being the centre of attention and would chat with everyone, but as the night would progress you would start feeling a bit drained and that’s when the one-eyed dragon would swoop in, pick you up and takes you to a quiet corner where the two of you cuddle and snuggle together.

He would spoil you rotten with the most amazing food, he would basically, cook anything your heart desires just to see that beautiful smile on your face. His heart would always burst with affection whenever he cuddles and kiss you, he knew that the fact that you allowed him to cuddle you was the ultimate statement of trust between the two of you.

Often the two of you cuties can be found causing mischief and giving Mamayoshi more grey hairs or cuddled together sharing stories of your day

Other potential matches............... Mitsuhide 

Hope u enjoyed it dear @november-solarstorms

[sotheywrotestories]

One Minute to Midnight

Pairings: Bucky x Patricia

Request: Secret Santa for @forever-rogue :)

Warnings: Angst to fluff, new year’s kiss ;)

Notes: Enemies to lovers AU!

Word count: 1,730 words

                                                           ***

Let’s get one thing straight. Bucky does not like Patricia. Nope. No. From the first mission they went on to the most recent dispute, all she’s done is get on his nerves. 

When he watches Steve sit and chat with her, he can’t help but wonder what it is the rest of the team sees in her. What is so appealing about the new recruit that makes everyone want to be kind to her?

He could still vividly remember when they met. How he tried oh so hard to connect with her. 

                                                            *** 

“Hi! I’m Patricia,” she stuck out her hand. 

“Bucky,” he forced a smile and shook her hand.

“I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“...I thought you were going to be assigned to a task force?” Bucky asked as he tilted his head. 

“Yes...to yours. You do lead the Hydra force, don’t you?”

“I’m not taking a rookie with me to infiltrate Hydra bases. Steve!” Bucky turned from Patricia. “I want her taken off the force.”

                                                            ***

“Keep staring at her like that and she’s going to think you might actually like her,” Sam teased, sipping his coffee while leaning on the counter next to Bucky. 

“I don’t like her.”

“Whatever you say,” Sam shrugged. “Why don’t you like her, again?”

“She’s just...”

Sam watched Bucky as he continued to stare at Patricia. 

“Sure, sure. Hey, are you showing your face at the party tonight?” Sam cleaned up his mug. 

“For what?” Bucky finally turned to Sam.

“New Years? Ya know, end of the decade? Woo hoo, 2020?” 

Bucky stared blankly at Sam, hearing Steve and Patricia laughing behind him. 

After an uncomfortable silence, Sam spoke. “Right. Well, Patricia’s going so...maybe you should at least show up to say hi.”                                               

                                                             ***

Steve had dropped a tuxedo off at Bucky’s room three hours before the party started, conveying the hope that Bucky would at least try to make it. 

The tuxedo also fit surprisingly well, but Bucky was sure Tony had everyone’s measurements for some reason or another. It was black and tight-fitting with the sleeves ending just at his wrist and three buttons on the jacket itself. 

The party was already in full swing (although it was only nine o’clock) by the time Bucky made his way to the “party room” as Tony called it. It was like a giant ballroom but nobody ever had balls anymore.

And, of course, Patricia was there. In a stunning pastel purple dress. The length of it complimented her height, being since she was on the shorter side, the short dress made her seem...taller. Maybe it was the heels she was wearing. Her dark hair had been straightened and hung a little bit longer than Bucky had ever seen it before.

“Staring again?” Steve handed Bucky a drink. “Just go talk to her. She’s a lot nicer than you make her out to be.”

Bucky grumbled but resolved to at least give her a chance. 

“Patricia,” Bucky greeted. 

“Oh,” she stared at him with wide eyes her glasses making them seem bigger. “Bucky, hi.”

An uncomfortable silence fell between them, both glancing at each other, then away and staring off to some odd point in the distance.

“Oh, funny story,” Patricia started to laugh. “Today, Natasha came up to me and asked if she could borrow a book mark.”

Bucky stared at Patricia, wondering what she thought was so funny about that. 

“It’s just, it’s so-” Patricia continued to giggle. “It’s so sad that after being with the team for almost a year and she still doesn’t know my name is Patricia.”

Bucky stared at her blankly while she stifled her laughs, her face getting red. 

“Get it?” She laughed out loud, throwing her head back.

“That wasn’t funny,” Bucky spat. 

Patricia calmed down and her face paled back into her normal complexion.

“You know, Barnes, maybe if you treated others with kindness, people would enjoy being around you more often.” Patricia began to walk over to Tony, who was operating the DJ booth on the other side of the room. 

“Well,” Bucky caught her arm. “Maybe if you weren’t such an attention hog, I’d actually enjoy being around you.”

“Screw you, Barnes!” Patricia ripped her arm away. “All you do is push people away! And you never give anyone a chance. It’s not my responsibility to sit here and inflate your ego.”

Most party-goers around the pair stopped to watch the interaction and, as Patricia was walking away, Steve came up to Bucky. 

“Why are you so rude to her?” Steve said through a forced smile as he pulled Bucky out of the room. “She’s just trying to be your friend.”

                                                             ***

Bucky watched Patricia open her secret Santa gift, the little lemur mug he got her, but thank god for secret because there was no way he wanted her to know that he knew so much about her. 

He watched her face light up and he watched as she used it every day and he wondered what it would be like for her to know that he caused her happiness. 

                                                            ***

Steve advised Bucky to spend some time to calm down in his own personal space before returning to the party.

It’s not that he didn’t want to like Patricia. He so desperately did. She did seem nice enough and the rest of the team trusts her so much so she has to have redeeming qualities, but he doesn’t get it. It’s been a year, all she does is distract him and it gets on his nerves. 

“Hey,” Sam poked his head in. “It’s half an hour to midnight. You coming out?”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed. “Is Patricia still out there? I think I need to apologize.”

                                                              ***

Now there were more people, if possible, packed into the tower, which made it harder for Bucky to try and spot Patricia. When he did, his blood began to boil again. 

Some agent, who’s name Bucky never cared enough to remember, had a hand tight on Patricia’s waist. Had it not been for the obviously forced smile and the pinch of discomfort on Patricia’s face, Bucky would’ve looked away and sulked for the rest of the night. 

But the look in her eyes made him desperately want to diffuse the situation. 

“Hey, Patricia,” Bucky smiled. 

Patricia’s eyes snapped to his and her smile became a little less forced. 

“Barnes! What’s up?” she giggled, pulling farther away from the agent. 

“Just wondering where you were, you promised me a dance, remember?” Bucky lied, there was no way he could dance to the music that was playing but he had to get her out of whatever situation she was in. 

“Oh! You’re so right. Sorry, Damien,” Patricia faux smiled. “But I am a woman of my word.”

Damien’s face turned sour. “Well, why don’t you meet me in my room, later, then?”

“Mhm, yeah, well, we’ll see how I’m feeling,” Patricia tried pulling away. 

“Hey, pal,” Bucky growled, twisting Damien’s hand off of Patricia’s waist. “Let her go, all right? And don’t expect her to go anywhere with you tonight.”

Damien glared but turned away anyway.

“Hey, thanks,” Patricia put her hand on Bucky’s arm. “You can go back to hating me, now.”

“I...don’t,” Bucy turned to her. “I don’t hate you. I just...when I first met you, you were so sweet. The thought of you following me into Hydra, I hadn’t lead any raids yet, I didn’t trust anything to go well...I thought if I pushed you away, I could keep Hydra out of your life.”

“Bucky,” Patricia smiled sadly.

“And I’m here to ask for your forgiveness.”

“Of course I forgive you,” Patricia grabbed his hand. “You just need a little help when it comes to learning how to let people into your life.”

People around them began counting down. 

“Ten!”

“I was your secret Santa.”

“Nine!”

“I know.”

“Eight!”

“I know you like lemurs.”

“Seven!”

“They’re my favorite. I use it every day.”

“Six!”

“I know.”

“Five!”

“You look handsome tonight.”

“Four!”

“Doll, you’re gorgeous.”

“Three!”

“Get over here, Barnes.”

“Two!”

“Pushy, are we?”

“One!”

Just as the new year started, Bucky and Patricia shared their first kiss. 

“Happy new year, Barnes.”

“Looking forward to it, doll.”

Tag list: @thatcluelessone @ima-fucking-nerd​​  @embrace-themagic @fireboltrose5737@whatdafricklefrackle@peeterparkr @sherlokiantheatrenerd @legit-fandom-trash​ @abitchformarvel​​​ @dark-night-sky-99​​ @dreams-of-feysand

[cescalr]

Fic preview : slaughterhouse rulez

Apologies for length, can't cut on mobile.

----------------------

The treck across the field was longer than it should have been- they might have looked cool, sure, but they were tired and dirty and probably, possibly traumatised in reality.

Well. Best not think on that.

Once they arrived at the road, the group of students groaned. All the building's attached to the school had been blown sky-high, and there wasn't anything for miles.

"Y'know those parents what decided it'd be a good idea to put a school on the middle of num-fuck nowhere, I'd like to punch them," Don said, decidedly. "Hear hear," Kay agreed. Clemsie leaned heavily against his side and frowned off to the left, down the road. "Does anyone have a signal?" She asked.

"Unfortunately none of us have a phone," Will reminded her.

"Oh right." She blinked and yawned, and Don placed an arm around her shoulder as she put one around his waist. "Fuck, I'm tired."

"It's not so bad," Don said. "We're alive, aren't we?"

"True," Kay said. "And this *is* England, which compared to other places I've been is laughably small. Shouldn't take longer than a half hour to reach civilisation, if that."

"Nice one, Kay," Don said, as Wooten groaned again. Hargreaves was leaning firefly against a tree. "I'd like to offer the option of hiding in the trees and having a nap first," he said. "We've been up all night."

"At least you've slept in the last three days," Don said. "Let's get going.

With some effort, the group of six all got into a line and started a procession down the road to the right; left, so far as they knew, went towards the husk of Slaughterhouse.

"I wonder how my parents are going to take this." Kay mused. "Like I said; mum's gonna kill me," Don grimaced. Will patted his shoulder. "Chin up, Ducky. You are the one who keeps saying it will only get better from here on."

"At least I didn't die in greek sandals," Smudger said. "Wouldn't they be Roman sandals?" Clemsie glanced at her brother. " They should be," Smudger said. "But wherever Theodore and Laura got them from only had to gas of the Roman kind, everything else was greek."

"This is a *highly* unimportant conversation," Hargreaves snapped. "And it's slowing down our progress. We need to just - focus on getting somewhere with people before we all pass out once the adrenaline dies down."

"I'm tired." Wootten admitted. "And what mumm- mum will think... or Steve..." He trailed off, quietly.

"Right, well." Will said. "I suppose we should just get on with it then?"

"Does anybody here know the area?" Don asked. "Because I've got t' tell you, I don'" Don paused for a moment, the crunch of the forest undergrowth loud under their feet. "I do," Hargreaves said. "Have to, to teach people like this idiot about the school."

"Y'know what it was like when the first earl of Slaughter was hanging around the place, Hargreaves," Wootten accused.

"You were the person who most recently left Slaughterhouse, Kay." Clemsie said. "When you went to your chess tournament."

"Have to admit I don't pay attention to the scenery." Kay said. "Never thought I'd need to. But I mean, I could try and navigate."

"No point," Smudger said. "I mean, were on a road. Surely that will lead us to civi-civi-" - "A town?" Wootten offered "-a town soon enough, right?" He suggested, glancing at each of the other ex-slaughterians in turn.

"True," Kay said.

"Alright then, Smudger." Don said. "Let's hope you're right," Will added.

----------------------

He was right, of course. Kay's estimated time appeared to be about right, give or take a few minutes, because even though it felt like forever, the group arrived at a town before the sun had moved significantly though the sky.

"Whoop." Clemsie muttered sleepily. She'd seen a lot of action over the past night and morning, and it showed. They - meaning Kay, Don Will, and Clemsie - had also drunk a *lot* of alcohol yesterday (though Will the most) and that was hitting them hard already. Probably because of all the aforementioned action.

Clemsie staggered away from the group and slumped against the wall of a building and sighed in relief once she'd slid down to the pavement and was sitting on the floor.

"I've walked *far* too much in the last twenty-four-hours," Kay said, decidedly. "Budge over, Clemsie." Kay dropped next to her best friend, and Clemsie sighed, her head dropping onto the other girl's shoulder. "Go sit down, Smudger," Don said, not unkindly. It would help not having to hold up two other people, in terms of him himself not falling over asleep, anyway.

"Right," Smudger mumbled, and dropped next to his sister. He winced as he moved - likely still sore from... that whole mess at the orgy.

Don grimaced and looked over to Will. "Should probably find someone." Don said. "These five can look after themselves," Will assured. "I'll help you find one of the authorities."

Don nodded, rubbed at his eyes then sighed, shook his head and straightened his shoulders. "Alright mate." He nodded, shortly.

"We'll just... wait here then." Hargreaves said, attempting not to fall asleep. Wootten hadn't even bothered with the pretence; he'd curled up on the floor and promptly passed out. Don figured the kid deserved the rest.

"Let's get going." Don said, glancing once more at Clemsie before walking into the town proper alongside Will.

"Everything appears to have turned out quit well for you, Ducky." Will said. "I think it's turned out decent for all of us here," Don said.

"And that's the caveat, isn't it?" Will said, looking at Don. "For those of us who made it."

Don looked at the taller teen. "Yeah." He sighed. "You'd be right there."

Will turned his attention to the street up ahead, and the two continued their walk in silence.

----------------------

"So you're telling me nobody heard the big, fuck-off explosion? No-one?" Don demanded.

The police officer shrugged. "We get a lot of calls from you rich ponces," She said, affable. "'Some guy got beat up and nearly died' happens way too often to be genuine. 'The school blew up' happens just as often, if not more."

"Did you not hear the explosion, though?" Don asked.

"Well, my shelves rattled," She said. "'Bout an hour ago? I live on the edge of town closest to your blasted school."

"What else could that have been?" Will asked.

"Earl of bloody Slaughter, that's who," she blinked owlishly at them. "Surely his own bloody fucking training ground knows about the Earl of Slaughter? How he couldn't kill the beast so he trapped it underground, how one day he claimed he killed the beast but provided no proof other than a clean pike, how his dog never seemed to age, never seemed to die, yet he grew old and frail and withered away?" She looked between them. "Personally," she added, "im pretty sure the dog is still around, looking for a new, worthy owner."

"That's a great story, and all," Don said, "But do you think we'd really go to all this effort for a prank?" He tried.

"Probably," She said. "I don't know you."

"Look just send someone over there," Don said. "And if the school's still standing then - fine us for wasting for time, or somethin'".

"Sounds legit," she said. "You're desperate enough alright. A holding cell's no place for a bunch of kids, though - find your friends and bring 'em back here, I'll call up Lorraine and she'll take you to the inn."

"Thanks, officer." Don said.

"Don't mention it," she said. "Now skedaddle."

"That went better than I had expected," Will admitted.

"You just got't have some faith, Will." Don smiled. "We're goin' to be alright."

"If you say so, Ducky." Will said. "I do," Don affirmed, and started walking off in the direction of where they'd left the rest of the ex-students.

[imagination-of-a-melted-bitch]

Chan’s Breakdown {Bang Chan}

Prompt:  Can I have Chan fluffy (Stray Kids) where your a well respected idol at YG and you two meet at an award ceremony or something. Thanks live your writing 💞

Pairing: Chan x Reader

Word Count: 1/369k

Warning: shitpost

Stray Kids Masterlist,

"I've never seen Chan hyung so nervous before," Felix whispered to his camera as the stylist finished his hair, tapping his shoulder to signal for him to get out the chair so the next member could have a seat, "Tonight we've been invited to perform Hellevator on stage and his favorite female idol is here," Felix looks toward Chan who paced back and forth, mumbling his lines to himself, "Look at him," Felix turned the camera toward Chan, shaking his head as the older boy continued to pace back and forth, paying no mind to Felix or his childish antics,

"I don't know if anyone's noticed but Chan hyung is freaking out," Hyujin whispered to a small circle of members, Jisung, Changbin, and Seungmin. "Like...look at him," Everyone's head turned toward Chan who was now practicing the dance, a dance which they had practiced for twelve straight hours yesterday and two hours today,

"Do you think it's because of Y/N-sunbaenim?" Jeongin asks, dropping into the conversation,

"Of course it is!" Jisung answers in a duh tone, shaking his head at the youngest boy's question, "He's in love with her, like he downloaded all her songs to his phone and his laptop, he has most of her posters, and he knows all the lyrics and dances to her songs." Everyone turns their heads back to their circle when Chan's head snaps toward them, all of them feeling as though they had been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

"Are you okay hyung?" Minho asked, knowing none of the other members would, all of them having a blast in poking fun at their love-stricken member.

"I'm fine. Do I not look fine? Is it my hair? My outfit? God, what if my voice cracks while I'm on stage? What if I forget my lines? Or the dance? God, I'm going to forget the dance, I can't even remember the second eight count, I'm a mess, I'm a wreck, I'm not fine!" Minho stared at Chan, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to find comforting words to soothe over his friend but nothing came out,

"Stick in there hyung, stick in there," Minho gives him a thumb up before turning on his heel, returning to his chair. Chan sighs, putting his hands on his hips, he was freaking out, and it was going to make the stage look a mess.

"Dude, you got to calm down," Woojin laughed from the stylist chair, "You're going to do amazing, Y/N is going to love the stage, who knows, maybe you'll do so well, she'll come up and compliment you afterward." Woojin winks at Chan before the stylist turns his head, the scenario makes Chan's heart hammer against his ribcage and he suddenly feels very faint. He snaps out of it when there's a small knock on the door. He furrows his brows and makes his way toward the door, turning to make sure everyone was dressed before he opened it, his heart dropping to his stomach when he came face to face with you.

Y/N Y/LN, only a year older than Chan, was a very popular YG idol, who is most famously known for her expression and complex music video concepts. You have a voice like honey but you could also pronounce 27 syllables in a second. You were also known for being a taller girl idol, who didn't care about norms for idols. You were very beautiful in Chan's eyes with your shoulder-length hair and your wide doe-brown eyes, he remembers having read somewhere you hated putting contacts in, they hid your true color which you took pride in.

"May I come in?" Your accent is thick and Chan lets out a small squeal, stepping to the side to allow you to walk into the dressing room, everyone else freezing at the sight of you as well.

"Hi!" Felix waves, staring at you awestruck, every one of the member's cheeks lighting up as you waved and bowed to all of them.

"Y/N sunbaenim!" Jeongin raced toward you, repeatedly bowing, his heart thumping against his ribcage as Chan's was doing just seconds before he had answered the door, now it felt as if it had stopped completely. "It is so nice to be in your presence." Jeongin compliments and Chan rolls his eyes, growling, none of them were worried about you as he was before you walked into their dressing room...wait why were you in their dressing room?

"Thank you Jeonginie," You smile at the younger boy who rushes away, giggling like a schoolgirl, the others gathering around him to ask how it felt to have been so close to you. "I bet you're all probably wondering what I'm doing here," Everyone's heads quickly nodded up and down and you clapped your hands, smiling at them all, "Well, I really want to get to know you guys more," You start out, looking over toward a gushing Chan, who just continued to stare at you in awe, "I thought the best way to do that was to treat you all to dinner." Everyone gasps, their eyes widening to the size of saucers. "Tonight, after the award show, I already asked JYP-sunbaenim, he's completely fine by it as long as I get you all back to your dorm by 12." Everyone laughs at this and Chan moves closer to you, having snapped out of his trance, deciding to try to at least say hi to you.

"H-hi," He waves, sticking his hand out, "I'm Chan," You giggle, grabbing his hand, giving it a firm shake,

"I know who you are, I'm a big fan and you guys haven't even debuted yet," Chan's arms drop to his side, you were a fan of his group, you, a fan, of his group! "I watched all the episodes," You look toward Minho and Felix, "Welcome back guys! Congrats on debuting as nine, I totally bawled when you both left, like legit tears," This makes everyone laugh again, Minho and Felix's cheeks burning a deep red. Changbin stands up and walks over toward you, putting a little pep in his step, his face cool.

"Hi, I'm Changbin, so nice to meet you, you beautiful-"

"No, no, no," You shake your head before he can finish the pick-up line, "I am not interested in dating any babies," Changbin nods his head, pulling his lips into a tight line when the others laugh at him,

"I tried," You nod and shoo him on back to his seat,

"Anyway, I'll meet you guys back in here after the show's finished," You drape an arm around Chan's shoulders, swaying him a little, making him blush and look away, "You're such a shy one, it's so cute," Chan felt his heart explode at your words, this game you were playing was not okay, he felt like he could faint,

"Y/N-sunbaenim?" Jisung calls, his voice softs and everyone already knows what he's up to by the tone in his voice, "Chan's really nervous to go and perform in front of you, maybe you could give him a little pep talk," Chan's head snaps toward the boy and you laugh, removing your arm from his shoulders,

"It's okay, I've been there," You lean over and whisper something in Chan's ear, making his eyes go wide, a small laugh spilling from his lips. "Got it?" Chan nods, thanking you for the helpful advice, "Okie doke, good luck everyone, I know you're going to kill it, I'll see you after the show!" You give them a thumbs up before letting yourself out of the dressing room.

"Well, what did she say?" Hyunjin asked, leaning toward Chan, the others following suit,

"To just imagine her in her underwear, apparently it's supposed to be really effective," Chan coughs, his cheeks burning darker than ever.

um, excuse me Chan, COULD YOU FUCKING NOT,,,

[bsidebf]

Can you summarize the kin memories? I wanna hear em! I haven’t gotten any yet, and I wanna get an idea how they can be like.

idk if it will actually help but ill try!!

im puttin them under the cut bc it might get long haha

also since these are summaries, dont take their lengths as having more memories! some that are shorter may have near the same or more memories than others!

b-side boyfriend:

my name was ryan and gf's name was sophie. my hair was dyed but pico's wasnt, i was also childhood friends with him. sophie and i's relationship was not super healthy, instead of her dad sending people after me it was her (she wanted me to "prove my love" or some shit). i was legit simping so hard i didnt care about this or other red flags. the biggest of which was when after pico started trying to point out how sketchy she was she forbade me from speaking to him. other than that i think most characters roles were the same, aside from senpai ofc (check out the b side mod for the explanation of that).

whitty:

pretty much same as canon at least in origin. tgg lost track of me and i ended up rooming with some guys who i ended up forming an underground punk band with. we got a little to popular for my own good, and it got the attention of daddy dearest and he alerted tgg. i had an argument with my bandmates after gf came to warn me and i fled. i met hex quickly after that, and he was a lot different than canon hex (so much different that i cant really go into too much detail here lol), and carol some time after. both offered me lodge but i never stayed more than a week straight, anxiety keeping me moving.

when bf found me he cornered me into a rap battle as his usual. after the third song i exploded but bf and gf were able to get away. my explosion sizes actually varied so it just left a lot of damage in the alley. bf came and found me about two weeks later to apologize, which actually worried me since i felt like hed found me too easily. I guess he sensed my discomfort and tried to ease my worries, assuring me that he wasn't there to harm me or tell anyone my location. I guess GF told him what she knew about me after all (I don't think he knew when we'd met previously). He just wanted to apologize for pushing my limits and that I didn't even have to forgive him. I instantly did mentally, but lied and told him I'd think about it just to get him to leave. I felt bad about doing that, but I did need some time to reflect. I did tell him I forgave him later.

also i think bf's name was some variation of jay or jaydin.

senpai:

i have the fewest memories for him jsyk

i was the game character, spirit was not me. spirit fused to my code and gave me sentience and it freaked me out really bad. also daddy dearest's watch had something to do with spirit but idk what yet.

mean minus bf:

the other bf's were my brothers, we were all interested in different people. beta bf was with gf, i think blue may have had a crush on senpai, and i was head over heels for pico. i was way to stubborn to admit this for a long long time, but eventually we ended up together so it was nice. also everyone was on pretty good terms with each other, even us and gf's parents. pico was also some kind of were-lizard? idk lol

hex (timeline 1):

pretty similar to canon in origin. i had a big friend group that consisted of bf, pico, whitty, and garcello. bf dated gf for a bit but realized he wasnt really interested in women but they stayed close friends and he had crushes on all of us at one point or another lol. i mostly remember non-important feeling stuff from this canon like and attempt at making soup for bf when he got sick.

none of us were fully human i think lol; pico was a demon and garcello was some kind of shadow monster?? thing?? yeah

id share more from this but i dont really wanna put triggering stuff and prefer to keep it light for this post anyway.

hex (timeline 2):

hanahaki au. yeah, this is where the idea for the ask blog came from. again id like to keep it light here but uh. lets just say not everything from this is the same as the ask blog. i will say though that i was really close to static and displo and considered them like cousins.

updike (timeline 1):

beta storyline au. got the blue trench coat and was taller than whitty. we were just rivals, i worked as a weatherman. tgg actually did still exist but i never worked for them. they existed because a lot of people in that world had powers, they were more of a regulatory organization. a shady one though, if you were deemed dangerous or used your powers for bad theyd hunt you down and study how to suppress your powers or worse make you work for them. it was weird and kinda freaky.

updike (timeline 2):

this is the updike were used to. since i was only 4 years older than whitty, the guy hunting the bomb before me was actually my dad. when my mom died in an accident involving whitty my dad brought me to tgg to join the ranks. years later though i would come to understand whitty better and wanted to quit, but realized tgg isnt the kind of organization you can just leave whenever. that, and if i left someone new would just torment whitty. i had a lot of regrets about everything and i even became a bit dependent on alcohol (specifically wine) to cope.

static:

everything i know is pretty much the same except the end of the rap battle with bf was the scrapped "funk'd up" ending. i malfunctioned right as i was trying to leave and i didnt end up escaping the tv world. not gonna go into too much detail here bc its kinda just really sad.

[caswouldratherbehere]

I was tagged by @starsinursa. Thank you!

Rules: answer these 85 statements about yourself, then tag 20 people.

1. last drink: Coffee

2: last phone call: My husband

3. last text message: My tumblr two step activation code. Cause my laptop crashed and burned and I had to reinstall and re-sign into everything.

4. last song you listened to: Whatever was last at the superbowl halftime show.

5. last time you cried: I don’t remember, probably some sappy commercial.

6. dated someone twice: Kinda? He refused to call it dating until well after we were reunited, so I don’t know if the breakup was ever technically a breakup? Relationships are weird. Rest under the cut.

7. kissed someone and regretted it?: Not kissing specifically, no...

8. been cheated on?: Nope.

9. lost someone special?: Unfortunately.

10. been depressed?: Yes. I technically scored as mildly depressed about a year ago, but it wasn’t severe enough for medication. 

11. gotten drunk and thrown up?: Ugh, yes. Tequila is evil.

fave colors

12. Blue

13. Teal

14. Purple

in the last year have you…

15. made new friends?: Not really. I have within the last two years though.

16: fallen out of love?: Not in the least.

17. laughed until you cried?: Yep. We have had a few game nights that ended up at this point.

18. found out someone was talking about you?: Considering I applied for a different position in my company, I know for a fact they were talking about me. If you mean in a backstabbing way, then no.

19. met someone who changed you?: Nope.

20. found out who your friends are?: I already knew. ;)

21. kissed someone on your facebook friends list?: Well. Yeah. My husband. This list was definitely made for teens, wasn’t it?

general

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know irl?: All but three, and I’m pretty damn close with them, too.

23. do you have any pets?: Two kitties.

24. do you want to change your name?: I used to want to really bad. Got over it at some point.

25. what did you do for your last birthday?: Played games and chilled with my hubby. My next birthday is about three weeks away and I plan on playing more Artemis. So much fun.

26. What time did you wake up today? Uhhhh.... Noon. I work from home, and with a downed laptop, I just didn’t care.

27. What were you doing at midnight last night?: Reading in bed. Probably on my phone, articles and stuff, before switching to my Kindle.

28. what is something you can’t wait for?: Seeing my sister again. She moved across the country last year and I miss her.

29. What are you listening to right now?: Grey’s Anatomy is on in the background.

30. have you ever talked to a person named tom?: Yessss? What a weird question. My BF’s friend’s dad is named Tom. Actually, I know a lot of Toms from that generation.

31. something that’s getting on your nerves?: STUPID LAPTOPS THAT COST A FORTUNE AND ARE SHIT

32. most visited website: *sigh* The honest answer to this is riptidepublishing.com. It’s the company I work for.

33. hair color: That nebulous shade that no one can decide if it’s dark blonde or light brown, with red undertones.

34. long or short hair: Medium. Shoulder length right now, then I let it grow to my boobs before I cut it again.

35. do you have a crush on someone?: Only if my husband or actors count.

36. what do you like about yourself?: My brain. My mbti test tells me I’m good at dreaming up ideas and equally good at having the logic, organization, and critical thinking to see those ideas through. This is incredibly true.

37. want any piercings?: No. My ears are enough.

38. blood type: I have no idea. XD

39. nicknames: Kel.

40. relationship status: Married. 

41. zodiac: Pisces, first zodiac. Meaning I have a hint of Aquarius to me. (And I do.)

42. pronouns: She/ her

43. fave tv shows: Out of the current lineup? Supernatural, Game of Thrones, Grey’s Anatomy, Lucifer, Archer. I also watch a ton of ice figure skating.

44. tattoos: No.

45. right or left handed: Right.

46. ever had surgery?: Yeah, I had a cyst on my right ovary the size of a small watermelon. That was fun.

47. piercings?: Just ears.

48. sport: As I said, I watch a ton of figure skating. As for playing something, I’ll pass.

49. vacation: My dream vacation is Paris. But I love everywhere we go. The beach, the mountains, Vegas, other cities... I like a little bit of it all.

50. trainers: …I assume you mean sneakers/tennis shoes and are British, but I’m still confused why anyone would find that interesting. Asics, currently. New Balance usually.

more general:

51. eating: We’re having burrito bowls for dinner?

52. drinking: Water right now. Coke Vanilla zero with dinner.

53. i’m about to watch: Currently watching Grey’s Anatomy. We’ll probably watch Supernatural or X-Files with dinner.

54. waiting for: My laptop to get its head out of its ass.

55. want: More cats. All the cats. And all the money. And this job with my work.

56. get married: Already am, and I love it. Helps that I love him to bits.

57. career: I work for an LGBTQ publisher and it is truly, in nearly every way possible, the perfect job for me.

which is better:

58. hugs or kisses: Hugs, cause they are easier and more socially acceptable to share.

59. lips or eyes: Eyes.

60. shorter or taller: Taller. Says the 5′ 0″ chick.

61. older or younger: Older? Hubby is four years older than me anyway.

62. nice arms or stomach: Legs.

63. hookup or relationship: Relationship. I would be horrible at hookups.

64. troublemaker or hesitant: Hesitant. My mom never worried an ounce about me when I was a teen.

have you ever:

65. kissed a stranger: No.

66. drank hard liquor: Yep. Crown Apple is the bomb.

67. lost glasses: I “lost” a pair in the sense that I left them in a drawer of a nightstand in Vegas. Ugh, so mad about that.

68. turned someone down: Yeah, actually. Don’t know how that ever happened.

69. sex on first date: Lol. I’ve only ever been with my husband (life just worked out that way) and he didn’t want to do it until we were married. He cracked a two years. (Though given that he wouldn’t say we were dating, that might still count? lol)

70. broken someones heart: No.

71. had your heart broken: Oh yeah.

72. been arrested: Nope. See statement about being so “good” that my mom never worried about me.

73. cried when someone died: Ridiculous amounts. Every time.

74. fallen for a friend: Not really.

do you believe in:

75. yourself: Some days.

76. miracles: Yeah.

77. love at first sight: I believe it happens, yes. It’s just rare.

78. santa clause: I believe in the magic of Santa.

79. kiss on a first date: Yeah, why not? As long as both want it.

80. angels: Not really, I’m a fairly strong atheist-agnostic.

80.5. Ghosts: Yes. I’ve heard too many stories to doubt that. One came from my mom and the hospital she works at, and she is not prone to fancy or fantasy.

other:

81. best friend’s name: Tammy. Wow, I guess some things never change. I’ve known her since I was 5.

82. eye color: Blue.

83. favorite movie: The Princess Bride.

84. fave actor: Misha Collins. Obvs.

This legit did not have 85 questions, so I added one under the “believe” section. You’re welcome.

And I legit can not think of people to tag right now, other than the one or two I always tag. (You know who you are...) So feel free to say I tagged you if you want.

[sfw-haikyuu-nsfw]

Can I get separate relationship headcanons or scenarios for a SUPER short girl that's under 150cm with 3rd Gym + Oikawa? I'm really insecure with my height since I'm a midget at age 18 lmao. Your blog is amazing btw!

Thank you, Anon! And I way hope these are okay. I don’t really know what it’s like to be short - by any standards - on a personal experience, but I had a really good friend for a while who was 5′1″ that I based most of these off of.

Hope you enjoy!

Bokuto Koutarou

Legit treats this girl like a teddy bear. She will always be in his lap with his arms wrapped around her waist and he’ll have to qualms about pulling her across the couch or bed to get into that perfect cuddle position.

If that doesn’t suit her tastes, LET THE BABY KNOW. He’ll quickly shift gears to asking her to come cuddle. He doesn’t want to force anything on her, but he just adores her so much and can’t stand how cute she is when it’s so easy for those beefy muscles to carry her around.

And he would love picking her up when they kiss. Like, he’d bend down and hug her while she wrapped her arms around his neck and just stands. Her feet will dangle - like a foot off the ground! - and there’d be tons of giggle kisses!

Oh, go to a concert with him. Boy will be all over throwing her up onto his shoulders. Not only does he end up being that way cool boyfriend but he also has an excuse to kiss her thighs! Because, really, this owl does not mind his head getting crushed by those sexy legs.

Akaashi Keiji

I think when they first start dating this poor boy would just be afraid of losing her. Like, they probably when shopping together once and when he turned around she was just gone. Panic sets in when he can’t see her in the crowd but turns out she was just the row over behind a particularly tall clothing rack.

You better believe it’s a MUST that they are constantly holding hands when they go out now. He will not be taken to that heart wrenching moment ever again.

You don’t think this boy would be a little shit about height but he totally is. He’ll withhold kisses just to watch her struggle on her tiptoes in an attempt to reach his mouth. He’d be all smiles and wouldn’t even move a muscle.

OMG! What if she started climbing him like a jungle gym and he just tries to pretend like it isn’t happening until neither of them can hold back anymore! They start laughing and he makes up for his teasing with tons of kisses!

Kuroo Tetsurou

Adored giving her piggyback rides. Like, just let him do it. He loves having her wrap her arms around his neck, her thighs in his hands, and her head resting against his shoulder. Seriously, he’d beg for it, so just let the guy get his fill every now and then.

Oh, another thing he loves doing is hug her from behind and rest his head on top of hers. Even though he’s still slightly taller than her from there, he likes to see what they world looks like from her height. He won’t hold back on being a little brat about it either.

Okay, for real, I’m more than sure he used her to save a couple cats from trees and such. Since she’s so tiny and he’s so tall it’d be way easy just to lift her up so she could reach into the branches or perch on top of one.

Same strategy applies anywhere actually. If it’s high and just out of his reach, she’ll volunteer to be that extra length they need. Tol and smol make a great team.

Tsukishima Kei

The shittiest little shit about it. And he’s the tallest which makes it just that much worse. He absolutely adores her, of course, and when anyone else says something about her height his switch is flipped. No one says anything about his girl.

He’s probably be teasing her that she’s even smaller than Noya or something and Hinata comes along and starts giggling about it as well before Tsuki turns all serious and like, “shut up, you disgusting carrot, she’s perfect.”

Hear me out, they probably dance a lot - like, ballroom dance. Not only do they do the thing where she stands on his feet and he slowly totters around the living room, but on walks home, they’ll be holding hands when she suddenly twirls and he’s really quick to guide her under his arm and into his side. (Yama totally makes fun of him for it)

Dies when she decides to wear heels. I mean, he never has to worry about her being taller than him (sidenote: not that it would be a bad thing!) and let’s face it, she looks damn good in them. Probably the first time she wore them he had a really hard time adjusting where to put his hands since he had gotten so used to her usual height.

Oikawa Tooru

Despite the height difference, this kid is pro at taking selfies of them without either of them having to adjust much. It’s like a science at this point. And they’ll always turn out good which are quickly uploaded onto Instagram. #lovemyshortie

LOVES being the little spoon. I mean, yeah, he’ll be the big spoon, cause he loves cuddling and he will always bury his face in her neck, but sometimes a boy just wants to be held. He loves feeling her face pressed into his back and her arms wrapped around him, it’s just yes.

He also loves just being held by her, like with his head on her chest, his legs curled up over hers, and her arms around him. Yup, he’s a big boy but he’s also a big baby that needs to be pampered with love and affection.

He always gets a kick out of carrying her bridal style. Usually when they’re at home or something they’ll just be hanging out in the kitchen and then decide they’re going into the living room. So, he just swoops and carries her from place to place. She’s come to just expect it and when he starts to move in, she instinctively raises her arm to hang onto his shoulder.

[spnife]

91 question tag

Tagged by @vanillabeanniall​ and then @uswntinharmony​

More below the cut bc that’s how I roll

the last – 

1. drink: Arizona Tea

2. phone call: my mom

3. text message: my mom - she sent me two climbing videos. Or I sent them to me, from her phone

4. song i listened to: What a feeling, but I was asleep (i checked the music app just now), so the last song I remember hearing is Ray of Light by Madonna

5. time you cried: wednesday. First day of school was today so it was some stress

have you ever – 6. dated someone twice: yeah

7. been cheated on: yeah. I became friends with the guy though. Similar tastes I guess???  (( Actually I blocked him on snapchat last year bc he was talking some bs on his story but in eigth grade he wasn’t awful))  She lied abt it though and then talked to me two years later and still lied like okay

8. kissed someone and regretted it: no ragrets

9. lost someone special: not really

10. been depressed: fuck hell yep

11. gotten drunk and thrown up: no. I had like a sip of beer on a trip but it was just to mess with a dude while he was in the porta potty

list 3 favorite colors – 12. light blue

13. orangish pink

14. dark purple

in the last year have you – 15. made new friends: heck yeah. I switched schools and found a really good group of people there already. It’s been alright

16. fallen out of love: not in the last year. gotta be in love first

17. laughed until you cried: probably but I don’t remember rn

18. found out someone was talking about you: I think? I found out parents were saying nice things about me. Mean wise maybe? I’m not really sure. Probably

19. met someone who changed you: at least one. a teacher last year

20. found out who your true friends were: i think? 

more –  21. kissed someone on your facebook? alas, i do not have a facebook

22. how many of your facebook friends do you know in real life? see 21

23. do you have any pets? A super sweet black lab named FeeBee, a kitten named Mulder and a cat named Milo, and a hedgehog named Wembly

24. do you want to change your name? i like my name. My last name bothers me sometimes bc dad stuff but it’s gotten better

25. what did you do on your last birthday? I had a chill day at school, got a nice car, got a card from all of the kids on the climbing team. One of them said “Wow Coach Ella, you only have two more years til you can drink,” like i’m sorry kid I’m only 16

26. what time did you wake up? 7. first day of school

27. what were you doing at midnight? crying and putting school stuff in my backpack and watching VEEP

28. name something you can’t wait for: to keep getting better at climbing, the Harry Styles concert on oct 11, my birthday on oct 13 bc it should be fun and I hope I’ll get another card from the climbing team bc they’re all lovely

29. when was the last time you saw your mother? today

30. what is one thing you wish you could change about your life? i want to know that I’ll be able to be happy

31. what are you listening to right now? watching Raising Hope

32. have you ever talked to a person named tom? yep

33. something that is getting on your nerves? I keep getting anxiety while I’m at climbing practice and that’s one of my most comfortable places. it feels like im going downhill with climbing even though I know im getting better

34. most visited site: netflix

school –  35. elementary: i loved my elementary school. every teacher i had was amazing, small school in austin and a good community and i still talk to my friends from there. so when i moved to the new school in fifth grade and depression was already showing up, the differences made it literally hell. it was awful. i didnt like my teachers and i didnt know people

36. middle: 6th grade was hell, 7th grade was even fuckin worse, 8th was still pretty bad. All the worst years of my life so far, and tbh it’s gonna be hard to top them

37. high: better than middle school but thats a really fucking low bar. like incredibly low.

38. college: planning for ACC for two years to get base courses, dream school UT in an engineering major. I love the school and the program there, but I worry if I could barely get through middle school, how tf am I supposed to survive college. Also it didn’t feel great when I was talking to a friend and I was like “yeah ut is tbh my dream school, if I can get in” and she was like “oh that’s one my last choice colleges” like fucking okay love you thanks for telling me that makes me feel real good about my intelligence and how you view me

me –  39. hair color: brown

40. long or short hair? shoulder length

41. do you have a crush on someone? yep. according to a friend i am “so gone for this girl” but um. oka y what if she doesn’t like me? I feel good around her though and she likes being around me and we work well together I think. She’s lovely and I wouldn’t want to make things weird by asking her out if I don’t know she feels that way too.

42. what do you like about yourself? I am able to figure things out and I work with kids really well. I’ve also been getting better at climbing again so I’m proud of myself for that

43. piercings? just my ears

44. blood type: lol yeah like i know?

45. nickname: ellallalala is something I’m getting from people at the new school, and I’ve had some climbing nicknames over the years but Coachella is sticking. I coach and my name is Ella it’s great

46. relationship status: nope

47. zodiac sign: libra

48. pronouns: she/her

49. favorite tv show(s): always sunny, parks and rec, my name is earl, curious george

50. tattoos: soon

51. right, ambidextrous, or left-handed? right

first –  52. surgery: i had one on my pelvis in 2013? i was in preschool and it was for this weird group of veins on the side of my leg. We’d always called it a birthmark and after the surgery the scar looked like a sunset over water but the sun is purple (still looks like that it’s rad) and the first time someone showed me a birthmark i was like??? Um no thats just a little dark bit of skin?? my birthmark is purple what is this shit

53. piercing: ears

54. sport: rock climbing. found it early and still love it

55. vacation: no idea

56. pair of trainers: first i remember are a PAIR OF DORA LIGHT UP SHOES

current –  57. eating: nothing

58. drinking: arizona tea

59. i’m about to: finish my arizona tea

60. listening to: the episode ended so me typing and the clock my great grandmother gave is

future –  61. waiting for: me to feel alright

62. want: to like what i’m doing and to know i’m able to be happy doing it. I wish I could just skip to being married with kids and a dog and everything.

63. married: oh for sure

64. career: astronaut has always been my dream career but with this level of anxiety it’s probably a no go. I am not over it. I’m def gonna cry abt it in a couple of minutes bc thats how it goes, ya know. The last astronaut I talked to though said “the biggest disqualifier is not applying” so i’m still going to try my hardest. I also love engineering and physics and space and science and education and would love to be a librarian, so we’ll see

your type – 
 65. hugs or kisses? depends

66. lips or eyes? eyes, i guess. There’s more character there

67. shorter or taller? in my head i’m always like oh taller but really it doesn’t matter. as long as i can be little spoon im good to go

68. older or younger? doesn’t matter

69. nice arms or nice stomach? tummies are cute i guess. 

70. sensitive or loud? i don’t know

71. hook-up or relationship? right now relationship and at some point relationship but ask me a couple months ago and it would have been different

72. troublemaker or hesitant? both. troublemaker with a lot of decisions but in fun ways, but hesitant when it comes to talking to new people that i want to be good friends with. and asking people out

73. kissed a stranger? yep. on a bet

74. drank hard liquor? had some jack daniels mixed with coffee and it tasted like cinnamon toast crunch

75. lost contact lenses/glasses? my glasses always turn up

76. turned someone down? yeah. accidentally on a few though lol. As i had a crush on someone i went out with for a little while last yeah legit three other people liked me and i guess im oblivious bc i had no fucking idea

77. sex on first date? depends

78. broken someone’s heart? i don’t think so

79. had your heart broken? yes but in a friendship way along with the relationship. it goes back to the you should kill yourself stuff

80. been arrested? nope

81. cried when someone died? no one i’ve known closely has died. My great-great grandmother died when i was fiveish but she was really old. There have been a few suicides at my old school (i switched 2 months before end of last year) and those hit hard, just knowing that there are so many people here dealing with that stuff and me relating to it. I didn’t know the people well but we’d spoken and I knew them some, but I had some friends who were much closer and really affected

82. fallen for a friend? yeah

do you believe in –  83. yourself? i try

84. miracles? shit happens, and sometimes it’s good

85. love at first sight? who am i to say tbh

86. santa claus? no

87. kiss on first date? if i like them

88. angels? no

other –  89. current best friend’s name: skip

90. eye color: hazel

91. favorite movie: i dont know im tired and want to cry sort of so maybe i shouldnt think about this stuff as much when im already stressed im going to go drink more tea and eat some soup

Anway

I’m tagging anyone who reads this far. gotcha

[talldrink-o-h2o]

Travel: Sharing Clothes

Sharing clothes wasn’t a thing I did when I was younger. I was always a lot taller than the other girls in my grade, graduating into junior cloths before I was ten, so practically speaking, it was hard to find anyone with clothes to fit my gangly limbs. Also, I’m pretty sure my mom would have killed me if I had let someone borrow any one of my American Eagle sweaters only to have that person spill on it, or, worse yet, shrink it in the dryer. And don’t get me started on lol the ways me borrowing someone’s clothing could go wrong. Did I want to use my allowance money to replace a shirt? Sure didn’t. So to this day, the concept of sharing clothes with others remains a foreign concept to me.

But at Biddy’s daughter’s birthday party this past September, all of my hesitation with sharing clothes was thrown out the window. September in Minnesota is a crap shoot weather-wise. Earlier in the week, temperatures had dropped into the 50s. Biddy sent emails warning people to dress accordingly, since it would be held outside regardless. Hating to be cold, I showed up that day in a light sweater and a pair of jeans. And of course, it turned out to be beautiful: 80 and sunny, not a cloud in the sky nor a breeze in the air. In short, I wasn’t cold at all; on the contrary, I was sweating. A fact which I let everyone around me know. 

Stacy, also at the party and likely annoyed by my complaints, stepped in to solve my problem. She took me into Biddy’s closet and chose a shirt for me to change into. The shirt? A Run DMC band tee. Lightweight and all around cool looking, perfect for a three-year-old’s birthday party. 

The borrowing of the shirt led to a series of events where every time I saw Biddy thereafter, I either completely forgot I had the t-shirt, or, more annoyingly put it next to my purse as I was going to leave, and forgot it on the table. Each time I’d see Biddy, I’d apologize for forgetting her shirt, a big no-no in my mind, but Biddy would laugh it off, reminding me she’s pregnant and therefore not about to wear the t-shirt any time soon. 

So, since I still had the shirt a few months later, and I think it’s pretty legit, I decided to wear it on my way to a Miami weekend with Pam in November. Which Miami in November is 80, not unlike the day of Sloane’s party. Minnesota in November is 30. I balanced the dual climate by wearing the t-shirt, ripped denim, booties, and a leather jacket on the plane.

I arrived at the hotel an hour before check-in. Apparently this hotel really adhered to its policies and wouldn’t let me into a room early. I took the opportunity to inquire about a late checkout, since Pam and I both had evening flights on Sunday. I was told I would have to call the morning of and it was based on availability; she advised I call as early as possible Sunday morning.

After spewing all of this information at me, unsolicited, she pointed me in the direction of the hotel’s restaurant bathroom where she suggested I change into something more appropriate, direction which I happily accepted.  

After a quick bathroom selfie to send to Biddy of the shirt, I changed and dropped my bags off with Kenny, the bellman, who had witnessed my movements since arrival. 

”Where are you coming from?” He asked. 

”Minnesota.” 

“Really?! I love Minnesota! They have my favorite hockey team.” Seeing the questioning look on my face, Kenny clarified that he loves the University of Minnesota’s hockey team, not the Minnesota Wild, which made more sense, but still seemed random.

Regardless, Kenny checked my bag and no sooner had I sat down at the hotel bar than did Pam walk in. She changed in the same bathroom, checked her bags with Kenny, and joined me at the bar fo are celebratory glass of champagne. 

When we got into our room forty minutes later, I did what I always do for any trip greater than two days: unpack. That’s right. I’m the person who actually uses the drawers provided and all the hangers in the closet. I once read an interview of a female executive who travels frequently who said her goal is to pack efficiently and wear each item at least once. This rule made sense to me and I judge my acting the same way. Over the course of any stay, I will re-pack each item after it’s been worn so that by the last day all that’s left is what I will wear on the plane.

Over the course of the weekend, Pam and I acted as we always do. We flitted around the city with no real agenda but always finding entertainment. Each time we ventured through the lobby, we’d stop to say hi to our boy Kenny, who over the course of the weekend shared more and more of himself. For instance, when I told him how tall I am, he found it important that I know he once dated a volleyball player in college who happened to be exactly my height. He also felt the need to let us know about his semi-professional hockey career - hence his love of Minnesota. 

On our last night in town, Pam suggested we actually stay out late. You see, we had come back before midnight the other two nights. We rose to the challlenge and stayed out until close to 6AM, dancing the night away at the Faena hotel.

I awoke with a jolt Sunday morning at 10AM. I was in no position to be awake and there was no way we were going to be in a position to leave in two hours. We needed that late checkout. Based on how stingy they were with the early check-in, I was concerned I might be too late. So in my half-sober state, I fumbled to the phone, called the front desk, and got immediately denied my request for a late check-out. Turns out we should have called down at 7AM. 

Now, more or less awake, I hopped into the shower, and then proceeded to get ready, packing hastily. I had broken all of my packing goals this trip, and, whereas, normally on my last day of a trip I’ve pretty much re-packed everything, in this case, after coming home each night in varying degrees of sober, I had failed to re-pack anything. Tack on to that the fact that I brought way more than I could wear and that we felt the need to buy shoes one of the days, our hotel room was a mess. 

And while we didn’t have a late checkout, it didn’t change the fact that we didn’t need to leave for the airport until 4. Meaning we had pretty much all day ahead of us, so I needed clothes appropriate for brunch, a swimsuit for the pool, and then my Run DMC shirt and jeans for the plane.

Except, I couldn’t find my Run DMC shirt or jeans. Fearing what my mom would say in this moment, I was now wide awake and on high alert. The following thoughts went through my mind:

Was I really going to have to fly home in shorts? I had no other pants with me and the radar predicted snow in Minnesota.

Was I going to have to ask Stacy to re-order me the jeans, a pair that was obviously made for my gangly limbs since they were the perfect length and just the right amount of distressing?

And, most importantly, was I going to have to tell Biddy I lost the t-shirt I had borrowed without her permission, kept forgetting to return, and then brazenly took with me to Miami?

Pam was only starting to move as my crisis was unfolding. I filled her in on the situation and wracked my brain for where the clothes could be, most concerned with Biddy’s shirt. And then I had it! I must have left them in the bathroom when I changed that first day.  

After leaving our room right at noon, we found Kenny to hold our bags for the day. “Kenny,” I started in. “I lost something.” 

”What?” He asked, genuinely concerned. 

”My kidney,” I responded. I can’t help but go for a joke, especially when I’m not entirely sober. “No, but seriously, I can’t find a shirt and jeans that I brought.” I went on to tell him about my bathroom theory. 

He told me they had a lost and found, which wouldn’t help my kidney situation, but might with the clothes. He set off on his mission to find them for me. Meanwhile, Pam and I plunked down at a table for brunch in the restaurant not far from the bathroom. 

Kenny stopped by our table to ask for specifics on the clothing. I remembered the picture I had taken and pulled up the bathroom selfie to show him. I texted him the picture, instructing him to show it to housekeeping. Turns out selfies can be helpful. He left us again, heading back to housekeeping. 

After Pam stopped laughing about the fact that I had taken a bathroom selfie - of course I did - we fell into a lull, the exhaustion creeping in. My mind drifted to the fact that I needed to run, desperately, to work off this weekend. I then remembered that I had brought running clothes that I never used nor did I remember packing them either this morning. Which is when it hit me. I had unpacked the running clothes and my plane outfit and put them in the dresser drawer during a more sober period that weekend. By God! They were in the room we had just checked out of! 

I looked around for Kenny, but couldn’t find him. Instead, I went to the front desk to tell the young dude behind it of my plight. As I was doing so, Kenny walked by, whom I immediately flagged over to tell him to call off the troops. Both men stared at me like I was nuts - which, in fairness, I kind of was. 

”Wait,” the dude behind the desk interrupted. “You actually unpack in a hotel room?” 

Really? That’s the takeaway here? 

Ultimately Kenny took me upstairs to the room. It had yet to be cleaned so there remained a shopping bag from the shoes that I threw all my clothes into. 

And of course, it’s now March and I still have Biddy’s shirt because I continue to forget to return it. But the important point is that I have the t-shirt and that I didn’t have to fly back to the snow in shorts.