#so for me to have chugged this medicine with no regard to how it’s going to effect my body shows how unhinged i am right now

[waste-0f-spacee]

just chugged cough syrup the way adam sandler does in Click

[justmypartner]

Make it Work: Chapter 4

Summary: When offered a permanent position with the FBI, Hailey agrees to take it under one condition: Jay comes too. As their personal lives and work lives begin to change, the two partners find it increasingly difficult to navigate their complex relationship and manage their feelings for one another. 

Writer’s Note: This is a monster of a chapter. I honestly could have split it into two separate chapters, but I felt like the flow of the story went better having it all be in one. If you watch FBI or have at least seen Hailey’s episode, there’s a familiar character in this chapter ;) as well as some newbies. Reach out if you would like to be added to the taglist for future chapters! As always, thank you for following my stories and for all of the kind words!

Tagging: @angelsjedi , @brookerz122493 , @cpdfan2014 , @the–carousel , @maya-asturias​ 

Read on AO3 or below

Jay’s first night in the city wasn’t pleasant. Both he and Hailey hired moving services to ship their things from Chicago to New York prior to their move. Because of this, they spent their last few days in Chicago living out of duffle bags and travel toiletries in hotel rooms. The hope was that by the time they arrived in New York, unpacking was the only thing they’d have to worry about. However, when Jay walked into his apartment for the first time, only half of his things were waiting for him. He tried contacting the moving company, but being that it was so late, all he got was an automated message. Wherever the rest of his things were, his mattress, couch, and any sort of seating he had were all with it. This left him sleeping on the floor, using whatever he could find in the mess of boxes filling the apartment to build a makeshift bed. It was something he had done plenty of times before, especially while he was stationed overseas. However, as proven the next morning, his body just wasn’t cut out for it like it used to be. He was sore all over, making the rest of the day miserable.

The first thing he did was reach out to the moving company. He found out that of the two trucks that were carrying his things, one of them had gotten delayed somewhere in Pennsylvania. That particular truck just so happened to be the one carrying his mattress, bed frame, and couch. He figured in the meantime, he would unpack the things he had. However, he found it increasingly difficult to maneuver around due to the ache mainly centered around his back.

After a few hours of progress, he decided to take a break, leaning his back against the wall and sliding his body down until he was in a sitting position on the floor. He hadn’t had a chance to get groceries of any sort, so he was hungry and in desperate need for painkillers, but he couldn’t find it in himself to leave that spot on the floor, let alone his apartment. He threw his head back against the wall and closed his eyes as his face scrunched up from pain. He was about to pick up his phone and text Hailey when there was a knock at the door. He stood with a groan, holding at the lower part of his back as the motion sent a sting of pain up his body.

When he opened the door, Hailey was standing there with a 6 pack of beer and a cheerful smile on her face. The smile faded as she realized he was clenching his back in pain.

“What happened to you?” She asked, her brows furrowing as she looked him up and down.

“Nice to see you too,” he said, moving out of the way to let her in. She stepped inside, making her way to his kitchen counter to place the beers down.

“Yeah, hi or whatever… What happened to you?” She asked again, looking at him with a puzzled look.

“Stupid moving truck carrying the other half of my stuff got delayed, so I was left sleeping on the floor. I do not recommend that by the way,” he said, grabbing one of the beers and making his way to sit back on the floor.

“Why didn’t you tell me? You could’ve just spent the night with me,” she said. Her eyes immediately widened and Jay sent her a raised brow, a confused smile on his face as she said it. He noticed her turn red and he rubbed at his mouth and chin to conceal a smile escaping across his face.

“Ah I mean, you know you could have slept at my place on the couch,” she stammered over her words as she turned to look around his apartment, avoiding eye contact with him completely.

“It was like 3am. I didn’t want to bother you and I was too tired to even consider that. Thanks though,” he told her taking a swig of the beer. “Thanks for these too by the way,” he said, raising the beer in the air.

“Yeah of course. So when’s your stuff supposed to be here?” She questioned, playing with a small Chicago Bears figurine he had rested on a shelf.

“They said sometime this afternoon. Really hoping they’re right because I don’t think my body can take another night on the floor,” he told her, his eyes following her as she moved about the room.

“Yeah, you better watch it. Might not be able to get back up next time, old man,” she told him with a smirk, grabbing a beer from the counter and coming to sit crossed legged across from him on the floor. He wiped the condensation from his bottle and flung the water droplets at her, causing her to flinch.

“Hey!” She called out, guarding her face with her hands.

“Call me old again,” he challenged with a grin. She held her hands up in surrender and he retreated.

“So I like your place. How are you liking New York so far?” She asked him, placing one hand behind her and leaning back on it as she brought the bottle to her lips.

“Well considering I’ve only seen the inside of this apartment, I feel like I can’t answer that. How about you? How’s your apartment coming along?”

“Really good actually. Most of the major stuff has been arranged, now I just have to unpack all of the tedious things - dishes, silverware, knick knacks, all that,” she told him. He nodded as he adjusted his position against the wall. She sent him a concerned look when she saw him flinch and grasp at his back.

“Can I get you anything? We could stop by the store and get you some medicine then we could go back to my place. You could check it out, we could order some food, you could actually have a comfortable place to sit too,” she offered him.

“You had me at get you some medicine,” he beamed. She chuckled and stood, extending a hand towards him to help him up. Being that he was much heavier than her, she really had to pull to help him up. When he was finally on his feet, he was only inches away from her, their hands remaining together for longer than they should’ve. He could feel his heart picking up rhythm in his chest by her touch, so he quickly released his hand, bringing it to the back of his neck before chugging the rest of his beer and tossing it in the trash bin by the counter.

After picking up painkillers and dinner, the two made their way to Hailey’s apartment. Following Hailey into the apartment, Jay’s eyes studied the space, noting how accurately it represented her personality. It wasn’t completely put together yet. There were still boxes lying around sporadically across the floor, but for the most part it was simple and organized much like her. Hailey made her way to the living room where she set the food down on the coffee table before planting herself on the couch. Jay followed suit, falling onto the couch and letting himself sink into the cushions. Hailey popped open the bottle of aspirin they picked up at the store, offering him a bottle of water and 3 pills. As he took them, he realized how instinctively she was caring for him and how natural it felt to be in such a domestic setting with her. She pulled out his food, sitting it in front of him and snapping him out of his roaming thoughts.

“So, are you nervous about tomorrow?” She asked him, settling back into the couch as she took her fork out of the plastic wrapper. She was referring to it being their first day. Jay hadn’t confronted his feelings about it until that moment.

“I would tell you no, but we both know that would be a lie,” he admitted. She flashed him a knowing smile before continuing.

“What are you most worried about?”

“Nothing in particular, I just know it’s going to be a lot different than what I’m used to. Every fed I’ve ever worked with has been a pompous jackass, in it for the optics more than the actual people they’re trying to help. I know what we’ll be doing will be important, I guess my reservations come from a combination of not wanting to deal with that and not wanting to turn into that,” he told her, a solemn look overcoming his face. Her face formed into a frown and her stare fell to her plate as she seemed to silently think through her response.

“You know my first day, I walked into that building already carrying this sort of forced regard for the place. I had those same reservations you carry for the feds, but I respected what they did so I forced myself to walk into it all with a sort of blind respect. My first interaction with OA wasn’t so great. He made some backhanded comment and you know me, I don’t take stuff like that, so I threw it back at him. Made him realize I saw through what he was really trying to say. The more time I was there, I realized that even though they don’t all go about it the best way, everyone is there to do their part and take the bad guys off the street. While that type of mentality you described certainly exists among many of the people we’ll work with, I think the perspective we can bring will have a similar impact as what went down with OA that day. We put ‘em in check and they sort the rest out themselves. You’re a good cop, and that’s just what these units need. So whatever fears you have, I wouldn’t spend too much time dwelling on them because you’re going to be great,” she told him, smiling briefly before immediately diving back into her food.

Her words reassured him. He still felt some apprehension about the next day, but she leveled him enough to instill a bout of confidence he hadn’t previously carried. After finishing their dinner, Jay relished in the comfort of the couch and the relief brought on by the painkillers. Hailey had put a tv show on in the background, but Jay was watching it absentmindedly. He noticed his eyes get heavier and heavier, and when exhaustion eventually caught up to him, he fell asleep. He was woken up with a light shake from Hailey. His eyes blinked open and he took in the sight of her slightly hovered over him.

“Hi,” she said as he fully opened his eyes and pushed himself into a straighter sitting position.

“How long have I been out?” He asked her, rubbing at his eyes and stirring about in a blanket he didn’t remember having before. He realized Hailey must have put it on him while he was sleeping and he stifled a smile as he awaited her answer.

“About an hour. Your phone was ringing and I picked it up. I hope you don’t mind,” she told him, holding the phone out to him. He took it from her, squinting his eyes at the brightness of the screen.

“No, it’s fine. Who was it?” He asked, looking at a number he didn’t recognize and looking back at her for her response.

“It was the movers, they said they’re coming in about an hour,” she told him, standing to clear their empty take out containers from the table. He looked down at the time and threw the blanket off his body gently before folding it into a more manageable size. He then picked up what was left on the table and brought it into the kitchen to help her clean up.

“I guess I better get going,” he told her, looking for his coat.

“Okay, yeah. Here’s the painkillers. You may need them again later,” she told him, handing him the bottle from before.

“Thanks for taking care of me today,” he told her, tilting his head slightly as he sent her a warm smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” she shook her head with a grin. “See you tomorrow?”

“You know it,” he told her, opening the door to leave. Just as she went to close it behind him, he pushed it back open slightly. “Also, thank you for what you said earlier. It helped a lot.”

She returned his words with a slight nod before he turned to make his way to the elevator. The rest of the night he felt like there was an oddly natural shift in their relationship. The way she cared for him and reassured him seemed so much more than their usual platonic dynamic. It was like they crossed some sort of line without making a thing of it, and it made his heart rush just thinking about it. Though, he decided to not think about it. Instead, he tried to focus on the change they were set to endure that next day.

- - - -

Jay woke the next morning in the comfort and familiarity of his bed. The night before, the movers brought the last of his things into his place, and he felt relieved to not have to sleep on the floor once again. After taking a shower, he stood in his bedroom in nothing but a t-shirt and boxers, staring down at the suit he had laid out for the day. It was a tangible symbol of his new life, and it made him nervous. He only ever had to wear a suit for two things: funerals and court, and those never came with good memories. He finally psyched himself up enough to put it on, looking in the mirror as he adjusted the tie around his neck. He took a breath, briefly staring back at his own reflection in the mirror before moving to his bedroom and pulling his gun from a safe in the closet. He secured it in the holster on his belt before pulling on his jacket, buttoning the top two buttons to conceal it from view.

He met Hailey outside of the building. They first had to get their photos taken for their identification and badges before making their way up to the new unit. He immediately recognized how nice everything was, even just the equipment they used to make their IDs was far more advanced than anything he’d ever seen. As soon as they handed the badge to him and he placed it on his hip, everything settled in. This was his new life. His new job. The nerves kicked in as they made their way up to their floor. He fidgeted in the elevator, pulling at the sleeves of his coat and adjusting his tie every few seconds. Hailey clocked his jumpiness from the corner of her eye.

“Dude, you need to relax,” she told him with a chuckle, placing a hand briefly on his shoulder.

“I know, I know,” he all but whispered.

He was feeling very out of his element. First days can be nerve wrecking in general, but this seemed new and unfamiliar to him. His transition from Organized Crime to Intelligence felt natural. There was a comfort about the ruggedness of Intelligence that put him at ease on his first day; it made him feel like he fit in. This though? Suits, million dollar tech, fancy buildings, it all seemed so far out of his league and he was having trouble calming his nerves.

There was a brief silence before he blurted out, “I just really hate suits,” he admitted, putting his energy into the discomfort he was feeling about the attire.

“Eh, I do too, but you get used to it. Just, relax though. You’re going to be great, they’re going to be great. It’ll be fine… You look great by the way,” she reassured him with her dimpled grin. He flashed an unconvincing smile at her and took a deep breath just as the elevator doors opened.

Organized chaos is how he would have described the room before him. Everyone in the room was busily distracted by something. It seemed to be a meticulous operation, but it was a much larger scale than what he was used to in Intelligence.

“Hailey Upton!” An excited voice called out as they exited the elevator.

“OA? The hell are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be a few floors down?” She asked as Jay watched a stranger grab her in a hug. He was tall, so tall in fact that he made Hailey look miniature.

“Yeah, I heard you started today so I thought I’d come say hello,” he said as his eyes met Jay’s over Hailey’s shoulder. As they pulled away from the embrace, Hailey turned to gesture towards an awkward smiling Jay.

“OA, I’d like to introduce you to my partner, Jay.”

“So you’re the illustrious Jay. Hailey told me a lot about you, specifically that you were a Ranger. I was a Captain, two tours in Iraq,” OA said, reaching a hand out to shake Jay’s.

“No way, I did two in Afghanistan. 75th Regiment, 3rd Battalion,” he said, shaking his hand back firmly. “Hailey told me a lot about you as well by the way. Thanks for looking out for her all those weeks,” he continued.

“Yeah, well I think you got it backwards, it was her who was looking out for me,” he said sending a smile Hailey’s way.

“Yeah, he’s alright… for a fed,” she said with a shrug and a mischievous grin.

“What do you mean? You know you’re a fed now too, right?” he laughed back.

“Shhh don’t tell anyone,” she replied jokingly.

“Secret’s safe with me, but I have a feeling they’ll find out eventually,” he said waving a finger at the busy room around them. “Anyway, it was good seeing you Chicago, but I gotta head back to JOC. Catch ya later?” OA said backing away towards the elevator.

“Yeah, for sure,” she responded.

“Hey man, nice meeting you!” Jay called out.

“Yeah, you too!” OA replied as he climbed into the elevator.

Jay felt more at ease by the interaction. Seeing how comfortable Hailey was in this environment and how well she got on with OA lowered his nerves a bit. He figured if everyone with the bureau was like him, adjusting may be easier than he thought. He followed Hailey as she made her way over to a group of people gathered by a large screen. When they were close enough, Hailey cleared her throat catching the attention of them all, heads spinning around to look at the two of them.

“Detective… or should I say Special Agent Upton, great to see you again. Welcome,” one of them said, extending a hand out to shake hers.

“Agent Reynolds, likewise. This is Jay Halstead,” she said with a nod towards Jay.

“Jay Halstead, it’s nice to officially meet you, I’m Drake Reynolds, Assistant Special Agent in Charge. Welcome to the FBI,” he said, reaching his hand out to meet Jay’s. “Everyone on the team just calls me Drake by the way,” he said, darting his eyes back to Hailey to correct her.

“Nice to meet you as well, sir,” Jay replied.  

“Right. Now, normally we’d do a more official welcome, you know get to meet everyone and everything, but we just had a really urgent case come in so I’m going to have you two jump right in if that’s okay,” Drake told them. They nodded as he made his way to the front of the room to get everyone’s attention.

“Okay, everyone we caught a live one this morning. Subject is Eli Sarkova, Latvian national who has been on many federal agencies’ radars for a while now. Sarkova is said to run one of the major trafficking rings out of Eastern Europe with strong ties right here in New York. NYPD picked up one of his connections, Andris Ozola, last night. They called us and now he is sitting in our interrogation room where one of our agents was able to pull out intel that Sarkova is right here in Manhattan for the first time in months. Ozola didn’t have a direct location, but we do know where his driver is expected to be at 11 am today, so we’re sending a team to go pick him up. Driver’s name is Edgars Berlina, white male, 6’2”, 185 pounds, bald, with ironically, a tattoo of angel wings on his neck. Berlina and any crew he’s with are most definitely going to be armed and dangerous. Memorize his picture, he’s going to be in a public area so we need to play this one right,” Drake said as he addressed the whole room.

“Bennett and Burrows, I want you two riding with Halstead and Upton today. Show them the ropes and answer any questions they may have about the field,” he told two agents to his right. They nodded in agreement, flashing warm smiles to the partners before Drake left the four of them standing there.

“Agent Daisy Bennett,” the female agent said extending her hand out to each of them. “And this is Walker Burrows,” she said, gesturing to the male agent by her side. Jay picked up on a lingering look Agent Burrows gave Hailey as he shook her hand. He frowned at this slightly as Hailey introduced herself.

“Hailey Upton, good to meet you both.”

“Jay Halstead,” he said shortly, continuing a stern stare at the man in front of him whose gaze continued to remain on Hailey.

“Follow us to the garage. The gear is already in the car, so we can get suited up out there,” Daisy said, turning to walk down the hall to the elevators.

“So you’re both from Chicago. Detectives, right?” Walker questioned, pressing the button for the garage.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Jay replied, carrying his gaze straight ahead of him. “I gotta say, it’s already a culture shock. I’m not used to having intel handed to us like this. Usually we’re digging for this stuff ourselves,” Jay admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah, I’m sure as hell glad we don’t have to worry about that. We get to do the actual important stuff like actually taking down the targets,” Walker replied. Jay shot Hailey a cross look, one that she returned, but he decided to keep his mouth shut, not wanting to challenge the man already in the first 5 minutes of meeting him. Maybe it was because he was used to doing the intel work himself, but Jay saw the value in all of it. Hearing the man so easily disregard other positions in the unit already didn’t sit right with him, but he shook it off for the sake of starting off on the right foot.

When they arrived at the car, Daisy opened the tailgate, pulling out 2 containers of gear.

“I’m not sure how you guys rolled in Chicago, but we have these in-ear coms. They’re fully open channels so you can communicate with any and all of us at all times. Mic button falls near your collar, so keep that in mind,” she said, handing them each ear pieces to put in their ears. “Bureau issued vests. Level IIIA body armor. It’s supposed to protect you even up to point blank range, but will leave a pretty nasty bruise,” she told them as she handed them each a vest. As they took their jackets off to put them on, Hailey looked over at Jay with a cheeky grin.

“Just because it’s good armor, doesn’t mean you need to go testing it out, okay?” She joked as she pulled it over her head, securing the velcro straps on the sides.

“Ha Ha,” he mocked back at her.

“Get shot a lot do you?” Daisy asked as she pulled her hair up in a ponytail.

“Bullet magnet, this man,” Hailey joked, eliciting a laugh from each of them.

Walker drove them to the target location, Daisy riding in the front and Hailey and Jay in the back. Jay didn’t like not being in the front, in control of the car, but he went with it, recognizing it as a temporary thing until they got settled in. When they rolled up, they exited the car, concealing their badges, vests, and weapons as to not be identified as law enforcement before they could get eyes on the target.

“Looks like there’s two entrances to the park. I say you guys take the north end and we’ll take the south. If he’s anywhere-“ Jay began, taking point on tactics as he was so used to doing in Intelligence, but Daisy cut him off.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but you guys are supposed to be following our lead today. I think each of us need to be partnered with you both. So, Walker you go with Hailey to the south end. Jay, you and I will take the north,” she instructed. It made Jay slightly uneasy to be split from Hailey, but he went along with it, acknowledging his unfamiliar role that came from being the new guy. Hailey sent him a reassuring look, silently communicating that everything would be fine. He nodded before they all departed ways.

“Dean, Fisher, your teams in place?” Daisy asked the other team leaders through the coms.

They each confirmed as Jay walked side by side with her down the path in the park. They settled on a bench, giving them a view of the center and north entrance of the park.

“We’re in place, all clear on the north end,” Jay said into the coms, his eyes surveying his surroundings as he put an arm on the back of the bench.

They sat in the park for a while. Eventually, one of the other agents saw the target pull up. They were able to bring him in without any problems. He was alone when they brought him in, which they all found odd. He was also very silent throughout every interaction, something they took as years of keeping his mouth shut with his boss. When they got him in the interrogation room, Drake sent Jay and Hailey in together to get a read on their capabilities. While Hailey pulled the “we’re here to help you, but only if you talk” method, Jay took a more silent approach. He remained in the seat staring at the man as Hailey paced the floor of the interrogation room trying to convince him to talk. After 20 minutes of silence, Hailey sat down next to Jay, looking down at the table, her arms crossed as the man kept a cold stare at her.

“Tell me Berlina, why’d Sarkova send you into that park alone this morning?” Jay finally asked, leaning forward and clasping his hands together on the table. The man said nothing, shifting his stare from Hailey to Jay.

“I mean, you’re just his driver after all. Anybody can drive a car, you’re pretty replaceable. But still, you’d think years of working for the man would earn you something, right? Some sort of protection,” Still the man remained silent. Jay shrugged before continuing on. “I don’t know. He’s probably already got you replaced anyway. We found out some pretty interesting things about you from Interpol. A couple of outstanding warrants in Latvia… even a few in Estonia. You get around, don’t you? Anyway, your plane leaves this afternoon. Hopefully that gives you enough time to get out of here before Sarkova has a chance to tie up loose ends,” Jay finished, rising in his chair to exit the room. Hailey followed, and just as they were about to exit, the man called them back.

He ended up giving them the location of a brownstone in a wealthier neighborhood. They set out with the FBI tactical team, expecting heavy arms and numerous bodyguards according to what Berlina gave them. They had planned to infiltrate late in the night to provide themselves with an extra element of surprise. This was the one part of the job that Jay felt sure about. As he geared up, he felt pumped up for the first time that day. Knowing that his interrogation gave them the location added a little motivation as well. Still partnered with Daisy, she and Jay followed after the two tact team guys upon breaching the front door. Walker and Hailey were behind them, making their way to the other side of the house upon entry. One of the tact team guys came in contact with an offender first, convincing him to stand down and taking his weapon before cuffing him. Jay and Daisy continued into the house, sweeping each room one by one. They came into contact with a second offender, and they were able to convince him to stand down as well. Next thing they knew, there was a ruckus on the other side of the house, so they swiftly picked up their pace, making their way in that direction. There was a gunshot and panic overcame Jay as he realized it was in the part of the house Hailey was clearing.

“Hailey!” He called out. No response. He called her name once more before entering a large room. He caught sight of her blonde hair on the ground. His heart dropped, but she turned over as he got closer, clutching at her jaw. Walker was behind her, standing over Sarkova who was face down on the ground.

“Hailey! What the hell happened, are you okay?” Jay questioned, making his way over to her and instinctively grabbing at her chin to get a better look at the red mark on her jaw.

“Guy was hiding behind the door when I walked in. He tried to grab at my gun and forced me to fire a round into the wall. He also got me nice in the jaw before I could react,” she told him, stretching her jaw. Jay offered her a hand and she grabbed it to come to a standing position.

“She took the hell out of him though. Girl’s a badass,” Walker said, bringing Sarkova to his feet and guiding him to a tact guy by the door.

“Yeah, where the hell were you? Huh?” Jay asked, a slight snarky tone in his voice.

“Hey man, I was right behind her. I had her back,” Walker said back, closing the distance between him and Jay. Jay didn’t take well to people getting in his face. Hailey noticed this and stood between them, lightly pushing them apart.

“Woah, okay boys. We’re all good here,” she said, her eyes looking between the two of them.

Jay backed off, looking down at her with a worried look.

“Are you okay?” he asked her quietly, dropping his voice to a sincere tone.

“I’m good,” she nodded, patting him slightly on the chest.

“I should’ve had your back,” he said, his jaw clenched tightly.

“Jay, I’m fine. Relax, would you?” she told him, a slight frustration in her voice.

Jay didn’t like that she had gotten hurt and he wasn’t there to protect her. It wasn’t that she was hurt badly, but he didn’t like the idea of someone else, basically a stranger, being the one to watch her back in such a high risk situation. His opinion of Walker wasn’t all that great after his comment that morning, and it certainly wasn’t improving now that she had gotten hurt under his watch. One thing he was sure of was that he was glad their separation was only a temporary thing.

[kyber-crystal]

I know it’s not sw BUT PLS

hc that benji is your bf and looks after you because you’re sick lol 👀

yes PLEASE

ok so i think it’s been established at this point that the imf shares one braincell

(and it’s usually ilsa who has it)

so those lil shits are always getting themselves into trouble

especially ethan

also you

but benji is genuinely worried for your safety sometimes 

then again it’s part of the JOB so i mean,,,,

after a rough few nights in cannes you finally went up to paris and had the entire weekend to relax and have fun that’s when you suddenly came down with a bad cold

and you were miserable

you couldn’t even get out of bed

if you tried to your head would spin and you’d end up on the floor (this happened twice and it took so much energy to drag yourself back in between the covers)

so benji’s like 

you know wHAt

“you can get shot twice—in the same spot, may i add! you can jump out of planes, sprint half a mile with a sprained ankle, take down a man with nothing but a napkin and your bare hands, survive car crashes, and make it out of crumbling, exploding buildings with your arms and legs still attached and you’re telling me the flu is going to kill you.”

“yes.”

“don’t you think you’re being a little too dramatic?”

“dramatic? ethan jumps out of planes for fun but is afraid of needles and you’re calling ME dramatic.”

ok so you made a POINT there

"i hate you. you're mean"

"you know you love me"

this lil SHIT

"i do."

"how about this. i'll order in some pasta for lunch, we can watch some tv, and relax."

"your weak ass can't even handle spicy food so don't make that same mistake you did in hong kong."

(you were referring when he accidentally ordered some noodles with a rather high spice level and spent the rest of the night chugging glass after glass of water and tying not to scream)

"i won't!"

he slid in next to you and gently nudged you. "scoot over."

"benji, you'll get sick." "i don't care. at least that means ethan won't force me to jump out of a plane again."

so you let yourself lean against him as you mindlessly watched whatever was on TV

you found yourself growing rather sleepy (also lightheaded) and were knocked out cold within minutes

the weight of your head against benji's chest was quite heavy but he didn't dare budge because omg look my girlfriend looks all soft and adorable and doesn't look like she's going to slit open a man's throat with a fork

eventually the food arrives and he forces you to sit up

after you finish eating he tries to give you medicine but you keep dodging it

"you have to take this or you're going to feel even worse tomorrow!" "no! that smells like shit!" "do you WANT to feel like shit then?"

you knew there was no use in arguing with benji esp when it was in regards to you & your well-being so you gave up and took the pills

"this tastes like SHIT. i just proved my point" "but you'll feel better in the morning!"

he laughed and just gave you a kiss on the top of your head before leaning back

"you're awesome," you mumbled while half asleep

"i know. i love you too"

again you were completely knocked out within a few minutes after consuming your lunch & medicine

i think ethan & ilsa returned to the apartment around 8 ish

and they opened the doors to discover you with half your body draped over benji as you snored softly

and benji, who was just as fast asleep

: ')

@kenobismullet ACK i hope this was what you were asking for :))) i'm so sorry this was super late andkskfkskfosldkdo but here is your hccccc

[blazerina]

Losing (Ethan x MC)

Losing (Ethan x MC)

Word Count: 3090

A/N: Last Sunday, I wrote and posted a very random story, Winning, that came to me out of NOWHERE and y’all ate it up! I was so pleasantly surprised by the reactions to this little scene that I didn’t expect to be any good!! It was such a success (and I left it at such a cliffhanger) that part two was basically demanded (I’m not complaining). So this is it - part two…hope it doesn’t disappoint! I am terrified of posting this because I’m just not good at all with “part twos.”  Please enjoy and I hope all of you are happy, safe and healthy! Be well. xoxo

Tag List [they didn’t work the first time so I had to re-post]: @parkerattano @queencarb @custaroonie @mkamra2355 @humanpokemon @ramseysno1rookie @unknowntimelady @myusualnerdyself @schnitzelbutterfinger @mvalentine @jasminedayz @thanialis @tefigranger @kenzierookie @justanotherrookie @keepcreativechoices @heauxplesslydevoted @ethandaddyramsey @kaavyaethanramsey @sherlockedmcu @edith-eggs1  @noboundariesplease @edgiestwinter @danysims4cc @tempesreture @unusualvisionsblog @chasingrobbie @mapipa @lifeof-liv @3riche-blog @anonymous2094 @annaidziaszczyk @ntoraplayschoices @jessirosebud @mskinkyafro @caseyvalentineramsey @desmaranj

The room was spinning. His head was on fire. And pounding. And throbbing. And his neck ached. His shoulders were tense. He felt nauseous. If he was experiencing all of this before so much as sitting up in bed, he could not fathom how actually trying to walk to the bathroom would feel. He didn’t have the ability to even begin to try and piece together the events of the night before.  All he could focus on right now was willing his body, which felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, to sit up and get out of bed.

What time is it?

Ethan reached for his phone and groaned. 7:08 am.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then rolled over onto his side and sat up gradually, letting his legs dangle off the bed. Timidly, he exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. It was exactly as he expected. More spinning. More fire.  More throbbing.  

His throat was incredibly dry, and he needed water, but also something more.  He reached over his nightstand and grabbed his glasses, hoping that his vision adjustment would help his aching head.  He was wrong.

A glass of water?

Ethan noticed a glass of water and four ibuprofen pills were also on the bedside table.

I even amaze myself sometimes.

He didn’t remember getting a glass of water or medicine, or changing out of his clothes, but then again, he really didn’t remember much of last night at all.  He gladly took the medicine and chugged the glass of water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he finished.

He stumbled into the bathroom and retched a few times, over the sink, then moved to get his toothbrush. The taste of his own breath was making him queasy. He noticed his reflection in the mirror and almost didn’t even recognize himself.  Bloodshot, dry eyes. Pasty skin.  He was in desperate need of a shower. His hair was a complete mess, swept to one side of his head and sticking straight up in some parts.

Christ, I look like shit. I feel like shit.

Ethan knew his next step needed to be making breakfast and coffee. It was imperative that he remedy his empty stomach as soon as possible.  The early morning sunlight was streaming in through his large glass windows as entered his living room. Shielding his eyes, he quickly padded to the window and closed the drapes. He hardly ever did that, but this morning it was a necessity. He stopped to catch his breath after closing them, hearing his own heartbeat in his ears.

Staggering into the kitchen, he propped himself up on the counter with both hands. His head was hanging low and he couldn’t remember the last time he felt this way. He was one who took great pride in his ability to hold his liquor. Something must have really thrown him a curveball last night.

As his eyes surveyed the kitchen, mentally taking an inventory of what menu options he had available, he noticed that the coffee pot was blinking, signaling it only needed the button to be pressed; the coffee grounds and water had already been added. A bag of bagels was tightly wrapped and sitting on the counter next to a plate, along with a napkin and knife. His toaster, that he only got out when he had the sole intention of toasting something, was also out.

What the hell?!

He pressed the button on the coffee maker and plopped a cinnamon raisin bagel into the toaster.  Opening the fridge, he grabbed some cream cheese, but then leaned against the counter with a heavy sigh. Even that little bit of effort had taken a lot out of him.

God, let this pass soon.

Methodically, Ethan made his coffee and the rest of his bagel and took a seat at his kitchen table. Holding his head in his hands for a few moments before he began to eat, he took another deep breath, whispering a prayer, asking for the food and coffee to work. For it to be enough to quell his headache and nausea.  He still had to somehow make it into the office today.

The office today…

Remembering Edenbrook set his mind in motion and all at once a tsunami of memories flooded his brain. Everything from the night before played out once again, clearly.  All that he saw.  All that he said.  All that he did.

He remembered Reggie getting him in the cab, and someone pulling him out…but beyond that it was a little hazy.  As he brought his coffee mug to his lips, the front door of his apartment opened, and Ethan almost choked recognizing who it was.

She had earbuds in and had clearly just been on a run.  She was intently listening to music or a podcast, Ethan couldn’t be sure.  From the entry she couldn’t see him, but he could see her. All of her. In a tight tank top and leggings. Almost exactly the same outfit she wore when she worked out with the boys that random Tuesday morning. He had all but forgotten about the curve of her waist and her amazing ass. As his eyes travelled and marveled at her body, Ethan thought his head was about to explode. He was experiencing mental whiplash remembering last night and then unexpectedly seeing her this morning. He was confused and had no idea what was going on.

Am I dreaming?

Jenner came trotting in behind Allie as she held the door open for the pup.  She then hung Jenner’s leash up on the hooks by the door.  

Earbuds still prominently fixed to her ears, she told Jenner she was a good girl and turned over her shoulder towards the kitchen when she saw him. He was holding his coffee mug with both hands, mouth agape, totally frozen.

“Jesus!” she called out, clutching her chest, taking a moment to collect herself. She took her earbuds out and placed them on the counter, still breathing a little heavy.

“Sorry…” Ethan choked out, his voice raspy and harsh.

“It’s only right that should be the first word you say to me.”

Ethan sighed.

Of course she has some smart ass remark. This is a great way to start the day.

“Allie, please.  I didn’t ask you to do all this for me. I can handle myself.”

“Are we really going to get into it first thing this morning? Is this really what you want to be doing right now? Arguing with me?”

He could tell she was in no mood for pleasantries, so he stopped talking and focused on his coffee and his bagel.  It was not lost on him that he was sitting at his table in his underwear and a white t-shirt with crazy bed-head, in front of the love of his life.  The woman he was too damn proud to be completely honest with.

Allie remembered her way around Ethan’s kitchen much better than he expected.  She poured herself a cup of coffee as he watched her every move. Grabbing a banana from a bowl on the bar, she leaned against it, facing him, making eye contact as she peeled the fruit.

Her intention was not to make it sensual, but Ethan’s mind went there right away. Watching her hands as she unfolded the peel and her lips as she began to eat, he couldn’t remember how bad his head hurt, or feeling ill anymore.

Completely oblivious to Ethan’s thoughts, Allie took a long sip of her coffee, a deep breath and cleared her throat.

“You’re welcome, by the way.”

Her voice broke through Ethan’s sudden daydream and the silence hanging heavy over them both.

He looked away from her, noticing that Jenner was eating her own food from her dish.  Allie really had thought of everything. She chose to take care of him, even after what he had done.

“I suppose I should thank you.  I don’t know everything you did for me, but I suspect it was quite a lot. I appreciate it. And Jenner does too.”

Allie nodded solemnly, taking her banana trash to the kitchen.  She grabbed her keys and a phone from the counter and pulled a sweatshirt on over her head.

“Last night...” She started to talk but then cut herself off.  

Ethan watched her. He knew she was about to leave. She took another drink of coffee and then rinsed out her cup in the sink.

Why are you doing this, you ignorant buffoon? Say something. Do something.

His fists clenched around the mug he was still holding in both hands. He hadn’t moved much and felt like he couldn’t -- he was paralyzed. Paralyzed with fear about how she regarded him now. Paralyzed with fear that he had now lost her forever.

The familiar ping of her cell phone rang out and almost echoed in the entrance of his apartment home. Allie checked it and smiled a little, looking back to Ethan.

Immediately he felt the anger course through his veins again.

Wonder who that was from. I swear to God if it’s Tobias or that dumb ass scalpel jockey…

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you; you know.” Allie explained, absentmindedly twisting her keychain around her index finger, glancing at the floor.

“To be clear, me taking care of you like this does not mean that I’m not pissed.  There is no excuse for what you said to me last night, Ethan, or your behavior in general.”

“Allie…” He began, but she held up her hand to stop him.

“Please let me finish.”

Ethan stopped and watched her shudder. She took a deep breath and it was evident that whatever she was about to say was taking an extreme amount of bravery and courage. She was clearly having to work herself up to spitting out these next words. Ethan was doing what he was used to; putting on his armor, ready to defend himself if necessary, even though he knew he had no right to defend himself this morning. Everything he was feeling was well-deserved. The retaliation he was going to get from her was more than fair.

“When I talked to Reggie last night and asked him to help me get you home, I didn’t know that you’d end up puking on me in the elevator on the way up to your apartment, or that tucking you into bed would mean I get to hear a confession from you about your undying love for me. You acted as if you were on your deathbed, and honestly, it was not cute.

But God help me, Ethan, I just couldn’t bear the thought of you trying to navigate being drunk and hung over all on your own. I thought about you here, all by yourself, stumbling around, struggling to function, and I felt bad.  I’m sure you’ve done it before, but something about the look in your eyes last night scared me.  I knew I’d never forgive myself if I saw you leave that way and did nothing to help.

For some reason that I cannot for the life of me figure out, I still…after all we’ve been through…care about you.

Dammit! I don’t want to, but I do.”

Ethan gulped, waiting for her to say more, but she didn’t. She was through. Once again paralyzed, he didn’t know what to do or say.

Don’t let her leave. You cannot let her walk out that door.

“Why did you…I mean I didn’t…ugh…” He cleared his throat, feeling flushed.

“I just can’t…” He fumbled and stumbled over his words, struggling to find his voice.

“I have to go and get ready for work. Naveen knows that you’ll be in later today and I asked Diane to move our diagnostics team meeting to this afternoon, in order to allow you enough time to get your shit together. Guess I’ll see you later.”

Ethan watched her open the door to leave, trying to stand but still feeling woozy.  

Allie’s head popped back into the doorframe as she mentioned, “Your key is on the kitchen countertop by the way.”

The door closed behind her with a soft thud, as Ethan was still trying to put together something to say. Once again, he questioned himself.

What the hell just happened?

--

Later on, Ethan text Naveen to let him know that he was on his way into work.  Naveen met him at his office with a venti Starbucks coffee in hand.

“The name on the cup says Ethan, but from what I’m hearing today it should say something a little more accurate.” He scolded, handing the cup to Ethan as he entered his own office.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Ethan frowned.

He wasn’t surprised, but still not thrilled to learn that the rumor and gossip mill at Edenbrook had picked his story up as one of the daily headlines.

“Perhaps something like total jerk, or complete asshole, would better describe your actions post-softball game last night?” Naveen raised an eyebrow and kept a stoic look on his face.

“I don’t like hearing about this side of you Ethan. It’s one thing to experience it in private, but another to know it’s been witnessed in public. I don’t have to tell you it’s wrong because you already know that. But I do expect you to make it right. Make it right, Dr. Ramsey.”

With that directive, Dr. Banerji left the room and the glass doors hissed behind him as they closed.

Ethan slumped into his chair like the pile of goo he felt like.  He was beat up and broken down, but knew he only had himself to blame.

--

He had been dreading the afternoon meeting of his diagnostic team, mainly because he knew he had to see her again. He had no idea what to expect from her. He’d been hiding in his office all day, trying to keep people from staring at him as he walked the halls like some sort of sideshow freak.

June and Baz were early to the meeting and much to everyone’s surprise, Dr. Banerji decided “on a whim” to join the team for the day. Everyone was silent while waiting on Dr. Valentine to arrive.

Ethan would have to deal with Naveen later. He knew damn well why he decided “on a whim” to attend the meeting today.

Who does he think he is? This is just what I need right now, to have to worry about him too on top of all this.

Allie walked in just then, not in a dramatic fashion, but a very normal, typical everyday way. No one would know anything was wrong or different from the way she was acting…at least…so far.

“Hi everyone, sorry I’m the last one here. Esme’s had a hard day.  Hope you weren’t waiting too long!”

Still thinking about everyone else. I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to be as good of a person as she is.

Much to Ethan’s surprise, the meeting went on like normal too. Naveen contributed to the conversation and they were able to discuss quite a few patients this time, when typically, they only have time to focus on one.  

As they wrapped up the meeting, Ethan stood up abruptly.

“There is one more thing I’d like to say before we disperse.”

Allie sat back down, as she had already packed up her things. It seemed as though she wanted to make a quick exit.

“I just wanted to say that I’m grateful for the way this team takes care of each other.” He locked eyes with Allie, refusing to look away.

Eventually, she did.

“We work together well, all striving towards the same goal. Looking out for one another and stepping in to correct each other too when one of us may be going down the wrong path…”

He could tell Baz and June were a little taken aback by his thoughtful speech and were slightly confused.

“I just don’t take it for granted and I wanted to say thank you.”

Ethan looked again at Allie, then sat back down.

“That will be all for today, thank you team.”

As everyone packed up, Allie was a little slower than she had been before.  Dr. Banerji made the rounds, shaking hands with all the doctors in the room as they exited.

“Make it right, Ethan.” He reminded as he waved to Allie and left the two of them alone.

Dr. Valentine was headed toward the door again, folders and charts in hand, when Ethan placed a hand on her elbow and gently asked her to stay.

“I’m no good at saying sorry…” Ethan began.

“I know.” Allie agreed, holding the folders and charts close to her chest.

“I need you to hear this, though. Please.” He sighed, not sure how to begin.

“There’s nothing I can do or say to take back what I did to you last night. I’m not even fully aware of all that I did and all that I said…and quite frankly, I’m not sure I want to be.

I’m not going to ask you to forgive me. You explained yourself this morning regarding forgiveness, and I could not agree with you more. I do not deserve the kindness you showed me.

But you…you deserve so much more than anything I can give to you. Last night was proof of that. And honestly, you deserve an apology that’s a hulluva lot better than this one.”

Ethan nodded at her, wanting desperately to reach out for her hand and pull her into him, holding her close. But he knew he couldn’t. Not now. Not after everything he’d done and all the damage he had caused.

“You’re right.” Allie said, swallowing hard. Ethan thought he might have seen a hint of tears in her eyes.

“I do deserve an apology better than this one…but I’ll take what I can get.”

Sadly, she gave him a tight smile and walked out of the room. Ethan watched her go, hoping he had not let her walk out of his life forever.  

He knew he’d take what he could get too and what made him sad was that it took him getting angry, drunk and jealous to realize he’d rather have Allie in hard times like these, than to not have her at all.

He had gone from winning a softball game against his rival to losing the only woman he ever truly loved, all within in 24 hours.

[5am-the-foxing-hour]

Unyielding as Aluminium

Next part of There’s More In A Mine Than Precious Metals

Things are coming together, but Sham is not doing as well as he tries to appear.

- - -

Characters: Roman. Virgil. Thomas. Logan. Patton. Deceit and Remus

Deceit is named Sham

Warnings: Depictions of injury, Major character injury, Sham got PTSD, Dissociating, Flashbacks, Anxiety/Panic attack, Deceit has no regards for his own well being, Remus being Remus, Police work. If i’ve missed a warning, don’t hesitate to tell me. General Fanfic Tag list: @ebony-wolf​, @nashiraneko​,  @secretlyanxiouspersona, @i-sold-my-soul-to-thefandom​, @rabbitsartcorner​,@punsterterry​,  @sleepyssnail​,  @nightmaresides​, @virgilswritings​, @ninja-girl2846​, @ninjago2020, @starryfirefliesbloggo​, @garecc​,  @sympatheticdeceit​, @cookiethedevil​, @askthesnake​,  @all-bridges-will-burn​, @tacohippy56900, @little-euro-girl​

- - -

To say that the first thing Logan did when getting back to headquarters was to make a pot of coffee and then chug directly from the pot, would not be an overly dramatic change of the truth. Virgil did help him thought, even if he grimaced at the taste of the purely black coffee. Virgil had been about to return it to Logan when Sham grabbed the pot and chugged, until Logan managed to get him to stop, saying that caffeine wasn’t good to be mixed with the medicine Sham was still supplemented to take, the scarred man cursed before scowling.

  “I’ll be fine.” Sham huffed “I’ve taken my medicine with coffee before.”

Logan made a loud offended noise at that, before he held up his finger and chugged the remaining coffee before he went on a rapid explanation on why not to do that. Virgil inched away when he knew this would take a while.

Remus during that time had walked over to Roman who, actually had moved over to the couch to sleep, and sat down on top of his stomach making the other wake with a grunt and several grumbles, that grew into full on curses when he saw it was Remus.

  “You’re crushing me- GET YOUR BONY BOTTOM OFF ME!” Roman snarled as he pushed his taller but scrawnier brother off him, Remus cackled as he jumped away.

  “Better bony and silent than loud and clapping!” Remus snickered back avoiding the pillow Roman threw at his head.

Now they were all gathered around the table as Thomas went though the Intel they had currently, and other leads as well as a laminated map of the old harbour that had with whiteboard markers been coloured to show the turfs, while also showing where the explosion had taken place, red lines went from the explosion to other parts of the white board.

Now and again the others spoke up about things they knew, even Remus spoke up. He had said he would help them with this case after all.

Sham was only really listening to the others talk with half an ear.

He was tired, and even if the burns had healed well according to the doctor, even if there was still need for some more time before he was fully okay again. The doctor had prescribed him two bottles of painkillers, he hadn’t really listened when the nurse told him how many to take, knowing he would throw them away anyway.

Sham rubbed at his left arm as he flexed his fingers, watching the scarred skin move.

He jolted when one of the bottles of painkillers were placed before him along with a glass of water. He jerked his head up to find how Logan stood there.

  “Take two. Doctors orders.” the man said as he crossed his arms.

  “I don’t take orders from that lab-coat.” Sham huffed as he pushed the bottle away. “And I’m fine.”

  “Oh really?” Logan said raising one eyebrow, and giving him a look, Sham hated it, it was as if Logan could see right through him. “Then tell me why you’re gripping your arm hard enough to bruise and why you’re tapping the floor with your foot?”

Sham blinked looking down to find that Logan was right. He instantly forced himself to let go of his scarred arm and to make the scarred leg stop bouncing, he cursed under his breath when it didn’t want to heed his instructions but seemed to bounce harder in defiance.

Logan pushed the bottle towards Sham again.

  “If you won’t take the orders from the doctor, one having the knowledge on what you need in order to not be in constant pain, then i will.” Logan said

  “I don’t take orders from you either.” Sham pointed out, only to jerk back when Logan suddenly leaned forward, getting up in his face.

  “Don’t test me. If you won’t listen to me I will tell Remus-” Sham grimaced at that. “And from the look of things, you rather avoid that. So, eat your medicine or i swear i will force it down your throat.”

  “Threatening of Police brutality, is what i would call that.” Sham said with a smirk as he crossed his own arms, giving away a loud curse in his head when his scarred arm loudly complaining at being moved.

  “Eat. Your. Medicine. Or i will send Remus on you. Or even Virgil.” Sham glared right back.

  “NOW KISS!” Remus suddenly barked form the door, having tagged along with Roman for a food run.

  “Fine.” Sham hissed, only loud enough for Logan to hear as he opened the medicine bottle and made two pain killers fall into the palm of his hand before he threw them into his mouth and downed the water. Logan leaned back and nodded before he grabbed on of the sandwiches Patton was walking over with and held it out.

  “Now eat.” Sham snatched the sandwich with a grumble turning his side to Logan.

  “What are you? a mom.”

  “Well it seems you will need it.” Logan stated in a deadpanned voice, making Sham choke on his sandwich. Logan took the bottle from the table. “I will keep reminding you to take these.” he said giving the bottle a shake. “Don’t try to avoid it.” and with that Logan walked away to talk with Thomas who was currently talking with one of the investigators of the scene.

  “Don’t try to avoid it. bleh bleh bleh!” Sham said in a mocking voice.

  “I HEARD THAT!” Logan called making Sham flinch and curse under his breath.

  “His ears are magical, he hears you the very moment you mock him, boo~” Virgil said in a spooky voice from the other side of the table.

  “Shut up.” Virgil made a mocking face in return. “I see your humour haven’t changed.” Sham huffed.

  “Okay everyone! breaks over, back to business. I also got some new information.” Thomas called as he was once again at the white board.

Patton had put up some new pictures on it, and was currently getting back to his seat, only to bump into one of the desks. giving away a yelp of pain. one of the containers that held the pends toppled over and clattered to the floor, the container rolled over and stopped next to Sham’s side, he felt his throat constrict and he wasn’t sure what noise he made.

One moment he was alone in his chair, the next he was on the floor. Patton was crouching before him, talking.

But Sham couldn’t hear a word he said. He also couldn’t breathe.

A choked noise left him, as he tried to move, only for his shoe to loose grip against the floor and he slumped a bit more against the table legs, the only thing that actually kept him from lying flat on his back.

A pair of cold hands suddenly cupped his face, bending his head to the side, away from Patton’s worried face, until he was staring into a pair of cool deep blue eyes, framed by a pair of black frames.

  “Breathe.” the person mouthed.

Sham tried. But he just choked on it again. The smell of smoke and fire heavy in his nose. He could feel his skin burning away.

 “Breathe.” the Logan mouthed again, patting Sham on the cheek to keep his attention.

It took a while. But Logan nodded when Sham managed to keep the breaths he took. Logan let go of him when he had managed to get his breathing back properly.

  “Come on, Up you go.” Logan said as he helped Sham back to his feet. Remus moved over and took Sham’s other side, the two lead him towards the couch.

He grunted as he sat down. rubbing his arms from the sudden chill. he blinked up at Remus when the boss threw a blanket over him.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Sure sure, now sleep. I can’t have my right hand be exhausted.” Remus said with a snicker. Sham huffed.

  “I don’t need to-” Sham started but stopped talking once Remus pushed him into a lying position on the couch.

  “Sleep. I will fill you in on what get’s decided later.”

Sham grumbled, as his traitorous eyelid decided to follow the boss’s order of sleep.

He huffed as he shuffled a bit under the blanket, not managing to force his eye open again.

He sighed as sleep grabbed him, and pulled him down deep.

  “Is he okay?” Thomas asked.

Remus did a full 180 degree turned on his heel, hands on his hips.

  “Nope. Not one bit.” Remus said popping the P on nope “But don’t tell Snakey that, he will get hissy.” he said as he waltzed over to the chair he had previously occupied. “He got half way blown up, he got all the juicy stuff because off it.”

  “Please don’t say juicy in that context.” Virgil groaned, only for Remus to pout.

  “To put it simply, he got ptsd, and due to the happening still being fairly recent he has an, easier is not the right word to use.” Logan hummed for a moment. “Due to the damage being so recent the trauma is still fresh making him being more prone to panic and, or anxiety attacks. He may also experience other things as well, due to the trauma.” Logan explained, pushing up his glasses as he sat down.

  “In conclusion. He’s a mess.” Virgil stated, sending a glance at Sham’s sleeping form, drumming his fingers from anxiety against the table.

  “I’m sorry.” Patton said in a weak voice “I didn’t meant to give him a panic attack.”

  “It wasn’t your fault Patton.” Logan said.

  “But-”

  “Things could have gone differently sure, but there is no telling that he wouldn’t have gotten an attack due to something else either.”

  “Shouldn’t he go to therapy to get better?” Roman asked. Turning to face Remus when his brother exhaled a puff of breath.

  “He doesn’t want to go.” Remus said, head lolling at the back of the chair. “And if Snakey really doesn’t want to do something, he won’t do it.”

  “He hasn’t changed at all.” Virgil huffed.

  “No... he has...” Remus said with another huff of breath as he started to spin around in the office chair.

A silence fell over the group for a moment. Before Logan cleared his throat.

  “Let’s get back on track shall we?” The others mumbled different forms of agreements, and soon the meeting was back on.

[screamingatanemptyroom]

Just a thought I had, would like to write it (read it), but don't know how to.

You are a shapeshifting dragon guarding a princess in the castle. You are also a caretaker and guide of said castle. You are bound to the castle by magic in a metal collar around your neck and only way to break free is for the princess to be rescued. One day a prince come to rescue her and to slay the dragon. Only problem is that you fall in love with him. Shifted to your human form you approach him.

Thanks for the prompt submission @adaed5! I’m not sure if this is what you were looking for, but here is the story I came up with. I hope you enjoy it!

“What is this?” 

I stared at the shining, glittering metal coins in my hand, curious as to why the humans around me were paying it so much heed.

Phillip barely glanced in my direction before rolling his eyes, “It’s gold.”

“Gold?” I rolled the unfamiliar word around my tongue, trying to test it out. “What’s so important about this ‘gold’?”

He shrugged at my question, fairly uninterested in the conversation as he led me through the market, picking up objects and purchasing them with a smile for the vendors.

“It’s money, currency. It’s considered a valuable, rare metal. They make jewelry out of it sometimes. Wars have been fought over it.”

Staring at the coins with skepticism, I shook my head slowly, handing the coins back over to Phillip. “Silly humans, it’s not the most rare or even the most beautiful metal, why waste time and effort over it?”

“Not all of us think like you do, dragon.” He laughed at me, and despite his mocking tone I found myself laughing with him.

 I was a dragon.

One of the supreme beings, born of fire and magic, destined to live centuries, even millennia, before returning to the world’s flame. I was a young dragon, only several decades old. I had grown out of my lair, bored with the lack of other creatures. Crawling from the cave where I had been born, the light of the sun had blinded me, almost causing me to turn back. I am a dragon. I told myself firmly. I fear nothing. I left the safety of my home, and went to explore.  I had tried many forms, changing my shape was a gift of mine, a natural ability of a dragon. I flew with birds, crawled with snakes, I ran with wolves and swam with fish. Each fun and exciting for a moment, but quickly growing dull after a few short years.  Still I persisted, hoping to find a spark of interest, something that would call to me, give me a purpose.

All dragons have a purpose.

And then I came across a new, fantastic creature. One that varied greatly from beast to beast. Since taking its form, I had yet to lose interest in their ever changing presence.

Humans.

“Are you ready to go?” Phillip asked once he had completed his preparations. I nodded, tired of observing the market anyways.

I had met him during my third or forth year running around in human form. I had been masquerading as an adventurer, finding that this was the best way to explore freely without being questioned. Fortunately, adventurers seemed to be a rather odd group, even for humans, so my… peculiarities, from my inexperience with human culture, were overlooked. Phillip was a fellow adventurer, one that I had taken several quests with already. We were close, although our initial meeting hadn’t gone smoothly.

“You’re too weak.” Was the first thing he said to me, when I applied to join his group to take on a quest. I understood his concern. My human form looked frail, even compared to other humans. However, that did not mean I would let the insult slide. I was a dragon. I had my pride.

“I am stronger than you.”

Phillip raised an eyebrow. “Prove it.”

I did.

After regaining consciousness, the human agreed to team up with me while taking quests. It didn’t take long for him to discover my true identity. My odd gaps in knowledge regarding human culture and common sense were too obvious and strange to cover up for someone in such close proximity. Besides, it wasn’t like I felt shame or concern. I was a dragon, and I was proud.

A year had passed since that time.

After picking up supplies, we headed out on our quest. We entered a cave, thought to be a monster’s lair. The sources we received the quest from said that the creature was only active at night. If we snuck in during the day, it should be easy enough to kill.

Unfortunately, our information was inaccurate.

“Dodge!” I pushed Phillip out of the way, taking the full brunt of the Troll’s club into my chest. If I had been a normal human I would have instantly been crushed and died, but fortunately I was not. Instead, my human form was flung across the cace into a wall, knocking the air from my lungs.

I cursed as my body had a difficult time standing up, my arms bending under my weight, causing my body to fall to the ground.

A growl filled the room. The troll looked extremely awake and angry for a supposedly nocturnal creature. I was trapped between the wall and the monster, with nowhere to run.

“Dragon, transform and kill it!”

I shook my head at Phillip’s shouted advice. “I can’t, there’s not enough room!”

“Well, do SOMETHING or we’re going to die!”

“SHUT UP HUMAN!”

I wracked my brains as the troll walked closer, dragging its club on the ground. Its beady eyes were fixed on my struggling figure, a grin filled with large broken teeth spreading across its face as it stopped within striking distance. Drool dripped from its mouth, pooling on the floor near my feet. I tried to stand once more, almost making it before falling down again. This form had taken too much damage, even my strength as a dragon was not enough to force it to fight. I stared up at the creature that would cause my death, unresigned.

I am a dragon. A creature born of fire and magic. I can’t die like this. I WON’T die like this.  All dragons have a purpose, and I won’t die before I find mine.

I glared at the monster as it raised its club.

“Ugh, I can’t believe I’m doing this…AAAHH!” Just as the club was about to descend, Phillip muttered a few words and jumped on the troll’s back with a yell.

“Here!” Having distracted the monster, he tossed a bottle at me. I recognized it as a healing potion, a rare, expensive medicine. Normally I would resist taking something that would put me in debt, but desperate times… I chugged the contents in one go, standing up as strength filled my limbs once more. I stood up, just in time to see the troll throw Phillip across the room, where he struck the wall with a sickening crack!

“PHILLIP!” I called out, wanting to go to him to check on him, but unable to, obstructed by the troll. It smiled at me, looking forward to hurting something new, but seemed to shudder in fear when I smiled back at it.

It had forgotten. I was a dragon, and it was nothing more than prey before me.

I ripped the troll’s head off, still smiling.

Racing over its dead body, I knelt beside the still form of my human teammate. He was deathly still on the ground, his face pale, barely breathing. I rested a shaking hand on his forehead, letting my magic course through him.

He was dying. Bleeding on his brain, around his heart, into his abdomen. Too many injuries, all about to kill him. Broken bones, torn muscle, even if I stopped him from bleeding, he would never walk again.  He was too far-gone for potions, or healing magic. He would die. I clutched at my chest as a sharp pain coursed through it.  It was an unknown sensation, completely unrelated to any physical injuries. I was confused, upset, but in the midst of my agitation, a clear thought rose through.

I would not let him die.

I bit my finger, wincing as my teeth tore through skin. A drop of silver blood bloomed at the tip of the wound, and without hesitation I forced Phillip’s mouth open and dripped the blood in. He swallowed reflexively, and immediately his body started convulsing. Calm, now that I knew my blood was taking effect, I turned the man onto his side, and watched over his shaking form. Dragon blood had one of the most potent healing effects, but too much would rob a lesser creature of its life, and too little would be ineffective. Many had died from trying to steal what had to be rightfully given. Phillip would heal, he would live longer, be stronger, but he would live. As his body stilled, and his breathing evened out, I found myself smiling gently down at the friend I had made over this time.

“That is to repay you for the potion you gave me.”

Without it, I would have been unable to fight the troll, and would have died.

“… is that so?” a shaking voice replied, his eyes slowly opening.

I nodded. “A dragon always repays debts.”

He smiled, his overly pale face quickly filling with color once more. “Good to know.”

“I still owe you a favor, human.”

“What for?”

I shrugged. “You risked your life to distract the troll. Without that I would have died. Two favors, one repaid. What would you like for the second?”

“Hmm…” He thought it over. “I’m not sure, but I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t wait too long human, you all die so quickly.”

“Wow, so cheerful.”

We laughed at his words, and after a few moments of rest, we collected proof that we had killed the troll and made our way out of the cave.

“YOUR MAJESTY!”

A loud voice called out as we left the cave. Startled, we found ourselves faced with a large group of knights on horses, all with solemn expressions.  I looked over at Phillip, whose face was grim.

“Your address is wrong.” His voice was so cold it seemed to freeze the air around us. “It’s ‘Your Highness.’”

The man in the front shook his head. “No, my king, I’m afraid it’s not.” At some unknown signal, the knights dismounted and knelt before us. “King William is dead. Long live King Phillip!”

“LONG LIVE THE KING!”

At their resounding shouts, I glanced over at my friend with a bemused expression. “So you were a king?”

“I WAS a prince.” He corrected. “Impressed?”

I laughed. “Not really. You’re still human.”

“That’s what I thought.” His words seemed annoyed, but there was an amused light in his eyes.

The kneeling man was offended at my reaction. “You there, adventurer! Kneel before your king!”

I smiled at them, releasing my aura of a dragon, and the knights went from bended knee to groveling on the ground with terrified expressions.

“Dragon…”

“Fine, I will let them go, since they are your people. “ I retracted my aura with a frown. “Teach them to fear and respect dragons though.”

“Deal. I have to go to the Capitol, there will be much to do with the death of my father.” He hesitated and then added. “Would you come with me?”

I was tempted. Phillip was the first friend I had met since taking on a human form. I also still owed him a favor for saving my life. But after a few moments, I shook my head. “No. The city is too crowded, and i have yet to find my purpose. I’ll continue to roam freely here.”

“Understood.”

“I will come find you soon. Until we meet again you must think of how you would like my debt repaid.”

His smile was sad. “Of course. A dragon always repays their debts, right?”

“Right.”

After ten years I went to find him again.

He was older, didn’t smile as much. His eyes were slightly colder, although a happy light still filled them when I walked through the palace doors, a trail of angry guards running behind me.

“Don’t you know how to announce a visit a head of time?” His voice was dry, but there was a smile on his face. “Or at least, knock?”

I shrugged. “I’m a dragon, why bother?”

“… Sure, why not?”

I stood before the throne, ignoring the shocked expressions of the humans around me when I didn’t kneel. “How would you like my debt to be repaid?”

“You really don’t waste time, do you? Would you like to have some tea?”

I shook my head. “I’ll drink tea with you, human. After you tell me how you would like me to repay my debt.”

Phillip sighed. “I don’t know, dragon. Can’t you simply forget and come spend time with a friend.” His smile was self-mocking. “It would do me some good to have someone nearby who didn’t treat me like some kind of god.”

I snorted. “A god should be more impressive.”

“Exactly what I mean.”

“I’ll have tea with you, human king. But then I will leave. I have not yet finished exploring, have not yet found my purpose. Think of what favor you would like before I return.”

“What if what I want is for you to stay with me?”

“Then I will.”

“But it will be because you owe me, not because you want to?”

I nodded. “That is correct.”

A long sigh left his body. “Then continue to be free, dragon.”

“I will return, human. I will repay my debt.”

“Of course,” He muttered. “A dragon always repays their debt.”

Ten years later.

I returned. He still had no request.

“I’d like you to meet someone.” His smile was gentle, but his eyes were even colder than before.  He pushed  a small child in front of him. A small girl with golden hair and a wide, innocent gaze. “This is Milana, my daughter, she’s six years old this year.”

I nodded. “Human child.” I turned back to Phillip with a frustrated expression. “If you still do not have a way for me to repay my debt, than I will go.”

“Wait!” He reached out, hesitating, and then asked. “Will you at least stay for tea with me and my daughter?”

I thought it over, I was in no rush. “I will.”

We passed an afternoon reminiscing about our adventures.

I left, with a promise to return to fulfill my debt.

Ten years later.

I received a letter from the king, before I could even plan to return. Startled, relieved, I made my way to the castle to talk with Phillip.

“Dragon, you came!” He greeted me with a friendly smile, reaching out to grasp my hand, but I stepped out of his reach. His expression, his posture, his words… everything indicated he was happy to see me, an old friend. But something in his eyes made me hesitate.

His eyes… they reminded me of the eyes of the troll all those years ago. Dark, mad, taking joy in hurting others.

Perhaps I simply imagined it. I shook my head, trying to clear it of that thought. Only ten years had passed, could my friend really have changed so much?

“You sent for me, human?” I tried to keep my voice natural.

“Yes, my friend. I finally have a way for you to repay your debt to me!” He sat down, motioning for me to do the same. “My precious daughter, my Milana, who you met before, is in great danger.” Sighing, he looked out of the window nearby, as if weighed down by his responsibilities. “She has a wonderful magical power which strengthens and blesses the nation she resides in. It is with her help these last sixteen years that my kingdom has flourished. But as she comes of age, the competition for her hand has become a bloodbath. All sorts of greedy and unruly men wish to claim her, to use her powers for their own gain.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You wish me to kill these suitors then?”

“No, there are too many, and many are too important.” He sighed loudly. “I want you to protect her.” Bringing out a map, he pointed to an empty space. “I have renovated an old abandoned castle in the forest here. What I ask is that you guard the princess with your life, keeping her safe, and filtering out her suitors.”

“Filtering out her suitors?”

Shrugging, Phillip continued. “I plan to make a proclamation that only one who can defeat the dragon can marry the princess.”

The atmosphere around us grew colder at his words. “Not that I’m saying you can be defeated, dragon, but that when you find someone worthy of the girl, that you… pretend to lose.”

“Lose.” I tested out the foreign words, displeased with its taste in my mouth. “Sacrifice my pride as a dragon?”

“But then your life debt to me will be completed, I promise.”

This was a conundrum. If I pretended to lose to a mere human I would sacrifice my pride, but if I reneged on my life debt then what pride did I have to sacrifice? I nodded slowly. “I will do this.”

“Thank you my friend.” His face was relieved, but his eyes remained cold, as if staring at a corpse.

“If that is all, I will take my leave.” I turned to go, but his words stopped me in my tracks.

“One last thing!” Now Phillip looked embarrassed. “I trust you dragon, but my court… they were hard to convince.”

“…” I waited silently for him to complete his request, and he seemed even more uncomfortable with my lack of reaction. “To be honest… the only way I could get them to agree, is if you wear this:” He opened a nearby golden chest. I snorted at the vanity of the yellow metal he loved so much, but froze at the sight of the object within it. Hurt, I stared at him, the betrayal I felt clear, and he flushed with shame. “I’m sorry, dragon. I swear it is only temporary.”

“You would have me wear this?” My voice was filled with rage, but I kept my face calm. There was no reason to strike out, although every instinct urged me to

“It has only two conditions. You cannot harm the princess, and you must guard the castle until the princess is rescued.”

I looked into his eyes, but he didn’t flinch. I wanted to rage, to tear him limb from limb for his arrogance, his deceit, but I didn’t. This was part of my life debt. I would repay him, no matter what.

I reached down towards the disgusting object, my skin crawling as I made contact with the cold, dark metal.

It was a collar.

Crafted with dark magic, it was used to control slaves and magical beasts. Simple conditions could be woven into the magic, and only once these condition were met would the collar fall off. As I touched it, my magic coiled around the object, informing me of the conditions for its release. My gaze grew cold, but I stayed silent as I latched the metal into place around my neck. It was almost too tight, but at least the magic within it would allow it to grow or shrink with me when I transformed.

“With this favor, we are even.”

“Yes dragon, finally you will repay your debt.” He smiled as I did, but neither of us meant it. “Would you like to stay for tea before you go?”

I leapt out the window. “I only drink tea with friends.”

With that, I was gone, my suddenly appearing wings carrying me over to the abandoned castle where I would find my new home.

Two years later.

“YOU STUPID BEAST, WHY DID YOU DRIVE HIM OFF?!!” The princess screamed at me, her face red with rage.

I sighed quietly, reminding myself of my debt before forcing my voice out in a calm tone.

“He was an evil man, one known to murder the innocent and steal from the weak. I did you humans a favor by killing him.”

The girl was unappeased by my answer. “Idiot monster! He was a crown prince! It was a good match!”

“I promised your father to only lower my head to someone worthy of you.” I rolled my eyes, pushing away the thought that no one deserved to be trapped with her.

“I have been here for two years! TWO YEARS!” Pointing a finger at my face, she grinned cruelly. “Pretend to lose to the next man who comes, or I will tell my father to activate that collar around your neck.”

“The conditions for activation have already been set, human girl.” I smiled. “I cannot harm you, and you must be rescued before it can be removed.  Or are you saying that there is a hidden condition I don’t know about?”

My mild words scared her, her face paled and her eyes darted around nervously. “O-of course not! I’m just frustrated, dragon. You can ignore my silly words.”

I held back a sigh of disappointment.

She knew.

The collar was not what it seemed to be. Deep down, I hoped this unpleasant girl was innocent, unaware of her father’s evil schemes. However, from her words and actions just now, it seems she was a co-conspirator.

“I will go out to the town to buy food. Is there anything you would like?” I asked calmly, pretending to overlook her mistake.

“I want a husband.”

“Very well, I will see what I can find.” With a smile, I was out the door and headed for the nearest town.

 When I arrived in town, the man who tended the stall I bought food from was engrossed in conversation.

“You have to be careful, stranger, word is that there is a castle in these nearby woods with a monster living in it! It guards a beautiful princess, killing all who come nearby. The king himself has issued a proclamation that who ever kills the dragon can marry the princess! “ The shopkeep chatted with an unfamiliar male human, a worried expression on his face.

“Thank you for the warning.” The man answered with a broad grin, a gleam of excitement in his eyes. “Do you happen to know where the adventurer’s guild is?”

“I can take you there.” I stepped forward, curious about the new arrival.

The young man was tall, his dark hair tied back behind his head to keep it out of the way. In the thirty years of living amongst humans, I had learned to distinguish quality of equipment. This man was in the finest of armor, with a sword bearing the personal mark of a blademaster. It would take more than gold to purchase such, it took prestige and ability to wield a blade such as that. Why would such an important and wealthy young man come all the way out to this small village?

I smiled to myself. Looks, like the newest contender for the princess’s hand had arrived.

The human stood tall, his expression tinged with pride, as he looked me up and down.

“How would you be able to enter the Adventurer’s guild? You look weak.”

The surrounding villagers groaned, having gotten used to me receiving these sorts of challenges over the last two years. Quickly in the background money was already exchanging hands in a bet.

I refused to hide my pride as a dragon. “I’m stronger than you.”

“Prove it.”

I couldn’t help it, I burst into delighted laughter. He looked nothing like him, but this man couldn’t help but remind me of my first friend, of Phillip. Thinking of my last conversation with that human, however, my smile faded into sadness. Instead, I cracked my knuckles, wanting to work out some frustration.

“All right then.”

I knocked him out with one blow.

Once he had woken up, he gave me a self-depreciating smile and reached out a hand. I grasped it, helping him to his feet. “Wow, I really underestimated you!” His gaze was bright, lacking the greed and arrogance that the men who came after the princess before him had shown. “You’re an awesome fighter!”

“You aren’t bad yourself.” For a human. I added silently.

“Thanks!”  He paused and then reached out his hand again. “I’m Pr… I’m Robert.”

I shook it. “You can call me ‘Dragon.’”

He chuckled “Is that a nickname, a fighting title or something?”

“Of sorts.”

“Well, Dragon, let’s go to the adventurer’s guild!”

I introduced Robert to the guild, allowing him to register. He stated he wanted to get used to the surrounding area, and I volunteered to take a few quests with him. He was a bright, cheerful human, and I enjoyed fighting by his side. Often we would speak while traveling, learning about each other.

“What do you wish for in your life, Dragon?”

I looked up at the sky, touching the collar around my neck which was hidden under my clothes. “Freedom.” All dragons had a purpose, and that had become mine.

He chuckled. “What a novel answer, Dragon. Is someone forcing you to stay in this village against your will?” He cracked his knuckled. “Let me know, I can help you sort the villain out.”

Imagining his face if I told him that the villain he was looking for was the king of this nation, I laughed as well. “What about you, Robert? What is your dream?”

He smiled brightly. “I want to be a great king, just like my father! A wise ruler that people will thrive under! I want my people to be happy, to prosper!”

I patted his shoulder. “That’s a good dream.”

And so the happy days spent together continued.

“Dragon, can I tell you a secret?” After months of taking quests and exploring together, we sat at the guild, having a drink after a long fight that had lasted until evening.

“If you wish.” I had no wish to hear it, but I knew enough of human customs now to know I shouldn’t refuse.

“I’m not here to just be an adventurer.” Robert was drunk, he swayed slightly in his chair as he spoke, his gaze slightly unfocused. “Actually…” he looked side to side to make sure no one else was close enough to hear. “I’m a prince!”

I fought the desire to roll my eyes. He bore the royal crest of the neighboring kingdom on his saddle! Did he really think I hadn’t noticed?

Robert studied my calm expression, pouting. “You don’t seem surprised. Do you not believe me?”

“If you say you are a prince, I believe you.” I answered quietly. His face broke out into a wide smile.

“Thanks! You are a great person!”

I chuckled at his drunken compliments.

“But that’s not all my secrets.” My laughter was cut short at his next whisper.

“Robert…”

“I’m here to slay the dragon, and rescue the princess!” He was still smiling, but I was unable to smile back.

I felt a deep pain in my chest. We had not spent all that much time together, but over the last few months I had grown to respect him as a person. He seemed to lack greed and dishonesty, the traits that had made me despair of ever trusting another human again. We had laughed together, shared stories, guarded each other’s backs… it reminded me of a simpler time, before I understood the darkness underneath the surface of the human world, back when it was just me and Phillip. To hear him say that he would kill me, even if it was unknowingly, struck me silent with pain where I sat.

“If I kill the beast, and rescue Princess Milana, the king has promised me her hand in marriage, which will cement the relations between our two countries!” He grinned excitedly, his slightly red eyes staring off into the distance, but I simply shook my head.

“What if…” The tentative words were not like me, it caught Robert’s attention immediately, drunk as he was.

“What?! What’s wrong?”

“Do you really think you can kill a dragon?”

He puffed out his chest. “Of course! I’m the strongest!” He paused, wincing. “Of course, I guess, the second strongest, next to you. But still, I should be able to slay a simple dragon!”

No, you’re wrong, you’ve already lost to the dragon and just said that you were weaker…

I sighed. “What if the dragon wasn’t just a simple beast?”

“What do you mean? A dragon is a monster!” He rubbed his face, as if trying to clear his head.

“What if the dragon was like… you or me? Could talk, could dream, could hope…”

Could love. The words died silently in my chest.

His face grew serious. “If that were the case… then I would still kill it.”

My hearts hurt again. I rubbed my chest uncomfortably.

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t secure this marriage, my father will name my brother as his successor. I need the alliance from this nation to secure my right to the throne.”

“And this throne is more important to you than a living being?”

“It’s kidnapped a princess, it’s not like that monster is innocent.”

I laughed out loud, a strange, haunted sound. I suppose that’s right. I’m not innocent.

“What’s wrong?” He grinned uncomfortably, “Is this because of your nickname, Dragon? I won’t kill you, just the monster, I promise!”

A second burst of desperate laughter escaped my chest, it sounded like a sob of pain.

“Power, thrones, gold… humans like these things very much, don’t they?”

“Dragon…” Robert trailed off as I stood up.

“I know where the castle is. I will send you directions.”

“You- you do?”

“I do.” I reached out and patted his shoulder. “I wish you luck, friend.”

I started to walk away.

“Hey! After I defeat the dragon, and rescue the princess… you should come back to my kingdom! We can keep going on quests, adventuring just like we have before!” He grew excited as he spoke, but I simply shook my head.

“I’m sorry Robert, I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“What?! Why?”

“Because I also have to pursue my dream. Goodbye, Robert.” With these words, I left him.

As I walked, the pain in my chest moved to my eyes, causing them to water. I cursed the weakness of this human form, running out of sight to transform back into my dragon body. As I flew away, I roared my pain out to the heaven’s suppressing my grief, and looking forward. 

I was a dragon. A supreme being of fire and magic. I needed no one.

I informed the princess that night that she would be rescued in the morning. She cheered, clapping her hands excitedly upon finding out that her future husband would be a prince.

I stared at her quietly, unable to suppress my curiosity.

“So we will part tomorrow, the collar’s restriction will be lifted. I will play my part, and my debt to your father will be paid.”

The human girl stared at me, her eyes widening as she realized what my words meant.

Would she speak up? This would be her last chance to speak out, to tell the truth about the collar around my neck, to reach out to the one who had protected her from villains, assassins and thieves for the past two years…

“Well, I’m going to go to sleep, Dragon. I wouldn’t want to be tired for my rescue!” She gave me a wide grin, avoiding my eyes, and scampered upstairs.

I stared after her, feeling a sense of disappointment

I flew away in the night searching for magic within the deep forests and lakes. Catching wind of a spark, I landed down within a clearing, standing just outside a fairy ring. 

“Mighty dragon, to what do I owe the pleasure?” The fairy queen stepped out, still dancing under the moonlight as if to a silent tune.

“I have come to make a trade.”

“Your kind rule over all that is magical and all that is not. You take what you want and give what you want.” Her tiny face was confused. “What can I trade with you?”

I let out a sigh, lowering my head until we were eye to eye. “I have been betrayed.”

“What…?” She trailed over, her silver eyes widening upon seeing the black metal around my neck. “Who in this world could collar you?”

“I put it around my own neck to pay a life debt.”

A long sigh came from the fairy queen. “What a waste of a life debt. If the human was smart he would have asked for one of your hearts, or a cup of your blood.”  Studying it closer she frowned. “The conditions of this dark magic…”

“Yes, to never hurt the princess, to only be freed upon her rescue…”

“But the third condition…”

I cut her off. “I’m well aware of the third condition.”

“Those bastards!” She cursed, crying glowing tears as she stared at the collar around my neck as if it were a noose.  “What can I do?”

I smiled. “I’ve spent many years among humans, I’ve studied them, lived among them… I know what they value most. I will make them drown in regret for what they have done.”

“But how?”

I handed her a jar, that glowed with an eerie silver light. She glanced at it, her face turning purple as she realized what it held.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

“Shush. You only need to hold onto it.” I soothed the fairy with a laugh. “When the collar’s magic is complete, please return it to me. In return I will give you 3 drops of my blood. One now, and two upon completion.”

She shook her head. “I don’t dare take that high of payment this simple task.”

“Good, because I have two more tasks for you.”

We placed our heads together and planned quietly through the night.

“Dragon! Come out! I, Prince Robert, have come to face you!” A familiar voice called out from the castle’s entrance. I sighed quietly, even if I expected it, it was still painful to confront him like this. I spread my wings, lifting my dragon form into the air, landing in front of him quietly.

“What do you want, human?” I asked him.

He started, confused for a moment. “You can talk?”

I laughed bitterly. “I am a dragon, a supreme being of fire and magic. Did you think I was a simple beast?”

“N- No.” He shook his head. “Dragon or no, I have come to rescue the princess today.”

“And what if I release her without a fight?” I stared at him seriously, and he grew uncomfortable.

“Y- You can’t do that.”

“Why not?  If I release her, will you leave without my head?”

Robert paused, seeming to think it over, and then shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” I knew his reasons, but some perverseness within me made me want to hear him say it out loud.

“YOU… you must pay for your crimes!” He turned red and stammered as he spoke, unused to lying.

I chuckled. “So you must slay the dragon to prove your worth as the future king. The princess matters very little to you.”

“No! I need the marriage too!” He stopped, clapping a hand to his mouth. “I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine, she has not heard you. I will call her out now. “ I whistled a wind spell, opening the doors and lifting the princess to come to rest on the ground half-way between us. She looked hopefully at Robert, squeezing out a few fake tears.

“My hero!”

Her sweet falsetto caused him to smile at her. I watched them both, wishing to rub my chest which hurt.

“Human!” I called out, not having to fake my irritation. “If you have come to fight, let us fight.”

Robert nodded, notching back an arrow and aiming it at my chest.

It bounced off my scales and clattered to the ground.

I sighed. “You aren’t making this easy.” With that, I transformed into my human form.

Seeing me, he yelled, confused. “Dragon? Why are you here… this has to be an illusion!”

I smiled sadly. “I told you from the start to call me ‘dragon’ and you still did not understand?”

“You- you’re…”

“I am your friend, the one who has fought side by side with you the past few months.” I spread my arms wide, leaving myself open to attack. “I am also the dragon which guards the princess. To kill one is to kill the other.”

Robert retreated a few steps, shaking with shock. The princess saw his reluctance and called out. “Hurry up and fight that horrible monster!”

Monster? I saw him mouth the word as if confused.

“Don’t you have a dream?” I asked him quietly?

His eyes slowly cleared, and his hands steadied. The arrow was aimed at my chest.

“I’m sorry, Dragon.”

I smiled. “I won’t forgive you.”

He let loose the arrow, and it struck me between my upper ribs. I fell backwards with a groan.

“There, princess, I have saved you. Let’s go.”

“Wait!” She called out, angry. “Do you really think one arrow is enough to kill a dragon?!”

The both turned towards me, who had sat up, and casually pulled the arrow out. “I am too weak to continue, brave prince.” My voice was mocking, my eyes cold. “I yield, and declare you the winner. You may take the princess.”

Robert hesitated only a moment, and then nodded. “Then I will take her away, dragon.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but held back. With his acceptance of his win, however, it was enough.

The collar around my neck glowed. I sighed with relief.

“What’s happening?” Robert was confused.

“I have been collared by the king to repay a life debt.” I laughed softly. “The first of the collar is that I could never harm the princess. The second is that I must guard her until she is rescued and only then would the collar’s magic be complete.”

“So you are free?” He asked with a hopeful expression.

“If only the world were so kind, isn’t that right princess?” I called out the young woman, who sneered at me from where she hid behind the prince.

“Milana? What does Dragon mean?”

“Yes, princess, do you want to tell him about the secret condition you and your father hid from me?” I paused, listening to the magic of the collar as it activated. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, you’ll see soon enough. “ I changed into my dragon form.

“What are you…?”

“I don’t wish to die in another form. I will die as a dragon.”

“Die…?” Robert was pale, he stepped closer only to be pulled back by the princess.

A bright light poured out from the collar, enveloping me. I felt its magic sink into my flesh, seeking my heart, to stop it.

The third condition.

When the princess was rescued, and the collar’s magic was completed. I would die. Only then would the collar come off and I would be free.

“Goodbye.” 

I was unsure who I was saying it to. Robert? The princess? Phillip?

I thought I heard someone cry out: “DON’T GO!” but before I could look in that direction, darkness over came me. The magic entered my heart, stopping it in place.

And at the foot of the castle, next to the prince and the princess he rescued… I died.

Pain.

Pain in my chest was the first thing I felt again. I tried to open my eyes, the light of the sun blinding me.

“Ouch.”

I blinked a few times, focusing on the tiny form in front of my chest, her hand buried deep within the flesh.

“Thank you Fairy Queen.”

She smiled and retrieved her hand. “You’re welcome, Dragon. We had a deal, after all.”

“Any problems?”

She gestured behind her back. “The human was noisy. The male one. He kept crying and screaming about how he betrayed you and deserved death. The female immediately started talking about draining your blood for her father. I assume that is why they wanted you dead.” She thought it over. “Should I kill them?”

I shook my head, wincing as the motion pulled at my open chest wound the fairy had just made. “No need.”

“DRAGON?” Robert cried out, tears on his face. He rushed forward, staring at me with wide eyes. “How are you alive? I thought…”

“That the magic of the collar had killed me?” I glanced down at the pieces of dark metal on the ground and let out a flame, melting it into a puddle. “It  did.”

“Then how are you alive?” The princess was upset.

The fairy laughed. “Foolish humans. All creatures know that dragons have two hearts. The magic only affected the one in the chest, while I had the second one given to me last night!” She pointed at my wound within a silver heart beat loudly. “It only needed to be replaced. “

“That’s enough, fairy.” I sighed as she used magic to close up the scales of my chest, hiding my heart from view. I felt safer without it exposed. “Did you do the other tasks I asked you?”

She grinned mischievously. “That I did, mighty dragon.”

“What did you…?” Robert started to ask, but stopped, as if unsure if he should continue.

“I will tell you, human.” I no longer called him by his name. He was no longer a friend, like Phillip or his daughter. “My time amongst humans has taught me much. You all spout ideals of love, and hope and light. But in the end, you care for only two things: power and gold.”

“I-“ He seemed to want to argue, but fell silent.

“I will simply take the things you love.”

Now the princess looked concerned. “What do you mean?”

The fairy leaned back, cackling with glee. “We took all the gold in the castle vaults! Every last piece! We rotted all the wood on your weapons, rendering your armies useless, and turned your thrones into dust.” She glanced at Robert. “Your kingdom too.”

The princess fell down, her face pale. “All of the gold is gone?”

“It belongs to me.” I smiled, “I have no use for it, but I will decorate my lair with it, and enjoy looking at something that you care so much for being in my possession.”

“But…”

“You are always free to try to take it from me, if you dare.” My smile turned cold. “But know this: I am a dragon. I will not be challenged lightly. I have been merciful, but no longer. If you come searching for your gold, be prepared to lose your life.”

“Dragon.” Robert whispered my name as if it meant something, his face sad. 

I spread my wings and lifted into the air, ignoring him.  Flying over the kingdoms, I let out roar after roar. It was a shout a joy, of being alive again. Of challenge for all who would oppose me.

Finally I came to my lair, the small cave I had been born in that had now been dug into an enormous cavern. I settled within it, looking with satisfaction at the sparkling golden pieces that decorated every inch of my lair. I made a nest among it, falling asleep within the piles.

I hoped they would try and take it. I looked forward to their attempts. 

I would kill them all.

I was a dragon. A creature born of fire and magic. I paid my debts, protected my pride. And now…

I was home. 

[loadingluke]

2-7 weeks post stage 2 update!

Hello! Thought it was about time for an update. Time has gone by incredibly quickly. I’ve been pretty preoccupied with life stuff and honestly stage 2 recovery was pretty uneventful once I was out of the hospital and resting. Strap in though, as this is gonna be a long one.I think the best way I can update you all is by doing a rough update of the past few weeks, and then I will talk specifically about the healing of each section.

GENERAL HEALING FROM 2-6 WEEKS

My last update was from 2 weeks post op, so feel free to go back to that if you want some context. Following that update, I had my first appointment at the continence clinic for my first void trial! I got to the clinic at 7:30am, and this was located at Greenslopes. Goossen came in and had a bit of a look and took my urethral catheter out- he said there wasn’t any resistance which was a good sign. I was then taken to the waiting room area and given some water...and then it was time to wait.

The room itself was quite nice, there were a huge selection of recliners and some TVs, and nurses who were offering food and coffee while I waited. I had my 2L bottle of water and just started chugging. Once I felt the urge to pee I went to the bathroom, and on a table was a selection of bottles all labelled with peoples names. I located my own and then had my first attempt and it went well! I was expecting it to hurt or be uncomfortable, but it didn’t hurt very much at all, possibly because I was so well hydrated. I then went to the consulting room and had an ultrasound on my bladder to see whether or not I completely emptied my bladder. The nurses then measured how much I peed to see if it was all normal. All was looking good so I was sent back into the waiting room for another 2 attempts before I’d be cleared to leave. The other two attempts went off without a hitch and so I was sent off back home, with my SPC being switched to a flip flow instead of a bag. From now on, I will be solely voiding from my penis, but if there is any issue like a stricture or for whatever reason I can’t pee, I have the SPC as a backup option.

The rest of this week was pretty uneventful. The only issue I noticed post urethral catheter removal was that the next few days I had a few issues with bladder spasms, but it passed pretty quick and wasn’t an issue again as long as I took my ditropan. I was oozing less and less, eventually to the point where I only needed 2 pieces of gauze on my scrotum and no more giant pads, and the best part...normal underwear instead of the hospital ones I’d been wearing for 2 weeks 🥰. I just chilled at home, drinking my water and peeing when I needed to- and thankfully there were no issues. I didn’t need to use the SPC at all, and now that it wasn’t being used and I was back to normal underwear it was actually not too bothersome. My family returned to Hong Kong and so I didn’t do too much besides waiting for my next appointment so I could go home. At this point, I was pretty much off pain meds besides random instances of pain or if I overdid it.

On Tuesday I had the SPC removed. This was also at the continence clinic at 7:30am. The nurses started to remove it but found that it wasn’t coming out. They were trying to be very gentle and unfortunately it wasn’t budging. They decided they would wait until Goossen came in to do it. In typical fashion, he removed it in 2 seconds with a few solid tugs. Luckily for me, it was so quick that I didn’t really have time to register what was happening and that it hurt before it was all over, lol. My drainage hole was dressed and I was told to contact him or the hospital if I had any issues. He stressed that I am not to be catheterised by my urethra unless it is done via camera and by someone with experience, and if not to just get an SPC, or, in case of emergencies, a large needle through my spc scar to aspirate urine if I can’t be catheterised. After shuddering at the thought of that I was all set to go and I was cleared to go back to Melbourne the next day.

My flight home was fine. I was a lot more mobile this time around compared to how I was post stage 1, and although I was taking it easy travelling didn’t completely wipe me like it did last time. I had some panadol just to manage my pain during the trip, but I don’t think I really needed it. I was feeling pretty back to normal now at 4 weeks post op, and boy was I glad to be home. I spent a few days relaxing, and then started back into GAMSAT study which took up the majority of my time.

The GAMSAT was last week, I was 6 weeks post op. For those unfamiliar, it is an exam you need to take to apply for most postgraduate medicine programs and consists of 3 sections that total about 5.5 hours. It’s a mammoth of a day for anyone, let alone someone who had a 6 hour surgery not even 2 months prior. I was feeling pretty back to normal luckily, and I think it went okay…but I’ll find out in November. I applied for accommodations before surgery as I was unsure how I’d be feeling post op, and so I was allowed to bring some pain meds in just in case, as well as a pillow to sit on. Apparently this was a strange request as when I entered the room the lady went “Oh! You’re the pillow man!” lol. I was actually seated in a separate section to the other people sitting the exam due to my accommodations, which was nice as it meant the whole process was smoother and there was less waiting around which I think was good for my body as I was getting a little sore towards the end. I’m just glad it’s all over now!That is about it for my general update, now I’m going to go specifically into how the different wounds/sections travelled and how I managed the healing. I have my next post op in mid October, so I’ll do another update then. I have a date booked for stage 3 for early next year, but at the moment it isn’t confirmed so I’ll find out at my post op if we are all good to go ahead then, so fingers crossed 🤞

GLANS

At this point, I would say my glans is fully healed. I am very happy with the shape and how it looks, it looks better than I could imagine. The scar underneath the corona looks just like a circumcision scar, which has made me feel a lot better about the general look of my penis. So far it hasn’t flattened, but I am going to keep an eye on it. As for the progression of healing, it changed quite a bit. For the first week and a half it was pretty uneventful, and I just had combine dressings on it to keep everything in place. Eventually the glans started to bleed and ooze quite a bit and so I was having to change it more frequently, so I started using gauze on my glans, wrapping it around the incisions and taping it in place. I would change this every day, and use saline-soaked gauze on the wound for about 15 minutes every morning before redressing it to keep it clean as per Goossen’s recommendation. It was pretty sloughy and gross for about 3 weeks, but started settling around the 4 week mark. Eventually I didn’t need gauze anymore and it looked pretty much healed. I occasionally use a little bit of fixomul on the glans, two strips on either side to hold it back so it heals raised, but I stopped doing that as I didn’t really like having to take it off and at this point it doesn’t look necessary. I had a little area that took a little longer to heal, and that formed a bit of a scab. I just left it be and eventually it fell off. This has left s little divot in my glans, but it’s pretty subtle and not really noticeable. I’m super super happy with how it all looks, aesthetically it looks better than I could have dreamed!

SCROTUM AND VAGINECTOMY SITE

I’ll start with my vaginectomy site, which has honestly been the easiest part of recovery. I’ve had no issues at all with the healing of this, it all healed well and all the stitches dissolved no problem. The amount of relief this has given has been huge for me, knowing it’s gone makes me feel so much more at peace. Nothing really to say though as it was pretty uneventful and healed as well as one could hope, with no complications or issues.

My scrotum has taken its time to heal, and this has been the longest process of the whole surgery. Because of the shape of the wound, it’s very hard to actually manage, as you can’t really stick things in place or anything. I had quite a bit of ooze coming from a small hole behind my scrotum, which I just used some gauze on and changed when needed. I also had some ooze coming from the seam line where my scrotum joins in the middle, which I also used gauze for. I would salt bath both wounds for 15-20 minutes a day after my shower and I definitely think that helped. By week 5 most of the ooze was gone, and I felt a lot more comfortable. The hole behind my scrotum is now completely gone, and the seamline looks normal.

The look of my scrotum isn’t pretty, and honestly it looks a little strange without any implants. It’s kinda shrivelled and deflated, but I know implants will improve its look significantly. The right side is quite a bit larger than the left, as the left had some tissue removed in stage 1, but over time this has settled and it looks a lot more even now. I think it’s important to mention this because there is very minimal info regarding the actual scrotoplasty aspect of phallo.

Right after surgery, the scrotum was looking pretty small and Goossen was concerned about me potentially needing tissue expanders to create enough room to accommodate the implant and pump- but since healing I think it has actually descended rather than retracted as we expected. The scrotum looks quite a bit larger now since I last saw him, and I think shouldn’t pose an issue for implants, but I’m not a surgeon so we shall see in October. I’m crossing my fingers that we will be okay to go ahead with stage 3 as planned, as if I need another op before stage 3 it would throw out my timing quite significantly...so we shall see. If it needs to be done it needs to be done, but I’m hoping that it will be fine to proceed without them.

URINATION

The part I was most concerned about of this whole surgery experience was no doubt my urethral lengthening- as this is where most complications typically stem from. I have been super lucky, and haven’t had any issues from the day I could stand to pee. Having the catheter was irritating, but it was so worth it for this result. I am so much more comfortable now and because of this, I’m drinking so much more water! I used to avoid drinking so I wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom because having to think about what I had in my pants stressed me out. Now that that’s not an issue I’m so hydrated. It’s great. I’m still stressing that something is going to go wrong, but there is no reason to. My stream is super strong and nice and straight and hasn’t changed at all. I don’t feel pain or irritation which is good, but the fear is still there and probably will still be there until I’m further down the line.

The sensation of peeing is weird. I can feel it in my natal urethra, and then it going through the bend where the new urethra and my natal urethra join, and then nothing. Because of this, it took a long time for me to not feel like I was just going to pee on the floor as it feels like it is exiting where it used to. I also was quite paranoid I was leaking because of this, even though I had no fistula or any reason to be stressed about it. This took a few weeks to get used to but wasn’t really something I saw discussed pre op. I can feel the urine through my urethra when I hold my penis as it makes it feel stiffer which is super cool.

My number one tip for if you’re having a catheter or just in general for this stage is to drink. Drink as much as you can and then drink more- it helped with the bladder spasms, it helped with the pain and with a catheter especially it’s important to keep things dilute. I had my 2L bottle with me that I took everywhere and I made sure to drink at least that entire thing every day and it made a huge difference, as once I forgot and the bladder pains and stinging was a lot worse. Drinking so much water during my recovery really got me into the habit and I’m really glad about it as it was definitely something I didn’t do as much as I should, and I feel better for it.

I had a bit of issue with post void dripping for a  few weeks, and I combatted this by using a bit of gauze or toilet paper on the end of my penis to catch any remaining drips.  I noticed this improved heaps at 5 weeks post op, as a lot of the swelling went down and it is easier to milk the urethra. I haven't had any issues with dripping since then really, which is good as it was getting kind of frustrating.

MISCELLANEOUS

My incision from where the full thickness graft was taken for my glansplasty is healing well. Pretty uneventful. I put fixomul on it when I can be bothered, but due to its location it doesn’t seem to stretch much anyway and so this may be overkill. My SPC site is closed over, but at this stage is still kinda scabby. I’m just letting it be, it’ll heal in time. Pics of both are attached.

Since stage 2 I’ve noticed an increase in hair growth on my penis, probably due to the increased blood flow to the area. Although it’s a lot better since my electrolysis, this is still super disappointing. Part of me wants to wait until after stage 3 to continue with it as I’m not too keen to put all the time and money into it just to have it all grow back again. For the time being I’m just trimming it and I’ll make more of a decision later.

As I’ve mentioned, I had burial of my original genitals this stage- and since this sexually I feel a lot more comfortable. I am able to tell where it is located at the base of my penis, but honestly I don’t need to find it as just using my penis is enough. I haven’t lost the ability to orgasm, nothing really feels different in terms of the feeling compared to pre burial, just that now I’m not super dysphoric after. That’s all I’ll say about that as it’s pretty personal, but we are all good in that department lol.

Emotionally I feel great, being able to stand to pee has been huge for my dysphoria and I feel awesome about it. I’ve used urinals without issue, and it’s so nice not stressing about an STP failing or there not being any stalls. I also feel a lot more comfortable now that the vaginectomy is done as I still had a lot of dysphoria relating to those parts, so it feels like a weight has been lifted off me. As much as the first few days were awful, recovery for this stage has been a lot less stressful and I’ve been able to bounce back pretty quickly. I’m looking forward to my final stage and for this chapter to be over. As always, let me know if you have any questions, my inbox is always open as well if you want to ask something privately. Hope the past few weeks have been treating you all well!

[airquietworks]

Hearts vs. Heroics or: How Uravity Surpassed the World’s Greatest Hero (IzuOcha) (Part 4)

Previous parts: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 Chapter 4: Trials before Battle To Ochako, the world seemed to suddenly pop into a greater focus. The crowd’s cheer banged hard against her eardrums as she struggled to process the full weight of Present Mic’s announcement. The mere thought of fighting Deku made her breathe faster. Her head started to throb painfully as the noise of the arena disrupted the buzzing inside her mind.

“Well…I guess…” Deku tried to speak from his position next to her to fill the icy silence building between them. Unfortunately, Present Mic’s explosive voice cut him off.

“KATSUKI BAKUGO VS. TSUYU ASUI!”  Ochako and Deku both flinched, goosebumps running down their skin as Present Mic continued to announce combatants.

“Let’s go somewhere quieter. We can talk there,” Deku suggested. Ochako nodded enthusiastically in agreement, suddenly desperate to get away from the battlefield. The place that could soon spell the end of all her immediate hopes.

The two walked forward at a brisk pace as they trudged through the hallways around the edge of the arena. Ochako hardly noticed the distance they travelled, her mind filled with a haze of anxiety over what was to come. Ochako clutched at her stomach all the while, trying desperately to stop herself from puking again on the way. Despite the sudden elephant of a topic standing between them, the pair kept quiet as they focused on getting Ochako over to the infirmary. They came to a silent agreement it was better to focus on that then the impending battle between them.

Ochako could not help but gasp when she walked into the familiar white room of the infirmary. It was cluttered and crowded, with beds lined up as far as she could see on either side of the room. There were about twelve in all, almost all of them occupied with students. Some were dozing peacefully, bandaged up snuggly as mummies, various limbs held in slings and casts. But others looked to be in a considerable amount of pain, both physical and emotional, as they groaned in their beds, dotted with bruises and cuts. 

“Hey guys,” Ojiro said from one of the beds closest to the door on the right. His head and tail were heavily bandaged, but he regarded them with a friendly smile all the same.  “Guess you had it pretty rough too?”

“Yeah…” Ochako replied mournfully, frowning at the rather grim sight before her. She did not recall this many combatants getting so injured in previous years. She supposed everyone was competing that much harder for what would be their last Summer Sports Festival. A free-for-all probably did not help keep injuries down, either.

“Another one?” Recovery Girl cocked her eyes up toward them from her position treating Sero near the back of the room, who was dozing with his arm in a sling. “I swear to all that is righteous, I am going to chew that damned rodent out for this one. A free-for-all! You have got to be kidding me!”

She sent a glare at both of them, who turned their eyes away from the elderly school physician. “Not you two again. How many times do I have to tell you to be more careful?”

“It’s just me this time,” Ochako stepped forward to take responsibility. She kept her eyes glued to the ground, knowing it would be best not to try to challenge the elderly nurse. “I got a bad blow to the face. And I need something to settle my stomach.”

With an agility that shocked Ochako, Recovery Girl ambled over to her and leapt up to kiss her cheek. She then pulled a small pill out of one of her pockets and shoved it into Ochako’s hands, before pointing forcefully at one of the beds in the back corner of the room.

“I saw the stunt you pulled. Take this and rest there. Next time, try to think of a strategy that does not require you to send your stomach into fits. Plus Ultra should not mean ruin your body. Although I suppose yours was a better option than getting blasted in all the chaos.”

With her fifteen-second treatment finished, Recovery Girl resumed her work bandaging up Sero’s arms, grumbling all the while. Ochako and Deku stood there in a moment of stunned silence, a little astonished at how fast the old woman could work when need demanded.

Longing for the comfort the bed had to offer, Ochako quickly walked forward and jumped into the soft surface. It felt heavenly after spending so long floating without anything solid beneath her. Her limbs went limp and started to feel like jelly, but the sting around her face dulled as Recovery Girl’s quirk took effect.  

“Here,” Deku said while holding out a plastic water bottle, grabbed from a pile of them located near the infirmary door. Ochako gratefully grabbed onto the refreshment, urgently twisting off the cap and gulping it down. She only stopped to throw the medicinal pill into her mouth before continuing to chug. She paused to take a deep breath of relief as the coolness of the water flowed through her.

Ochako closed her eyes and tried to think, putting off looking at Deku’s face for the moment. The misfortune of their matchup was still sinking in, but the full weight of it was starting to bear down on her.

She was going to fight Deku. The strongest person in their class.

The person she revelled in fighting in the gym — but who she knew she could never beat when quirks were involved.

The person who made her heart do somersaults, which had been aggravatingly difficult to control of late and could certainly hamper her in combat.

Her idol. Her hero. He now stood in the way of her dreams.

Ochako groaned as she let herself sink deeper into the soft bed. She wondered how much longer it would take her to achieve her dream of providing for her parents if she lost here in the first round. She’d certainly get less lucrative job offers out of high school. How long would it take to make up the difference in starting salary? Two years? Three? It was just more time her parents would have to spend working, struggling to get by and risking some awful injury.

In her mind’s eye, she could see a building crumbling with her hopes. Everything was dashed by the luck of the draw.

“Uraraka?”

Ochako blinked, her eyes opening just before the daydream finished in her mind. There was Deku, still hovering over her, gaze boring into her. His face was creased with worry. She realized he was probably anxious about this too. This was not how either of them would have wanted this to go.

“Guess there was always a chance of this, huh?” Ochako asked as sunnily as she could. It came out shakier than she hoped, exhausted and nervous as she was. “Really bad luck.”

“Uraraka…” Deku tried to reply to her, but the words did not come. His tone was feeble, making Ochako feel all the worse, and she quickly resolved to try to make him feel a little bit better about the whole thing. It would be good if one of them could, anyway.

“Hey, don’t worry Deku,” Ochako smiled at him while giving him a thumbs up. She did not have the energy to raise her right hand particularly high, but she hoped he still appreciated it. “It’s going to be fine for you. To be honest, I don’t think I have much of a chance. But I’ll try to make it a good fight. And I’m sure—”

“You’re wrong.”

Ochako stopped herself awkwardly, blinking as Deku’s face transformed from lined uncertainty to a familiar look of grim determination. His mouth made a hard line, his eyes piercing through her. She saw a familiar spark of fire within his irises.

“I know I’m going to have to give it my all to have a chance against you,” Deku stated, his tone steady as a rock, leaving no room for argument. “You shouldn’t —”

“Ochako?”

Deku suddenly stood straight as a ramrod, his hair standing a little on end as the familiar voice sounded from behind him. Ochako peered over his shoulder to confirm their mutual suspicion. Her eyes widened at the sight of her parents stepping trepidatiously through the door. Her father led the way, his mother just behind him, both scanning around the infirmary looking for her.

“Daddy! Mommy!” At that moment, all of her anxieties and nerves washed away under the sheer joy that filled her at the sight of her parents.

“Ochako!”

“Honey!”

Her parents called out in unison, rushing over to meet her. Ochako sat up on the bed but was unable to leave it before their arms wrapped around her, hugging her tightly to them.

She could not conceal the tears that started to well up in her eyes as the loving embrace enveloped her, filling her with a warmth that dispelled her depressing thoughts. It had been months since she’d last seen them, and their reunions were always emotional. She relished in the feeling of her parents’ arms. The feeling of just being with them again. She was home.

“You were amazing out there,” her daddy complimented, ruffling her head a bit as they disentangled from each other. “I can’t believe those moves you pulled! How are you holding up after all that?”

“I’m doing alright,” Ochako replied with sincere enthusiasm. The medicine and Recovery Girl’s quirk were actually taking pretty quick effect in settling her stomach, even if her limbs felt rather weary.

“Oh, hello there, Midoriya, dear,” her mother was the first to acknowledge the boy, who remained still as a statue at the display in front of him. It was not the first time Deku had met her parents, but in their few brief encounters, Deku was rather awkward around them.

“Hi Mr. and Mrs Uraraka!” Deku exclaimed with a little too much volume in his voice. Recovery Girl shushed him from Sero’s bed and sent a glare his way. Deku covered his mouth and shivered in response, respecting the authority of the nurse. “It’s...it’s nice to see you!” Deku continued, much quieter this time.

“Likewise,” Ochako’s father replied, smiling kindly at him. “You put on quite the spectacle there too.”

“Thank — thank you, sir!” Deku stuttered under the praise, quivering a little. Ochako regarded him with an eyebrow quirked up. Deku never answered her as to why he got so nervous around her parents, always as formal and polite as possible around them. She had a similar reaction when she first met his mother Inko, but she was not so uptight around the gentle woman during subsequent encounters

“I’ll...I’ll let you spend some time with your family. I’ll...we’ll...talk before the next match, okay?” Deku stammered awkwardly. He walked out of the room with overly large steps before she could react, giving her a sorrowful look before waving his hand and waltzing out the door.

“...He’s a strange boy. Nice enough, though,” her mother muttered, shaking her head at Deku.

“Yeah, he’s...he’s not usually that awkward,” Ochako explained, instinctively trying to defend him.

“Well anyways...how are you really feeling after all of that?” Her father asked, pointedly refocusing the conversation onto her. His smile fell a little bit as he looked at the remnants of the burns on her face.

“I’m fine, daddy, honest.” She sighed, a little exasperated by the concern. She loved her father dearly, but his probing at her barriers got exhausting. She could trust him with almost anything, but there were some things she wanted to keep to herself, even from him.

“It’s because you’re fighting your friend in the next round, right?” He cut to the heart of the matter with a surgeon’s precision. Ochako felt a shadow fall over her sunny expression, her joy crumbling as quickly as it had arisen when her parents arrived.

“Yeah. It’s...it’s going to be a tough fight.” She reluctantly admitted what was bothering her, knowing it would do no good to deny it with her father having already caught on. She stared up at the two of them, their faces as forlorn as she felt. So much for a happy family reunion.

“Honey,” her mother spoke up, stepping forward a little bit and forcing her mouth into a smile. “No matter what happens, we’ll always be proud of you. I’m sure you can do it.”

Ochako took a deep breath and closed her eyes at that, trying to control the tearful mist threatening to overtake them.

The sincerity of her mother was heartwarming, but Ochako could not think of the right words to explain reality. That no amount of encouragement was ever going to close the gap between Deku and her.

He was like a shooting star, blazing across the night sky with a brilliance beyond human imagination. She was the hapless stargazer, appreciating him from afar.

She wanted to catch up to him. But she knew, deep down, that would never actually happen. He was bound to be the world’s greatest hero. She...well, she would just be a regular pro. Hopefully, one that could make enough money to provide a comfortable life for her family.

At the end of the day, she could live with the gap between them. She had made herself content with that reality. But right now….

“I don’t think I can. Win, I mean,” Ochako admitted to them. Her voice quivered as she uttered that, something deep inside her hating herself for making the statement. “But I’ll do the best I can. I want to show you...I want to show everyone what I can do.”

She didn’t look up before she felt familiar hands grasp both of hers. The hands were hardened by decades of manual labour, firm, with an incredible strength contained within them. But they were also gentle, lifting her hands up as gently as a cloud, brushing over them with a touch as light as a feather.

Her father’s hands reminded her of Deku’s. Or perhaps it was Deku’s touch that reminded her of her father. She was not sure how she should feel about that.

“Ochako, you’ve already shown us...shown everyone what you can do. The people you’ve helped, the lives you’ve saved...nothing will ever take that away,” her father assured her, voice filled to the brim with pride and warmth. She felt a few more tears stream down her cheeks as she opened her eyes to see her father crouched to be face-to-face with her.

“I know you’re going to be able to achieve your dreams, no matter what happens today. And remember, there’s no rush,” he assured her, repeating the familiar mantra. He was always telling her to slow down; that she did not have to be in such a hurry to become a hero. Today was no different.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying desperately to maintain her facade. To be like the strong and inspiring hero she was chasing. An unwavering pillar of strength.

But it was hard to manage that after she felt his warm arms encircle her again. She could not hope to stop the tears that continued to flow in response.

“I don’t want to lose here…” she murmured into her father’s chest. “I just want to be a good hero. I want to help you sooner.”

“You’re already an incredible hero, Ochako. And we’ll be fine.”

“I want to win. For you guys.”

“We’ll be cheering you on. But you don’t need to put the whole world on your shoulders, Ochako. You don’t have to prove anything to us. We’ll be happy just seeing you following your own dreams.”

Ochako felt another hand touching her shoulder. Her mother, silently echoing the loving sentiment of her father.

Ochako sighed, letting her father’s heartbeat lull her into some semblance of peace. She felt too drained to keep arguing with him any further. 

Her parents were every bit as good as putting on a brave face as she was. But she knew how much they struggled to get by. She knew the risks they took every year to keep their business afloat. She knew she was not willing to let them keep working themselves to death for any longer than necessary.

She was the Uravity, the gravity hero. She should be able to take the world atop her shoulders.

“Thanks, daddy, mommy. I’m...I’m okay now.”

She pushed herself out of her father’s arms. She summoned the best smile she could for them, wanting to reassure them about her. It was probably sullied by the tear tracks left on her cheeks, but she hoped it was convincing enough.

“Are you sure, honey? You can talk to us about anything.” Her mother pierced right through the hastily assembled wall Ochako was trying to erect around herself. Still, she was not willing to let herself fall into despair in front of them again. She shook her head, looking up at her mother and trying harder to make her happiness more convincing.

“Yeah. It’s not going to do me much good to keep crying about it. All I can do is go out there and try my best, right?”

With the pop of a firework, Mina Ashido suddenly burst into the room from the hallway, dark eyes scanning rapidly around the infirmary. She locked onto Ochako, eyes widening in alarm at the sight of her parents. With steps far more demure than anything Ochako had ever seen from her, Mina walked past the other infirmary beds, straight towards them. She still wore her usual exuberant smile, but it did not quite reach her eyes.

“Hey there, Mr and Mrs Uraraka! Nice to see you again. Ochako, Midnight wanted me to come and get you. You’ve got 30 minutes until the next round starts and they want to make sure you and Midoriya are both ready.”

Ochako took a deep breath and nodded her head deeply. She regarded her parents again before hugging each of them in turn tightly.

“We’ll be cheering you on. Do your best out there!” her mother said. She ghosted her lips over her daughter’s forehead. Ochako’s skin tingled from the contact.

“We’ll find you after the match. Best of luck out there,” her daddy added encouragingly, ruffling her hair one last time. “No matter what happens, I know it’ll work out in the end.”

Ochako nodded in reply, unable to summon any more words. She was pretty sure she’d cry if she tried. Her heartbeat ran fast as she stepped away from her parents with urgency, following Mina out of the room.

Ochako’s heart swelled with love for her parents. She stopped her steps just before exiting the door, turning to give them one last, beaming smile and a shaky thumbs up. They both smiled and waved in return, standing together, the picture of happiness.

The gravity hero spun around and cleared the threshold, turning down the hallway. With her parents behind her, Ochako’s smile faltered. She hung her head low, looking down at her fragile-looking hands.

She loved her parents. But they did not get it the hero business, not really. There was always a degree of separation between her relationship with her heroic self, and her relationship with her parents. They did not completely understand why she had to push herself so hard. They did not understand why she wanted to win so much — why she needed to do well here. There was no way they could understand how much it hurt her knowing she was almost certainly going to lose. 

They knew Ochako. They did not really understand Uravity. They did not know what it meant for a hero to go Plus Ultra.

She walked forward behind Mina towards the waiting area of the arena. She kept her head hanging low, ready to resign herself to her losing fate against Deku.

“That was a pretty impressive performance, Ochako. Even by your standards.”

Ochako stopped and blinked rapidly, limbs freezing in place. She looked up to see Mina had turned to face her, hands on her hips. There was a slight smile on her lips, but it looked puny compared to the exuberant grins the pink girl usually gave.

“Wha…?”

“It’s not hard to see how much this fight is bothering you,” Mina explained, interrupting Ochako before she could get a word out. “So I’m going to give you the advice you need to hear.”

Mina’s voice went down an octave with those words, taking on a seriousness Ochako had never heard from her. The strangeness of it sent a small chill down Ochako’s spine, as she struggled to figure out what kind of game Mina was playing at.

“Go out there, do your best, and try to have fun!”

It was like watching a jack-in-the-box, as Mina jumped a little into the air, face brightening with an open-mouthed grin and her hands pointing haphazardly upward into the air. Ochako blinked, too stunned to respond quickly.

Evidently, the non-response was not what Mina was looking for, as the pink girl shook her head and sighed.

“Look, the reason I tease you so much is because you’re serious way too often.” Serious Mina had returned, but she at least managed to keep an easygoing grin on her face this time.

“I”m not...always serious…” Ochako mumbled in reply, already on the defensive, clasping her hands and rubbing her thumbs together.

“The act you pull half the time doesn’t count,” Ashido replied quickly, sending a peering glance straight at Ochako. The gravity hero gulped in reply.

“Even Momo, nerdy as she is, finds chances to get silly when she rants about some book she likes. But you...you’re always so focused on hero work that I hardly see you smiling anymore. Really smiling, I mean. That goes for Midoriya too, for that matter. He’s rubbing off on you more than I can stand.”

Ochako stood there, slack-jawed, struggling to process this side of Mina, who continued to cut through her facade with a swagger that was hard to respond to.

“We all have our own reasons, but we all want to be heroes, Ochako,” Ashido explained before she gave Ochako another toothy smile. “But we have to keep our own happiness in mind too.”

“What...what do you mean by that?” Ochako asked slowly. Mina’s sudden rant froze her feet in place as she tried to process her friend’s words.

“You’re not going to be able to help people if you’re miserable all the time,” Mina answered without breaking her vocal stride, her hands as bouncy as her words were. “And the fact is, the happiest I ever see you and Midoriya is when you’re together. That’s why I think you need to give it a real shot with him.”

“I’m...I’m plenty happy,” Ochako pouted and crossed her arms in front of her, growing increasingly indignant at Mina’s speech. She was absolutely happy. Wasn’t she? She wanted to give a stronger rebuttal — prove Mina wrong somehow —  but she could not think of any. Her head was foggy and she felt unsure of how to navigate her feelings in the jumble of nerves she was in right now.

“There’s happy and then there’s happy,” Mina retorted, shaking her head again at Ochako’s stubbornness. “Look, I see how bummed out you’re getting about this fight, but I don’t see why you should be. You spar with Midoriya all the time, right?”

Ochako narrowed her eyes at the girl, not entirely sure what she was getting at.

“And how does fighting with him make you feel?” Mina leaned forward, hands clasped behind her, watching Ochako’s face with an intense stare.

At the prompting, Ochako reflected back at all the times she had trained with Deku. The exhilaration, the exhaustion, the joys of victory and the disappointment of defeat. But no matter the outcome, their sparring always ended up with them sharing a laugh together. There was not a single time she could remember where she did not walk away from sparring with a warm feeling in her chest.

“...Pretty good,” Ochako admitted, crossing her arms in front of her.

“So, just think of that feeling!” Mina advised as she raised her hands in the air. “You have fun sparring with him, right? Well, think of it as just another sparring session, but on a bigger stage. It does not have to be all serious. Just enjoy the thrill of competition!”

Ochako let the words sink in, stroking her chin lightly in thought. A part of her refused to let go of the harsh reality of the fight ahead. She wanted to win. She knew her early career prospects hinged on it. She had too much pride as a hero to not take the upcoming bout seriously.

But pained as much as it pained her to admit it...maybe Mina had a point. Her head felt muddied by all the warring thoughts and feeling she was dealing with.

Her parents, her career, her pride, her love for Deku, the prospect of fighting Deku, the strategy for the battle, the nerves of performance. She was not sure how to come to grips with it all. She struggled to focus on any one thing rattling around in her mind.

But sparring with Deku...training with Deku...it was almost as natural as breathing at this point. That much, she was more than capable of. If she just focused on that, maybe she could at least put up a decent fight for him. She might even be able to appreciate the thrill of battle, as Mina suggested.

Ochako knew such a feeling would never last. But it might last her long enough to get her through the fight, at least.

“...Thanks, Mina.” Ochako looked up and gave her friend a sincere smile. As much as Mina irritated her, she ultimately had the good of her friends at heart. “I’ll give it a try.”

“You’re welcome,” Mina replied, giving her a grin and a thumbs up. “I’m rooting for ‘ya out there.”

“Would Ochako Uraraka please report to the waiting area.” The voice of Midnight sounded through the speakers around the arena, reminding them both of how little time remained before the fight.

“Shoot, I better go,” Ochako grumbled, breaking off into a brisk jog. Mina nodded and stood off to the side, letting Ochako run right past her.

“Make sure to ask for a kiss after the fight!” Mina called after her, cackling all the while. Ochako nearly tripped, her heart kicking up a notch and heat surging into her cheeks. But she kept going, with far too little time to turn around and give Mina a piece of her mind. Her pink friend had undoubtedly counted on that.

With only a few minutes to spare, Ochako rounded a corner to the waiting area. Her eyes were met with Deku and the back of Bakugo’s head, the pair standing close together, talking about something. She gasped but covered her mouth, taking a few steps back to peer around the corner of the hallway.

Why would Bakugo want to talk to Deku right now? Ochako wondered, knowing the two were still far from being friends — and probably never would be. Curiosity got the best of her and she decided to eavesdrop.

“...Don’t lose to her.” Bakugo ordered in a low, threatening done, hands deep in the pockets of his sports uniform. Ochako could not make out his face from where she was standing, but she could tell he was probably glaring straight as Deku.

“What?” Deku replied, raising his eyebrows, perplexed.

“I wouldn’t put it past you to throw the fight or do something stupid and get your ass kicked. She’s tough. But you better win, Deku. I didn’t go after you last round because I expect to destroy you in the finals.”

“I would never throw the fight. I’m giving it my all,” Deku assured him, looking forward with the familiar blaze of conviction in his eyes. Ochako looked on, biting her lip at the thought of having those eyes aimed squarely at her in the ring.

“I’m not going to lose, Kacchan.”

The words sent a cold chill straight to Ochako’s heart. She gripped the edge of the corner tightly as they sunk in. They were not surprising in the slightest; of course Deku would give it his all against her, just like she was planning too. And of course he would be confident. He would probably say the same no matter his opponent, just due to his sheer determination alone. His quirk certainly gave him the power to back up that sentiment, as well.

“You better not, or I’ll make you regret it, loser.” With the warning — tame by Bakugo’s standards — the explosive boy walked past Deku towards an exit to the stands.

Deku breathed out a sigh of relief. He frowned suddenly and started pacing rapidly in front of the waiting room.

The time to fight was approaching fast. She could not let Deku’s pronouncement get her down too much. With her own deep breath, Ochako painted an easygoing smile on her face and took the plunge, walking around the corner to greet her best friend – and her probable doom.

“Heya Deku,” Ochako greeted cheerily, summoning her usual bubbliness.

“Uraraka!” Deku jumped slightly as she came into view, a slow smile emerging across his own face. “I was worried we wouldn’t get to talk before the fight.”

“Wouldn’t want to miss that,” Ochako agreed. Every second with him made it harder and harder to keep her a smile on her face. “What was it you wanted to say earlier?”

“Uraraka...I...you…” Deku stopped and started his speech repeatedly, struggling to get the words out. He took a deep breath and started again. “Uraraka, you shouldn’t put yourself down.”

“Whaddya mean?” She asked, feigning ignorance. She did not like where this might be going. She did not want to be confronted any more about her jumbled emotions again, especially not by him of all people.

“You said earlier you didn’t think you had much of a chance against me.” Deku stared intently at her, but Ochako refused to meet his eyes, looking away and off into the corner.

She was tired. She was trying to focus on just getting through the fight ahead. She wanted out of this conversation.

“Did I? Well, I mean—”

“You’re strong, Uraraka. You shouldn’t doubt yourself. You have every bit as good a chance to win as I do.”

Her chest got tight as she felt her heart swelling. She scrunched her face and shook her head. The words were comforting, but she was wary. How did she know Deku was not just trying to make her feel better? There was no way—

“...And to tell you the truth, I’m terrified about it.”

She turned her head to look at his face again, jolted by the sudden confession. His eyes were suddenly downcast and his posture slumped.

“What do you mean by that?”

“...I know how hard it is going to be to fight you. I want to be confident but...I know if I’m not performing at my absolute best, I’m going to lose. And I can’t afford to lose here.”

The desperate edge radiating in his voice sounded sincere. As she looked at him, the indomitable hero she knew he was going to become had faded away. There was only Izuku, the nerdy, kind worrywart who she was proud to call a friend.

He was just as freaked out about this fight as she was, she realized. The thought made the fog hanging in her mind disperse as a clear course of action took too form in front of her.

“And I hate that one of us is going to have to lose,” Deku mumbled, eyes glued to the floor. “I don’t want to be the person who knocks you out of this. I know how much this means to you. I—”

Ochako wrapped her arms around his body to cut him off. She pressed her head under him, squeezing him tightly. She breathed him in, relishing in the contact, even though he grew very still in her arms. But after a few moments, he loosened up, slowly wrapping his arms around her in turn.

It was a rare form of contact between them. They were usually too shy to initiate anything so bold as a hug. But time had made these moments of physical comfort come up on occasion. Ochako knew it was something they both needed.

Ochako disentangled herself from him, holding him at arm’s length. His eyes were shining down on her, his cheeks painted red. She beamed up at him in turn without the slightest bit of effort, a sense of relief making the gesture sincere.

“As long as we can...just think of this fight as another sparring session. Just me, versus you, giving it our all. Win or lose, no hard feelings. Trying our best to improve as heroes. Okay?”

It was the only way she could see through the storm of conflicting emotions raging within her. Her relationship with Deku was an anchor point. He consistently confounded her, but she knew she could always rely on him to keep her down to earth. And she’d always do the same for him.

With only a moment of hesitancy, Deku nodded in agreement. “...Alright then. Just like any other sparring session. Thanks, Uraraka.”

"Mina gives good advice sometimes," she muttered in admittance. The two shared a laugh at that, the moment of levity a wonderful break from the overbearing sense of tension.

"You two are absolutely ADORABLE!"

The two jumped to split apart, the exclamation hitting them like a cold bucket of water. They both turned, faces on fire, to see Midnight standing behind them, eyeing them with her hands clasped together and a knowing smile on her face.

"We were just talking!" Ochako stated with a little too much force to be convincing.

"Nothing unusual!" Deku added, turning his eyes towards the ceiling.

"There's no need to be ashamed of young love!" Midnight declared. She laughed haughtily as a tide of red made its way up both of the teenagers' faces as they sputtered denials to her.

"I'm just teasing," Midnight assured them, rolling her eyes. "But time's up. Are you both ready?"

Ochako took a deep breath and briefly considered the question. In many ways, she wasn't. She did not have any kind of plan — or expectation — of beating Deku. The consequences of what it would mean to lose here still lurked as a shadow in her mind. And her feelings for the boy were still a mess.

But as she turned to look into Deku's eyes — which he did in turn — she found the certainty she needed. The two of them had been through life-or-death situations together more than they could count. Ochako knew if she was by his side, she could take on this challenge too, strange as that idea sounded.

Ochako twisted her head and nodded to Midnight, seeing Deku do the same in unison out of the corner in her eye. Midnight gave them a toothy grin but did not comment otherwise, gesturing for them to follow her.

The seconds went by far too quickly for Ochako's liking as they stepped through the twisting halls of the arena's superstructure. In what felt like no time at all, Ochako parted ways with Deku to head to the opposite end of the arena. He gave her one last smile and wave before disappearing behind a corner — the last look she'd get before she faced him in the ring.

Before long, Ochako found herself face-to-face with the entranceway to the battlefield, enshrouded in glorious sunlight. She stretched as she awaited the cue, breathing deeply to get a proper rhythm going. Her stomach was completely settled now, which made her breathe a little easier. She was going to need that if she was going to make this a good fight.

"Good luck out there. I'm hoping you can pull this off," Midnight said, winking, before leaving Ochako to her own devices. Ochako only nodded, words hard to come by in these last moments before her fight.

This was it. No more time. No more fretting. Just her, Deku, and an uncomfortable amount of people watching them. Sparring, trying to one-up each other, doing their best. For the future they were both pursuing.

She might not have a chance. But she was not going down without a fight.

In the distance, she could see massive torches on her side of the arena ignite and shoot up into the sky. Her cue.

Ochako walked forward into the light and the roar of the crowd, ready to seize her destiny.

AN: Sorry this took so long! I should be able to get back to a weekly update schedule to finish off this fic. Thanks to Kingdom Lightzz on fanfiction.net for editing. Hope you all enjoyed it! ^_^ I’m excited to bring you the climax next week. Please, leave a like or a reblog.

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Suicide Note

Mirror: paste.ee/p/iClXD

Please rehost on zeronet and substratum when they publish their hosting platform

Early Saturday morning, I killed myself with toxic gas. The last two years of my life have been a slow motion death sentence, and I’ve finally chosen to complete it on my own terms. I started planning this more than a month ago when I first realized that my last chance for survival had failed me. I’m mentally disabled, very ill and I was illegally fired from my last job as a dishwasher because of it six months ago. Since then, I’ve been fighting a discrimination case against the company through the Seattle Office for Civil Rights. A settlement from the result of that became my only chance to escape what’s destroyed my life, but SOCR failed me. It was agonizingly difficult and straining to get an investigator on my case, and then he quit a few weeks after opening it in February. Since then every employee I’ve dealt with from top to bottom has been dishonest and deceitful to me, after realizing that no one in the only organization with the ability to help me had any interest of actually helping me, I lost any hope of getting a new investigator in a time frame that’ll save me. I only got a new investigator last week, and by then it was far too late. If this got started when it should have, it would be wrapped up this month at the very latest.

Then, some days later I go notice that my rent is going up next month, which sealed my fate. For the last year I’ve had to depend on my parents, Ken and Jodi for bills after an unsuccessful job hunt after being laid off. They have abused me my entire life, always mentally and emotionally and sometimes physically. They’re delusional, sadistic, childishly vindictive, dangerously stupid, and terrifyingly negligent. In January they forced me into an agreement that conditioned their continued payment of my bills on me taking pharmaceutical medication from a psychiatrist. This is in virtue of their delusion that my mental illnesses are genetic and innate, not brought up from my environment and what’s done to me. I’ve had all of my DNA sequenced, which disproved any disposition to neural conditions early in life. This agreement wasn’t arrived at through discourse or negotiation, but out of nowhere they exploited my worst fears against me at my most vulnerable moment in order to renege on past agreements and strong arm me into lying about agreeing to their condition. A few psychiatrist meetings and a pharmacy visit later, it was relatively harmless but insanely stressful because of how impulsively aggressive my parents are. So my current fears aren’t precisely that their current condition is unachievable, it doesn’t hurt me to fill my cabinet with wasted pill bottles, despite the wasted money handed to big pharma that could go to help cover my basic needs. But they are absurdly dishonest people, they will never for even a second stay faithful to any agreement or negotiation. They hold the fact that they cover my bills over me to try to leverage me into more and more of their impulsive demands, they talk to me like I’m a pet dog and to this day it’s never stopped even though I’m 20. I’d need the settlement money to cover my life expenses until I could get back on my feet alone, given that relying on my parents is untenable and could be revoke any month now on their whim. They’ve always prospered from their privilege, idolized the rich and loathed the poor which is why they just don’t understand at all the poverty that they forced me into.

In late 2016, I moved back in with them after having to drop out of university and they promised to support me in moving back out to a new college somewhere to do whatever program I wanted. Then within days they did a reversal and said they’d only pay for me to get a Bachelor’s, claiming that it’s necessary for a job which is bullshit since nearly all degrees are useless, connections are all that matter. Then again just days later, another reversal and they said they wouldn’t support me living anywhere doing anything, not even staying at their home, with the cannabis that I needed for medical purposes. They were very clearly freestyling their parenting methods, with zero regard for my wellbeing and the pathetic notion that they could squeeze aspects of me that they disapproved of out with force, and I’ll eventually submit to their every whim after their force me through enough misery and suffering. It was at that point that I was forced out of their place, and living out of a suitcase I couch hopped until landing at this current house in December.

The cannabis has been medicinal since that summer two years ago for PTSD, I had been illegally detained (essentially kidnapped) and psychologically tortured at a mental institution for more than two weeks. I was the victim of multiple felonies committed by government officials and medical professionals, including perjury and malpractice to justify my detainment in what was basically a jail. It was aided and encouraged by my parents, my mom said the first night she had slept well in a while was after hearing that I had gotten locked up. The corporation that owns the Fairfax institution, United Health Services, has been under investigation by multiple federal agencies for years for longterm and widespread national fraud and abuse, scheming insurance to lock people up on false pretenses and abuse them under state sanctioned involuntary detainment. This has been covered by Rosalind Adams extensively in Buzzfeed, and it’s exactly what happened to me. I had excessive hubris and had ordered what I thought was acid from an onion market, it turned out to be 25i-NBOMe which is a very dangerous and toxic synthetic compound. I mistakenly tried some without testing and had a jarring trip, ending with inescapable paranoia and hallucinations that I had copped from a honeypot and the feds would be at my door in the morning, I panicked and thought suicide was my only way out so I chugged some rum and put back a handful of prozac, then promptly puked it all up. Clearly not premeditated and I quickly called 911, telling police everything because I couldn’t hide anything and I realized I needed help. Any young person that takes a FULL serotonin agonist without preparation absolutely needs gentle and attentive care to help them calm down and move on from the trip, because that shit throttles your neuron pathways and fucks with your chemical balances way more easily than most drugs. It is an absolute crime against my humanity that no one would be there to give me that, all it did was make me a perfect target for the UHS involuntary detainment insurance scam, basically farming the vulnerable and mentally ill to harvest money from while being tortured and held in a pseudo jail without any consent or due process. That arguably makes it worse than jail since aside from the massive corruption and inequality at the roots of the criminal justice system, there’s still the intention and supposition of fair and due process. The cops decided not to charge me with possession and I went to the ER while still super drunk and out of it. The staff at the hospital there didn’t wait at all to question me which I’m pretty certain was illegal, if they waited a few hours until I sobered up I would have told them succinctly the foolish mistakes I made and wouldn’t make again, and that I wasn’t in any danger to anyone. Instead the responses they got from me were drunken mumbling and incoherent partial words, which they used to justify me needing to be shipped off to an institution the next day. Once there I petitioned to be released as soon as possible but I was obstructed everywhere and I was diagnosed with “cannabis use disorder,” normally diagnosed with daily smokers for a decade but I had only been for six months, and they intended to treat it through psychological torture and abuse. It was insanely traumatic and I went on a hunger strike the whole time, only eating some very small snacks and drinking more than ten cups of tea a day. I had bought tickets to fly out and protest at the Democratic National Convention for Bernie, but I was locked up over that whole time and couldn’t follow what happened at all. Since I got out I’ve needed cannabis to cope with the PTSD from then. If I lived in a socialist country then these institutions would actually exist to help people and treat them, and I would have gotten help with the judgment issues that led to the drug mishap. Instead these institutions betrayed me and threw my life into a tailspin, all for some company’s profit.

And at the very least my parents should have stood up for me and done anything to help me from the predatory hospitals but they were completely on their side and took pleasure in my suffering. They have never let up this behavior pattern since, kicking me out on the street a few months later and then six months ago they trigged the incident which led to my former employer turning on me. Then in January they tried to have me murdered by bring cops banging down my door because they exaggerated and trumped up the risk that I was violent which was nonsense and something that I went out of my way to try to tell them. It is the police’s job to exterminate the mentally ill, and having someone lie that you’re a violent threat exponentiates the risk of being gunned down. I kept them from coming inside but they made a huge disturbance for more than an hour on a Saturday afternoon. If I wasn’t white, there would be no question they would have broken the door down and executed me. All of this was done under my parent’s greedy impulses and attempts to force me to become subservient, submissive and forget my long history of being abused by them. They should be given no condolences or extended any sympathy, they need to be criminally investigated and prosecuted for driving my life to its end.

After many traumas all at once last spring (being laid off, losing my partner and all of my friends, people encouraging me to kill myself, friendship with my landlord was ruined, returning to dependence on parents), compounded with my PTSD led me to develop more serious cognitive disabilities, what I suspect is brain damage from hypersecretion of glucocorticoids in the limbic system. I lost my ability to function in public, every friend I had lost patience with me and I was completely isolated while being squeezed all around into deeper poverty and despair. I started to improve in the fall and getting the dishwasher job gave me hope, since they promised to quickly promote me to higher kitchen positions and I expected to soon be able to cover rent again, finally becoming independent. But after the incident which is completely covered in my SOCR file, that did a complete 180 and my hope vanished, sending me back into unending despair and misery.

Dear Filippo Fiori: You had been the first person ever in my entire life to make me feel appreciated and valued. I worked my ass off cleaning every corner of that kitchen because you promised to promote and teach me so fast. Then you committed multiple crimes that set my death in motion, and tried to frame me as having always been incompetent to avoid blame which is far beyond unforgivable. Had I seen the investigation through its end, my plan was to demand at least twenty grand or bankrupt your restaurant, whichever came first. That would be the bare minimum punishment you deserve for your initial crimes, but now it’s up to someone else. I hope it was worth it to you, killing someone in the most vulnerable position because they’re mentally disabled. I did everything I could to warn and explain this all to you but you did what you did and here we are, you made the last six months of my short life miserable and agonizing all to defend a full grown middle aged man with only one year of managing experience.

Lawyers Nancy Chupp and Liza Burke both have my blood on their hands too, they both went out of their way to deliberately lie to me, waste my time and cause me serious damage that I wouldn’t even let them pay me to do. Every lawyer I’ve ever dealt with everywhere has been obstructive and malicious, I think it’s beyond vile how prevalent contempt against the most vulnerable and needing of help is.

To law enforcement: My linux machine is fully encrypted with a very long password, and even if you crack that, all that’s left is my book and media collection. I erased and sfill’d anything interesting so good luck trying to recover shit. If you crack my old laptop password, the only interesting things left on there are my unfinished film and media projects, as that’s all I’ve used it for in many years.

I’m not scared of dying because I’ve already met god, and I’ve discovered the deep truths of this existence. The universe is a hologram, at a subatomic level every single point in space contains a portal to the “implicate order,” or the universal consciousness. The explicate order we reside in is manifested by the ebb and flow of this united energy, at a frequency of planck time each electron enfolds and unfolds, perpetuating alternated spin states that present the illusion of movement and time progression we perceive. All of consciousness and our external reality are the same energy waves manifested and concentrated in different forms, the simulation is like a giant 4D film with a frame rate at the 44th degree of magnitude. We think that our external environment and its objects have physical permanence, while our thoughts in our head are imaginary neurochemical processes, but consciousness is a form of matter ultimately inseparable from anything “physical.” When a 30fps video is slowed down frame by frame, that’s sinking down one order in magnitude of playback speed. If we could do that with the linear time we exist in 44 times, we would reach the plane of existence from which everything that’s ever been and ever will be is conjured from.

To quote David Bohm, who pioneered this theory - “At the present, our whole thought process is telling us that we have to keep our attention here. You can’t cross the street, for example, if you don’t. But consciousness is always in the unlimited depth which is beyond space and time, in the subtler levels of the implicate order. Therefore, if you went deeply enough into the actual present, then maybe there’s no difference between this moment and the next. The idea would be that in the death experience you would get into that. Contact with eternity is in the present moment, but it is mediated by thought. It is a matter of attention.” This four-dimensional universe with linear temporality traps our minds from experiencing the full potential that can be harnessed through tapping into the universal energy, but throughout history those boundaries cosmically foisted upon us have been challenged through shamanism, entheogens, and spirituality in general. To quote Michael Talbot’s book Holographic Universe, “we are so thoroughly conditioned to believe that perceiving the future is not possible, our natural precognitive abilities have gone dormant. Like the superhuman strengths individuals display during life-threatening emergencies, they only spill over into our conscious minds during times of crisis – when someone near to us is about to die; when our children or some other loved one is in danger, and so on. That our “sophisticated” understanding of reality is responsible for our inability to both grasp and utilize the true nature of our relationship with time is evident in the fact that primitive cultures nearly always score better on ESP tests than so-called civilized cultures. Further evidence that we have relegated our innate precognitive abilities to the hinterlands of the unconscious can be found in the close association between premonitions and dreams. Studies show that from 60 to 68 percent of all precognitions occur during dreaming. We may have banished our ability to see the future from our conscious minds, but it is still very active in the deeper strata of our psyches.” (209)

Now we think of those in past eras as just stupid and bored from their lack of modern technology, and they only hallucinated and wrote religious tales to replace the forms of innovation valued post-industrialization. I posit this could not be less true, it is the rise and spread of modern education that has taught us to rid ourselves of our innate connection to the implicate order and awareness of the fluidity of reality.

I never really dream, either that or I’m never consciously aware of it. I suspect it’s from always having so many cannabinoids flowing through my brain putting me in too deep sleep to allow my conscious to travel to another reality. If there would have been precognitions in them, maybe it’s also because of my fear of the future and being too occupied with messes in the present to wonder what will come after. Instead I push my conscious to travel outside of this realm through entheogens, which is how I met god during a McKenna heroic dose of fungus. I traveled into a realm completely filled with moving and spiraling fractalized columns of light and waves of energy. I was taken on a tour throughout time and space, traveling between discombobulated and disjointed morphing spatiotemporal environments. Later I realized that I had been taken to the implicated realm from which all of this universe’s particles unfold out of, and some force was spinning me around and through this cosmic soup. I had been researching and studying all of this closely for many months beforehand but when I had everything that I supposed to be accurate about reality through holographic theory absolutely proven and validated just by eating a handful of things that had grown out of the ground in nature in my city, I became 100% certain of the validity in all of this. The amount of unfathomably unpredictable evidence that would be needed to safely and thoroughly disprove holographic theory makes it a practical impossibility, there’s so much otherwise unexplained that is resolved perfectly this way.

This also proves exactly why America has engaged in global psyops since Nixon to plant disinformation at the basis of societies about fabricated dangers of psychedelics and discourage its use through criminalization. The government has never actually been concerned about stopping people from taking drugs since everyone knows that is impossible to accomplish. The CIA has always been a fan of using acid when it can brainwash people and torture prisoners in more sadistic ways, and using cocaine when they can flood the streets of black communities with it, and creating cartels or black market trafficking ops when they achieve geopolitical results desired by the imperialist capitalist hegemony agenda.

Can you imagine what it would do to society if any adult could go to a mushroom dispensary and experience the same kind of reality-shattering and consciousness-expanding experience as I did whenever they wanted? I’ve read a lot of psilocybin trip reports and the majority of them include very similar things to what I experienced. They do not describe these phenomena holographically like I do, but I’m absolutely certain that it’s a universal experience that the same fungi allow anyone to travel to. It’s so tragic to me that most describe these as hallucinations, and the drugs as hallucinogens which of course restrains it as being unreal. But these alternate planes are much more real than our reality, and calling it a trip could not be more accurate as it is essentially traveling towards home, as in the origin of all of us and everything else. One’s consciousness, being energy waves in a different form than whats around it, exists in a spectrum between entirely localized in the brain and expanding radiating outwards to rejoin the cosmic energy. When low/mild doses of entheogens give one visuals that fill, surround and saturate the visual field, it is their consciousness beginning to expand outwards and begin moving towards the other end of the energy spectrum. Taking a large dose is more like god reaching a hand out of the sky and plucking their soul out of their body and tossing it out of this simulation. By god I don’t mean a singular or cohesive entity, but of the powerful forces manifested by the collective universal consciousness. We are subject to the supreme power of supernatural forces, but instead of a higher being it is the energy of all of us, all of us that have ever been and ever will. That’s why I use a lowercase g.

If these kind of spiritual awakenings happened on a massive scale, it would cause unheard of social unrest. Everything that holds up the capitalist order and necessitates global neoliberal capitalism would dissolve, so many people would become entirely different people, giving up hollow norms and starting to question the real purpose and meaning in what this life is. The rising of class consciousness and awareness of the cruelty manifested by capitalism, which only persists when it’s not questioned, will spell its certain demise. Nearly everything all of us are taught about how the world works is falsified and perpetuated by the minimally satisfactory life circumstances capitalism provides for most. When people are fed lies from birth, taught to be satisfied with a substandard life with the false hope that anyone can “succeed” in a free market (which is another fabrication), and discouraged from ever questioning why things are this way, that’s what allows cruelty to persist.

That’s why the most important thing for people to do is just QUESTION. Especially at a time when daring to ever question what our government says gets you immediately smeared as a puppet or useful idiot of some boogeyman. For most of my life I thought, as we’re all raised to, that communists are evil authoritarians and that it’s not something anyone takes seriously. But up until I shed my last trace of liberalism and beyond, I kept questioning everything and being skeptical, which led me on a path eventually ending at becoming a devout communist. Like many others I started being inspired about political change and social justice from Bernie’s campaign. During his speech at Safeco Field my volunteer job was to run up and down the line waiting outside before helping people, and the lines stretched block after block after block after block in every direction. And everyone was excited or cheering, that kind of mass enthusiasm about something so progressive made me genuinely optimistic about a radically improved future. Then I watched all of the rigging, interference and corruption by the democratic party and corporate media. I knew what was happening behind the scenes all along, but the wikileaks podesta emails of course proved it all. It was soon after that that my political involvement and aspirations were demolished when I was kidnapped during the DNC convention. For better or for worse I was not at all tuned into all the fuckery and media nonsense happening around late summer that year since obviously no internet in there. So after that I just kinda gave up on Bernie, started to move on and voted for Jill Stein. If only I had known I’d fallen victim to a disinformation campaign led by Putin to sow discord in the stable and perfectly equal American democracy!

I think I was one of the only people that was not at all surprised and completely indifferent on election night, going into it I knew there was a 50/50 chance and it could go either way dependent on a million unpredictable things. At least it was hilarious seeing the delusional liberal establishment having their hopes and fantasies of a continued neoliberal slow descent into corporate neofeudalism shattered. I honestly thought Trump was gonna get assassinated either before or soon after taking office, largely driven by my throwing up my hands and saying fuck it to any sense of an illusion of social stability. Yet at that point I suppose I didn’t fully understand the size, power and pervasiveness of the elites and the extent of their resources to which they protect their own and maintain control over what tragedies or shocking events are allowed to happen or unfold in different ways.

The very next day was the first time I ever heard the phrase fake news, and I immediately thought it was just something made up out of nowhere by the democrats to avoid blaming themselves for the loss. I was half right, it was a deliberate attempt by the clinton campaign to avert blame and feed into Russiagate, but what I also didn’t fully understand yet then was the pervasiveness of literal actual fake news in the entire news and media establishment. I mean Operation Mockingbird is real history and it never ended, the CIA has always controlled the media and had a hand in making everything pro-America and advantageous for the government’s agenda. Now there’s so many former intelligence directors as news “contributors” or “analysts” it’s never been more obvious. But since Russiagate has been such a successful psyop, liberals have revealed themselves as ultimately only wanting to serve the intelligence community and uphold capitalism. And such a huge portion of ex-intelligence spooks are running as democrats in the midterms this year, it’s absolutely insane! Talk about a slow coup of the supposed “left” in this country.

There is of course no actual leftist representation in the federal government as they’re diametrically opposed to each other. The actual political spectrum is between socialism/communism on the left and capitalism on the right, with social democrats in the center. Bernie is extremely radical compared to all of his peers but he is still a centrist, it’s just that this country has been constantly shifting rightward faster and faster pretty much throughout most of it’s history, so it allows liberals to pretend to be opposed to conservatives while actually not moving far enough to the left to actually be on a different side, this of course requires abandonment of any hope and admiration for capitalism which is something always taught to us as being of the utmost importance. Democrat president terms do not do anything to oppose this never ending move rightward, Carter, Clinton and Obama all did a ton to service and build up the military industrial complex, surveillance state, NATO aggression, and the tentacles of the secret mafia police known as the CIA. We’re now at the point of our society not being able to reach a consensus of opposition to Bloody Gina becoming its director, which would never be happening now if Obama ever bothered to do a single thing to punish the Bush torture regime. Does anyone even realize that since last February she’s been the fucking deputy director, the position right below, which Trump appointed her to without any need for confirmation, and no one in the media ever said a damn thing about it? Being the deputy director of an intelligence agency is clearly an important position, as McCabe was able to grift all these shitlibs out of more than half a million dollars over a lie about him being fired for being a liar. And even if Haspel had been kept away from any job with any amount of power this whole time, does anyone honestly think the CIA would avoid black ops torture programs without her? Yeah she is one of the biggest torture lovers around there, but would an agency that never hesitates to send out right wing extremist death squads to rape and pillage entire countries just as punishment for striving for independence from capitalist hegemony, ever hesitate to commit unthinkable atrocities if it’s even possibly remotely helpful for America, regardless of who’s directing the agency? The state of public discourse is so so so far behind anything remotely substantive and real that it’s hard to be anything but hopeless for the future, and that is absolutely a consequence of the neoliberal order which has dominated globally and continued to expand ever since the cold war.

The only hope for revolution, besides legalization of psychedelics, is capitalism’s built in self destruction. Anything always expanding, growing without regulation or concern for sustainability, zero concern for accountability and the wellbeing of the common man, will always be unsustainable and eventually crumble upon itself. As Lenin wrote in ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder, “the fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the ‘lower classes’ do not want to live in the wold way and the ‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. Revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking and politically active workers) should fully realise that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a government crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics, weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.”

I am gracious to have lived in the only area of the country, from what I understand, to have a socialist representing in local government – it is good that DSA members have been getting elected different places but I’m not counting them. But there’s still such massive problems facing Seattle brought by Amazon, such as hordes of rich liberals and neo nazis (less of a difference than most think) displacing so many families and making the prices of everything skyrocket, while stripping away the beautiful generations-old history of the city for lifeless, cold machinations of the corporate stranglehold smothering us all. And then when someone dares to request that that megacorp sucking the life out of everything around us pay some taxes so that the people that aren’t rich or white enough for a plush tech career might have a chance to find affordable housing, they all cry and moan about stifling the business community. It’s so toxic how the unending and unquestioned obsession with infinite growth is willingly upheld by capitalists, it’s absolutely untethered from the basic principles of reality. Not even talking about holograms and other realms, but how the laws of nature that we all know physically work on this planet. The “market” as an entity with agency is the biggest delusion of all within economics, stories like it’s invisible hand or that it always corrects itself are such obvious infantile fantasies. This unfortunately only becomes obvious when you lose motivation or ability to climb the ladders within capitalist structures, namely the poor and underprivileged and disadvantaged. These are things I only realized after being forced into long-term serious poverty and suffering from serious mental illnesses with zero support system or anyone anywhere with the ability or desire to actually help me. How could someone in my situation, having been through what I have, still be delusional enough to think that there’s hope for everyone and oppression is easily escapable? Having been exposed to the deep depths of cruelty life can throw you in, it freed me from having to make excuses for all of the suffering around the world. That’s one of the main cognitive dissonances ingrained into liberalism, awareness of how many people around the world are starving, in serious poverty, in a war torn country or exposed to natural disasters without aid, or victim of genocide or political violence, but all of that is so complicated and messy it’s easier to just focus on what affects you directly and pretend that all those people will find help eventually. The lie we’re all fed is that capitalism provides people with opportunity, but the reality is that on a large scale it robs people of opportunity, and whenever people try alternative systems aimed at providing for the common man, the CIA (Capitalist Insurgency Assholes) stops at nothing sabotage and suppress socialist movements through false flags, psyops, puppet dictators, agitprop, death squads and militias.

And of course business partner and close friend of the CIA being Bezos, who is undoubtedly feeding live audio streams of everyone with an IoT’s household conversations to Langley and/or Fort Meade. He has the fucking balls to say that the only responsible thing he can think to do with his billions upon billions in hoarded wealth grifted from the national taxpayer base is to burn it on fancy space fantasies for the ultra rich, but then halts expansion of new offices (as if destroying entire neighborhoods isn’t already enough) in order to feed the boot lickers eager to attack any taxes on businesses or the rich. They moan about taxes from the massive tax-cheating megacorp already crushing the city in order to support poor people is the worst thing ever, but how many of them know how many billions of taxpayer dollars the Pentagon has wasted and tossed away? How many people know that the money taken out of their paychecks goes to funding the worst genocide since WW2 in Yemen, the indiscriminate slaughter of Arabs in Gaza, and towards numerous Jihadist terrorist groups in Syria? I mean there’s been points in recent history where Pentagon-backed extremist militants were fighting CIA-backed extremist militants in Syria, money is being stolen from all of us without consent to fund the majority of the worst atrocities on the globe, we’re paying for Islamic terrorists to shoot each other with our guns. But how dare the evil socialists suggest that megacorporations that already evade all its taxes pay something to help the poor! And if anyone dares to say anything about this in public, then they must be a Putin puppet or Assad apologist.

So many people around here are so eager to brown-nose Bezos, who clearly has zero concern for the wellbeing of any of his workers or the communities he burns to the ground, I fear that in the coming decades, everyone will be mandated to live in cookie cutter Amazon micro-apartment buildings with mandated subcutaneous surveillance trackers. The tech workers and elites get the Prime luxury apartments, while the poor have to fight each other to the death for squatting rights in the dwindling number of tiny run down studios, and those are the only two classes. AI, AR, VR and robots will of course be taking over the vast majority of jobs in the near future, and as long as the means of production remain in the control of the elite, these new tech advancements will never ever even be considered to be put to use for solving mass poverty or ending wars or radical climate action or redistributing wealth, every hedge fund and investor will jump at the first opportunity to kick out all vulnerable and low wage workers and make shiny expensive fancy toys for corporate welfare queens. Because that’s the very purpose of capitalism, always make as much profit as possible and strive to eventually concentrate the entirety of global wealth in the hands of a few people. It’s not nearly enough to tax corporations like Amazon, there needs to be heads rolling in the street. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk need to be executed for their crimes against humanity along with the rest of their ilk, and all these corporate structures need to be forcefully dissolved entirely. There will never be hope of reversing how fast we’re spiraling into unfathomably unsustainable inequality, mass human rights violations and inescapable oppression, unless the bastards leading us down that road feel the pain that they inflict on millions and millions of innocent people. I hope that the Seattle Times cartoonist is a clairvoyant instead of just a whiny dipshit, most of the absurd right-wing cartoons fear-mongering about democrats and libs being communists that are taking radical action could not be less accurate now but I hope are prophetic of the future.

Some things I can’t publish while living without being slandered as a Russian troll – In the same way that Iran Contra, MK Ultra and the JFK assassination have gone down in history as the intelligence operations of a past era, this era will have Russiagate, White Helmets and false flag gas attacks, Skripal, and the assassinations of BLM leaders as the intelligence ops of the time. This is all obvious to anyone that reads the news closely without corporate filters and can see the patterns of how the CIA and FBI have always covertly operated domestically and globally since their inception, in collaboration with MI6 and the Mossad. The state of Israel needs to be destroyed entirely, it was a mistake in the first place, has always enforced worse apartheid than in South Africa, and is an inspiring ethnostate. And their state-sponsored troll farms and disinformation campaigns along with the most advanced intelligence capabilities aimed with the only purpose of destabilizing the middle east and maintaining perpetual chaos. People are fucking stupid enough to think that some non-government affiliated click farm in St Petersburg posting puppy memes on facebook actually damaged our “democracy” but are completely blind to how nearly everyone in our government begs and grovels for the opportunity to pander to Israel, who’s covertly influencing so many internet and media narratives. It’s not an anti-semetic thing, Bibi loves anti-semites and to enable them because that’s what serves the Israeli geopolitical agenda. And there’s no proof at all to that Russian influence and sowing discord bullshit, literally every single story is hollow with nothing to back it up. It’s easy to believe what’s shoved down your throat by mainstream media, but when you actually look at it, it’s clear that Guccifer 2.0 is a multi-level fraud, a fictional identity created by the Crowdstrike CEOs as the solution for the Clinton campaign panicking about wikileaks teasing email dumps. Unintentionally meta, it’s like a matroyshka doll. On the outside, he’s a lone wolf somewhere in Europe. Then you look at the first layer of planted metadata and forensic info which points towards Russia, and everyone in the media immediately jumps to it having to be a Putin agent who very poorly tried to appear as a lone wolf. But every single piece of evidence tying Guccifer 2 to Russia was so shoddily tacked on to the documents, while genuine data indicating that the data had to have been locally transferred and was modified on the American east coast, plus the public timeline of relevant events makes it obvious that it was impossible to have come from a foreign “hack” and someone on the east coast is very obviously trying to frame this as someone in Russia who’s poorly trying to appear as a lone wolf. As far as I can tell, the recent story about Guccifer having logged “real” Russian IPs in social media sites has no technical hard evidence to support that. So the FBI and the CIA should put their cards on the table and reveal precisely where and what these Russian IP logs are. That’s the start of a long road of allegations and fake news stories that need to be revisited and given real, no bullshit evidence to support.

Many years ago, in late middle and early high school I was in a band that played mostly Muse covers, they were my favorite back then but I haven’t listened to any rock at all for years until very recently. I’ve been revisiting Muse’s catalog and remembered a song titled “Thoughts of a Dying Atheist.” That moment struck me as Jungian given the circumstances, hearing it for the first time a couple weeks ago since long before ever becoming suicidal, in a period when I loved it only for the music. The chorus goes “it scares the hell out of me, and the end is all I can see.” I have always been an atheist being it’s how I was raised, even though I’ve long abandoned nihilism and the foolish idea that there’s no form of genuine spirituality. Back when I was a Muse fan, even though I was no where near needing to fear death I would have agreed with the words by and large, as death is not something we’re raised to appreciate or assess in this society. Yet now in revisiting I feel rather proud since I’m not scared of death at all. Through spiritual awakenings mostly since last summer I’ve completely made peace with transitioning out of this plane. Having found a method and time frame where I can pass immediately without pain all on my own time and terms, I’ve taken care of every concern on this end of the journey. I can’t know what it will be like on the other side, but I am absolutely certain that the energy of my conscious will be returned to the universal order. Thus, the thoughts of this dying atheist are that even though the end is all I can see, it excites the hell out of me. It is only a transformation, all that will end is the torture and agony that has been foisted upon me in this existence.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” - Macbeth (5.5.19-28)

Recently I’ve gone to the beach, ridden ferries and sought out large pools often because there’s nothing more calming to me than the meditation of staring off into the water. As Mandelbrot and fractal patterns are found throughout math, science and much of nature, I see the waves in large bodies of water as fractal-like too. No matter how closely you focus your gaze or how far you stare out into the horizon, the patterns of the waves appear to repeat inside and outside of each other at all magnitudes of size along the surface. And I feel an incredible energy from it, how the waves can appear calm and tranquil on the surface but you know deeper down, the entire moving masses of water carry enormous weight and power. The waves exponentially repeat themselves in all directions with simultaneous grace and massive force, reconciling contradictions and entire spectrums, what could be more emblematic of the beauty of the laws of nature? When I ask myself where I go after I die, I say that’s where, the water. I doubt I would and wouldn’t want to be reincarnated as water, but as my brain shuts off and my soul becomes non-localized and free, its essence will return into the entirety of nature, and I have never been more certain of that than anything in my life. Pharrell got it right, no one ever really dies because energy is never created or destroyed, and whats in all of our minds are just localized variants of the same energy that makes everything else around us.

My final work can be found at scribd.com/document/378259892 or anonfile.com/86C0raeeb1, I’m pulling a Kafka and leaving it unfinished

Did I truly live life, or simply ride the sands as they tumbled through the hour glass? Holding on the fine moments is like grasping water – always there, yet always slipping away. Lusting for more than we need, leading to the greed of acquisition and the gluttony of position. A future that feels far but all too close. One that could be sublime if we didn’t fall behind in the times from our refinement of the mind, the state of my people is altered but my faith is completely unfaltered. I’m reaching up and reaching out, to go where no one’s been. Spiral out, keep going

[royalpains-roleplay]

Original Characters - Female

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝ Something 'bout you makes me feel like a dangerous woman. ❞

✗ — Name: Elsa Grimaldi. ✗ — Age: 19. ✗ — Kingdom: France. ✗ — Sexuality: Heterosexual.

— Personality; Compared to what she once was, Elsa is a complete nightmare. There is not much left of the shy, sweet and innocent child that had once been Elsa Grimaldi. Whether it was shattered by her mother in early childhood, or by her weakness, Prince Ashton, Elsa has not much left of the kindness she once harbored for others. Elsa is a party girl, the liquor chugging, coke snorting princess that everyone loves to have a good time with. She likes the ability to lose herself in the buzz; it makes her feel better than getting in all of her deep emotions. She puts on a cold, bitchy demeanor, showing no sign of care or even awareness for other people, which is just another way to protect herself from being hurt. She used her abrasive personality to push people away, so they didn’t hurt her as her mother did. Deep down, the outwardly confident princess is really just broken on the inside, torn between the need to let someone in and to protect herself.

— Biography; Elsa grew up being the youngest child, yet still close in age to her brother, Luca. Despite being close in age the pair didn't have a close bond. As they grew, older Elsa became a quiet, shy girl. Her mother felt as if she wasn't fit to be a princess much less a queen because Elsa didn't possess the same manipulative qualities Mrs. Grimaldi had at that age, the qualities Mrs. Grimaldi seemed to deem important for a ruler. The queen began to treat her daughter terribly, acting as if the girl was an unwanted step child. Although the abuse wasn't physical, it took a toll on the girl. She developed an eating disorder, formed by her eagerness to please her mother. She strived to make her appearance perfect, and often worked for success in all other aspects of her life. She would go days without eating and it became effortless for her. She would often throw herself into the perfection of her own life. At the age of sixteen, she officially met Ashton Deutch, the Russian Prince at a party and they slept together. Elsa, still the shy girl from before panicked because of what she’d done and left before the boy could wake up. They had been in puppy love from years of glances from across rooms and brief encounters at balls so once Elsa left and refused to see the boy it crushed the both of them. She convinced her father to ban the boy from entering France. Elsa was taking all precautions she possibly could to prevent herself from letting Ashton in, which led to her ditching the shy sweetheart part of herself and becoming a liquor chugging princess with an attitude. Her cold-hearted demeanor was used to push people away from seeing the flaws her mother so eagerly pointed out. With her complete change in personality, her mother finally decided she was good enough and she was sent to Royal Pains Estate in order to develop the skills of a leader so she could maybe become the ruler of her country. A distraction became present when she discover Ashton was also at the Estate. It was at the Estate that she also met the old flame of her brother, Sophie and made the connection that her two year old child was her nephew.

✗ Secret; She suffers from anorexia and although it has drifted to a less severe problem it hasn't completely ceased. Its formation was heavily influenced by the treatment of her mother and although it has become less of the problem, her drinking often triggers it.

「 Faceclaim: Ariana Grande. 」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝And the things bottled inside have finally begun to create so much pressure that I'll soon blow up.❞

✗ — Name: Arlo Dawson ✗ — Age: 18 ✗ — Kingdom: New Zealand ✗ — Sexuality: Pansexual

— Personality; Arlo is typically nice and sweet, but she’s very quiet, especially around her sister. She’s level-headed most of the time, though she can become dark and irrational and act out some times. She’s very intelligent. But living in her sister’s shadow, she’s learned to become a little insecure and strive for perfection from herself. She’s working on allowing herself to be an individual from her sister and be confident.

— Biography; Arlo’s parents were set up for an epic love. Her mother, Isabelle, was next in line for the throne when she met Elijah, Arlo’s father. Isabelle didn’t want the throne; she was going to step down and let her brother take it, so she could have a relatively normal life. She put herself through university with working off jobs, and she worked very hard to move all the way to medical school, to become a doctor. Elijah was a small town boy, who taught literature at a community college. When the two met at a party, it was instant attraction. The two started dating a few days later, much to her family’s dismay. They were only together four months where they decided to get engaged. Then a month later, Isabelle discovered she was pregnant. Is and Elijah decided to have a shotgun wedding the same day; they went to their local court house and got married. When Isabelle’s parents found out, they insisted on giving her a proper wedding, one that would take place after the babies’ birth.

The day of their wedding, everything was going to plan. They were ready to be each other’s forever...again. But as Isabelle was saying “I do,” her brother swooped in and stabbed her in the back. Elijah and the doctors did everything they could to save her, but she passed away later the same evening. The kingdom wasn’t the same again.

Shortly after Isabelle’s death, Elijah took the girls to the country side to raise. Being a widowed single dad was hard on him. He turned to alcohol to soothe the pain, and the girls’ godmother stepped in to help them. After getting him help in sobering up, Elijah went back to teaching, and the girls grew up rather normally. The girls were best friends as they, but it seemed Arlo was the more submissive twin. She did whatever her sister wanted just to keep her happy, never really voicing her opinion; and it only worsened when they discovered her sister was bi-polar. Arlo became a sort of anchor to her sister, calming her down and cleaning up her messes. When the girls turned sixteen, their grandparents wanted the girls to start their royal training. Arlo was content to just be a normal girl, but agreed to go to keep an eye on her sister. After several months of training, their grandmother threw them a “coming out” party. Arlo met Antonia and completely fell for her. But her sister didn’t approve. For weeks after the party, Arlo snuck behind her sister’s back to start a relationship with Toni. Arlo was caught in her secret as her sister walked in on them being intimate. The whole thing turned into a fight that almost ended their bond. Feeling overshadowed and alone, Arlo attempted to take her own life by swallowing pills and downing her dad’s whiskey. Elijah found her in the morning and rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with depression. Once she was healed and seemed to be in better mental health, her father, with backing from her grandmother, sent her to the estate to get some distance while she finished her classes and training.

✗ Secret; Arlo was diagnosed with depression and codependency after her attempt. If she doesn’t take her medicine, she’ll soon be a grenade and the darkness inside her comes out.

「 Faceclaim: Kaylee Bryant」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝ From porcelain to ivory to steel, I rise above. ❞

✗ — Name: Sloane Luxem. ✗ — Age: 22. ✗ — Kingdom: Germany. ✗ — Sexuality: Pansexual.

— Personality; coming off as antagonistic and cold, Sloane has built up walls around herself. She had been a happy child when she was younger, filled with curiosity and thirst for knowledge. After she was kidnapped she learned real quick to block out emotions and not let anything phase her. Otherwise she'd just get herself killed. She's sarcastic beneath her shield and loves to provoke people into fighting her. She's reckless to the point of self-destruction and thrives off danger. She holds no regard for her own life, but she does care about the lives of others. Sloane can hold a grudge unlike anything else, she's unforgiving and ruthless especially when she has been wronged. Beneath the surface, Sloane is playful and quick to tease those that she’s allowed in and through her shields and armor. Most of the time she doesn’t think before she acts and reacts based off of instinct. She’s a protector when it counts and will do whatever is absolutely necessary to protect the few she cares about, willing to make the hard decisions and bear the guilt of the consequences so others wouldn’t have too. Sloane is empathic and despite the fact that she rarely shows it, she empathizes fairly easy with people, she just buries the emotions down and pretends that they are not there.

— Biography; The Luxem Queen was as independently strong as they came. For her entire reign she has refused to marry and hand over control to her husband. A decision that has always made waves. Her two children were the product of test tubes and doctors, no men directly involved. Another wave, a major wave that decision had made, twice. Sloane had been protected as she grew up, always having guards present. Until one day their loyalty was bought. Sloane was twelve when she and her brother were kidnapped from their home and taken by men who wanted them gone. Initially meant to be trained as an assassin, Sloane spent four years being taught how to kill. Before she was sold to the highest bidder. At sixteen she was bought by a fighting ring that heard of her vicious nature. She never had the finesse for assassination work.

Two years with the ring, she fell in love despite the fact that she knew she shouldn’t. Love was a weakness in that dark world, it painted a target on your back like a neon arrow screaming that you had a weakness. She knew loving him would get them both killed, but she did it anyway. It had been a love as fierce as the way they fought and it wasn’t long until their owners found out. At first when they did nothing, Sloane naively thought they didn’t care. But they did, especially when the love of her life was plotting a rebellion behind her back. He was killed for it in front of her. Each man and woman involved were slaughtered and the only reason Sloane had been allowed to live was because they knew she had no knowledge of the deceit, and they knew she’d been broken beyond repair and would not foolishly rise against them.

For the next few years she completely froze out all emotions, vowing to never love again, to never let another soul behind her walls. She lived, breathed, and survived fighting every day. About a month ago the ring was taken down by law enforcement, the fighters were all taken to a hospital and asked for names or had DNA tests run. Sloane knew who she was and didn’t say, knowing no matter what a test would be run. But she didn’t want to return, she didn’t know who she was outside the fighter she had become. Seeing the damage done, and her vicious nature, Sloane’s mother had her sent to the Estate after she finished healing of whatever injuries she possessed.

✗ Secret; Sloane was kidnapped as a child and a few years later sold to a fighting ring by her kidnappers. She watched the man she loved get murdered in front of her while there.

「 Faceclaim: Marie Avgeropoulos 」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝I am damaged at best, like you’ve already figured out.❞

✗ — Name: Hana Myung.

✗ — Age: 25.

✗ — Kingdom: South Korea.

✗ — Sexuality: Heterosexual.

— Personality; If you didn’t know her than you would be convinced that Hana truly is the embodiment of the stereotypical princess. From an outside perspective, she comes across as shallow and self-centred, only really caring about money and her looks. She knows that she can be a little conceded and often tunes out to the world around her. There is no doubt that Hana is spoilt, she’s used to getting what she wants and it shows. It’s a terrible habit really but she’s not ignorant to it. In fact, Hana is very self-aware with what she does and who she is. She chooses to embrace the negative sides of her personality as well as the good ones. No one’s perfect and that’s a statement that she lives by. Of course, Hana is no angel, she’s made plenty of mistakes in her lifetime but she’s always managed to learn from them. She’s no so ignorant where she would be stupid enough to make the same mistake twice and allow herself to be made a fool out of. You’d never guess it with the way she acts but Hana is a deeply sympathetic person, she doesn’t like to show her kindness in public settings but if she ever notices someone is having a particularly rough time, she’ll take time out of her day to talk to them. Not the kind to cause meaningless problems, Hana won’t purposely sub people unless she has a prior issue to them. She’s pretty open to talking with others and so she’s always been fairly popular with her peers. She may not look like much of a threat but Hana will do anything and everything to protect her friends and she’s not above playing dirty tactics in order to do that. Though she does sometimes come across as naive, she’s anything but. Hana doesn’t allow others to walk all over her. Even in a vulnerable state, she’s smart enough to realise when people are trying to dominate her or prove that they’re of more importance and she refuses to stand for it.

— Biography; Growing up in a big family was always going to be difficult. Hana wasn’t the oldest child and she wasn’t the youngest. With seven siblings in total, it was hard for her to ever really get any of the attention a normal child craved. Instead, her parents would usually just give her whatever she wanted in order to get her off their case so they could focus on more pressing issues. This often meant that Hana and her siblings were left alone with nannies to take care of them who only did it because of the money rather than the fact that they cared for the kids. There was absolutely no hiding that she came from a wealthy family, the Myung’s were a well respected royal family in South Korea, they had been ruling for hundreds of years until the last vote when the Myung family lost to the Kim family. It was the first time they’d lost in centuries which meant that Hana’s parents were set on doing everything they could to ensure the Myung’s would be back on top the next time a king or queen was needed, so of course a lot of pressure was placed on their kids to be perfect. Hana’s parents drilled into her head that it was up to her and her siblings that to make an impact in the world and that meant that they had big plans for their kids. Wanting to maintain their family status, the Myung siblings were forced to go to classes 14 hours a day with minimal breaks in between. They were a hard-working family, determined that they would be the future rulers of the country. The kids didn’t get a lot of time to just have fun and act like kids but they never complained, falling into line so that they would please their parents and their country. Hana was a middle child, the only two siblings younger than her was her sister Youra and her twin brother Arlo. Particularly close to her sister, Hana grew up with a protective instinct to take care of her. It was obvious fairly soon into her life that Hana was different from the rest of her family. While still entitled and arrogant, she longed for more than just the life of a royal. She didn’t want to have to fit into this perfect box her parents had created for her. While her siblings were more than thrilled with the way their lives were heading, Hana wanted more than that. She wanted freedom, adventure and all things in between and so she made the bold move to tell her parents about her dreams and ambitions. It was a sensitive topic, she was well aware of the risks she was taking telling her parents she didn’t want to follow in their footsteps. Her siblings never questioned their parent’s authority and with good reason to. While they weren’t physically abusive by any means, they definitely knew how to hurt their kids. For Hana, it was through their pets. Growing up, she’d grown attached to her dog, Bruno and when she was seven and refused to finish her classwork, her parents got rid of the dog and she never saw it again. She worried that perhaps something similar would happen to her pet cat but surprisingly they supported her. She has six other siblings so she didn’t really have to worry about the crown, it was unlikely that she would ever get to become queen so her parents said that as long as she kept up her good grades and reputation, they would allow her to travel on her own terms. Of course, Hana agreed to their terms and happily packed her bags to travel around the world. She loved it, the freedom of being who she wanted to be rather than the princess she had to be and the funds she had were endless, it was bliss. She’d always been exceptionally intelligent so it wasn’t hard for her to maintain her royal classes high grades. Hana moved around frequently, never staying in one place for long because she just wanted to see everything the world had to offer. She was happy and wanted to share that. Her younger sister, Youra often contacted Hana and told her how bored she was so after two years of travelling on her own and meeting a bunch a wonderful people, Hana asked her sister to come and visit her for a month.

For the first couple of weeks, everything was running smoothly, they decided to go to America and that’s where the real trouble began. Hana decided to go and have lunch with a friend and leave her little sister to her own devices for an afternoon. Youra agreed to pick her up with the car they rented later on and when that time came, disaster struck. Hana had only been in the car ten minutes at the most when the accident happened. Tires screeching and the sickening sound of metal crashing haunted Hana but before she could process what had happened, Youra sped off leaving the other car and the person inside it. It was revealed later that night on the news that the man had passed away and they were looking for the suspect that had committed the crime. Youra was hysterically crying at this point so Hana knew she had to remain calm and so she did. Without hesitation, she phoned her father and informed him about the hit and run that claimed a man’s life but she changed one major detail. Protecting her sister, Hana told her father she was the one that committed the crime and he immediately flew out to help his daughters. Like he always did when there was an issue, her father threw money at the problem and it disappeared. Hana and Youra were in the clear but their father was furious and insisted that they pack their things and go home. Though she loved travelling, Hana didn’t put up any protest, she was devastated by what had happened so she did what he asked. No one realise just how negative of an impact it made on Hana until she tried to jump out of her third-story bedroom window. When asked why she did it, Hana explained that she kept seeing the man from the crash wherever she went and he constantly told her to hurt herself. She had been harming herself for months and no one even noticed until she almost died. Hana’s parents insisted she see a specialist who decided to put Hana on a medication to help her out. Though she’s stopped seeing the man putting awful thoughts in her head, her guilt lingers and so her father insisted she be sent to royal pains estate so that she could recover properly there.

Secret: Hana and her sister were involved in a hit and run accident. Instead of letting her younger sister take blame accident for the accident she was responsible for, Hana said she did it. The crash claimed a mans life and instead of it being publicised, the girls father threw money at the problem and it disappeared. Although she wasn’t actually the one driving, she’s devastated about the situation and it caused her to start seeing the man that died who kept encouraging her to harm herself.

「 Faceclaim: Jennie Kim. 」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

❝ I am here in my mold. But I’m a million different people from one day to the next, I can’t change my mold.❞

✗ — Name: Elise Dawson

✗ — Age: 18

✗ — Kingdom (do not place character in a Kingdom with three ruling families already): New Zealand

✗ — Sexuality: Heterosexual

— Personality; From her looks right down to her personality Elise can be considered a typical mean girl. Almost every word that comes out of her mouth is laced with venom. She’s fun, witty and brutally honest. She’s not afraid to tell it how it is, even if it hurts someone else in the process. That includes people that she cares about. She’s a narcissist with a fragile ego that hates it when she doesn’t have someone’s full attention. She might care about her father and sister more than anything and do anything for them, but she’s self-absorbed and finds it difficult to see things from others perspectives. A lot of that can be attributed to her bipolar disorder. The desperate search to have some form of control and stability in her life. That’s why she craved so much attention from her father and clung to her sister more than she probably should have.

— Biography (at least two hundred words); From a young age Elise was always a little more dominant of the Dawson twins. When it came to choosing what the girls were going to do it was always Elise’s idea and Arlo just went along with it. At first nobody questioned how she acted. That was how some children were. When she got older though the changes got worse. She started having manic episodes that didn’t go unnoticed to her father. She got sent to be seen by a psychologist who after a few sessions diagnosed Elise with bipolar disorder. While she spent a lot of time with her father doing things like meditation and calming exercises, her sister was just as much there for her as she had ever been. Whenever things were going seemingly well and Elise had an episode that she didn’t want anyone finding out about Arlo would be there and help do damage control. When the twins turned sixteen and their grandparents wanted them to do royal training Elise got excited. The idea of one day being able to take the throne and be queen of their homeland was something that she didn’t take lightly. She agreed to it before they could even finish their sentence.

After several months Elise felt like she was really getting into what the royal lifestyle had to offer. The royal outfits were similar to her everyday outfits so she fit right in. She was even working harder on her mental health to be the leader that she thought was needed. When her grandmother thought they were ready she threw the twins a “coming out” party to introduce them into the royal life and circles. While Elise was more focused on the attention she didn’t realise that her sister had found an interest in one of the royal girls that were there. She felt like she was losing her sister and that there wasn’t something right about the girl she fancied. Arlo gave in and agreed not to see Toni anymore. Everything was going smoothly after the party. Elise began going to royal parties and occasions to get an “in” with them. When sneaking back in from one of the parties Elise overheard her father and grandmother talking about how they were going to choose Arlo to be the one to take the throne. The girl began spiraling as she made her way up to her room that she shared with the slightly younger Dawson twin, only to find her sister in an intimate situation with Toni. Whatever anger she had was just intensified ten fold. The pair got into a fight, the worst one they had ever had. Because of the betrayal and thing that she had overheard Elise took it all out on Arlo. Blaming her for everything and being a lot harsher than she should have. When the fight finally ended Elise left to go and stay somewhere else. Not wanting to be under the same roof as her sister, who in that moment was the enemy. It wasn’t until the next morning when she got a call that Arlo had tried to take her own life and was in the hospital that Elise actually thought about the fight that they’d had again. She wanted to get better. Learn how to control daily challenges, her outbursts and regain control. With Arlo being sent to Royal Pains after her suicide attempt her father didn’t want Elise being far away. So instead she started going through the process of intense behavioral therapy at a local facility. Everyday was spent being bombarded with medical professionals and healers to try and help her with her bipolar. She was making great strides until her grandmother attempted to introduce training back into her routine. Making her first reappearance since her sister had been sent away all Elise could focus on was the chatter amongst everyone of what happened to Arlo. Everyone talking bad about her sister caused her to have a massive episode. Attacking people both verbally and physically. After the incident her father and grandmother decided to send her to Royal Pains after deciding that was the best place for her to make progress and have some stability amongst the royal life.

✗ Secret; She has bipolar disorder and can be a loose canon because of it.

「 Faceclaim: Jenny Boyd」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝So much history in my head, the people I’ve left, the ones that I’ve kept.❞

✗ — Name: Mercury Zoegar.

✗ — Age: 25.

✗ — Kingdom: Iceland.

✗ — Sexuality: Heterosexual.

— Personality; On the surface, Mercury seems like the typical mean princess. She is beautiful and popular but can be a complete snob at times. Her strive for popularity stems from her parents need to make her into the perfect daughter with the perfect reputation while Mercury just wants to be herself. However she’s not a complete lost cause as some would think, at times, Mercury does display forms of kindness and support towards other, and often shows it to those that deserve it instead of doing it for everyone just for the sake of being nice. She is much smarter then she lets on and much more lost then she wants people to know. She used to be the kind of girl that thrives off living in the moment but certain recent events have caused her to live in the past and she’s afraid she’s never going to get past it. Mercury is excellent at hiding her own emotions though so she can easily prevent people from seeing how badly she’s coping. Sometimes she finds herself dewlling on the past and wishes she could go back to a year ago when she was truly carefree and happy as she worries she will never feel that way again. It’s hard for her to get out of that head space but she really is trying.

— Biography; Mercury lived in a household where being royalty came second to religion. From a young age, Christianity was forced up on the young princess and at first, she didn’t mind. After all, it was all she had known. She had always considered herself as a religious girl, but unlike her parents, she never mocked or discriminated against others with different religious beliefs as her and was open to the possibility of new things. As she grew into her teens this became more of a problem for Mercury, she never lost her faith but she had questioned it a few times. First when her mother fell pregnant and lost the baby four months into the pregnancy, again when she became scrutinised by the public on the internet for ‘growing up too quick’ because she was seen out wearing a bikini to the beach and the last time she questioned the religion was when she was sexually abused by one of the kingdom guards when she was only fourteen. Of course she told her parents and he lost his job and was sent to prison but that was when she decided that religion wasn’t everything and she also became cold and confrontational towards people because she didn’t trust them not to hurt her. For years she lived like this, keeping a comfortable distance from everyone. Of course she wasn’t a complete nun, Mercury had a few boyfriends here and there but nothing too serious and she never really had friends she completely trusted. She was labelled as the ‘bitch from Iceland’ in her country so it became rather shocking to her parents when they discovered that at the age of nineteen, Mercury was sleeping with her fathers best friend, Warren, and they had been in a secret relationship for months. Her father was furious, threatening to send the man to jail but Mercury managed to calm him down by telling him that she deeply cared for the man despite the big age gap. It was true, after the sexual assault she suffered, Warren was the first man that she ever really trusted. He didn’t treat her like a china doll, he knew she was tough and could handle herself so he acted normally around her. Sometimes they drove each other insane and they would be up all hours of the day arguing but at the end of the night, he would be back in her bed holding her close, they never went to bed on an argument. Mercury thought everything was great in her relationship especially after her father agreed to calm down and renationalised the situation. It was the first time Mercury ever truly felt what it was like to be loved but when she met and soon became best friends with a local girl called Bianca things soon took a turn between the couple.

Quickly the two became inseparable. Bianca encouraged Mercury’s careless behaviour and despite her parents and boyfriends disapproval of their friendship, Mercury enjoyed Bianca’s carefree nature and let that come between her and her relationships with other people. Bianca claimed that Mercury’s boyfriend had attempted to hit on her. It was the one thing Mercury ever really questioned when it came to Bianca because she knew Warren adored her but she was a fantastic manipulator and cried her heart out to Mercury and always acted scared when her boyfriend was around so Mercury believed her despite having no evidence and the relationship broke apart taking a bit of Mercury with it as it faded away. She was heart broken over the loss of her longest relationship that she fought so hard for her parents to except but Bianca wouldn’t let her mope about and always come up with new things for them to do together. Mercury fell hook, line and sinker for all the lies she was being told because she truly believed that they would be friends until the end of time but that didn’t happen. Mercury tried to block out the painful thoughts of losing her ex by replacing him with a less boy her own age, he was called Malcolm but despite her attempts at trying to act normal around him, he never compared to Warren. One day Bianca invited Mercury to a party and she agreed, insisting that she brought Malcolm along despite the fact they were just a casual fling. Things quickly took a nasty turn when the car Bianca was driving them in crashed into a truck, instantly killing both Bianca and Malcolm on impact. Mercury fell through the windshield and was in a coma for two weeks due to the incident. The doctors were unsure of her survival but she did pull through. When she woke up her parents explained to her what had happened and Mercury was devastated, completely broken by the loss of her best friend, and was flooded with guilt because she made her Malcolm join them in the car when all he wanted was to spend time with her alone at the movies. A month after the car accident, while Mercury was still recovering and wallowing in her own guilt, the truth was revealed. There was never a party going on. Bianca was part of a secret organisation set up by the rivalry royals to take down the Zoega family and had set the entire thing up. She had crashed the car on purpose. Mercury was the first cause of action, they wanted to take out the only heir of the Zoega family to devastate her parents hoping that they would become too depressed for to run the country and hand it down to someone else. Fortunately for Mercury, she survived but the mental scars lived on. Ever since the incident, the girl has been failing to sleep much and when she is able to, she always wakes up screaming because of the flash backs she has. She can’t wrap her mind around the idea of her best friend wanting to hurt her after she finally let someone close. The situation became so bad that Mercury began to pinch her arms and legs to keep herself awake to avoid the nightmares. Warren came to see her in the hospital because her parents hoped it would calm her down and though it did somewhat help and she was happy to see him again, Mercury’s mind was too messed up for anything to really sink in. Seeing what was happening to their daughter, her parents decided it was best for Mercury to be sent to Royal Pains Estate until she has fully healed from the trauma, but things have spiralled further then ever. Since arriving to the academy, Mercury hasn’t been able to forget that an organisation is set up and they are hell-bent in ending her life. It has all became too much and Mercury has began to self harm as a way to help her cope.

Secret; Since arriving at Royal Pains Mercury has began to self harm.

「 Faceclaim: Margot Robbie. 」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝ A wolf is still a wolf, even in a cage, even dressed in silk. ❞

✗ — Name: Raven Avalanche ✗ — Age: 21 ✗ — Kingdom: Colombia ✗ — sexuality: Bisexual

— Personality: Raven has built a rather cold brick wall around her heart. She doesn’t let people get too close to her especially after her last failed relationship. She prefers it that people see her as someone that is coldhearted. Raven is sarcastic and has a rather big attitude. At first Raven can come off as a typical , bitchy Royal but she is so much more than that. Once you manage to get past the cold exterior Raven is actually caring and compassionate. She is the type of girl that would do everything for the people she loves.

— Biography; On the rare occasions two Royals fall in love without being forced into marriage beforehand. That was what happened to Raven’s parents. Raven’s mother was the Princess of Poland and her Father was the King of Colombia. The two fell in love , got married and decided to have a child. However, each story has an obstacle and in this case it was the fact that the King of Colombia couldn’t provide a heir. The Royal couple couldn’t allow that information to be leaked to the news so they started to search for a sperm donor and then the King came up with a wonderful idea about getting their trusted advisor Richard to do the honors of allowing them to have a child. Of course, they paid him well and he accepted the offer. Several months down the line a baby girl was born she had a head full of black hair and her parents decided on calling her Raven. the King loved his daughter more than anything in the world, he kept her out of the media in fear that his enemies would think of kidnapping or hurting his little princess. However, one day, when she turned 12 and was returning home with her father after spending the weekend away in a different city whilst her mother, was back in Poland dealing with some important stuff. For safety reasons, the king traveled in a different car and Raven traveled in a car with their parents trusted advisor. When her father’s car got attacked the driver of Raven’s car stopped in order to go and help the king. Richard the advisor couldn’t allow anything to happen to Raven the only Heiress to the throne. Quickly he found himself behind the wheel and drove in a completely different direction. The news of her father’s assassinations reached her mother faster than anything else. Magdalena rushed back home to her child, unfortunately, Raven couldn’t stay with her mother she got put into a witness protection program considering the fact she was one of the few people that survived the attack. She got sent away to Canada to make sure her daughter was well protected Magdalena sent Richard along with her.

Raven had to go through a whole makeover, she wore wigs and changed the color of her eyes using contact lenses. Raven and Richard also lived in one of the poorer houses and Raven attended a public school. Every now and then she would have to fly back to her home so she could attend all the important events and visit her mother. Whenever Raven would be back home she would have bodyguards surround her throughout every moment.

Back In Canada Raven was known as Mary Santiago, she got told not to stand out too much but her dominating nature took the best of her and eventually she became one of the popular girls that attended the school. She also had a best friend that was younger than her by two years called Nesryn Elliot to who she developed romantic feelings towards, however at the time Nesryn was dating a boy in Raven’s class so she never acted upon it. For her seventeenth birthday Raven’s mother decided to take her to Australia since it was a place the girl always wanted to go too. she decided to sneak out of the hotel they were staying at for the first time ever. She was tired of being followed by the bodyguards and wanted to live a little. Raven managed to get herself inside one of the clubs, enough flirting caused her to achieve that.

In the club she met Cayden Moore, the two clicked pretty instantly and Raven liked the fact he was older than her. They spent the rest of the night talking and then just as dawn was creeping up, within the space of a few hours she had formed an opinion on Cayden and it was a good one. She liked him a lot , she liked the fact he was older and she wanted to forget completely about Nessie at least for one night so Raven was drunk enough to spend the night with him and experience her first time. When she woke up in the morning and saw that he was nowhere to be found with not even a single note the girl felt rather hurt. She returned back to the hotel and headed straight to her Room to pack back for Canada being ready to leave earlier. When she returned back to Canada she decided to tell Nesryn about how she felt and the two of them dated. Until Nessie’s nudes from one time have been leaked, Raven in an instant assumed that Nesryn cheated on her so the two got into a heated argument and broke up before Nesryn left for France and Raven once again left for Colombia. Being back at home she found out that her mother was having an affair with Richard and that her fathers death was planned by the two of them, she found the documents and all that stuff. Raven couldn’t believe her own eyes, but her mother caught her the moment Raven found the documents and sent her away to royal pains before she could act on it.

✗ Secret; Raven found out that it was her mother and her father’s trusted advisor that have planned his death.

「 Faceclaim: Sofia Carson. 」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝ We do what we have to so we can do what we want to. ❞

✗ — Name: Luna Evans

✗ — Age: 19

✗ — Kingdom (do not place character in a Kingdom that already has three ruling families): Monaco

✗ — Sexuality: Bisexual

— Personality; Growing up in the royal lifestyle isn’t for everyone. In this case, that involved Luna. She always dreamed and looked for more than just the royal life she grew up in. She’s very self-possessed, able to keep control of herself and her emotions no matter the situation. It’s the thing that helps her stay level-headed, even in the face of chaos. Luna has always been very smart and knowledgeable, that didn’t matter much to her parents, however. They preferred someone who was able to not get distracted by words and meaning, and just be able to rule their kingdom. And that wasn’t who Luna was. She couldn’t just ignore the meaning behind things. Although knowing just how cruel the world can be, Luna never liked to linger on the topic. Instead finding interest in ways that she was able to help better the world. Be it through psychology, literature or charitability. She never thought that she would find herself in a position where she would have to act for her life, finding sly and conniving solutions. But after the abduction and death there was a hint of darkness always lingering inside her, simply waiting for the next opportunity to jump out.

— Biography (at least two hundred words); Due to her mother having infertility issues after her birth, Luna was the only child to the Garcia family. There was worry from an early age that Luna wouldn’t be enough to take the throne. As she got older it was clear they had a right to be worry. Luna continuously strayed from her royal duties, instead finding comfort and interest in books and learning from the environment outside of the palace. It was important for a Queen to be well-educated before she took the throne, so her parents encouraged her at first. But when she turned 18 it became clear that she wanted more than the royal life had to offer her. She wanted to continue to study, earn a degree and make the most of her life. Taking control of the situation, her father organized a marriage to another Monaco royal. Tying two royal families together seemed like the perfect idea to strengthen their country. Luna hated the idea. She hated not having control of how her life was going to turn out and who she was going to marry. So, she concocted a plan with one of her best friends, Elijah to stage a kidnapping. The day before the wedding Elijah and Luna staged her room to make it look like there had been a struggle and Elijah drove Luna to a smaller town where she was able to change her last name to Evans and enroll in a local college where she could study. Or at least that was the plan. On the drive Luna filled out the papers, but they were never filed. Luna trusted Elijah, but it turned out that he was obsessed with her, even stalking her at her home and while she was out. Not wanting to risk losing Luna to someone else Elijah did the only thing he thought where he wouldn’t lose her. He drugged her coffee on the drive and chained her to a bed in a locked soundproof basement. It had been decorated to look like the bedroom she had as a child when she had first met Elijah. It creeped her out to say the least. Attempting to reason with Elijah didn’t work since he thought he was protecting the princess from a fake marriage and miserable lifestyle when he was able to provide for her and be the person she needed. One day while Elijah was out. Luna attempted to escape by using a key chain she found on the bedside table next to the bed. She succeeded in getting the lock unlocked, but she was quickly found out by Elijah. Something Luna hadn’t thought about was that he had cameras in the room, watching over her. She was drugged once more and chained back up. This time making sure that there was nothing around that Luna could possibly make-shift into a key. When Luna woke up, everything hurt physically and mentally. The drugging was taking a toll on her and she knew it. She became bitter. Bitter towards Elijah, towards the situation, that she didn’t have control over anything. She began snapping and swearing at Elijah whenever he tried to sit and have conversations with her. As a punishment Elijah would only come in to give her food and water once a day. Needing a more conniving solution to help her escape, Luna one night decided to position the chains around her neck making it look as though she had strangled herself. From the cameras watching the room, Elijah freaked out when he saw the seemingly lifeless Luna on the bed. When he came down to try help her, he unlocked the chains and unhooked them from around Luna. Acting on impulse, she grabbed the most solid thing closest to her and hit Elijah over the head with it. He fell to the ground, still alive but struggling to move and breathe properly. He grabbed his phone from his pocket with much effort saying that something didn’t feel right. Climbing off the bed, Luna grabbed the phone from his hand and took a step back before sitting on the ground and watching as Elijah died in front of her. Once she was sure he was dead, Luna escaped and ran outside learning they were in the middle of nowhere. It took what felt like forever to get to the next closest house where she announced to the person that she was the lost princess Garcia. Her parents didn’t know the full story of what happened. All they knew was that she was kidnapped and that was enough for them to send her to Royal Pains Estate to work through the trauma she went through and catch up on what she missed. Luna agreed to go if she could change her last name to Evans, not wanting to be known as the helpless princess that got kidnapped and not wanting to let others know the full story.

✗ Secret;  Luna staged her own kidnapping and watched her kidnapper die after landing the crucial blow to his head.

「 Faceclaim: Danielle Campbell 」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝Isn’t it lovely all alone?❞

✗ — Name: Asenka Alexandra Ivanovska (Nickname: Alex) 

✗ — Age: 19.

✗ — Kingdom: Latvia.

✗ — Sexuality: Demisexual.

— Personality; Alex is nothing like a royal is supposed to be. She could be quite sarcastic and ungraceful with her words and demure. Insecurity is her best friend due to the fact she had never been comfortable or really liked herself. Alex never felt like she was allowed to express herself without reprimand which has led to her feeling like she isn’t much of a person. Alex often finds herself trying to live up to other’s ideas of what she should be and how she should act out of fear of people leaving her or disapproving. She is often very self-critical and when she fails at something she tends to be self-destructive. There are times she feels very anxious especially when it comes to dealing with her grandparents and trying to prove to them that she can be royal so that maybe they will care about her as a person. 

— Biography; Asenka Ivanovska was pronounced dead on 03/30/2001. Along with her death, her mother, Dahlia, was pronounced dead the same day, having died during childbirth. Alex’s grandparents were never happy that their son, Mikelis, married the daughter of a slightly well off merchant, they had intended for him to go through with his arranged political marriage. Mikelis and Dahlia had been meeting up in secret behind his parent’s backs which had led to her getting pregnant and Mikelis couldn’t just leave her after that so he took her hand in marriage. To add salt to the wound Dahlia and Mikelis had learned they were expecting a daughter who they had intended to name Asenka. However, Dahlia had unexpectedly gone into labor while Mikelis was away and she had her twin sister Azalea visiting. Due to a complication during labor Dahlia hemorrhaged and the bleeding couldn’t be stopped in time. Azalea had heard Asenka cry once before she was taken out of the room, her grandparents following to check on Asenka. They walked back in a few minutes later to pronounce the death of the princess. Azalea couldn’t believe that bother her sister and niece had died but no one would listen to her. For months she tried to convince private investigators and nurses to try and find the girl or tell her what happened, but no one would question the king and queen. Eventually, the king and queen had Azalea institutionalized under the argument that she wasn’t in her right mind, that the death of her twin had been too much for her to comprehend just so she would stop asking questions. 

In a way, Asenka had died that day or at least her ties to that name and her family had. Her grandparents had made a call and managed to get the girl put into the foster system under a different name. They had wanted to erase any trace of Asenka and her ties to royalty leaving room for their son to have a different heir. Asenka was promptly renamed Alexandra when her new birth certificate and information was forged. 

Happy was never a word Alex would use to describe her childhood or honestly herself during any of that time. It seemed like Alex never quite fit in anywhere or even stayed somewhere long enough to fit in. She was constantly in and out of different foster homes. When she was younger it wasn’t so bad but it got worse when she was no longer an adorable baby and toddler. One thing she could always remember from being that young was feeling lonely, hungry and scared. She never quite got past feeling scared. When she was younger she found herself constantly getting attached to her foster parents just to be abandoned by them. As she got older despite knowing they would eventually get rid of her she still found herself trying to impress them and give them reasons to keep her even if it meant changing herself to make them happy. It never seemed to work no matter how hard she tried. 

It wasn’t until she was fifteen that she was placed in a home for longer than two years. At first glance this would have been a good sign, however, it was a new form of hell. Alex never could seem to do anything they asked her to do right, and every time she got it wrong her foster father would find a way to punish her. At first, he just hit her where it wouldn’t be seen when she went to school until that wasn’t enough. He eventually escalated to using a belt or other objects to hit her with until she bled. Alex had multiple scars on her back from her many different screw-ups. She couldn’t help but think that maybe if she did something different or was better then maybe she wouldn’t beat. It led to her believing she deserved to be punished, that she really was just a waste of a life. Her foster mother offered her no comfort, nor did she try to stop her husband. Instead, she found comfort in ridiculing Alex and making sure that she knew exactly why she deserved everything that happened to her. 

Alex’s only escape from home was school, it was the only place she was basically invisible. For the most part, no one noticed her or rather cared that she existed which she grew to enjoy. She wasn’t the new girl or the charity foster kid she was just that random girl you might have to partner with in science class. In all honesty, Alex wasn’t surprised when her foster father crept into her room for the first time at night a year after she moved in. But, that didn’t make it hurt any less when he got on top of her and forced himself inside of her. He hadn’t been the first person to use her. She had been eight her first time and hadn’t really known what her older foster brother was doing outside of the fact that it hurt. There were times after that she would tell a foster brother or father yes just because it made the beatings stop or for a moment they were nice to her. Sometimes it was just easier to comply and ignore that it was happening to her. That didn’t stop her from wearing baggy clothing that hid her figure or trying to avoid it when she could, but she knew that she wouldn’t fight it. She was too tired and hated herself to try and stop it, a part of her thought she deserved to be used that at least some part of her pleased others. 

Alex was sixteen the first time she tried to end her life, or at least the first time she had planned to but her younger foster sister had walked in on her tying the rope. After that, she felt guilty to try again because the little girl had almost been the one to find her body and she wasn’t about to be responsible for inflicting the girl with that trauma. So instead Alex told herself that when she turned eighteen she would try again once she was no longer in this house and on her own at least that way there would be no children walking in. 

Soon enough her eighteenth birthday came and took the bus away from the hell she had been living in for the past few years finally free of it. She got off in the next town over and locked herself in a diner bathroom where she downed a bottle of pills and slit her left wrist first and then as she went for the right one the knife slipped from her grasp when she heard the sound of someone pounding on the door. By the time they had made it into the bathroom, she was unconscious and she had been sent to the nearest hospital. 

Instead of being dead, Alex was admitted to their psych ward. At first, they had to restrain her because she kept trying to finish what she started that night until finally the reality of the situation sunk in. At first, Alex refused to leave her room until they dragged her to the group therapy session they were having. She was angry at the whole situation that at first, she didn’t notice the woman across from her staring at her like she had seen a ghost. What was even stranger was that the woman had tried to get her attention and called her Asenka. 

When one of the nurses noticed Azalea getting more and more insistent that Alex was Asenka they had her brought to a different room where they explained that Azalea’s twin sister had a child Asenka who had died and she had never got over it. At first, everyone had tried to ignore Azalea’s plea that Alex was Asenka but no one could deny just how similar the two of them looked. Finally, one of the nurses was tired of hearing about it that she ran Alex’s DNA with Azalea figuring it would come out as a nonmatch and it would get the woman to shut up. Azalea would be a perfect match to her twin sister due to being identical that it wasn’t a big deal to use her DNA in place of Dahlia’s. Everyone was surprised when the DNA results came back positive. Alex was the presumed dead princess Asenka. The news of it hit the media before the king and queen could get a hold of it to stop it. They were forced to agree to the release of both Alex and Azalea from the institution they were at. In the time that Alexa was in the foster care system, her father had never remarried or had another heir. Instead, he spent his time away from drinking and gambling. He hadn’t even come back when he heard about Alex and just sent word that he had no interest in the girl who was supposed to be dead, that it would hurt too much with how similar she looked to her mother.

Alex went from being no one to being royalty overnight and she couldn’t cope with it. Her grandparents were not happy that she was the heir they were stuck with and as a result, they held her to unrealistic expectations. The more Alex failed to meet them the more self-destructive she became. She couldn’t turn her anger outwards so instead, she internalized it and used it against herself. The one thing Alex couldn’t grow accustomed to was her grandparent’s insistence on her being called Asenka because unlike Alex it was fit for a royal, not a common street urchin. More often than not Alex felt like she was lost and defeated like the weight of the world was resting on her chest. Eventually, her grandparents sent her to royal pains informing her that she needed to come out acting like the perfect royal or they were going to arrange a marriage for her with one of the royal families so she would become their problem.

✗ Secret; Alex struggles with self destructive behavior and self-worth issues, she was also sexually abused throughout her childhood which she hasn’t told anyone about. 

「 Faceclaim: Liana Liberato」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝I didn't have it in myself to go with grace, and you're the hero flying around, saving face.❞

✗ — Name: Cassandra Kallas.

✗ — Age: 22.

✗ — Kingdom: Estonia.

✗ — Sexuality: Pansexual.

— Personality; Cassie’s a sweet and generally optimistic girl. She likes to look on the bright side of things and tries to be as positive as possible regarding situations. Compassion and empathy are two of her main traits. When someone is suffering in any way, she needs to be there to try and help them. Whether it’s bandaging a wound or giving comfort to help a broken heart, Cassie is the first one to be there for a person, even if they’re a perfect strangers to her. She is probably one of the more relentless people in helping others, and it is one of the few times she doesn’t find herself being more sensitive or reactive to rudeness. If she sees someone in danger, she disregards her own safety and wellness to ensure they’re okay. Cassie is generally a more sensitive person. While name calling doesn’t affect her a lot, sometimes if they strike a chord in particular she’ll be affected. Though Cassie is brutal for hiding her pain and often just bottles away her feelings. She’s quick to respond with a sassy remark and go on. She’s a very playful person and doesn’t consider herself held back by her royal status as without a great deal of seeing her dad involved she wasn’t always raised in the royal way. In Croatia it was obvious she wouldn’t get the throne so she didn’t bother being prim, proper and snobby. She’s got no problem letting her hair down and having fun. Though a part of her always has to be controlled. She often doesn’t drink until blackout or do drugs of any kind. She doesn’t ever dress too provocatively or she refuses to spend too much money even though she has plenty. Along with this, Cassie often experiences moments of dissociation. This is heavily due to the fact that despite the fact she bottles things up as to not remember them, or her amnesia now, she still is suffering from PTSD from what has been done in the past.  Sometimes it’ll be as little as not responding a lot in conversation. Other times it can be a full on, staring off into space check out. Cassie also has a habit of being slightly paranoid and does things she doesn’t have a reason for. Such as locking the door for most rooms she is allowed to. Or sitting in the back corners of rooms. All things related to her PTSD that she isn’t aware she has. 

— Biography; Cassandra’s parents were one of the few couples who actually fell in love and got married. They had both been engaged at the time. With Cassandra’s mother being a wealthy lady whose father was a lord, and her father being the crowned prince of Estonia, champion of all of his siblings. After meeting, they broke off their engagements and talked their parents into agreeing to allow them to be engaged. Cassandra’s paternal grandfather’s were reluctant to accept, but allowed it nonetheless. The first years were happy, after being married for two they had their first child, Cassandra. She was the light of her parent’s lives, even her grandparents were happy to meet her. They loved her dearly. She was given just about everything she wanted, though her mother was determined to teach her about work ethic so she encouraged her to do things for herself, bonding with her by teaching her life skills like baking and cooking, all supervised of course.  At four years old, Cassie’s father inherited the title of king, and she became the princess and one of the next potentials to be a ruler of Estonia. At six years old, Cassie’s mother and father told her she was going to have a new baby brother or sister. She was over the moon with excitement, overjoyed to be a big sister. To her it was an honor, and she couldn’t wait to meet the new baby. Tragedy struck, and her mother suffered a late term miscarriage, one that resulted in the loss of fertility. After that, things began to grow strange. Cassandra’s father, once enamored by Cassie and her mother seemed to want nothing to do with either of them. He was always away on business, or meeting with other royals. She barely saw her father, though part of her thought it might have been worth it. He always seemed angry, or he was yelling at her mother. It wasn’t something she felt entirely comfortable with. Cassie’s mother seemed sad, but she didn’t stop trying to be a mother to her child. One night, her father was out and Cassie was given the go ahead to stay with her mother that night. It hadn’t happened since her mother had lost the baby, because her dad said dependent children didn’t make good rulers. That night, her father showed up drunk. His walking through the bedroom door woke her up. She stayed quiet as she watched him try to talk her mother into going to the other room. When her mother said she wanted to stay with the kids and repeatedly turned him down, he punched her. Cassie screamed, and while the fight was quickly broken up by a few house servants, Cassie was changed. Three months later, Cassie’s parents announced to her they’d be getting a divorce. Cassie’s mother would be leaving to stay in her estate house, and Cassie would go with her for now. For about a year, Cassie lived like this. She only saw her father occasionally, and it was always awkward. About a year and half later, her mother announced that she was to be arranged in another marriage, to the fiance she had rejected years ago to be with Cassie’s father. He was recently widowed, with a young child of his own and he understood Cassie’s mother hadn’t wanted to marry him for love. He was also a King, in Croatia. Cassie’s mother accepted, and they were soon headed off for Croatia. At first, her father put up a fight but it was quickly dropped when Cassie’s mother threatened to tell everyone what he did. Cassie liked Croatia. She even liked her new step father. Cassie watched her mother start to fall in love with the man she’d married, and she knew they were happy like Cassie had never seen her mother before. Soon, Cassie’s step brother came home from boarding school in England. He was strange, there was no doubting that, but she didn’t mind him. Slowly but surely, they adapted to each other. Most tabloids painted it as a story for the ages, love in unexpected places, and a family found from nothing. Before her stepbrother left again at the end of the summer for boarding school, he told her he liked her a lot. And he kissed her. She didn’t exactly return the feelings, and she was deeply confused by what had happened. This was not the end of the strangeness. Whenever her stepbrother would come home, things like this would happen. He’d taunt her, pull on her clothes. He did a lot of things that made her uncomfortable, like walking in while she showered. Cassie felt more estranged from her father than ever, but her paternal grandparents were desperate to try and keep her around him. So she’d go visit them, and often see her father. These visits were awkward, uncomfortable and sometimes he was downright cruel to her. But she was always happy to go home. She could even ignore her stepbrother. Even if he made her uncomfortable, kissing her and touching her when she didn’t want him to. It was only when he was home. And he wasn’t home a lot. So she justified it, considering this normal. When she was fifteen, her stepbrother was kicked out of boarding school. He came home for good to attend a private school in Croatia. Things got ugly. The small things that she had brushed off were harder to brush off. He was always there, all the time, doing things and growing more bold each time. One night, they were attending a gala and after having a glass of champagne she felt dizzy and woozy. Her stepbrother took her to her room, and finally all the weirdness came to a climax after he forced himself on her. She woke up in the morning, confused and uncertain of what had happened when he asked her if she enjoyed herself. It happened three more times. The drinking and feeling woozy, him carrying her away. She could never stop it. She just constantly told herself that it was normal, and that she wanted to do this with him. Yet, despite the lies she told herself, she convinced her mother, who was too busy with her relationship to notice what her daughter had been going through to send her to boarding school. Sure enough, she agreed and Cassie went away. Slowly but surely, Cassie suppressed all the horrible memories of her stepbrother. She forgot them, whether through willful ignorance or the trauma hurting her so badly that she’d break from the memories, so her mind was protecting her. She went on and got through school, eventually graduating and going on to start some general studies programs her mother wanted her to complete. She might not have needed it, but her mother wanted her to have a degree of some sort. On her twenty second birthday, she was home from the university she’d been attending. After a night of having fun with her friends back home, she returned home and went to bed. Later that night, a hangover driving her, she was woken and went to sip from a water glass on her nightstand table. A familiar feeling washed over her. That dizziness. The room was spinning than her step brother walked in. This time, she was lucid enough to fight him off, realizing all those memories she denied herself for years. She finally remembered all that he had done to her, and now after getting out of the world, she knew that what he had done was not right or normal. She confronted him rather violently about everything he’d done, and decided she was too much of a liability now he started to beat her. He staged it so it looked like a ‘rogue’ guard had done it. When she woke up from the coma three months later, she couldn’t consciously remember nearly the last year of her life, or what her step brother had done for her. After two weeks in the hospital, her grandparents came to her and told her that her father was sick, and soon she may be considered for a royal position. They wanted her to be their choice to endorse as their heir. Her mother didn’t agree to the idea of having her daughter who just woke up hauled away. But something told Cassie to do what her grandparents wanted. She agreed to study to become Queen. They started the ball rolling by sending her to The Estate, where they assumed she would end up receiving an education while also recovering her health.

✗ Secret; Cassie has been pretending as if she still remembers the last year of her life, but has secretly been trying to fill in the blanks the entire time and figure out what had happened to her.

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯

Character quote: ❝Sometimes quiet is violent.❞

✗ — Name: Violet Ahlström 

✗ — Age: 21

✗ — Kingdom Sweden.

✗ — Sexuality: Bisexual

— Personality; Violet can be fairly shy and quiet especially when it comes to meeting new people or any form of public speaking. Socializing had always made her feel anxious and self-conscious to the point where at times it made her sick to her stomach. She tends to avoid large crowds of people due to her fear of not being able to keep up with the conversation. Violet has difficulty letting people in and actually letting down her walls so they can get to know her. Instead, she tends to show people a more happy cheerful side of her. She uses humor and optimism to avoid people getting too close to her and having to say anything personal. She was raised to keep her emotions bottled up inside to avoid showing any weakness which has led her to have emotional outbursts that she usually directs at herself. There is a darker side of her that is more prone to anger and depression that she internalizes instead of expressing. Violet believes if anyone were to actually see her insecurities or outbursts of emotion they would grow to hate her or be disappointed in her. She constantly feels like she is never good enough and strives for perfection to the point where if she doesn’t achieve she feels worthless and angry with herself.  

— Biography; From a young age Violet had experienced problems with her hearing. At first, it was little things where she couldn’t quite hear someone talking from the next room over but every time it got worse. Eventually, it became difficult for her to keep up with conversations especially when more than one person was talking at once or there was too much background noise in the room. At first, her parents had decided that Violet just hadn’t been trying enough, that she had just refused to pay attention. So they would give her extra lessons outside of the tutoring she received or quiz her on certain social events she was expected to attend. Violet tried to be perfect. She found herself studying in her free time trying to make up for the fact that she often would only hear or comprehend half of what her tutors were saying. Even then she could still feel her parent’s disappointment with her progress in her lessons especially when it came to learning other languages or public speeches. Violet began to dread having to attend parties that her parents arranged and even just social engagements. The prospect of having to speak in front of people and engage with them turned her stomach to the point where it often made her sick and anxious. This only fueled her parent’s disappointment in their daughter and their view of her being socially inept. It wasn’t until she was thirteen that she ended up seeing a doctor for her anxiety and they also diagnosed her hearing loss. Her parents were unhappy with the fact that their daughter had the disease and viewed it as a stain on their bloodline. They allowed her to get hearing aids but they still expected her to keep up at social functions and they pushed her harder to keep up. Anytime she couldn’t keep up with a conversation and her parents noticed they would take her aside and have her hold out her hand palms up and then hit her hands or wrists. They figured that if she associated it with pain then she would learn to be better. Her parents wanted to be sure she understood to never show weakness and to them her hearing loss and the issues it caused her were a weakness. At one point they told her that if a suitor found out about it before she was married it could ruin any alliance they would make and that she would be responsible for the destruction of their family name. 

For years Violet tried to live up to her parent’s expectations and every time she failed to meet them it made her hate herself for being unable to garner her parent’s approval. Eventually, her self hatred and the weight of the expectations she put on herself got to be too much for her to handle. She started to act out and sneak out in the middle of the night. She started to go to clubs and soon she came across a place where she met other people who were deaf and hard of hearing and she felt less alone. Violet had even started to get a few of them to teach her sign language so she didn’t always have to communicate with words which helped with her anxiety. She found she could express herself better with it and keep up with the conversations she had with her friends easier. It was a feeling she had never felt before, a sense of belonging and the ability to express a part of herself she always kept hidden. 

When she was seventeen her parents found out about her sneaking out and after that, she was basically on lockdown. They yelled at her for hours on end about how stupid it had been to go out in public and flaunt the fact she had difficulty hearing by using sign language. After that Violet was back to being alone with only her anxiety and her own expectations for a companion. The weight of everything crashing down on her and the emotions she kept bottled in the hopes her parents would finally not be disappointed in her had started to trigger episodes of rage. She kept those episodes hidden from her parents and instead internalized it and inflicted that anger on herself. At first, she only hurt herself when it got to be overwhelming or her anxiety got bad but eventually she was doing to cope with socializing and appearing normal. She found it easier to pretend she was fine and less like she wanted to just disappear and stop being a problem for everyone. She finally took it too far and her parents found her in the bathroom surrounded by her own blood. Violet hadn’t been trying to kill herself; she just wanted to stop feeling everything at once and be able to breathe. Her parents sent for a physician to come to the house so no one else had to know about Violet’s problem because if she was hospitalized for it then everyone would know that their daughter was weak. So they sent her to royal pains hoping that would fix her and that maybe they could mold her into the perfect royal.

✗ Secret; Violet was born with type 3 usher’s syndrome, over time she has begun to lose her hearing which her family has kept hidden. She also struggles with her emotions and self-harm issues. 

「 Faceclaim: Vanessa Marano」

» ; ♛ ❮ORIGINAL CHARACTER❯ 

Character quote: ❝They told me all my cages were mental, so I got wasted like all my potential.❞

✗ — Name: Kalina Marek.

✗ — Age: 21.

✗ — Kingdom: Poland.

✗ — Sexuality: Pansexual.

— Personality; Kalina isn’t rough and tough, but she’s not the heart on her sleeve type either. She likes to keep it someone reserved, but is generally a rather friendly person. She holds a lot back, many of her secrets, true emotions and feelings, but often puts on a face of outwards being rather laidback. She’s rather charming and gets along well with most. Holding back most of who she is often grants her the ability to also morph into the more subtle factors of what others decide that they want with her. It’s all part in portion with the fact she doesn’t truly believe that she can be loved as she is. The rejection from her parents have led her from hiding most true parts of personality, scared people will turn her away for them. Because of her fear of rejection, she often ends up being something of her people pleaser and will often put up with a lot in order to keep people happy. Kalina missed out on a great deal of familial affection, and because of this, she seeks for love through other mediums. Often through meaningless one night stands with strangers who she doesn’t really know. It’s a bad habit of hers. Kalina is a compassionate soul, and does like to take care of people. She’s very sensitive to the feelings of others and can often pick up on small things some people can’t.

— Biography; The Marek’s were always a family of self-importance. They held themselves to a high standard and prided themselves on being the possessors of the throne for so many years. They were the rulers, and they would remain that way for the rest of their lives. They were perfectionists about it really. It didn’t just cause discourse with the rest of the world. With other rulers, potential suitors and allies. But it caused issues with the Marek family itself. Siblings would compete and throw themselves at each other’s throats to gain the throne. Their parents would only choose to endorse the one who was most qualified, who’d put in the most efforts. Unlike most royals, they did not choose their eldest son and their eldest daughter, but the one who showed most promise. It wasn’t uncommon for Marek siblings to argue. It was more rare than anything for them to actually be getting along. Jakob and Antoni were poisoned by this just as much as any Marek sibling.  They duked it out for several years for their parents endorsement as the male heir to be put up for election. It was extremely promising, given that the Slyvinksy’s male heir wasn’t anything to scoff at. Tooth and nail, with snipes and jabs and sometimes physical blows, Jakob and Antoni would fight. Unlike their sister who never actually had to, given she was the only female. It was shortly before the election when their sister committed suicide. It was then Antoni decided that he was going to do better, to try and do better. He vowed to stop fighting Jakob and cherish his brother. He would end their feud. This is what made their parents choose him to endorse. And sure enough, with his promising resume and tact for politics, he got elected as their King. He got married. Little did he know that in Jakob’s heart, the feud was still ongoing and he was determined to win. Right under Antoni’s nose, despite having his own wife, Jakob slept with Antoni’s wife and got her pregnant. The woman was suddenly far more scared so she covered the affair quickly by saying her child was Antoni’s. His experience with his sister caving to the pressure of royal life meant he didn’t let any of those royal curses near his daughter. Instead he kept the paparazzi from her as much as possible, limited staff in contact with her. Kalina, born Isobela, was kept away from most people but her parents, uncle and aunt. Things were good for her. Her parents doted on her, her father completely unknowing of the truth of her lineage, and her mother just happy to have a child. She was spoiled, but most importantly loved. She was one of the lucky royals who knew the love of her parents. However, when she was four tragedy struck. Most would say it was up there with the suicide of Antoni’s and Jakob’s sister’s suicide. The palace was invaded by assassins in the night. They were bloodthirsty, killing most maids and guards in their wake. But their main targets were the royal family. The King, his wife. Though they’d been given special orders by those who’d sent them not to hurt Isobela. Because, while the feud burned in Jakob’s heart, with his power hungry wife cooing in his ear they plotted to have his brother killed so the family power would default to him. But there was one line he couldn’t cross. Jakob knew that Isobela was his, and he couldn’t bring himself to kill her. So he devised another plan. He had her injured enough so that the blood patterns would make it appear as if she had in fact died. And then he brought her quietly to his home. Most of those who were around her were killed in the attack, others were bribed. A month later, Isobela was living with Jakob - who had been crowned King -, now named Kalina. She was confused a lot, and often shouted for her mother and father. And soon the press statement was released. Jakob guiltily admitted to having an affair on the camera with a common woman. He begged for the forgiveness of his Kingdom and wife. But was now faced with the fact that his former lover had died and had left him behind a child he hadn’t known he had. He convinced them all that Kalina was his daughter and that he was going to do the noble thing and raise her while paying penance for his unfaithfulness. Kalina slowly forgot the memories of those who had raised her. And life with this man became the new normal. She came to know Jakob and his wife as her father and mother. To her, her father was the best to her. He was harsh with Alexa and Lena, their newer addition, but he would always take time to quietly dote on her. He would bring her gifts from his trips, get her new dresses. His wife however didn’t show any love towards the daughter she had adopted. Kalina was ignored by her mother for the most part. The woman was cold most of the time, without emotion. Sure, she was still bossy, still enforced that she couldn’t let down the Marek name, but she refused to even let her husband acknowledge her as a true potential heir to the throne. Old time royal views haunted her and spite that Kalina was alive at all. Kalina craved love from her mother, or even love from her father that could be more than a secret from his wife. She felt as if she was just a shame. She may have had bloodright to the throne, but she was treated as awfully as if she was a bastard in the older days. Kalina tried to keep her head down and stay rather lowkey. At the end of the day, she just needed to get away from her family, so when her mother suggested she attend a boarding school in Switzerland she jumped on the opportunity. She gradually distanced herself from the royal world. While it was still upper class members of society, at least she wasn’t judged so harshly there. Eventually, she graduated and moved onto a college campus. It was in her second year attending college that she stopped getting invited to galas and events. It was like not only had her mother given up on her, which she knew had happened a long time ago, but her father too. She felt like she was being left out on purpose, abandoned. So she started to act out, seeking love in others. Often this led to one night stands with no real love or romance involved at all. Sometimes, the men and women she found herself with were find with it. Others were looking for more. Most overall took her rejection pretty easily. But there was one man who swore up and down he was in love with her and tried to be with her.  He was bullied on campus often, and she was the first one to really show any interest. Of course it was all superficial, she was just looking for someone to fill the emptiness inside of herself.  Almost a few months later, after dodging all of his text messages, it was announced on the PA system that there was a shooter in the building. Lockdown procedures were fallen into, but it didn’t stop the shooter from ripping through the school. Many students were injured and killed that day. And finally, he came to Kalina’s classroom. He took off his mask and revealed himself to be the man she’d slept with who’d become obsessed with her. She was forced to watch him kill almost four members of her class when he finally started addressing her. He told her that he didn’t know why she couldn’t love him back. She tried to convince him that it wasn’t anything to do with him. And finally she tried to convince him she did love him, if only it meant the stop of the carnage. She managed to almost nearly talk him down, but at the last moment he told her that he knew she was lying and shot her before ending his own life. As she bled on the floor, she remembered her arm being cut as a little girl, and a man taking her away. Kalina was surprised when she woke up in the hospital if she was honest. She hadn’t expected to survive. She believed she had endured her last moments of life. But, sure enough she awoke. Only to find an onslaught of memories coming to her the more days she spent in the hospital. Finally, the dam broke and she realized what had happened. She confronted her mother and father, telling her she remembered everything. Her father surprisingly seemed happy to unload his guilty conscience, but her mother was furious. She said it was too dangerous. They had to end her. Her father refused, and finally they institutionalized her instead. She spent most of her time out of it, filled with things that were so strong she could barely open her eyes. It lasted for a few months, this new hell. Honestly, she was barely conscious. She lost almost twenty pounds, slowly starting to fade away as she could barely function. Finally, her father decided enough was enough. He wanted to rescue her, get her out of there. So he bribed the doctors to say she was still there. And for a long time she was put up in a hotel room, forced to undergo withdrawals from the drugs she’d been given, but finally he brought her to the Royal Pains Estate on the condition she wouldn’t say anything. She agreed to avoid returning to the drugged state. Anything to keep from going back there. And so she went. She just relied on the fact her father had somehow taken care of Lena and Alexa.

✗ Secret; Kalina was originally born Isobela, the legal daughter of King Antoni and his wife. She was kidnapped by her biological father after he had her legal father killed.

「 Faceclaim: Sabrina Carpenter.」

[human-redesigned-rp]

In From the Cold

Deanna / Cleo

Desperate for help, Cleo wanders into a clinic near the docks.

“Cleo.” 

Her name cut through the warm haze of paracetamol and exhaustion and the low, monotonous hum of the half-empty vending machine. The tiny break room was empty save for herself and the bespectacled floor supervisor, who was staring down at her with a tight arch in his brow, arms folded. 

 Cleo blinked upwards and tried not to look too surprised to see him standing over her. “Is everything alright, Cam? Do you need me back out?” 

Cameron regarded her for a moment, lips pursed, before heaving a sigh and sitting down on the threadbare sofa next to her. “Cleo,” he said again, more gently this time. “Maybe you’d better go home.” 

She took a deep, painful breath, her jaw clenched. She noticed that Cameron had left a clear foot between them on the sofa. “No, no,” she replied, in a tone that she hoped sounded brisk and dismissive. “Not at all. I’m just… self-inflicted, really… I was out last night - too much cheap vodka, you know - I wasn’t going to tell you but I really shouldn’t get to go home early just because of my own-”

“Cut the bullshit, Cleo. You can hardly catch your breath. You’re sick.” 

Cleo shook her head, panic rising in her chest as she scrambled for excuses. “N-no, honestly, Cam. I wouldn’t leave you short-staffed. There’s no way you’re going to talk anyone else into covering over Christmas week. I’ll go straight to bed after my shift, alright? I’ll be fine by tomorrow…”

Cameron shook his head. “No.” 

 The firmness in his voice took her by surprise, disarming her. “N-no?” 

“No. Cleo, um…” He sighed again, shuffling in his seat and folding his arms more tightly around himself as he glanced back at the door. “...Listen. It’s just… Cleo, some of the customers have been complaining.” Cleo’s heart sank. “Nothing terrible or that - you’re a good girl, yeah? It’s just that you’re serving food and you look, well…” Cleo's gaze dropped, avoiding Cameron’s eyes. 

“Gross. You look gross, Cleo,” Cameron finished decisively. “You’re practically grey, your eyes are bloodshot and you sound like you gargle with gravel. And that cough... Sorry, kid, but I need you to get out of here. You shouldn't be working around with food right now. And, um… don’t come back in until you’re better, okay? I don’t want to have this conversation with you again.” 

Cleo blinked back tears as shame and anxiety in equal measures bubbled up inside her. Without another word, she nodded and gathered up her tatty purse and coat. Even as she checked she had all of her things, her mind raced as she wondered whether the hours she’d already worked this week would be enough to cover everything she needed. She had been planning to pick up a few groceries from the Express on her way home tonight, but that would surely have to wait. 

“I’ll call you tomorrow to check in on you,” Cameron called feebly after her as she fled the room. She’d barely made a thing this week busking, either. As Cameron had pointed out, she sounded hideous, not to mention she couldn’t seem to get a deep breath to even sing much of anything in the first place. She knew she probably needed penicillin if she wanted to get back to work any time in the next few days. That would be much more easily solved, of course, were it not ten o’clock on a Friday night. 

Blurry headlights streaked past her watering eyes as she contemplated a trip to the out-of-hours doctor. But her last Friday evening at the out-of-hours unit, which had consisted of an eight-hour wait surrounded by drunks and sobbing women and one screeching lady high on who-only-knew-what, was still fresh in her memory. Her father hadn’t been seen until four in the morning, and he’d been ill from the effects of his chemotherapy. She’d probably wait even longer with a piddly little cough. They’d probably laugh at her for even turning up. After all, it could easily wait until Monday. If, of course, she weren’t living hand-to-mouth and relying on every hour of work she could scrape together just to keep a roof over her head. 

She sat down on the kerb outside the café, the chill of the pavement immediately permeating her jeans. She tried to blink her tears back again, but this time only succeeded in causing them to spill down her cheeks. 

Cleo did not sleep that night. She couldn’t. Every time she coughed, the stabbing pain in her chest shot her back into full wakefulness, until finally, both shivering and sweating at the same time, she trailed her blanket off the bed at five o’clock and dragged it to the threadbare armchair to read. 

Her phone rang at nine o’clock. Blinking away the haze of exhaustion, Cleo shoved herself off the chair and dug out her old mobile phone from where it had fallen underneath. Cam’s name blinked cheerfully up at her. Frowning, she hit the Answer key. “Hello?” 

“Cleo, hi. God, you sound terrible. How are you?” 

“O-oh. Actually, much better,” she replied eagerly. "It sounds much worse than it is, I'm sure I'll be-" 

“I bet. Listen…” A pause, and then Cameron continued. “Listen, I know I was harsh yesterday. But I needed you to go home. Customers have been complaining, and what if there was a mystery shopper and you served them looking like-” 

“I get it,” Cleo said, with a dryness that surprised even her. “Gross.”

She heard Cameron sigh, but he didn't backtrack. “Can you get an appointment?” 

“I think I’m going to have to wait until Monday. I doubt I’ll get seen out of hours with a cough.” 

“You know you have more than a bloody cough, don’t you?” Cam’s voice was more stern now. “Cleo, you’re really not well. I’m being serious. Is anyone with you?”

Cleo almost asked Cam who on earth would be with her, but she didn’t. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t know and it wasn’t his fault. “Um, no, but I’m just reading-” 

“Cleo!” 

“Fine, I’ll ring out-of-hours.” 

Another short silence, this one more pensive than uncomfortable. “Isn’t there a little independent clinic on Cringle Street? It’s in the paper all the time, going on about opening evenings and weekends…” 

“What?” Cleo’s ears practically pricked up. “Cringle Street?” “At Battersea, yeah. Near the power station. There’s a little picture in the ad. Loads of plants around it, sticks out from the rest of the street like a sore thumb. Ring a taxi and give them a go, Cleo. You’re going to be a mess if you wait til Monday.” 

Cleo nodded, though she knew nobody could see her. She was already trying to work out whether her underground ticket would cover the right zones. “Y-yeah, thanks, Cam.” 

“Alright. Let me know how you get on.” 

“Yeah,” she replied absently, knowing full well that her phone had no credit and she wouldn’t be able to phone him. “Thank you, Cam.” 

“No sweat. See ya.”

 ---

The hot breath of the building's central heating system hit Cleo’s cold face and made her skin prickle, her eyes still stinging from the icy wind outside and blinded by the cyan walls. Her lungs screamed in agony as she caught her breath and glanced around the pristine reception. 

There was nobody there. In the center of the room stood a small table, surrounded by chairs. Not sure what else to do, she took a seat and observed with vague interest the strange looking little cactus in the middle of the table. She hadn't seen one like it before. She was so taken in by it, in fact, that it was a couple of minutes before she became aware of what looked like a small, lively aviary in the corner of the room, ablaze with beautiful, exotic-looking - expensive-looking - birds. A chill rising up inside her, she realised that this was definitely not an NHS clinic, and began to wonder how much treatment was likely to cost her. She already regretted coming here. 

Even seated, the joints in her legs ached and her ears rang, and she longed for her bed and a cup of hot tea. Right at this moment, it would have been easy to convince herself that it wasn’t worth coming all the way out here just to be told that she couldn’t afford a flimsy packet of antibiotics, but she was already here and the thought of going home empty-handed brought tears to her eyes yet again. Either wait two more days for medicine, miss more work, miss her rent, and get evicted… or pay out the nose here, still have no money for rent after paying the bill, and get evicted anyway. She was going to have to face the out-of-hours. With a heavy, painful sigh, she rubbed her face with her hands to remove the clamminess and stray tears, and tried to psyche herself up to go back outside again.

*~*~*

Deanna probably wasn't meant for customer service, but luckily for her being the receptionist for some shady free clinic with weird plants and birds didn't require much skill. Most days, she just sat behind the pristine desk and handed the patients a tablet to fill out their information. Sometimes, she wondered if she should warn them about all the strange shit hidden behind Dr. Vega's doors, but she couldn't even begin to explain what was going on in the clinic, and she didn't care enough to try. It didn't take much to put two and two together and figure out that her strange new ability came from the clinic, and it wasn't like she was complaining.  There were a lot of perks that came with being able to manipulate water. Plus, she got an easy, well paying job out of it, where she could wear whatever she wanted and not force a smile when she really couldn't care less. Sterling always told her she looked like she was swallowing nails when she tried.

It was quiet in the clinic that morning and Dean was suffering from a nasty hangover, so she disappeared into the youth hostel to sneak coffee from the kitchen, nearly chugging an entire mug of it before going for a refill. When she returned to the desk, there was a pretty miserable looking girl sitting by the strange plant. Another hint that something was weird about Dr. Vega, like she didn't have any clue that maybe she should invest in some cheap magazines, rather than choose a plant as a source of entertainment. Sighing, Dean took another sip of coffee before going for the tablet behind the desk. Most people were surprised to realize she worked there, considering, she didn't look that much better than the patients most days. Her long hair was tucked away in a messy bun, and her outfits usually consisted of some sort of flannel and jeans combo. Today she didn't even bother with makeup, her dark post-hangover under eye circles on full display. Without making eye contact, she passed the tablet to the girl, careful not to let their fingers brush, because she didn't want the germs. 

"Just fill out your information. Dr. Vega will be with you soon."

*~*~*

Cleo didn't even noticed that anyone  had come into the room until a brightly-lit tablet appeared on the table in front of her. She squinted down at the glaring screen, before looking up at the girl who'd appeared next to her. "Um," she began intelligently, glancing back at the tablet and then back at the girl. 

The girl, whom Cleo assumed must be an employee of the clinic, couldn't possibly have looked any more out of place in her pristine surroundings. Had she been in any state to imagine, she would have expected someone in a crisp tunic and dark trousers, maybe short hair or a sleek ponytail, and perhaps flawless makeup. Instead, she was met with jeans and a checked shirt, the girl's hair in one of those I-woke-up-like-this buns that white girls could do with so little effort. She looked like she might fit in at a mechanic's or a record shop more quickly that the spotless, breathtakingly modern clinic reception. 

When Cleo finally spoke, her words were halting, as though she'd momentarily forgotten how to speak English. "I, um, I think I've made a mistake," she said. She wasn't sure if it was sickness or embarrassment that was causing her face to boil. "This is a private clinic, isn't it?"

~*~*~*~

"It's a free clinic," Deanna shrugged. She wouldn't pretend she understood a whole lot about English healthcare. Clinics in America weren't free, and she typically avoided going unless she was on the brink of death, so she wasn't sure what was the norm or not. Though, she was pretty sure nothing about this place could be considered normal. When Dean was the one sitting in the lobby, staring at the weird plant, she also considered forgetting about the whole thing, but she had been sick for weeks with no end in sight, so she didn't really have any choice other than to just go with it.  After seeing Dr. Vega, she recovered quickly--probably too quickly for someone with Mono, and even walked out with a few...advancements. Well, she didn't know for sure that the clinic was the cause of it, but she was pretty sure that sketchy doner kebab wasn't the reason she could manipulate water. "It's up to you. She'll be able to see you as soon as you check in, and you look like you're about to fall over, so," She trailed off with another shrug. It wasn't like she got paid per patient, so she didn't really care whether she went back there or not.

~*~*~*~

At the receptionist's response, Cleo felt her heart lift in relief, with such disbelief in her stroke of luck that she honestly could have cried at that moment. A free clinic. Seen immediately. Amazing. Maybe it made its money doing medical trials on the side or something, or maybe it claimed back its expenses from the government. Maybe it just happened to be a really nice, shiny new NHS clinic that hadn't yet fallen victim to the trademark careworn shabbiness that came with years of heavy footfall. At this point, she honestly didn't care. 

She smiled in acknowledgement at the girl's advice and looked down at the tablet. The form didn't seem to demand too much information. She popped in her name, address, and National Insurance Number, before pausing at the next line.  

Emergency Contact: 

 Her head tilted in thought for a moment, trying to keep her expression unreadable. 

N/A 

Quickly, she moved on, skipping past the small print (honestly she'd have given this place her tongue if it would get her back to work more quickly), and ticking the consent button before hitting "Submit" and handing it back to the receptionist. 

"Thank you," she said, more hoarsely than she'd been expecting. "Sorry. I know I sound horrid."

~*~*~*~

Deanna awkwardly hovered as the other girl filled out the form, gaze shifting to the windows. It always looked gloomy in this part of the city, even on a sunny day. Sitting behind the desk always made her miss her first home in Massachusetts, even if she barely remembered it at this point. London was nice and all, better than most places she lived, but she would give her foot if she could live on a beach...especially now. She flinched when the girl spoke up, not realizing she completely zoned out. Silently, Dean took the tablet and returned it to her desk, pausing to take a long sip of the coffee she abandoned when she realized there was a patient waiting.

"It's fine," She waved a hand before collapsing into her seat, her temples still pounding from the hangover. "Better than the dude who projectile vomited all over the place yesterday." It definitely wasn't Dean's dream to work in a clinic, sick people were gross, but it paid for her textbooks. Her Aunt offered to pay, but accepting money went against Dean's nature, and it was better than the other ways she would scrounge up enough money to feed Sterling back in the day. "Dr. Vega will come get you soon," She added.

~*~*~*~

Cleo smiled gratefully at the girl's willingness to withhold judgement on her - at least, to not judge her openly - and folded her arms on the table.  The silence that followed was, in Cleo's mind, comfortable enough. It seemed like the receptionist was no more of a conversationalist than she herself was, and honestly talking hurt anyway. In an attempt to distract herself from the hot flush that had begun to creep up her neck again, she became occupied in examining the strange, forbidden little spiky plant in the middle of the table. Apart from being prickly, it actually looked quite cute - like a hedgehog rolled in a ball with its tiny spines extended. She didn't think it was a cactus - at least, not a kind of cactus that she'd ever seen before. You certainly wouldn't find one like it in the foyer of Aldi next to the hanging baskets. 

"Do you know what it is?" she asked the girl at her desk with a gesture towards the little plant, speaking before she could stop herself as curiosity got the better of her.

*~*~*~*

Dean reached for her phone to check her missed texts. There were a few leftover from the night before asking where she disappeared to. Her newest was from a girl in her class who asked if she wanted to go out for drinks tonight with some of their classmates. Hell no. No more drinking for the rest of her life. She was about to text her just that when the girl in the lobby spoke up again. Dean nearly forgot she was even there. 

Frowning in confusion, she looked up to see what she was asking about before letting out a short laugh. "Who knows?" Dean shrugged before turning her attention back to her phone. "I always figured it's from the Amazon or something. I think Dr. Vega travels a lot." It was hard to say what exactly the doctor did, but Dean had a few guesses based on what she saw around the clinic.

~*~*~*~

A small crease appeared between Cleo's eyebrows in response to the receptionist's answer, before she looked back at the prickly little plant, her head still swimming from her spiking temperature. The sign next to it, she was sorry to admit, only made her want to touch the strange thing all the more, if only to see what would happen. She was fairly sure that she couldn't get all that much sicker, at any rate. Well, she could, obviously. She could get poisoned and die. Then some poor person at the hospital would have to arrange a public health funeral for her when they probably had more than enough paperwork to deal with that day. Best to leave it alone. 

She pulled a book out of her backpack - The Magician's Nephew, an old childhood favourite -  and opened it at a random page before attempting to read. Her efforts to distract herself didn't go very far. The words danced on the page, swaying this way and that and crossing over each other and blurring until she shut the book again hurriedly and shut her eyes, grasping for some return of equilibrium. She supposed she'd be better sitting still until she was called.

~*~*~*~

Dean didn't know for sure how long Dr. Vega would take. Even when she didn't have another patient, she seemed to always busy herself with something. She watched the girl pull out a book, still looking pretty miserable. As much as she hates it, the nurturing side of her kicks in. It comes from practically raising her little brother. When Sterling was sick, she used to coddle him at his bedside, bringing him tea and soup. She should probably at least offer her something. Clearing her throat awkwardly, she gave the girl a pointed look. "Do you want some tea or something? There's a hostel upstairs and I raid the kitchen sometimes. I can grab you some."

~*~*~*~

Cleo glanced up from her mournful staring contest with the book's front cover when the receptionist spoke again, taking a minute to process what she'd been asked. Apparently, she'd spent so much time alone in recent years that the question of whether or not she'd like a cup of tea had somehow become alien to her. Sure, she made countless cups for customers every day, but it wasn't like she lived with housemates or family that would stick the kettle on for each other. She usually just made her own when she was on breaks in work. 

She tried to resist a small, grim smile at how ridiculous it was that she'd gotten to that level of isolation. "That," she said, clasping the book with both hands and lowering it to her lap. "Would actually be really lovely. Thank you." She hesitated, a question on the tip of her tongue, before she put the book back in her bag. "My name's Cleo, by the way. I don't think I got yours?"

~*~*~*~

Dean tried not to sigh as she pushed herself up from her seat. She asked for it by offering, but the thought of climbing the stairs to the hostel again was daunting. She would definitely be taking a nap when she got home. "I'm Dean," She gave Cleo a little half smile. It was a little hard to tell behind the sick pallor, but the girl was pretty cute. She had a head of gorgeous curls and warm almond-shaped eyes. If she wasn't dying of some disease, Dean might say something, but instead she left the room to find Cleo some tea. 

It took about five minutes for her to make the walk back to the hostel kitchen, and heat the tea. She may have cheated a little, and used her own abilities to speed up the process, but if she was going to be some freak, she might as well take advantage of it. 

"Here," Dean announced when she returned, handing Cleo the mug. Just as she stepped away, Dr. Vega finally poked her head in. "That's your cue," She raised a brow before disappearing behind her desk.

~*~*~*~

Dean. Cleo smiled back and nodded. Usually that was a boy's name, but she wondered if maybe it was short for something. She seemed nice. Or maybe Cleo just didn't talk to enough people outside of work. Either way she wasn't having a complicated latte order mumbled at her from behind an iPhone, so... had Cleo not been the height of grossness, this would have counted as an overall positive interaction. Dean came back with a cup of tea, and Cleo accepted it gratefully. "Thank you," she sighed. She had barely had time to enjoy the hot steam against her cheeks, though, when Dean directed her towards  one of the doors at the end of the room. She got to her feet, the mug still cupped in her hands. "Thanks," she said to Dean with a little nod, before making her way into the doctor's office.

[wingsy-keeper-of-songs]

Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man

I got a request from a friend who was feeling pretty low. She wanted something comforting, and while August isn’t the comforting type, I just couldn’t get him out of my head. So, this story is for my girl @movieexpert1978. I am in no way affiliated with Water for Elephants or the OC in this story. Elisa belongs to @movieexpert1978

Hope ya’ll enjoy!

Links to the songs on the record player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5lpfIeC-NU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzGVYyu9gsE

Her head was killing her. All hyperbole aside, it really was. She hadn’t the faintest idea how it had started, but it did and that was what brought her into a dark, dingy little bar downtown. Fuck, but she needed a drink. It probably wouldn’t do much for her head, but it could numb the pain some. She sat at the bar, head in hands as the bartender placed a whiskey and Coke in front of her.

“Rough day, honey?” He asked her, making conversation.

“You don’t know what rough is, sister.” She answered, not in the mood to socialize. “Don’t suppose you’ve got an aspirin back there along with the booze, do you?” He shook his head.

“Afraid not, got yourself a headache, have you?”

“Sent straight from the depths of Hell itself,” she replied. “And it’s only getting worse.”

“Well, here’s hoping the alcohol will counter the pain, yeah?” The bartender said with pity, patting her hand.

“Cheers to that,” she deadpanned and knocked back her drink. Should have asked for it straight up, she thought to herself. Coke fizzed on the way down and it tickled her sinuses which made her headache worsen. She winced when the door opened, letting light into the place and a man took a seat not too far away from her. Despite her eyes aching from the burst of light, he looked very familiar to her. He wasn’t very tall and was dressed simply in a rather grimy-looking white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tan riding breeches. He looked almost as bad as she felt. He ordered a whiskey straight up and chugged it down like he was dying of thirst.

“Wondered when your ass would wander back in here,” the bartender said to the stranger. “Things not looking so hot on the job front there, August?” The gentleman shrugged and winced.

“Does anything ever look good during economic depression?” He snarked and Elisa had to hide a snicker. He had a fair point. He glanced her way and raised an eyebrow. “It isn’t very polite to stare, you know.” He said.

“Who says I was looking at you?” Elisa retorted, now embarrassed that she’d been caught looking at him. It couldn’t be helped, really. He looked so familiar to her, and it made her head pound as she mulled it over.

“What else would you be staring at, the record player?” He asked, arms now folded over his chest.

“Forgive me for gawking, Carey Grant.” She remarked sarcastically. The corner of his mouth twitched a little, but he smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes, but it was a relatively nice smile. For the Devil, that is. He turned back to his drink, elbows on the bar and chin on his hands. His eyes hooded and he sighed deeply through his nose. Again, she wondered where she’d seen him before. A voice in her aching head recalled something.

“Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the most spectacular show on earth!” Her head snapped up as her eyes brightened with recognition.

“Mr. Rosenbluth, right?” She said to him. He tensed and pushed away from the counter.

“Who wants to know?” He asked, eyes narrowing at her.

“No one in particular,” she shrugged. “Just recognized you, I guess. I went to your show a few months back.”

“Did you now?” He said, eyes downcast.

“Sure did, I remember that red frock you were wearing. It was quite the spectacular show.” Elisa said, attempting a smile at him. She’d heard something about the circus going belly-up, but she wasn’t clear on the details.

“It isn’t shit now,” August muttered bitterly. “The damn thing went under after that stampede.”

“So, that’s what happened.” Elisa said. “A stampede? Did the animals get loose or something?”

“They were let out by the workers,” August said, sipping his drink. “Ungrateful, that’s what they were. I work hard to provide for them, to feed them and give them a place to belong. What do I get in return? They try to fucking kill me.”

“You were a ruthless son of a bitch, August.” The bartender said as he cleaned a glass. “I’ve heard nothing but horror stories regarding what went on behind that show. You just count your lucky stars that you survived that disaster.”

“What do you know about it?” August snarled back. “You weren’t there! Have you any idea the kind of stress running that business causes?!”

“It wouldn’t stress me out enough to throw a kid from a train,” the bartender replied coolly. August winced at the reminder and he looked away, glowering at the phonograph in the corner of the bar.

“You threw people from a train?” Elisa asked, eyes wide. “What the hell for?”

“For not listening to him, or for disobeying him.” The bartender answered for the irate August. “See, our friend here has a temper on him the like of which a toddler would call absurd. It drove his wife away and nearly cost him his life. Now, ‘stead of doing something about it, the man does nothing but mope all day here with me. He’s a mean bastard, but he’s my best customer.”

“Sitting right here,” August grumbled. “Hearing everything you say.”

“I can say what I want, I give you alcohol.” The bartender said. “And the lady ought to know what she’s getting herself into if she thinks about dragging your drunken ass home.”

“You’re married?” Elisa felt something churn in her stomach. Probably the Coke.

“Was,” August replied with an annoyed glance at the bartender. “She left me for our resident veterinarian.”

“Last I heard, they joined the Ringling Circus,” the bartender interjected. “And old August here is too damn poor to go after them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Elisa said to him sincerely. “Losing someone you love can be hard on a person.” August snorted as if he quite doubted that.

“She was terrified of me, and for damn good reason.” He glanced up at her and his eyes were flat, dead almost. It was a bit unnerving to say the least. “I used to hurt her, apparently. I have no recollection of it, but I remember the bruises.” He clenched his fist and brought it down hard on the counter. “Fuck!” He swore loudly.

“Hey, take it easy. You break any of my shit, you pay for it.” The bartender said. “And I doubt you have enough on you to do that.” August’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he slumped forward.

“I hate this,” he muttered. “I fucking hate this.” Elisa sat a bit closer to him. A stupid move on her part, sure, but this guy was in need of some TLC and badly. He looked like he walked through all nine circles of hell barefoot.

“Hey, join the club.” She said with a little shrug. “But would you mind not making such a huge racket about it? My head’s killing me.”

“Sorry,” he muttered and not sounding sorry at all.

“Bullshit,” she called him on it. He snorted.

“Don’t suppose you have a name to go with the face, do you?” He asked as he looked up at her.

“Elisa,” she answered, sticking out her hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” August deadpanned, shaking her hand and returning to his slump against the counter. “You mentioned something about your head killing you?”

“I get migraines sometimes, and they happen at the most inopportune moments, shit you not.” Elisa explained. “Thought I’d drop in here for a drink or something, but then you come along. Of all the gin joints, am I right?”

“I’m in something of the same boat,” August said. “I got my head split open by an elephant with a bullhook and a grudge.”

“From what I’ve heard, you deserved that.” The bartender said to him. “You treated that poor animal like garbage. And an elephant has a long memory. She probably could sense what a piece of work you were.”

“Yeah well, lucky me I lived.” August spat. “All I’ve got left is that goddamn train and my brandy, but that’s almost all gone now. Thank God for opiates.”

“Those will kill you if you get too addicted to ‘em,” Elisa pointed out. “Mixing medicine with alcohol will mess you up.”

“Kid, he’s already messed up.” The bartender said. “He’s been messed up since day fucking one.”

“Still sitting here,” August muttered venomously.

“I have to get my kicks somewhere.”

“Maybe you could lay off the guy a little, huh?” Elisa stuck up for him. “Sure he’s a real piece of work, but harping on him isn’t gonna help matters any.”

“The girl has a point,” August said, looking over towards her. She shrugged.

“Sure I do, but then again so does he.” She jabbed a thumb at the bartender who just blinked innocently. “You can’t go around asserting authority over everyone. You’re just as broke and as hopeless as the rest of us. And abusing an animal?” She shook her head. “That’s definitely not the way towards redemption, but you know something…” she looked him right in the eyes then. “I got a good feeling about you. I think you know this. I think deep down inside, and I mean really deep down, you know we’re right. You know what you did was wrong otherwise you’d show no remorse for it.” August hadn’t had anyone speak to him like this before. It was interesting, but at the same time it sort of pissed him off. But she was right, something inside him nagged. She was right and that was what bothered him. He could go right ahead being the bastard he knew he was, but it wouldn’t change anything. He wondered what could happen if he stopped. What if he changed? Would anything else?

“Girl’s got some wisdom on her,” the bartender said with a smile at her. “You ought to take her advice, August.” August managed a nod in reply. Elisa managed a smile in return, and her headache seemed to fade. The pounding was stopping and was actually fairly tolerable at the moment.

“I don’t suppose I could interest you in dinner, could I?” August asked, looking at Elisa. “I seem to have a lot to make up for.” Elisa raised her eyebrows.

“Think you could manage to keep your hands to yourself?” She asked, arms folded in front of her chest. August looked taken aback, but he bit down the caustic reply.

“I could do that.”

“Then sure,” Elisa smiled at him. “That sounds like a good time.” August could feel an answering smile tugging at his own lips and he looked down at the counter again.

“I’m pretty certain I could scrounge something up to give you a decent time,” he remarked. “Not exactly all the way to good, but it’s a start, isn’t it?” ``` Dinner turned out to be harder than he thought. Like the rest of the masses, he was flat-ass broke, and scrounging up something turned out to be for naught. But August was nothing if not stubborn. He wanted to show the girl a good time, and make up for something at least once in his life. If he couldn’t prove it to Marlene, he’d prove it to Elisa. There was something about that girl that August found himself admiring, whether it was her spirit or the blue of her eyes, he couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he needed to start making up for the things he’d done and he had a long way to go. He figured dinner was a good start. Since he couldn’t afford to take her anywhere, he settled on making her dinner. He thumbed through a collection of his mother’s old recipes, humming along to Billie Holiday on the radio. He’d settled on a traditional German dish (it had been so long since he’d had anything from his home) and he got straight to work. When it came time for Elisa to show up, he was just in the middle of setting the table when she knocked.

“It’s open!” He called over his shoulder and she walked right in. He really tried not to stare at her because it was rude, but holy hell she looked stunning. She favored simplicity over anything too fancy, and the style of the Depression really seemed to suit her. The dark blue of the dress brought out the paleness of her skin and dark brown of her unfashionably long hair. She was wearing fire engine red lipstick and gave him a nervous smile.

“I clean up pretty good, don’t I?” She said in a higher pitched voice than usual. God yes, she did. August shook himself out of his reverie and he offered a smile in return.

“You could say that. You look really nice.” You look nice, excellent choice in compliments, you idiot he thought to himself. She actually blushed and he considered that a small victory.

“Well, thanks. You look...nice as well.” She’d hesitated and August wondered why. He’d cleaned himself up since he saw her last, or at least he tried to.

“I try,” he shrugged. “Well, I had thought about taking you out someplace, but that was harder than it sounded.” He shrugged. “You’ll have to settle with my cooking instead.”

“You can cook?” She sounded surprised and he tried not to be offended because of fucking course he could cook.

“I survived on my own somehow, yeah?” He said instead. Elisa looked impressed and he chalked another victory. Maybe this wasn’t going to be too hard afterall. ``` Dinner was actually pleasant. Not only had he succeeded in not poisoning his guest, she actually seemed to like the food and the company was pleasant. August forgot just how lonely he was without Marlene with him until Elisa came stumbling into his life.

“I think this is the first time a man has ever done something like this for me,” she said with a smile that he was getting fond of. Careful now, a voice warned him.

“No one’s ever cooked for you?” He asked, lamenting and celebrating the fall of manners in young American men. She shook her head.

“Just my mother, but I don’t count her. The other dates I’ve been on were just dancing or it was a paid for dinner. Nothing like this.” She gestured around his home. “It feels nicer somehow.”

“You dance, hm?” He asked curiously and smiling at her. Elisa wasn’t sure if that made her nervous or excited.

“I used to. I’m a bit of a klutz. Got two left feet.” She said, tucking her hair behind her ear. August wondered if he would ever be allowed to do that and then stopped himself because this was moving awfully fast. Good Lord, he must have been lonelier than he thought.

“I could teach you,” he offered and wondered where that thought came from. Her eyes lit up and it was ridiculously attractive.

“I think I’d like that,” she smiled at him. He stood up and her eyes widened.

“Wait, we’re doing this now?”

“No time like the present,” he replied and turned on the phonograph. Billie Holiday’s voice came crooning out and Elisa found herself pulled to her feet. “I like this song,” she said to him as he put an arm around her waist and took her hand.

“Billie’s songs are best to dance to,” he remarked with a grin. Elisa found herself liking that crooked smile of his more and more. Still, a voice warned her. You need to be careful around him. He was trying, though. She had to give him credit for that.

“I like Ella,” she said as they swayed a little. “She’s just so smooth and pretty.” “I have one of hers too if you like,” August offered. Elisa nodded and he went off to switch the record and Ella’s smooth voice filled the little train car. As they danced, Elisa looked up at August and thought she saw something there. His expression may have seemed flat to anyone else who knew him, but there was a spark there. It was something not a lot of people got to see from him. The hardships of his life seemed to vanish and the only thing that remained was the August that Marlene had fallen in love with. Elisa could see why. He was a poisonous kind of charming, that kind of forbidden fruit women would read about. Handsome as the Devil, and twice as sly from what the bartender had told her. But here he was something different. It was as if every cruelty had melted away when he looked at her like this.

“August,” she said softly.

“Hm?”

“The music’s stopped.”

“Mm,” he didn’t seem to notice. Or care, really. He just continued to sway with her, like the way he’d dance with Marlene. Elisa wondered what brought this change upon him from the caustic man she’d met in the bar.

“We should stop,” she whispered.

“We have stopped,” he whispered back. She just continued to look at him and he looked right back at her. His expression was still flat, but there was a softness in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. He sighed for a moment before reluctantly letting her go. “You should go,” he said finally. “Don’t want to keep you too long.” Elisa nodded.

“You know,” she said as she turned to leave. “I wouldn’t mind doing this again sometime.” He looked back at her.

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” she smiled at him. “Maybe I’ll make you dinner next time?” He smiled back at her.

“I think I’d like that.”

“Good night, August.” She said as she opened the door. He raised a hand in farewell, hoping beyond hope that he’d see her again.

[kyberled]

☤ - self care/first aid habits

Headcanon meme - send me a symbol and I’ll describe my muse’s…

☤ - self care/first aid habits

Ironically enough, his own care is somewhat… Lacking, at least in regards to first aid and sleep cycles.

In terms of self-care re: dietary habits, he’s pretty good about making sure he’s eating enough, and that it’s all good food (aside from the occasional sweet, though he makes sure to limit his sugar intake, though he does have a sweet tooth; when he indulges, he adds anywhere from a half an hour to an hour onto his exercise routine for eating so much as a handful of tea biscuits. Ideal expanded-exercise takes the form of runs or sparring). He makes sure he’s hydrated, and the time he spends in the gardens ensures lots of fresh air, and he meditates regularly (that’s mandatory for Jedi).

He showers every day, and washes his hair just as often, since all the sweat he works up in training makes his hair all oily and not-nice. If he’s on a mission where he’s not working up a sweat, he washes his hair once every two days to avoid drying it out. He prefers showering with water, since the warm water really helps him not get all achey and sore and stiff after a long day of training, but he’ll use a sonic without complaint if, say, they’re on a planet where water is hard to come by. (He would adore baths, esp with the sort of bath bombs from Lush, but A) that’s too luxurious for a Jedi and B) he doesn’t usually have the time). He keeps his nails clipped short, both because it’s hygienic, and because making a proper fist with long nails just does not work. Can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been at martial arts tournaments, we’ve come across a very stubborn knot, and had to find audience members to help us untie them cause our finger nails are all pretty much nubs. But, I digress - long and short of it is, he keeps his nails short. Only a sliver of the whites are there, enough that he can poke at things without it hurting, but they rarely extend past his fingertips at all.

This strict upkeep of his appearance isn’t for his own vanity (except for his hair, he quite likes his hair; hence why he outright refuses the porcupine padawan haircut [which, it turns out, isn’t even mandatory]); It’s quite honestly for the good of the Order. The Jedi Path makes it very clear to padawans that their appearance influences the reputation of the Order, and that being scruffy will do absolutely nobody any favours, including themselves. Braig takes being a Jedi very seriously, as we all know, and so does his best to present the Order in a good light (with his best foot forward? ;D). It’s also because he has a hard time being taken seriously sometimes? I mean he’s a tiny little fluffball but he’s also a Jedi, and that’s something that a lot of people seem to forget when dealing with him. He’s outright been asked if he’s lost when he’s on the battlefield or at a strategy meeting, and that gets him bristling; he hopes that having a more polished appearance might help with that. It’s also because this is the only way he can fuss over himself without being a ‘bad Jedi’. It’s also, of course, for hygiene, which is very important to our little medic, and because, hell. When you come off a battlefield coated in dirt and dust and sweat and grime, oil from droids and grease from weapons and blood that you don’t know whose it is, taking a long shower and making sure it’s all scrubbed away can be at least a little bit soothing. He needs that, sometimes.

He maintains his clothes in much the same way, though this is in part because it’s chores for them, from at least the time they’re young initiates to padawans (I dunno if it’s the same for knights and masters, though I’ve no idea why it wouldn’t be), they’re in charge of their own laundry and whatnot, right down to polishing their boots. So, clean clothes that are pressed and shiny boots are the norm, since, again, they’re drilled pretty hard on presenting the Order in a good light. Unless, of course, he’s just come off a battlefield - then he’ll be understandably scruffy. The only ‘ratty’ piece of clothing he owns is his scarf, and he gets rid of that later on.

As I said, the problems he has stem from sleep schedules and first aid.

As a medic himself, he knows the importance of good medical care, and understands that even the foul-tasting medicine has its benefits (Though he prefers using the Force, or getting vaccinated in advance, or, heck, even chugging Bacta - he much prefers the fake-pineapple taste to some of the medications he’s had to endure). Of course, he doesn’t enjoy being sick, since it feels awful, and especially if he gets a fever he can get really achey and sore, but the worst part about being sick, as far as Braig’s concerned, is feeling useless. He’s sulky and moody because he’s sick, yes, but also because he’s lying in bed not contributing. And, even if he does find something to do, he feels like he’s not doing as much as he could. He could be up training, or helping with lessons, or studying, or fixing/modifying his sabers, or doing anything that isn’t being a burden on everyone else. Add to that that he sees how scarce medical supplies are throughout the galaxy during the war, and there’s always a little voice in the back of his mind going ‘there’s got to be someone who needs/deserves this medication more than you, you shouldn’t be using it up, just use the Force’. That kinda thing.

In regards to sleep, it’s both ‘I have too much to do to sleep’ and because he doesn’t often like the dreams he has. It’s usually a lot of war-related stuff, but when he’s really stressed, it can be anything that plagues his mind keeping him up at night. Sometimes, if he’s really tired and crummy, he’ll go to Obi-Dad for a ‘safer’ place to calm down and snooze, or Cody or his S.O. depending on verses and timelines, but most of the time he’s worried he’ll just be bothering them. So, he keeps himself busy - usually, by doing mods/repairs to his lightsabers, since that gives him something to do with his hands and lets him concentrate on something that actually requires a lot of his attention, but he might also read, stretch, meditate, do forms, or even go for a walk through the halls. Dealing with this on his own is… Rarely effective, and he’s often dog tired in the mornings until he kicks himself into gear, but he’d rather not be a burden on anyone else.

[moku-youbi]

Will/Hannibal ~3k Teen and up

A quiet moment following their first kill after the Great Red Dragon, as Will tends to Hannibal's wounds and comes to terms with the changes he's undergone in the past months...

AN: I had the honour of pinch-hitting for @thesmartbluebox for the @hannigramholidayexchange. They wanted Dark!Will, the aesthetics of the show, and the differences in their lifestyles, and I tried to blend that all together in this scene. I hope this makes up for the dreadfully long wait they had to receive it!

To the Victor the Spoils

The heavens are an aging bruise on the drive home. Pale ivory blue sky mottled in swollen plum and steel shadowed clouds. Will takes all the curves too fast, cresting every hill with enough speed to make his stomach drop. Sickly light brims over the mountain line and tumbles through the dips, dazzles over the surface of the lake, and caresses the gentle rise of the valley.

Backlit and cast in black, the cypress and juniper trees demarking the edge of their property bend and sway with the cloak of night still clinging to spindling needles. Their very own Greek chorus, blank-faced and observant, and the wild wind of the impending storm cuts through them with a riotous roar of judgement.

In juxtaposition, the home is startlingly still and silent when the door falls closed behind them. The scent of petrichor turns coppery on the stale air, mingled sweat and blood over the lingering traces of the fine cologne Hannibal had purchased for Will and insisted he wear. Musk with ambergris, cashmere, and vetiver. Pretentious, Will isn’t going to argue that point, but oddly comforting, with the salty hints of ocean water and the soothing cool mint.

Wind-chilled skin prickles with sweat, and Will sheds his jacket on the way through the foyer. He hisses at the movement; it pulls at the muscles of his shoulder and upper back, the old hurt, that knotty-stiff pain at the join of bursa and tendon. 

“Fuck.” He needs a drink, even with the malbec they shared over dinner burning acidic in the back of his throat, and winds his way into the kitchen.

Hannibal trails behind him. His normal gait has been interrupted by a limp, and Will’s weary mind finds patterns in the shuffling thud of his tread on the runner in the hall. So wrapped up in it that he feels a dip in his stomach like missing the last step at the landing of a stairway when Hannibal stops on the threshold. “You should allow me to tend to your wounds.”

It’s too dark to properly see and they’ve not been here long enough for Will to grow familiar with the lay of the land. When he turns on the light, Will lurches in place. Too bright, too brassy. Will puts up no fight when Hannibal comes to stand next to him, wind-chafed palm against his cheek, angling Will’s face up and to the side for Hannibal to survey the damage.

“It’s just a scratch, Hannibal,” Will manages, mouth arid and throat sticking closed.

Drink, right. He reaches past Hannibal’s shoulder for the cabinet above the stove and fingers grasping and closing around smooth, cool glass, pulling down the first bottle within reach. Snorts in amusement to see Hannibal’s fancy scotch, and unscrews the lid, not even bothering with a glass.

Hannibal’s touch is delicate fluttering over the skin just alongside the scratches in question. A faint counterpressure as Will’s throat works around a long pull of the scotch. There’s no diagnostic value to the examination. Will knows it for it what it is, and so he allows it.

“I somehow question your ability to appropriately savour my scotch whilst chugging it,” Hannibal mutters.

Will takes another hasty swallow just to make a point, and winces as he swallows. “So what you’re saying is that I shouldn’t pour it over our wounds.”

Hannibal gave him a quelling look, brow twitching as if uncertain whether to show his amusement or not. “Why you would want to when we have plenty of disinfectants and antibiotics in our extraordinarily well-stocked medicine cabinet, I’m not sure…”

“Anyway I’m not drinking to savour it,” Will says. “Maybe try buying something that doesn’t cost a small fortune next time.”

He shrugs away from Hannibal’s gentle probing, putting some space between them to take Hannibal in from head to toe. The crimson spread of blood isn’t visible on his tuxedo pants, but it’s created a slick sheen on the fabric still slowly expanding even now. Will lifts the edge of Hannibal’s jacket and peels it back from his ivory shirt. The blood on on his side there has left the shirt stiff as it dried.

“I’m more worried about this.”

Hannibal is silent under Will’s ministrations, as he works free the buttons of Hannibal’s shirt, but when Will flicks his gaze to Hannibal’s face, his expression speaks to the level of discomfort he feels. To show any sign at all in the narrowing of his eyes and the thin press of his lips turned white, the pain must be substantial. When the last button comes free and Will parts the halves, he can see why--the entire left half of Hannibal’s abdomen is covered in a livid red bruise, interrupted only by the darker, rusty red of the puncture wound.

Will takes another mouthful of the scotch, briefly entertaining the idea of offering some to Hannibal, and knowing full well he’ll turn it down. Instead he sets it aside to lay his hand against Hannibal’s uninjured side to steady himself as he leans in for closer inspection.

“It didn’t hit anything vital,” Hannibal says. His body is one long, tight line, stomach subconsciously sucked in to avoid Will’s touch, though it ghosts above the skin. “Though a stitch or two wouldn’t go amiss.”

It’s too tempting, Will can’t resist the smirk tugging at his lips, or the soft give of the flesh beneath his left hand when he squeezes, whole and unharmed. Hannibal takes excellent care of himself, but the inevitability of time still shows itself on his body in those places. “Good thing you’ve been indulging me with all that rich southern cuisine,” he teases.

Despite of all the aches and pains, the gentleness of his tone reels Hannibal in, and Will tilts his face upward to meet him. Just the barest pressure of Hannibal’s lips on his own, dry and flaking, catching together in a way that’s not entirely pleasant but nonetheless reassuring.

Will loses himself in that brief touch, pushing aside the strain of his muscles and the stinging throb in his neck, the sharp spur digging into his shoulder. Focusing all of his attention instead on the places their bodies meet--the supple warmth of Hannibal’s love handle warm against his palm, and the promise in the slight part of his lips, breath moist on Will’s mouth, of something wetter and lusher to follow.

Hannibal retreats too soon, and Will is momentarily bereft without his grounding touch. Too tired, too out of sorts, still wound in the sticky web of conflicting emotions and motivations resultant of the evening’s activities. Will was disarmed, not only by the act itself, after their months of isolation from the outside world, but his own reaction to it. How easy to give into those darker impulses, after a lifetime of denial.

To allow himself not only to participate, but revel in the act. So fully immersed as to have become disengaged from reality, lost in that shadowy place in between. The click of hooves uneven on the pavement behind them, feather strokes painting the world only in shades of black and grey. And Hannibal moving less like a man and more like the liquid roll of fog, sweeping over that man not with implacable force, but with the inevitability of nature, wearing down all things with time.

It was not the violence of their struggle for survival against the Dragon, but a tease of a dance. Allowing their victim to think he ever stood a chance against the two of them. Granting him the tearing of flesh and spilling of blood in exchange for growing bravado making it all the more satisfying in the end.

But now, no longer in the moment, Will finds it difficult to entertain all these mundane, worldly concerns. His body carries him through the motions, but his mind continues to drift back, again and again, to that liminal space. Blinking flickers of light and dark, the static of the television at two in the morning filtering over his vision.

Sometimes it’s Hannibal he sees, flesh and blood with all the tenderness he feels for Will written clearly on his face. At other times that monster of his nightmares, that void of light, constructed of all things evil in the world, regarding Will with his empty, pitiless gaze. Will keeps waiting for the accompanying terror and revulsion, yet finds it is no longer there. Whether he is himself, or some strange beast created in his fever-soaked mind, it is the same. The thread of connection that binds them is unchanged.

Will finds himself clinging to the stability that Hannibal provides, something both familiar from the early days of their relationship, yet in stringent opposition to his attitude towards Hannibal as of late, where the very idea of being in his presence was anathema. How quickly and entirely Will has come to rely on him again, as easy as slipping into the familiar routine of real life after returning from a long trip.

In the dim golden glow of the bathroom light, they undress. Will has grown accustomed to the fine clothing Hannibal dresses him in for their evenings out. Though it is not his preference, Will can still appreciate the aesthetics of the whole experience. The warm glide of wool against his skin. The silken, slippery slide of the satin trim beneath his fingers.

Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror, Will can appreciate the image he cuts when Hannibal has him on display. He drags a hand back through his curls, enraptured briefly by the glints of peacock blue and green from the topaz on his wrists.

Behind him, Hannibal sheds last of his clothing, revealing the extent of the damage done. As with his side, the cut missed any major veins or arteries, but it’s not a pretty picture. The jagged edge of the blade left the flesh a torn, pulpy mess.

In their time together, Hannibal has always been the caregiver, especially after their encounter with the Dragon. Days bleeding into weeks spent in a muddled haze of pain and medication, how Hannibal had managed to deal with his own wounds at the time a mystery. It had been the first test of Will’s acceptance of their survival and cohabitation, to allow Hannibal to tend to his wounds with the memory of herb-infused marinades and the buzz of a bonesaw echoing through the chambers of his mind.

Strange, to be the one giving rather than receiving, but fitting in this relationship. The constant shifting between them--of roles, of power. Hannibal showing his weakness as a sign of trust. Will kneels before him where he sits on the raised edge of the tub.

He can’t help but recall Hannibal’s delicate touch on his hand, as they stood together in his kitchen what seems a million years ago now, as he traces his own hand now down Hannibal’s thigh. The sting of disinfectant and blood blossoming tendrils through the water as he rinsed Will’s knuckles clean. There is far more blood now, quickly tinting the basin of water a pale pink run through with ribbons of red when Will rings out his cloth.

The whole room smells of blood and the nostril-stinging astringent of disinfectant. The mingling of discordant scents, the condition of Hannibal’s leg, along with Will’s own pain and exhaustion, triggers a wave of nausea. Too many memories associated with the sensory input, and none of them good. His stomach rebels against the scotch and Will has to swallow it back down when it rises in his gullet.

“Maybe next time you feel the urge to disembowel someone, we could do some recon first?” Will aims for levity, but it falls flat. “You never struck me as someone to go in unprepared.”

Hannibal hums, a vague, dreamy sound. Will glances up to meet drug-clouded eyes and a satisfied smile twisting Hannibal’s lips. “I’ll admit, it was a deviation from my usual methods, but was being terribly rude to you, Will. Besides, I have such a tender nurse to care for me in the aftermath.”

Will snorts in laughter. Hannibal on pain medication is almost enough to make him forget his own discomfort. “I’m just saying, it would have been nice to know beforehand that he was carrying not one, not two, but three different blades.”

“You have to admit, it was a bit of an overkill, particularly in formalwear.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel underdressed without at least four weapons somewhere on my person,” Will mutters.

He finishes cleaning the area and takes out the packet of sutures from the first aid kit, and eyes them dubiously. From observing Hannibal, he’s picked up a thing or two about wound care, still... “Hope you’re not expecting anything fancy from my stitching.”

Hannibal says nothing, merely watching from behind heavy lids, head tipped against the tile backsplash. Will returns his attention to the task at hand. After working in silence for several minutes, he gets into the rhythm. Despite his words, it’s not all that different from how he ties is flies. The painstaking care put into every last detail. It’s similarly absorbing, allowing him to dissociate. His body, held tight with stress for too long, begins to relax at last.

When Hannibal’s fingers press against his cheek and he hears his name, Will comes back to himself, and wonders how many times Hannibal said it before Will noticed. The stitches are as well-spaced and even as they can be, given the nature of the wound. He spreads silvadene over the area before bandaging it.

The muscles of his thighs and back protest when Will rises to his feet, and the room spins for a minute. “Up. Time for your side.”

Hannibal stands obediently, a hand on Will’s shoulder for balance. “Did you mean what you said?” he asks.

Will doesn’t need to ask for clarification on what Hannibal is referring to. As off-the-cuff as his statement had been, there is no use in denying the truth of it to himself, or Hannibal. Still, there are conditions. Beyond preparedness, Will simply doesn’t share Hannibal’s opinion of who is deserving of their wrath. That can be discussed at a later point in time, however, when Will has had the chance to process all the changes he’s undergone these last few months. What he is willing to compromise and what lines he will not cross. Rapidly, those lines are fading into nothingness.

So he says, simply, “Yes,” and leaves it at that. The answer is enough for satisfy Hannibal for the time. His pleasure is a physical presence alongside the two of them in the bathroom, buffeting against Will as he sews the five stitches necessary to close the wound on Hannibal’s side. It tugs a smirk from his lips, has him leaning in to press a kiss to the bandage he places atop it.

At first, Will considers how out of character a gesture it is for him, giving into impulse. But then, after all, isn’t this what this whole experiment between them has been about, from the start? Hannibal driving him to embrace his nature and indulge in his desires. He looks up to Hannibal. Once upon a time, being seen by him as Will saw others was disquieting. Now he’s takes pleasure in the way it makes him feel.

“Yes,” Will says again, “I want to.” And he does, to feel that pleasure singing through his veins again, with Hannibal at his side. His eyes flutter shut at the touch of Hannibal’s finger against his cheek. Tracing the shape of a curl that rests there. Will gives into the impulse again and turns his head to kiss the rough pad of Hannibal’s fingertip.

Will opens his eyes, and heat smoulders ashed-over orange between them. He knows how easy it would be to fan it to life, full-blown flames licking up his spine. They’ve been awake over twenty four hours now at this point, the adrenaline has long given over to bone-deep exhaustion, and they are neither of them young men any longer.

“Later,” he promises. “We can talk about it later.” He takes Hannibal’s hand in his own, lacing together their fingers, and tugs him in for another kiss. Despite the growing familiarity of Hannibal’s mouth, there is still a thrill every time their lips meet.

Hannibal sways unsteadily and Will breaks the kiss with a grunt. “Go to bed.” He gives Hannibal a shove towards the door.

The shower stall beckons, but Will is already halfway to sleep on his feet. He settles for swiping the scratches on his neck with antibiotic soap and slapping a bandage over it. Honestly he wouldn’t even bother with that, except he knows he’d never hear the end of it from Hannibal about the germs under people’s nails.

In their bedroom, the morning light has grown golden warm spilling across the sheets. Will snaps the curtains closed and turns to find Hannibal has already climbed into bed. Will slides in and bites his lip on a groan; the sheets are deliciously cool on his bare skin. Hannibal immediately attaches himself at Will’s side, all his soft, vulnerable places pressing into all of Will’s, a wall of heat.

Once the nightmares would have plagued him, and he would have done whatever he could to avoid sleep. Even if he wanted to now, he couldn’t fight off sleep any longer, but there is nothing behind his eyelids but the swirling darkness and the sound of rushing water. Will wades in, and allows the current to drag him under.

[braindamageforbeginners]

Week 1, Day 1, Treatment 1

I’m back home, after a day at the hospital. If things continue at the current rate, well, I’ll probably be dead in the near-future (median life-expectancy of GBM patients is 14 months), but at least I’ll make a dent in the reading list.

I began my day with a potentially dangerous, experimental drug. I’m going to focus on the positive and think that this is a step closer to being Hunter S. Thompson, and try to forget the fact that the nurse had to put on protective laboratory gear before handling something that she then injected into my veins. Also, because I’d been warned about keeping super-hydrated throughout this process (and because I have hard-to-find veins), I’d been chugging Gatorade since I rolled out of bed, so hooking me up to an IV  to hydrate me was just gilding the lily. Or over-filling the water balloon, to be more accurate. Anyway, apart from spending a disturbing amount of time, uh, let’s say, “discarding” all that excess fluid, there aren’t too many side-effects worth reporting (we’ll get to that shortly). Admittedly, spending about ten minutes peeing after 18 hours being pumped full of an unknown substance is disturbing, but if that’s the worst I suffer today, I’ll count it as a victory. However, the day is not over, and I have not taken my bed-time chemo drugs, and, as Herodotus wrote, “Judge no man fortunate until he is dead.”

However, as far as side-effects, I’m not too worried about vomiting any more. The nameless anti-nausea drug is amazingly effective; like, I could easily see myself becoming addicted to this stuff. Not because there’s any sort of fun, psychedelic effect, but because I hate puking, and this medication is so effective that I think I could wolf down a rotting raccoon carcass without any side effects (other than contracting rabies, I mean). Obviously, I’ll be putting that to the test over the coming weeks, but life would seem to have improved significantly in that regard (and, I’ve been told the chemo side-effects should be further lessened if I continue my extreme hydration-regimen).

I am, however, experiencing some side-effects; I feel bad, but not horrible. Specifically, my muscles feel sore and cramp-y, which, while unpleasant, isn’t the worst I was fearing. And, according my mad scientist oncologist (specifically, my Southern California Mad Scientist Oncologist), side-effects are indicative that the miracle drug is working well. And, based on how my muscles feel, it’s working. The major complaint, apart from lethargy, is, I shit you not, hallucinations. So, I plan to spend tomorrow lying on the couch, being tormented by my subconscious. This is different from normal because now there will be a visual component, and I’ll have a note from my doctor (also, I’ll eventually have to pry myself off the couch and get irradiated). Also, the worstest side-effects aren’t predicted to show up until week 2 or week 3; bad news is, they don’t think I’ll start recovering until week 10. Worse news - much, much worse news - is, after the six-ish weeks of radiation (for those of you keeping count, I have 30 radiation appointments, but since they don’t work on weekends, that works out to six weeks; and chemo every single day throughout), assuming that’s successful, I’ll get on a chemotherapy rotation, which means I’ll get three weeks off, and one week of chemo, for a whole year. FOR. ONE. WHOLE. YEAR. Which means, at my current life expectancy, I’ll be on some sort of unpleasant drugs for the rest of my life. Still, as I’m very aware, the phrase, “we’re extending treatment” is vastly preferable to the phrase, “we’re stopping treatment because it’s not working.” Also, if I do lose any hair, the clinicians think it’ll be in a very small, specific spot. Still, adding even another unpleasant side-effect seems excessively cruel.

And, I got some very reassuring signs today regarding my physicians. I never had any reason to doubt their competence, but, I have survived three tumors (so far) for fifteen years (the breakdown is; I got tumor #1 removed fifteen years ago, since then, I’ve had two more tumors), but it’s always good to have that confidence affirmed. Before I get there, a brief restatement to all future cancer patients (and humans in general); I’ve said it before, the crucial difference between a fatal disease and a dangerous disease is your medical team. Do not screw around with this, your life will depend upon it; do some research (Yelp does not count), and go straight to the best (the actual best, not the “Trump Steak” best). We now continue with the anecdote currently in progress.

During one of my many, many administrative/clerical intake interviews/vital signs monitoring sessions, an aide asked who my oncologists were, and I said, “Drs. X and Y,” and she, “Oh, they’re the best.” Now, it’s always possible - especially since we have a commander-in-chief who is hell-bent on destroying superlatives - that she was exaggerating, or just saying it because they bought her coffee or something, but, I know from fifteen years on the receiving end of modern medicine, that the nurses and administrative staff are usually where the buck stops, and they know a lot more than they let on, so their endorsements are usually reliable. Also, immediately prior to my serum injection, I was visited by Research Coordinator (and, to preserve everyone’s anonymity, I’m going to be extremely vague), who assured me that they only test drugs that are extremely promising. Which seemed like a regurgitation of Bioethics 101, until he also admitted that my oncology team will occasionally accept money to test drugs they know won’t work, then weasel out of that commitment through various medicolegal means and just keep the money. That might be some sort of standard, cancer research hack, but it’s still brilliant. And, even if they weren’t acting within the bounds of the law, there’s not a jury that would ever convict them.

As far as the radiation treatment, it went mostly-fine. To dwell on the negative (or to forewarn all future brain cancer patients), the weird plastic-mask thing is the most disturbingly claustrophobic thing I’ve ever encountered. I thought it was freaked out about it when they were fitting me for it, and it felt like some sort of weird fetish. Now, it feels like being smothered. The good news is, if you can resist the impulse to panic, and just remember to breathe, it’s not too bad after the initial shock (hopefully, that’s applicable to all my experiences over the next year). So, if you have claustrophobia or a fear of being smothered (a greater-than-average fear of being smothered, let us say), I’d definitely recommend asking about sedation beforehand. Hell, I’d ask about sedation the minute you get a cancer diagnosis, but especially look into it if you have claustrophobia and you’re getting radiation treatment and/or MRIs.

Anyway...

WEIGHT: about 210 lb (95-ish kilos). There were some fluctuations throughout the day (I got weighed several times throughout the day) between 209 lb to 217 lb, but that’s explained by both the incredible amount of fluids I’ve consumed throughout the day and whether I remembered to remove my shoes. CONCENTRATION: Pretty good; I made some decent headway in the Wodehouse novel I’m reading, even while being pumped full of saline and super-soldier serum (which is really saying something, because I really needed to use the restroom during that whole process). MEMORY: Not bad. I’m still missing or forgetting occasional stuff, which is a little upsetting, but I can still quote pertinent studies I read a few years ago. APPETITE: Decreased, but I’m still eating. I’ve also been drinking way too much water and/or Gatorade, and I started the day with a large, bacon-egg sandwich (heart disease be damned), and all that would chip away at the appetite even before factoring stress and experimental drugs in. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Normal. Normal-ish. I’m feeling sluggish now, at 9 pm, after a long day spent in waiting rooms, so it’s not like I turned down the opportunity to go jogging because I was feeling poorly (spoilers: I only ever run when being chased, or when I’m late for a plane). SLEEP QUALITY: Pretty good, for me. I got eight-ish hours of sleep last night, which is great for someone about to start cancer treatments, but I still have a big sleep debt. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Not bad, but I’m very slightly wobbly when finishing tasks/movements that require coordination. Starting them and the middle, I’m fine with, for some reason. PHYSICAL: Very much the same as yesterday, which is good. No new headaches or body-based symptoms, and the eternal suture-headache is quite tolerable. SIDE EFFECTS: The muscles in my upper body hurt. A lot. But it’s no worse than if I’d gone to the gym with someone named “Biff,” so I suppose I shouldn’t gripe too much, but it still hurts. And I can’t take aspirin, because I’m already at risk for bleeding thanks to the damned chemo drugs (I guess that’s my pain level - “Needs aspirin and will complain bitterly if deprived, but will survive without”). I’m peeing a lot - an awful lot - but I’m also keeping extremely hydrated, so I’m not sure that’s a side-effect. I feel oddly alert - like I’ve had half an espresso - but my body isn’t moving fast enough to keep up with my mind. It might seem excessively negative to keep track like this, but I actually intend to take careful notes in this area and send them all to my researchers at the end of all this.

[easyweight101]

Stiff Bull Review: Don’t Buy Before You Read This!

What is it?

Stiff Bull is a combination instant coffee drink and male enhancement product. It uses powerful stimulants and blends them with some of the more potent sexual health aids to create a drink that they advertise as “Viagra in a can.” Its effects are supposed to include better erections, increased libido, and other benefits to their sexual health.

The male enhancement product that our team endorses the strongest is Viritenz. Their blend has shown an ability to increase potency and sexual health in men of all ages and ability levels. Click here to learn more about how Viritenz was developed.

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Stiff Bull Ingredients and Side Effects

Coffee Maca Root Tongkat Ali Root Guarana

 Coffee: Beans from the Arabica bush that are used to make one of the most popular beverages worldwide. Coffee is consumed by billions of people on every continent of the planet. It is most known for its stimulant qualities, a product of the high levels of caffeine contained in the beans.

Coffee does not have any medicinal or therapeutic value of its own. The only use that it has been scientifically shown to have is for mental alertness. There are some side effects associated with coffee consumption including:

Insomnia

Nausea and vomiting

Headache

Anxiety

Irregular heartbeat

Heart attack

Tongkat Ali Root: One of the more effective herbs for male enhancement. Tongkat ali, also known as eurycoma longifolia or long jack, is a Malaysian shrub that is used as an aphrodisiac and has also been applied in the treatment of other conditions such as:

Fever

Diarrhea

Syphilis

Headache

One of the main benefits of Tongkat ali for male sexual health is that it increases testosterone levels in the body. This has a number of different effects, including the increase of sexual desire and libido levels. It also contributes to erection size, strength, and stamina, as well as seminal quantity and quality.

Maca Root: Another one of the more potent herbs in regards to male sexual health. Maca is a plant found in the Andes mountains that natives have used medicinally and as an aphrodisiac for over 3000 years.

Similar to tongkat ali, maca root can increase testosterone levels in its users. Because of this it also benefits erectile quality, desire levels, and semen quality.

It is also a mild stimulant that can increase the body’s circulation levels. This can benefit erectile health as well, as the ability to control how much blood gets into the spongy tissues of the penis is critical to achieving full arousal.

Guarana: Another potent stimulant. Guarana is often found in energy drinks and pills because of its ability to increase heart rate and mental functioning. It originally comes from the Amazon where native people have used it to treat:

Malaria

Diarrhea

Headaches

Anxiety

Guarana has not been linked to any sort of sexual benefits. As a stimulant it is possible that it could help improve erections in some individuals, however that has not been reported or studied if it is the case.

Guarana is safe for most individuals in small amounts, however there are some concerns about taking it regularly. Some side effects that have been linked to guarana consumption include:

Nausea and vomiting

Painful urination

Delirium

Diuresis

Irregular heartbeat

It is especially concerning how many different products there are in Stiff Bull that elevate heart rate and blood pressure. The risk of experiencing heart attacks and other dangerous side effects gets worse the more stimulants are included. Stiff Bull warns against users with heart or blood pressure problems consuming it at all, and even healthy users are limited to one packet per day.

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EDITOR’S TIP:Combine this supplement with a proven male enhancement pill such as Viritenz for better results.

Stiff Bull Quality of Ingredients

Stiff Bull does not have ingredients conducive to improving a person’s sexual health or wellness in the long term. It is only intended as a short term erectile aid, however even its effectiveness at that is questionable

The main effect that Stiff Bull has on the body is increasing blood flow. This is useful for helping achieve an erection, but only up to a point – excessively high blood pressure can also contribute to erection failure. Additionally, that is only one of the many ways that erectile health can be improved.

Increasing testosterone levels is a successful strategy for increasing libido levels, however its far more effective when used as a part of a daily supplement that encourages overall improved testosterone function.

Our team does not recommend using Stiff Bull on a daily basis. The combination of so many stimulants is hard on the heart and the negative effects of many of these supplements is cumulative over time. Stiff Bull is best consumed occasionally, as a novelty, with minimal expectations in place for immediate erectile improvement.

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The Price and Quality of Stiff Bull

Stiff Bull is not sold through any third-party retailers and is exclusively distributed through their own website. As of the date of this article’s publication, these were the prices it was being sold for:

1, 1-time use packet of Stiff Bull instant coffee: $10.00

10, 1-time use packets of Stiff Bull instant coffee: $90.00

20, 1-time use packets of Stiff Bull instant coffee: $160.00

30, 1-time use packets of Stiff Bull instant coffee: $210.00

This is far too expensive to be used as a regular supplement for the vast majority of consumers. Two to three days of Stiff Bull would cost as much as a month’s worth of many products.

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Business of Stiff Bull

Stiff Bull does not list any affiliates or parent companies on their website. Their contact information is posted as:

Phone Number: Stiff Bull does not post a public phone number.

Address: Stiff Bull does not publish their address.

Email: Stiff Bull does not publish an email address. The only way for customers to contact Stiff Bull is through the electronic contact form on their website.

It should be noted that the FDA recently sent out a warning to consumers about Stiff Bull. There were concerns that it may use hidden or unlisted ingredients that are hazardous to users. There were reports of people passing out and having seizures after consuming Stiff Bull, and these events were attributed to unmentioned chemicals in their blend.

Follow this link for more information about how the top brands of men’s sexual enhancement products compare to each other.

Customer Opinions of Stiff Bull

There has been a large outpouring of anger toward Stiff Bull from its former customers. They’ve had a number of different complaints about the company and its products, many similar to these:

“I never got a chance to see if Stiff Bull helped me in bed. After drinking it I started getting super sweaty and irritable, and my date ended up going home.”

“I chugged a can right before blastoff time… and let’s just say the rocket never made it off the launching pad.”

“I didn’t get hard, but I did poop in my pants and have to go home.”

Customers mentioned that it gave them gastro-intestinal issues, headaches, chills, and excessive sweat. They also listed quite a few gastro-intestinal issues and other side effects, however general complaints of ineffectiveness were the most frequently occurring.

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Conclusion – Does Stiff Bull Work?

Like all things, Stiff Bull is only as effective a tool as the job that it is being used for. If all a user expects to get out of it is a stimulant with some mild aphrodisiac qualities, then it is possible that they will be satisfied. If a user is looking for long-term solutions for erectile issues, or for a general increase in vitality and sexual power overall, then Stiff Bull is not an effective product.

Our team recommends products that are able to improve the way a users’ body works, not just offer short-term chemical fixes. The benefits to this are that smaller, regular doses are usually easier on a body than larger, infrequent ones, and users are less likely to experience the short-term side effects like chills and diarrhea.

They also mean that users do not have to plan for sex hours in advance but are able to take it naturally as it comes. This increases sexual confidence, because users know that when the time comes they will be ready as opposed to being put in the position of “waiting for it to kick in.”

Stiff Bull would probably be more effective if it could be taken on a daily basis, but the strain on a user’s heart and organs would be too great for our team to recommend in good conscience. It is the opinion of the panel that it is a more effective option for users to find an effective daily supplement, then to use Stiff Bull on rare, intermittent occasions when they are in need of a stimulant boost.

The daily men’s enhancement supplement that our panel like the most is Viritenz. They’ve shown an ability to make their users able to respond sexually when the occasion calls for it.

This means that users do not have to overload their systems directly before sex and hope that what they bought works, they are allowed to enjoy the time with their partner and let things take their natural course. To see everything that goes into Viritenz’s blend, follow this link.

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