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thechildoflightning · 5 years

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Ch2- Meteorological (September)

Title: Calendrical Consequences (Masterpost)

Fandom: Sander Sides

Pairings: Logicality, Eventual LAMP/CALM

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Chapter Title: Meteorological (September) - Chapter Two

Summary: School starts back up and Virgil's doing alright, if having a bit more nightmares than usual. Add in a meeting with his counselor and Virgil starts to question what he's doing with his life.

Warnings: Nightmares, Kidnapping, References and Allusions to Past Abuse, Panic Attack, Chronic Pain, Prescribed and Safe Use of Medication

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Meteorological (September) - Chapter Two

~~~

September 5, 2019

Virgil was six. His mom had brought him to the park to play with the other kids. But Virgil wasn’t really into playing with the other kids. They were loud and always organized games that made no sense to him. He played tag with them for a little bit, mostly to appease him mom, but quickly found it uninteresting and decided to leave them.

Instead he went over to the big tree with the roots that were bigger than his body in some places. He found a cool stick and poked it into the ground, frowning when it fell down. He tried again, but it just fell over once more. He was about to make a third attempt when a voice spoke up behind him.

“Hey kid, need some help?” a women offered, kneeling to his level.

“Momma told me not to talk to strangers,” he whispered.

“Oh don’t worry, I’m not a stranger, I’m Eliza’s Mom,” she explained. Her smile was warm and her simple blouse gave her a look of motherly affection.

“Eliza’s Mom?” he asked as he tilted his head to the side slightly.

“Yep, you played tag with her, remember?”

Virgil looked over at the group he was previously with. Frowning a bit at the kids who continued to chase after one another.

“Oh,” he frowned, “I thought her name was Abby.”

“Nope, but that's okay. The point is I’m not a stranger. Can I help you?” the strange woman asked him.

She leaned over a bit, inspecting what the young boy was doing. She raised her eyebrows a bit at the realization he was just repeatedly slabbing sticks in the ground. But really, he was six. Stabbing sticks in the ground was cool.

Virgil shrugged, “Sure. I can’t get the branch to stick up.”

“Let me help.”

She reached toward his hand to take the stick. In response, he held it out to her.

But instead of taking it, she grabbed his wrist and tugged him, clamping something over his mouth. He tried to scream, but his eyes got heavy and suddenly he was asleep.

“VIRGIL! VIRGIL! Stop her! That woman has my kid! Help! Help!”

Virgil woke up screaming.

“V, V, its Roman, you’re okay man.”

“What, what, Roman?” he whispered around choked breathing as he looked frantically around the room. His heart thudded in his chest loudly, droning at every other noise around him.

“Yeah man. You had a nightmare. Everything’s okay,” his roommate soothed.

Trixie was on him, putting pressure on him. He breathed deeply in reassurance. That was all over now. He was home and he was safe. He was okay. He was safe.

His heartbeat started to slow and the drowning buzz in his ears faded away. A tendril of shame clawed its way in instead.

“Right. Thanks. Sorry,” he muttered, face hot

“Not a problem,” Roman yawned. He was asleep in seconds.

Virgil just blinked at the ceiling and hoped that sleep would eventually take him soon.

Virgil woke up two more times that night. Luckily, neither seemed to wake Roman. In fact, when Virgil woke up in the morning for good, Roman was still snoozing away. Virgil could only guess he had gotten up to pray earlier and then fallen back asleep before his first class.

Virgil sighed and pushed off the covers before heading towards the kitchen. Patton was already at classes, but Logan should still be here.

He had started to heat up water for tea when Logan himself walked into the room. He was looking at something on his phone, flapping one of his hands absentmindedly and grinning wildly. He stopped immediately when he saw Virgil, shoving his hand into his pocket and clicking his phone off.

“What were you looking at?” Virgil asked.

“Oh,” Logan adjusted his glasses, “Just, a video of a fish. It's really quite unimportant. I just-”

“You don't have to justify your interests around us Logan. And we won't get mad when you stim.”

Logan nodded at the reminder.

“Would you,” Logan hesitated, “like to watch the video with me?”

“Sure,” Virgil replied.

Logan quickly joined Virgil and held the screen between the two before restarting the video. It was short, about twenty seconds, of a fish with long flowing colorful fins. As they watched it a few times, Logan took out his hand to flap it and even jumped. Virgil smiled at his excitement. It was nice seeing Logan become more comfortable stimming around them.

They watched it on repeat for maybe two minutes before Logan turned the phone off.

“What time is your first class?” he asked.

“I need to leave in about ten, fifteen minutes.”

The kettle started to hiss. Virgil walked over as he saw the steam rise.

The water was boiling. It would burn him if he touched it. But they knew that. They knew it would burn him. That was the point.

He clutched his arms right to himself and backed away breathing heavily. Trixie jumped up, pressing her paws against his chest. His gaze jerked to her and with a rush he snapped out of the flashback and returned to the present.

“Thanks girl,” he said, giving her a small treat from his pocket. Speaking of which, he needed to feed her. He would do that after his tea.

“Logan, do you want tea?” he asked.

“Yes please.”

Virgil filled two cups, dropping in Logan and his respective favorites. He then took out Trixie’s bowl and filled it up with her food, put some water in it, and placed it on the floor. She sat by it patiently, not moving until he gave her the command that allowed her to eat.

He sipped his tea slowly just as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He took out the offending device and read the reminder that told him to get ready for class. Right, time to get moving.

~~~

September 11, 2019

“Virgil, come in,” Michelle greeted, beckoning him into her office.

Virgil scowled, but followed, Trixie at his side.

Michelle held the door open as he entered, smiling at him in a way that was much too wide to be real. He took a seat in the small office and she started to close the door behind them.

He could feel the room closing in, trapped in the cellar.

Trixie whined and pawed at him, causing him to jerk back to the present. He patted her head.

“Thank you sweetie,” he told the pup.

The counselor took her own seat across from him and studied him carefully

“So, you chose your major,” she commented when it became obvious that Virgil wasn’t going to be the person to start the conversation.

Really, Virgil didn’t get why these meetings existed anyway. He understood that the school was trying to help each students “get settled” or whatever but did he really need this? He was passing his classes and on track to graduate. What more did they want?

“Yes I did. At the end of last year. Which you know.”

She shuffled some papers. For show, he suspected. Really, how much paperwork could this conversation involve? Plus, she wasn’t looking down at any of them.

“Well yes,” she admitted, “But I’m actually curious about what you want to do with your Creative Writing degree once you achieve it.”

Virgil froze.

“What?” he asked.

“Virgil,” she said, “What do you want for your future?”

Virgil walked glumly back to the apartment he shared with Logan, Roman, and Patton. With a groan, he shoved the door open.

He walked in, planning to flop onto the couch only to find Roman with a bowl of cheerios already sitting there.

Virgil just groaned again, causing Roman to look up.

“Hey,” Roman greeted, “long day?”

Virgil huffed in confirmation and joined him.

He sat on the floor, allowing Trixie to perform DPT. He needed the grounding method.

“You okay?” Roman asked as he watched his friend’s dog task.

Virgil shrugged miserably. Slowly, tears started to drip down his face in large drops.

“Woah, woah, woah, Surly Temple,” Roman said in panic, scrambling to join the older boy on the floor.

“Hey, uh, Virge? Can I touch you?”

Virgil just nodded and continued to silently cry. Roman wrapped his arms around Virgil and pulled him close, careful not to shift Trixie, allowing her to still perform her task. Roman had gotten a lot better about noticing things like that in the year they had known each other.

Virgil's tears eyes dried after a minute and he leaned heavily into Roman’s side.

Roman rubbed his back in comfort.

“Hey, what's up?” he asked, “What's going on?”

“I had a meeting with my counselor.”

“Yeah, I remember you saying that. But, isn't that supposed to be a good thing? She like, helps you and stuff?”

Virgil sniffled and swiped at his eyes.

“She asked me about my future.”

“Okay? Again Count Woe-lof, I'm gonna need a little more information. I'm not quite understanding.”

“I have no clue what I want for my future,” Virgil said with a huff, throwing his hands up.

Roman’s eyes narrowed slightly and Virgil could practically see his mind racing as he attempted to figure him out.

“Okay. Well that's okay?” Roman offered, “I mean yeah, you should probably start thinking about it, but you have time. No need to panic over it,” he attempted to comfort.

Virgil just gave him a look.

“I panic over everything,” Virgil said with a chuckle.

Roman shrugged and offered him some cheerios.

It was in this state that Logan and Patton found them in when they returned from their date. Roman excused himself to pray, Logan went off somewhere, and Patton joined Virgil on the floor.

“V, kiddo, are you okay?” Patton asked softly.

Virgil gave a small smile. Like always, Patton always knew when something was off. He may not always understand what or why, but he at least knew that something was wrong. It was a nice support to have.

“Yeah, I'm good. Roman and me talked, just got a lot on my mind,” he admitted.

Patton nodded, and after asking for permission, started to thread his fingers through Virgil’s hair. Virgil grinned softly at the action as his body relaxed.

“Hey, you and Logan got back early. Didn't go out for dinner?”

“Nah,” Patton said shrugging, “decided to just get back to the two of you. Lo’s not having a great day, and it's getting busier. And busier means louder.”

Virgil nodded in understanding. Then came to a realization.

“Shit, it's my night to cook,” he looked down at his dog, “Trixie-”

Patton waved his hand.

“Don't worry about it Virgil. I can cook.”

“You sure Pat? You cook a lot. And it's my night,” he protested

Patton just smiled, “Don’t worry, it's no problem. Plus you weren’t expecting me and Logan anyways.”

“I just don't want you putting to much on yourself like you used to.”

Patton gave him a wide smile and switched from petting his hair to quickly ruffling it. Virgil scowled and shoved the hand away.

“Thanks for looking out for me kiddo. Don't worry, I know now how to communicate my limits. It's really okay. I need something to do anyway.”

Virgil hesitated. It was still hard for him to accept help, but after years of practice it was getting slightly easier. Plus, his friends did seem so sincere. They seemed to genuinely want to help. So he relented.

“Okay. Thanks. Just let me know if you need help I guess.”

Patton just hummed and got to work.

Virgil shrugged and stayed with his dog.

Eventually, he directed Trixie up and left to his room that he shared with Roman.

He could fully admit that when the four of them had first started discussing rooming together he was inclined to refuse. His freshman year he had gotten a single dorm through his situation, and the idea of sharing an apartment off campus, much less sharing a room, scared him more than he cared to admit.

Plus, it meant sharing with Roman. And while the two were friends now, they weren't very close in the beginning. The two of them, unknowingly, were phenomenal at hitting each other in their most vulnerable spots.

But, the apartment was working out so far. Hopeful this whole “plan for the future” thing would too.

~~~

September 21, 2019

“Roman was a genius for bringing this,” Virgil commented as he continued to hit buttons on his controller, knocking Patton off the platform again.

“No,” Patton whined as his character fell, “Yeah it is pretty fun,” he replied, turning to glance quickly at Virgil, “I never really got into video games as a kid.”

They two of them were sitting on the couch, blankets wrapped around them, as the clock steadily ticked towards morning.

Virgil snorted, “I can tell.”

“Hey,” Patton said, letting out an offended gasp. He then proceed to walk his character off the platform. “Okay yeah, I suck at this.”

“We’ll choose a different platform next time,” Virgil promised, “One you can’t fall off of.”

“Oh good,” Patton muttered, eyes narrowed on the screen.

He pressed a button and his avatar jumped.

“Wait, if that’s jump, then what’s attack?”

“Well there’s multiple attacks,” Virgil started to explain once again.

“Wait, what!” Patton exclaimed, looking at his controller in a mixture of shock, horror, and awe.

Virgil snorted again, “Yes, I showed you them. Do you want me to show them to you again?”

“Huh. Uh, yes please,” Patton then proceeded to walk off the cliff again, ending the round.

“Okay, let me choose a new map and then I will,” Virgil said as they were returned to the home screen. Virgil fiddled around a bit, going through the multitude of maps. He flicked between three particular maps before finally settling on one.

He then held up his own controller, showing Patton the different buttons and going through each one and what they did. Patton listened intently staring back and forth between Virgil’s controller and his own.

“Hopefully this map will be better,” Virgil muttered as their characters spawned on the screen. The two played for a bit longer, Patton finally getting the hang of it, before Patton spoke up.

“So, why are you still up Virge?”

Virgil sighed, “Nightmares,” he admitted.

“Wanna talk about it?”

He shrugged and pressed a few buttons. His character on screen threw a bomb, creating an explosion that knocked Patton’s character back.

“Same as always,” he said, “Just a bit worse than usual.”

He tried to blink back the encroaching memories from his mind. Images of blood and bodies and being trapped and taken. Images of promises that he was cared for and safe and that they loved him even as they turned around and abused him the next moment.

He had to focus hard on pushing the memories to the back of his mind. Sometimes processing through it all was just too much. And if he didn’t have the strength to process it, it would just be overwhelming and damaging. Sometimes it really was better to just put a wall up and push it away. Sometimes that was the only thing he could do.

This was where the distraction of playing

“What about you?” Virgil asked, “Pain keeping you up?”

Patton nodded.

“I took my pain meds, but,” Patton shrugged.

Virgil studied him, noticing how his face was drawn tight under his cheerfulness and how he moved as little as possible. It had always been hard for Virgil to tell how Patton was feeling. Sometimes the physical symptoms gave him away, because they’re wasn’t much he could do about hiding them. But Patton could hide the pain. And he was good at it.

“I’m sorry,” Virgil offered, at a loss for anything else.

Patton shrugged.

“It’s kind of just what chronic pain is a lot of them time. Hurt’s a lot, just trying to distract myself.”

Virgil could get that, that attempt at distraction. It was also something he could go along with.

“By killing your character every two seconds?” he teased.

“I’m not trying to!” Patton protested. It probably would have been more effective is his character didn’t die right then.

“Sure,” Virgil said with a chuckle as they continued to play.

They would distract for now. Distract until they could deal with it. If they could even deal with. Because sometimes distracting was all you could really do.

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maxwellyjordan · 4 years

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Justices issue more orders from November 22 conference

This morning the Supreme Court issued more orders from last week’s private conference. The justices did not add any new cases to their merits docket for this term, and they denied review in several closely watched cases. Perhaps most notably, they turned down a request to reconsider one of last term’s significant decisions – even as Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaled that he might provide the key vote for the court to reach the opposite result in a future case.

In June, a deeply divided eight-member Supreme Court declined to resurrect the “nondelegation doctrine,” which would bar Congress from giving its power to legislate to another branch of government. The issue arose in Gundy v. United States, a challenge to a provision of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act that gives the attorney general the authority to decide whether the law’s registration requirements should apply to sex offenders who were convicted before SORNA was passed.

Justice Elena Kagan – joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor – concluded that the law does not create nondelegation problems because it instructs the attorney general to apply the registration requirements to all pre-SORNA offenders as soon as possible.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, took the opposite view. He interpreted SORNA as giving the attorney general an unconstitutional “free rein.”

Justice Samuel Alito agreed with the result that Kagan’s opinion reached – that is, that Herman Gundy should not prevail. He suggested that he might be willing to reconsider the nondelegation doctrine in the future, but he concluded that “it would be freakish to single out the provision at issue here for special treatment” when the court had upheld similar laws for nearly a century.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not participate in the case, because he had not yet been confirmed when the case was argued in October 2018. Kavanaugh’s absence prompted Gundy to file a petition asking the justices to reconsider his case, arguing that Kavanaugh’s presence on the court could lead to a different result. The justices considered Gundy’s petition, as well as two other petitions presenting the same issue, at seven consecutive conferences before turning it down today.

Kavanaugh did not participate in the decision not to rehear Gundy’s case, but he issued a statement regarding the court’s announcement that it would not take up one of the related petitions. Kavanaugh suggested that “Justice Gorsuch’s scholarly analysis of the Constitution’s nondelegation doctrine in his Gundy dissent may warrant further consideration in future cases.” In particular, citing both the Gorsuch dissent and an opinion by then-Justice William Rehnquist in 1980, Kavanaugh posited that Congress “could delegate to agencies the authority to decide less-major or fill-up-the-details decisions,” but that it could not delegate the power “to decide major policy questions.”

The justices also denied review in two other high-profile cases. They declined to grant the petition filed by Adnan Syed, the Maryland inmate whose case became famous when it was the subject of the “Serial” podcast. When he was a 17-year-old high-school student, Syed was charged with the 1999 murder of his classmate, Hae Min Lee; he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Maryland’s highest court upheld his conviction, rejecting his argument that the lawyer who represented him at trial performed so poorly that Syed was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel. The state court agreed that Syed’s lawyer should have contacted a fellow student who could have provided Syed with an alibi on the afternoon that Lee was killed, but it concluded that the lawyer’s failure to do so did not make a difference. Today’s ruling means that Syed’s life sentence will stand.

The justices also turned down a petition filed against the city of Ferguson, Missouri, by Dorian Johnson, who was with Michael Brown in 2014 when Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. Johnson had filed an excessive-force claim against the officer and the city, but the defendants countered (and the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit agreed) that because Johnson was free to go, no Fourth Amendment “seizure” had occurred.

The justices issued a summary opinion in Thompson v. Hebdon, involving the complicated and often contentious area of campaign-finance law. At issue in the case was whether an Alaska law that imposes (among other things) a $500 annual limit on individual contributions to a political candidate and to any group other than a political party violates the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the limits, ruling that they were drawn narrowly to prevent quid pro quo corruption or the appearance of such corruption. The challengers – who include two men who wanted to contribute more than $500 – then went to the Supreme Court, emphasizing that the current limits are among the lowest in the United States. “Alaska’s $500 limits,” they add, “allow only bare association” with political candidates and groups, “while depriving individuals of the ability to provide meaningful support.”

The Supreme Court today sent the case back to the 9th Circuit for another look, explaining that the lower court had “declined to apply our precedent in Randall v. Sorrell,” in which the justices struck down a Vermont law limiting individual contributions to candidates for statewide office. Alaska’s limits have some of the same “danger signs” that the court found in the Vermont law, the justices reasoned. Among other things, the state’s limits are “substantially lower” than other limits that the court has upheld (approximately $1600 in today’s dollars). Moreover, the $500 limit has not changed since 1996, because the law does not account for inflation. Therefore, the justices concluded, the 9th Circuit should “revisit whether Alaska’s contribution limits are consistent with our First Amendment precedents” – although the Supreme Court seemed to suggest that they are not.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a slightly different view. She wrote a separate statement to make clear that, in her view, “Alaska’s law does not exhibit certain features found troublesome in Vermont’s law.” For example, and “unlike in Vermont, political parties in Alaska are subject to much more lenient contribution limits than individual donors.” Moreover, she added, there may be special reasons for the low limits in Alaska, such as the state’s small size and the extent to which its economy relies on the oil and gas industry.

Sam Pope and Kenneth Isom had a long history as adversaries. As a prosecutor in Arkansas, Pope prosecuted Isom three times, securing a conviction once. Isom was later released on parole – but not before Pope attempted to block his release. Several years later, when Isom was on death row and Pope had become a judge, the Arkansas Supreme Court granted Isom’s request for a hearing to consider allegations that prosecutors had suppressed evidence that might have helped him. Isom argued that Pope should recuse himself because, at the very least, it appeared that he could be biased against Isom based on their past history. Pope declined to do so, however, and denied Isom relief. A divided Arkansas Supreme Court upheld that ruling, and today the Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate statement regarding the denial of review. She stressed that the “allegations of bias presented to the Arkansas Supreme Court are concerning” but acknowledged that Isom had not raised them until long after his trial had ended. Although she did not dissent from the denial of certiorari, she emphasized that she nonetheless wanted to “encourage vigilance about the risk of bias that may arise when trial judges peculiarly familiar with a party sit in judgment of themselves. The Due Process Clause’s guarantee of a neutral decisionmaker,” Sotomayor concluded, “will mean little if this form of partiality is overlooked or underestimated.”

The justices also declined to intervene in a defamation lawsuit filed against the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Review by Michael Mann, a well-known climate scientist and Penn State meteorology professor. Mann is a prolific author whose most recent book, with cartoonist Tom Toles, argues in the preface that the “distortion, denial, and confusion in the public-policy response to climate change has been nothing short of a madhouse.” Mann sued CEI and NR (among others), alleging that articles on CEI’s website and in NR that criticized his views on climate change and accused him of misconduct contained false statements that harmed his reputation in scientific and academic circles. (As this blog’s John Elwood reported, a post on CEI’s website “compared Mann to another famous Penn State faculty member, former football coach Jerry Sandusky, who had recently been convicted of sexual misconduct.”)

CEI and NR argued that the claims should be dismissed under the District of Columbia’s Anti-SLAPP Act, a law intended to provide legal protection for statements involving matters of public concern. But the trial court allowed the case to go forward, and D.C.’s highest court upheld that ruling. CEI and NR asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on two questions: whether the judge or the jury should decide whether an ambiguous statement contains a “provably false” connotation; and whether the First Amendment allows someone to be held liable for defamation when he expressed an opinion about a matter of scientific or political controversy.

Alito dissented from the denial of review. He wrote that the dispute “presents questions that go to the very heart of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press: the protection afforded to journalists and others who use harsh language in criticizing opposing advocacy on one of the most important public issues of the day.” “If the Court is serious about protecting freedom of expression,” Alito concluded, “we should grant review.”

The justices did not act on a request by President Donald Trump to block enforcement of a subpoena by the House of Representatives for the president’s financial records. A ruling on that request could come at any time.

The justices’ next conference is scheduled for December 6.

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

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