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artnerd1123 · 4 years

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A Familiar World

Land On Your Feet ——————————————-

Before Journal was “Journal,” he was Theodore: a mischievous kid with a handful of charm and a whole lotta stubbornness. On a normal trip to town, he sees something strange that would change his life. For better or worse, the kid has yet to find out...

The masterpost for AFW can be found here. The chapter post for AFW can be found here.

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ultimately I had planned for there to be a lot more going on here, but the chapter got way too long and i need validation to live. i’ll get on my other plans as i can, but there’s this for now! enjoy!

“Are we there yet?” “No, not yet.” “Are we there yet?!” “No, not yet.” “Are we THERE YET?!” “No, not y-” “Would you guys quit it back there?! I can’t focus on driving!” “Just ignore them, we’re almost there, anyway…” Such was the standard soundtrack on trips like these. The wagon bumped along the well worn dirt road, the horses kicking up dust as they went. The front row of the wagon was full to capacity- four people across, full of two parents and two elder children, with no space to spare for the four younger kids in the back. Just a farming family on their way to marketplace, laden down with kids and corn. Another standard around here. Three of the kids tumbled around among the market-boud corn, fooling around in the way bored children do. The last sat with his legs dangling over the back of the cart. The farmer boy kicked his feet idly, green eyed gaze sliding over the brush and wide fields along the road. A shock of messy brown curls rustled in the breeze. He reached up to smooth it down. It needed to stay in the cool swooshing style he’d seen on the cover of his older brother’s novels. His plaid tunic hung loosely off his lanky frame, his leggings more like a pair of pillowcases. Hand me downs. Nothing he wasn’t used to. He’d stuffed the ends of his leggings into his boots. Snatched a belt from his father’s closet to cinch the tunic around his waist. A patchwork look, sure, but he was working on it. Heroes can start off a little rough, his books told him. They soak in every little trip until they stumble into adventure. He believed it wholeheartedly. Though he did wish there was more action on their town trips. Heaving a sigh, he pulled his legs under him. Now crouching on the back of the cart, he considered his next move. He could hear whispers of “do a flip- backflip-! Do it do it-” behind him. He tensed his legs, holding tight to the back of the cart. Coiled to flip backwards, he cast a mischievous glance back at his siblings- And caught his mother’s eyes. “Theodore, don’t y’all dare!” her sharp voice flew back. “How many times’ve ah told ya ta stop doin’ that? Yer gonna get hurt ‘n knock corn outta the cart!” “Sorry ma,” Theodore said sheepishly, “cain’t help myself…” He let himself flop backwards instead. His siblings giggled and squawked as he did so, tossing corn at him. Grumbling from the front of the cart said his mother wasn’t amused. But it was fine, when was she? “Theo theo theo!!!” his youngest sister- Elise- chattered. “Whaddaya think we’re gon’ see in town today???” “Probably nothing cool,” Nilo piped up, his arms crossed defiantly. Always the cynic, his younger brother. “There’s never anythin’ cool in town…” “Don’t be so sure!” a chipper voice piped up, another slinging an arm around Nilo’s shoulders. “There could be ghosts ‘er somethin!!!” Nilo’s twin, Tyler, was definitely the more energetic of the pair. Theodore couldn’t help but chuckle at their antics. “We’ll find out when we get there, eh?” he grinned. Popping his collar, he leaned in conspiratorially. “Ah heard from Jessie that th’ candyman’s in town again,” he whispered. His siblings’ eyes gleamed in excitement. “Ah can prolly buy ‘n sneak a bag ‘er two inta th’ wagon. Jes make sure y’all stick by ma ‘n pa this time.” “We don’ want a repeat a’ last month,” Nilo snickered, nudging his twin. “Ay, you shuttit, I did mah part!” Tyler squeaked. “‘S not mah fault pa decided ta check th’ cart fer Theo!” “Y’all both need ta pay attention ta what’s goin on ‘round ya,” Elise giggled. “I’ve always been better at coverin’ than y’all.” “Hey now, one week at a time,” Theodore shook his head, beaming widely. “We’ll git it this time. Ah promise.” Theodore cast a look at the cart’s front row. Dean and Carrie were busy talking to ma and pa about something or other. Crop pricing, probably. Didn’t seem like anyone heard anything. Good. He stuck his hand out, winking at his siblings. “Hands in fer good luck?” Giggling and smiling, his siblings stuck their hands on top of his. “Hands in!” “You bet!” “We gon’ git it…!” “Awrite. Let’s get this show on th’ road…”

The wagon trundled into town half an hour later, the horses snorting as their hooves clacked on a cobblestone road. Sun beaten buildings lined the path, worn wooden sides tacked up with posters and shoddy repair jobs. Plenty of people milled about between them. The crowds parted ways lazily around the wagon, a couple people waving or shouting out a greeting. Standard trip. Standard town. Standard people. The kids in the back didn’t pay mind to any of it. Their eyes were fixed on the approaching town square. Today it was chock full of wagons just like theirs. Wheat, beans, hay, millet- you name a crop, someone was probably selling it. A few travelling merchants had their cart shops set up, too. Bright colors and fabric hangings adorned their stalls. All the better to catch someone’s eye. A good thing, too. That’s what the kids were really interested in. Theodore and his siblings exchanged glances as their parents guided the cart into their usual space. He’d have to work fast today. His siblings had better be on their game. The gentle rock of the wagon as his father climbed to the ground drew him from his thoughts. “Awright y’all,” His father called out, hands on his hips. “I wanna see alla’y’all helpin with the sellin today. Les’ git movin’.” Dean and Carrie hopped down after pa, both instantly pulling down their usual stall crates to set up. So those three wouldn’t be a problem- hopefully. He trusted his partners in crime to keep them busy. They’d scrambled down after the group, already squabbling about something or over. Nah. It was ma he worried about. Ma was busy adjusting her large sunhat and southern belle’s dress, swiping off dust from the road. He tried to look as innocent as possible when she turned to face him. “Yer pa’s gonna help Dean ‘n Carrie up front with handlin’ th’ gold,” his mother explained firmly, “so I don’ wanna hear of any funny business goin’ on while ah’m out browsin’.” “Of course, ma,” Theodore nodded. “We’ll be mindin’ th’ shop. Ya don’t gotta worry.” “Mmh. Thas’ what y’all said last month,” his mother huffed. “Ah expect more a’ all of you. No funny dancin’ around ’r tumblin in the dirt ‘r runnin off ta who knows where ‘n scarin us half ta death, or any’a that.” “I getcha, I getcha…” Theodore’s fingers twitched up towards his hair, fidgeting nervously. “I promise we’ll be handlin things here.” Mostly. “Awrite,” his mother said drily. She sighed, giving her sunhat one last tug before hopping down. “An quit playin with yer hair, Theo. If y’all keep treatin it like a toy, we’re cuttin it off.” His hands fell quick as a hare, knuckles nearly knocking them against the wagon’s wood. “Thas’ what ah thought.” Theodore watched her walk off into the marketplace, face burning a bit. Revaew, he had to quit doing that in front of his parents. There was no way he’d let them ruin his look. Sheesh. He waited until ma quit glancing back to move. He slid off the cart, making his way around to the gated back. He grunted as he slid his hands under it, carefully unhooking and lowering the gate so none of the corn spilled out. Around him, he could hear Nilo and Tyler arguing over who’d get to put the sign out. Dean and Carrie would get on that after they finished stall setup. And Elise was up with pa, using her influence as a papa’s girl to keep his eyes on her. Perfect. He fooled around in the back for a little longer, pretending to inspect the corn. He just needed an opening. Just a small one, so he could slip out. Eventually, the moment came. With all three of his partners in crime deep in bickering, squabbling, and poking at things they shouldn’t, the three elders had their hands full and then some. Theodore managed to sneak out easily around the back. He ran along the cramped alleyway behind the stalls, making sure to put plenty of distance between his home wagon and himself. He popped out in the middle of the silk merchants’ stall. They gave him a strange look at first. But when he swaggered right past, hands tucked in his belt and gaze comfortably uninterested, they turned back to business. Good. Nobody ever pays attention if you’ve got enough confidence, he thought smugly. The marketplace spread vibrant and dusty before him. The usual area sellers were shouting to sell their wares much farther down the street. The town kept this place open for merchants. They were hard to come by, sure. But they had their busy weeks. Theodore grinned as the mix of colors, smells, and sounds swirled around him. “Silk! Fresh spun and cut to a length of your liking!” “Handmade bags and jackets! All cheap! Come’n get it!” “Exotic plants! Guaranteed to keep great and make even greater fruit!” “Toys for the little ones! Wind ups, drag alongs, stuffies, we got it all!” Oh yeah. This was a busy one. He sauntered down the cobblestone paths, keeping his eyes peeled for the swirls and starbursts of the candy stall. The more he walked, the more confused he got. Funnel cake, cotton candy, sweet tarts… all good things, but not something he could stash and hide on the ride home. Where in Revaew’s green world was the candy stall? It had to be somewhere- he trusted Jessie to know what was going on around town. If he doesn’, I’ll have ta find someone better ta be my informant, Theodore thought to himself. Nevertheless, he kept moving. Casual glances from one side of the road to the other and a meandering pace let him blend in with all the other market goers. At least, enough to mask his nervousness. C’mon… his siblings would be so disappointed if he didn’t find- Suddenly, he froze, eyes going wide. Oh no. Oh no. Not ten feet from him stood his mother. She wasn’t facing him, thankfully, but she was right there. If she so much as turned her head the slightest bit, she’d see him. And if she saw him now, he and his siblings be in so much trouble- Not thinking, the boy ducked behind the nearest stall, sprinting back along the alleyways behind the market. Ducking and weaving between different paths, he tried not to focus on the sound of footsteps and squawks from someone trying to tail him. All he wanted to do was get as much distance between his mother and himself before she noticed. He ran faster, ducking down alley after alley, desperation and adrenaline fuelling his mad dash. He could not get caught, he just had to find the candy stall and head back, he- he- Wait a minute. Where was he? Theodore slowed to a stop, leaning heavily on a nearby building. He glanced around as he tried to catch his breath. These were alleyways, sure. But somehow he’d managed to stray from the ones behind the marketplace. Through the gaps of the buildings, he could see the wide open fields and scrub of town outskirts. The hustle and bustle of town echoed far behind him. Where, he couldn't place. Oh boy. Well. This is… less than ideal, he thought nervously. Ah guess ah better keep movin. Try ta find my way back, maybe. His steps were hesitant as he moved forward, eyes sliding over unfamiliar wood and stone. Recognizable landmarks would be great right about now. But. Well. He hadn’t exactly been in this side of town. If those were a bust, maybe he could follow sound? Someone was always trying to play some instrument in the marketplace. He cocked his head to the side, straining for any hint of music. He tensed as something else registered in his ears. A strange… puffing sound. Like someone was throwing something at the ground, or stirring up dust. His brows furrowed in confusion. As he strained for more, he caught a glimpse of something bright and gold flashing above the roof of a nearby building. His eyes glimmered softly as it faded away. “What’n th’ hell…?” he mumbled. … his worries about getting back to the marketplace didn’t seem so dire. I gotta find out what that is. Head cocked and gaze sharp, Theodore jogged toward the source of the strange flashes. The closer he got, the more he sped up. The sounds got louder, and he could just make out a voice or two. The gold flashes shimmered bright as diamonds in the sun, looking for all the world like someone was turning treasure into mist. Eventually he spotted a cloud of it receding down an alleyway. There!!! Eagerly pressing forward, he all but ran down the alleyway, skidding to a stop once it opened into a small dirt patch outside of town. His mouth dropped open, eyes widening at the sight. In the center of the patch, someone was busy weaving air into towers. Or, he assumed it was air- what else could the curious coin-colored clouds be??? As he watched, they jumped off the top of one, tucking and rolling several times before their hands hooked on a newly-formed branch of smoky gold. He silently registered a couple other town kids beside him. But they were far from his thoughts. All he could do was watch in complete awe as the stranger swooped and swung through the air, puffs of smoke and gilded air weaving a lovely dance before him. Eventually, the stranger seemed to notice their audience. They smiled, winking at the little group. Theodore could only manage a tiny wave in return. He’d never- never- seen anything like this. The flips, yes- he’d been doing those since he was little- and the stranger was doing one hell of an impressive job with ‘em- but he’d not seen anything close to the strange gold sheen in the air. Not even in his wildest dreams. None of his storybooks had this sort of- sort of- whatever the stranger was doing. Yet he couldn’t help but feel he was staring down a legend. With a rather extravagant backflip, the stranger tossed a puff of gold at the air before them- and- disappeared?! The little group gasped. Theodore felt his shoulders tense anxiously. Where had they gone? Why was their gold fog fading? Had he just imagined the whole thing??? He glanced around helplessly at the few others around him. They all blinked, just as confused as he was. What happened? Before he could wonder too much longer, another puff of gold exploded in the air above them. Everyone gasped again as the stranger popped back into existence, flipping through the air. Dust kicked up as their boots landed firmly in the center of the dirt patch, mingling with the glimmering sheen of fading golden smoke. Everyone sat in awestruck silence for a moment. Then... The stranger grinned. And took a deep bow. Theodore was clapping before he knew what he was doing, a dopey grin taking up half his face. He faintly registered one of the group peeling off towards the alleyways. He didn’t pay it too much mind. He was much too focused on how the stranger was looking at him. “Well, seems someone enjoyed the performance, mh?” they grinned. Theodore glanced around- surely they were talking to someone else- but, no, their gaze was squarely on him. Everyone else wasn’t even moving. He nodded vigorously, eager smile still in place. “Y-yessir! Er- ma’am- er- pal?- It was real cool! I ain’t never seen anythin’ quite like it!” he stammered.. “Yer moves were amazin- and- what- what was that cloudy stuff?” He paused, wondering briefly if he wasn’t supposed to inquire such things. His face reddened as he continued. “A-ah mean. If y’all don’ mind me askin’...?” The stranger just chuckled, shaking their head. “It’s quite alright,” they hummed. “I don’t tend to pass through here often- I’m jus glad I caught some gazes while practicing. And… I don’t think you’da seen much of this anyway.” They held out a hand, Theodore gasping softly as golden smoke rose from their palm. “It’s magic, kid.” The second the words registered, Theodore froze. Eyes wide and jaw slack, he felt he couldn’t breathe. Magic? That was magic? His brows furrowed in utter confusion. His gaze bounced between the gold mist and the stranger’s face. Part of him whispered he should turn and go, but- surely- surely it couldn’t be! Magic was a destructive force. Something horrid and corrupting and full of nothing but misery and laziness. You knew it when you saw it. You knew it to avoid it. And it was never, never anything good. At least, that’s what his parents said anytime someone mentioned it. That’s all anyone in town ever said when someone mentioned magic. He’d not had reason to doubt until now. “... are… are y’all sure that’s magic…?” he echoed softly. The stranger seemed to pick up on his unease. Letting the gold fade away, they nodded. “Yeah, that’s magic, kid,” they replied. “Swear on my heart.” “But- but how’d ya-” Theodore gestured for a minute, trying to put to words his clashing thoughts- “how’re y’all usin it without gettin hurt or somethin? That all looked like- like fun, not like trouble!” The stranger tilted their head a bit, a flash of something- pity?- crossing their face. Theodore fidgeted a bit, and it was gone. “Magic’s not bad, kiddo, as long as you’re keepin an eye on it,” the stranger said gently. They gestured to the air around them as they continued. “You can do a whole lot with it- every little bit of gold you saw was a spell! ‘S not all bad, ‘s long as ya know what you’re doin. Magic helps ya do anythin ya put your mind to. Like ya saw, you can mash it together with all kinds’a fancy moves, too. Y’all can do amazin’ things if you keep tabs on your spellwork ‘n watch yourself.” “... really?” Theodore breathed. “Really,” the stranger nodded. “Tha’s… I… hey, wait a sec-” Theodore said hurriedly, “who’s the “you” y’all’re talkin’ ‘bout? Y’all n who else? ‘S there other magic castin’ folks around? Where- where’re they hidin? Who are they?” The stranger chuckled at his eagerness, holding up a hand. Theodore fell silent reflexively, standing up a little straighter. They didn’t look annoyed, but. Well. Habit wouldn’t be ignored. They looked down at him, spreading their hands out at their sides. “Well… yeah, if you know where to look,” they smiled knowingly. “Just… for safety, I won’t list names. But, if you want to know…” They leaned in conspiratorially, eyes shining. “It’s me and every other human around.” Theodore stared at them, blinking owlishly. His words took a minute to find their sound, drifting around his head before he could get bits of them out. “Ev… every… person...? Y… w-whaddaya… how…?” he said softly. “Anyone can use magic, kid,” the stranger said gently. “Even you. You just gotta dig for it.” Theodore just… fell silent. This felt like something he shouldn’t know, but. Well. Here he was. And he’d never been one to turn down something big. Slowly, his gaze drifted down to his hands. Anyone can use magic? He knew he wanted to do something big when he grew up. He couldn’t run the farm- not with Dean ‘n Carrie filling those roles. He loved his little siblings, but they… his parents had plans for them. He was just. Stuck in the middle. He knew he had to do something to stand out. And… well… something about the sight of the stranger swinging around, the clapping and cheering, the golden haze and look of pure bliss on their face, the pure legendary aura that hung off of them, and the amazement they got from the crowd... He wanted that. And he wanted it desperately. Unfortunately, he didn’t have long to think on it before an angry voice rang out. “What ‘n the hell’s goin’ on here?!” Theodore froze in place at the voice, body going stiff and straight as a board. Uh oh. He cast a nervous glance behind him. Standing at the mouth of the alleyway was a small group of adults. The kid he’d seen sprint off a few minutes ago was among them, hiding behind the leader. And- with his heart sinking- he realized that wasn’t the only person he recognized. His mother was there. Glaring at him. In fact, none of the group looked happy. At all. “Kids, git over here, will ya?” the leader said calmly. Though his eyes said he was anything but. The other couple kids around trotted obediently into the group. They disappeared behind a wall of adults, a ring of angry cattle protecting their calves. But Theodore couldn’t get himself to move. He hadn’t quite realized how close he’d strayed to the stranger. And now, with all these eyes on him, he couldn’t move. He just looked back at the leader, terror bubbling across his face. The leader eyed him for a moment. With a click of his tongue, his mother darted out from the group. Theodore cowered as she neared, but that didn’t stop her. Her hand shackled quickly around his wrist, yanking him roughly- frantically- desperately- panicky- back with her to the group. He felt himself pushed into the center quickly, pressed up against other wide eyed kids. A second later, grumbling and muttering broke out. Voices were muffled, stretching over him and his fellows like a cup over a fly. What was going on?! He wiggled around a bit, trying to get a good look. But the wall of adults- his mother included- wouldn’t budge an inch. He needed to see what was happening. But he had to work with what was on hand. He took a gamble and crouched down, peering out from their legs. The sound didn’t travel well, but he could see the stranger’s face. And lip reading did the legwork there. “‘S there a problem, sir?” the stranger asked, chipper tone wavering. “Yeah. I’m lookin at it,” the leader growled. He spat on the ground, disdain all over his face. “Y’all know we don’ like yer kind around here.” “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you m-” the stranger tried, but they didn’t get far. The leader took a menacing step towards them. Theodore could feel the anger radiating off of him. Go, he pleaded mentally, you��re not safe here. “Git out of our town,” the leader hissed. “Or we’ll make ya.” “There’s no need t-” “Ah said git.” With another click of his tongue, the group suddenly lurched forward. Panicked legs crashed against Theodore’s back, sending him tumbling facefirst into the dirt. Oh shit. Theodore curled up frantically, arms covering his head. The group surged forward again, boots and bare feet barely missing his body. When he looked up again, the group was advancing steadily towards the stranger. The sight slammed his heart into his ribs. Oh Revaew- what was going on?! The stranger just stepped back cautiously, hands out and trying to placate them. Theodore couldn’t see what they were saying, but he knew they were in trouble- they were in trouble- they had to get out- they- oh Revaew- his breath was catching in his throat. I can’t let them do this. Scrambling to his feet, the boy ran blindly past the menacing mob. Nobody noticed him until it was too late. He waved his hands at the stranger desperately. “YOU HAVE TO GO!” he cried. And that was all he had time to get out. The mob- that’s what it was- oh revaew- exploded into chaos. He felt hands grabbing and shoving him back behind the adults, many of them surging forward toward the stranger. He tried desperately to slip past- to yell- to hope frantically that the stranger was ok. But they’d been warned. With a flash bang of smoky magic, they were off. The sound and sight was enough to freeze the crowd for a moment. Enough for Theodore to wiggle free and watch. Though the mob bellowed and crashed, the stranger swung out of reach, golden clouds lifting them out of the way. Their gold branching towers ferried them quickly- gracefully- away from danger. With a tuck, roll, and dive, they landed perfectly on their boots a hundred feet away. Theodore felt their eyes linger on him for just a moment. His own were wide, full of naught but wonder. “REMEMBER, KID!” they shouted, turning tail to run, “A TRUE SHOWMAN ALWAYS LANDS ON THEIR FEET!” And hits the ground running, theodore thought softly.

The boy didn’t really process what happened after that. He felt the mob quiet back into a crowd. He felt their anger melt into crushing concern. He felt the words of many swirling around him, none of them sticking with the phrase that echoed in his mind. Eventually, he felt his mother dragging him back to the family stall, berating and fussing over him the whole time. It was only when corn gently rustled beneath him, and his siblings gently touched him, that he finally broke from his stupor. He shook his head, holding up a hand. He did what he could to soothe his siblings worries. It wasn’t too hard- spin a tale, flash a confident grin, and make some joke about having to try again on the candyman- they calmed down quick enough. He was left to sit in the back of the cart. As the sounds of the ride relaxed into something resembling the standard, theodore stared thoughtfully out over the path. A true showman always lands on their feet. … And hits the ground running. But… Magic isn’t dangerous, not if you keep an eye on it. How had nobody told him this before? Or that… that… Anyone can do magic. … Even him. The boy’s thoughts trundled steadily along like the wagon, though they were many miles away. The day left much to think about.

#afw #a familiar world #afw chapter #my story #arty writes #journal sherman drapht #wahoo fun times with da boi :VVV #anyway slkdjf #enjoy this #i had fun workin with it n figurin out my boy ^^

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songtoyou · 4 years

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Chapter Two: Never Enough

Would You Call That Love

Pairing: Chris Evans x Raina Morrison (OC)

Rating: PG to PG-13 (Might be 18+ for some chapters)

Description: There was always one person Chris Evans tended to turn to when he was not in a committed relationship, Raina Morrison. He could confide in her about things going on in his life that he did not feel comfortable talking to his family or close friends about. Chris and Raina were able to establish a way to communicate with one another openly but also being respectful of the other’s time and needs. It was the only constant “relationship” he had, but without all the nonsense of trying to build a life together. A “friends with benefits” situation. However, what happens when Chris starts rethinking his “relationship” with Raina and if either is willing to pursue something more?

Chapter Rating: PG with mild swearing

Warnings: None

Word Count: 3,630

Author’s Note: I hoped those who ‘liked’ the previous chapter enjoys this one as well. I went back and made one little change in the first chapter. No longer is Raina a fan of the Seattle Mariners or Seattle Seahawks, but a Mets/Giants fan. Instead of having Raina grow up in Washington State, she grew up in New York on Long Island. It just made more sense location-wise for her to “closer” to Chris. I also changed something that happened during the summer of 2016 that involved another MCU actor. Let me know what you think. Feedback is always welcomed.

Sadly, I do not know Chris Evans or anyone in his family, and this is just a fictional take on his life. I do not permit this fic to be reposted on other platforms.

Thank you to @southerngracela for your support! :)

*Updated for grammar edits.

July 2019

"Christopher Robert Evans! Come here!" yelled his mother, Lisa Evans.

"What, Ma?" Chris asked when he entered her kitchen and replied, "Whatever happened? I assure you that it was Scott who did it."

"Would you stop? You aren't in trouble. Sit down for a sec." Lisa told her oldest son.

Taking a seat at the kitchen table next to his mother, Chris asked, "Why are you on the laptop? You hate using the computer."

"I do, but you need to send Raina some flowers to celebrate her big opening night on Broadway. You were planning on getting her something, right?" inquired Lisa as she turned the laptop over to Chris for him to look through different flower arrangements.

"Uh…I don't know, Ma. I am sure you will pick out something great."

Lisa gave Chris a knowing look and said, "Chris, you spend more time with Raina than the rest of us. You know her likes and dislikes. Now come on, look at the arrangements and pick which one she would like best."

Chris groaned and turned away from his mother to roll his eyes. His mother's behavior was not unusual to always insinuate that Raina was more than a friend to Chris. Well, she was, but that did not mean his mother had to know all of the dirty details. Despite what people might think of the confessed mama's boy, Chris did not always share everything with Lisa.

"Don't get her flowers…" Chris began, but Lisa cut him off.

"Chris! Why not?"

"It would be better to get Raina chocolate, cookies, or brownies. Something edible. Just not cupcakes because she doesn't like them. Call them overrated. Trust me. She'd prefer to have food over flowers," informed Chris.

"Great. You choose something for Raina while I give Carly a call. Choose something good," Lisa ordered as she got up from the table and exited the kitchen.

As Chris perused the website's items, he knew what to get Raina when he saw the object: a personalized gigantic caramel toffee fortune cookie. It was perfect. Not only was it giant, but it was dipped in decadent caramel with fatty toffee bits sprinkled on top and drizzled with dark chocolate. Raina would love it.

"Ma! Come here and look at this! What do you think?"

Lisa entered the kitchen once again. She was still talking on the phone with Carly.

"Chris, whatever you get, Raina, it will be great."

"What should I put on the card since it is from all of us?" asked Chris with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"No. Just have it be from you. Scott and I already picked out a nice flower arrangement from the two of us for Raina," Lisa informed Chris nonchalantly and added, "Carly is wondering if you could watch the kids this weekend?"

Chris was amazed at his mother's crafty scheme. She had that way about her.

"I'll text her that it isn't a problem, and I know what you are doing."

Lisa feigned an innocent look. "What are you talking about?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out an exasperated sigh, Chris said, "Ma, it isn't like that with Raina, okay. We are just friends. Nothing more. We can't be anything more. It would ruin what we have already. Plus, we both don't necessarily want the same things. She has shared with me that she doesn't see herself having kids. I want kids, someday."

Lisa put her hands up in mock defeat. She was not going to press Chris press about his hidden feelings for Raina. He was an adult, after all. However, as a mother, it was hard not to step in and help her children no matter what they were dealing with at the time.

"Just be sure to write something heartfelt and sweet in the gift message," ordered Lisa and got up once again left the kitchen.

Now alone, Chris looked over the textbox space to put his message for Raina's gift. He typed and retyped what to write to her. Taking a deep breath, Chris let his inhibitions go and proceeded to write honestly about how he felt.

Raina,

You bring so much joy and love to my existence. I know it would not be the same If I did not have you in my life. You help keep me centered in this crazy world of ours, and I always know I can count on you if I need anything. I am so proud of you. Your determination, hard work, and motivation in achieving your dreams have always inspired me. Sometimes I wished you could see yourself through my eyes because then you would realize how special you are to me. I hope you know much. I appreciate and love you so much.

Love,

Chris

With the gift now ordered and soon to be on its way, there was no going back.

"1, 2, 3, and 4! Turn! Kick leg up! Cross and dip!" shouted the choreographer and added, "Let's do it again from the top!"

Trying to catch her breath, Raina got back into position next to her co-star, Aaron Tveit. The two have been working on this project for the past three years. It amazed them both how everything started at a workshop lab, to a small theater production in Boston, to debut the show on Broadway. It was a dream come true for everyone involved.

For Raina, it was a check-off on her list of career accomplishments. While Raina had been offered different roles for Broadway productions in the past, she never accepted the offers. She was either too busy promoting and touring for her albums. Or the parts offered merely did not appeal to her. Raina was cautious about particular projects and took her time in making decisions on which to pursue or decline. That would often lead to arguments with people at her record company or management as one or the other would tell Raina that she was not reaching her full potential as a star. But the Long Island native never wanted to be "famous for being famous." She was not the type to freely give out information about her private life to maintain relevancy with the press or fans. She wanted her work to speak for itself.

A child prodigy gifted in music, Raina has set her sights on impacting the world through song. Her parents, George and Marie, often worried about the precocious little girl when she would hold herself up in her room for hours and hours a day practicing on her guitar or keyboard while jotting down lyrics.

When Raina was 14 years old, she was discovered by her first manager, Jerry Sullivan, at the annual New York State Fair. Jerry was taken aback by the young girl's mature voice as she sang Reba McEntire's classic hits, "Why Haven't I Heard from You" and "Fancy." He immediately introduced himself to Raina and her parents.

Although skeptical, both George and Marie agreed to a formal meeting with Jerry to discuss their daughter's future. After all, they did not want their only child to get screwed over by some conman. Thankfully, Jerry turned out to be legit and had been in the music industry for 20 years as an artists and repertoire (A&R) personnel at Columbia Records.

"Not many talented singers I have seen in all my years in the music have what Raina has. She has 'it' and could go far," said Jerry.

"Oh, I don't want to be famous," little Raina spoke up and continued, "I just want to make music."

Jerry just beamed with happiness, "That is a great answer, little one. You have your priorities. That is important in this industry. You don't ever want to lose sight of why you started in the first place."

"Trust me, I won't," replied Raina with a toothy smile.

Unfortunately, it was hard to remain authentic in the music industry. Too many times, someone would try to mold Raina into who they thought she should be. She never wanted to be placed in a box or confined to one style of music. All Raina ever wanted to be was Raina.

"1, 2, 3, and 4! Turn! Kick leg up! Cross and dip!" repeated the choreographer, "Great job, everyone. Let us take a ten-minute break. Raina and Aaron, they need another costume fitting."

"I swear, I am at a point where I could do the choreography in my sleep," Aaron joked as he walked with Raina to the fitting area.

Raina let out a chuckle, "Isn't that the truth."

With rehearsals finally coming to an end for the day, Raina gathered her belongings, said her goodbyes, and headed home. Thankfully, her Tribeca apartment was only 15 minutes away from the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. Frank, Raina's driver, greeted her as he opened the black Cadillac Escalade's back door.

"How were rehearsals today, Miss Raina?"

"Not too bad," Raina shared with her driver, "I think once the show is finally open to the public, everything will be…a lot easier to handle."

"You're going to be great. The previews of the show went very well, as you mentioned," Frank reminded Raina and asked, "Who you got coming to see you on opening night? I'm taking my wife and youngest daughter to see it before she heads off to school in late August."

It was not uncommon for Frank and Raina to have an easy rapport with one another. Frank was a talker, while Raina was quieter and preferred to listen to his stories about growing up in Queens or his family that consisted of a loving wife and three daughters. Despite enjoying Frank's company, Raina knew that she still had to keep herself wary and not allow herself to be caught off guard. Sadly, her past experiences when allowing others into her world, both private and public, left her feeling burned. Raina learned how to be a master at changing the subject from herself to the other person prying into her personal life.

"Aw! That is wonderful. Where is Alisha headed off to again? Cornell?" asked Raina while thinking, 'Hook line and sinker.'

"Brown University in Providence. Got a full academic scholarship."

"That's wonderful. At least your daughter won't be too far from home. I kind of wish I went to college but never had the time with everything else going on."

"Oh, come on now. I'd say you turned out well. Not everyone needs to go to college to be successful. With Alisha, she always had her sights on pursuing a career in archaeology. By attending Brown, she will have access to the best research and educators the country has to offer."

"Well, if she is anything like her father, then she's got the charms to take the world by storm."

When Frank finally reached the building of Raina's apartment, he proceeded to step out to open her door, but she stopped him and said, "I got it, Frank."

"You sure?" he questioned.

"Yeah. Tell your wife and daughter I said 'hello.' Bye, Frank. See you tomorrow."

"Okay. Have a nice night, Raina."

Upon entering the apartment building, Raina was greeted by the concierge, Winston.

"Hi, Winston. How are you?" asked Raina to make polite conversation as she strode into the lobby.

"Very well, ma'am. Thank you for asking."

Raina cringed at being referred to as "ma'am" despite being two-decades younger than Winston; however, she knew he was only polite and professional. Stopping by to check her mail at the cluster of mailboxes, there was only advertisements and bills. Closing the mailbox with a loud sigh, Raina walked towards the elevator to head up to her penthouse apartment.

The Tribeca apartment was such a great find as the penthouse had its own intimate and homey feel. The condo's main floor greeted guests with an open space kitchen-living room area with a fireplace and powder room. Floor-to-ceiling arched windows dominated the living room, allowing natural light to seep through in the morning and afternoon. Overall, it was ample space for when Raina wanted to entertain her close friends. She was able to accommodate overnight guest stays with two sky-lighted bedrooms with one main bathroom. One floor up was where the master suite was located with floor-to-ceiling French doors that led to a landscaped terrace that included a hot tub, outdoor kitchen, along with fantastic sunset and nighttime views of the Tribeca skyline.

It was a place where Raina felt at home and safe from the prying eyes of the paparazzi or overzealous admirers. Thankfully, the majority of Raina's fans respected her privacy and knew the importance of boundaries.

Unfortunately, only Raina's name was associated with fellow celebrities that things could get out of hand and overrun with speculations. For instance, in the early years of her friendship with Chris, both fandoms speculated if they were more than friends. Whereas with the media, they were relentless in their prying for more information about the two stars. Luckily, it was a dilemma that the two friends worked hard to overcome. The bond that grew between Chris and Raina was not something either experienced with other people. It was unique in how relatively normal both felt around each other. There were no pretenses the friends had to follow or any egos getting in the way.

Sad that the same could not have been applied to Raina's last relationship. The media scrutiny and the online abuse/harassment from the actor's fanbase became too much for Raina to handle that she eventually had to end the relationship prematurely. It was not something that she wanted to do as she cared for the man very much. He was sweet, charming, handsome, and treated Raina with respect. He became someone Raina could confide in outside of her inner circle. She was lucky to have met him at President Barack Obama's final White House Correspondents' Dinner back in April 2016.

'What might have been? Where would my life be if I had stayed with Tom?' Raina often thought.

After taking a quick shower, Raina changed into baggy sweats and a fitted tank top. Stretching out on the couch, she searched through Netflix and selected season five of Schitt's Creek to watch. It was her go-to show that she liked to watch at the end of the day. The crazy antics of the Rose family always helped her relax and ease her anxious mind.

"Oh, David Rose, you are a precious little bean, wrapped in uncertainty and apprehension about the world, aren't you? I connect with you on a spiritual level," Raina commented to herself.

Chris was a bag of nerves ever since he ordered Raina that gift. It was not so much the gift that was causing him to have anxiety, but the message inside the present.

He let it all out in that gift message and was mostly worried about what Raina would make of his words. For instance, would she read them and express the same sentiment, revealing that Chris's feelings were more profound than mere friends. However, what if Chris's words caused her to be upset and that she would not be able to return his feelings in fear of losing their friendship.

'Or she just doesn't love you the way you might want her to,' thought Chris apprehensively.

Now, Chris was beginning to worry that he might have overstepped his boundaries with Raina. 'Why did you have to go and develop deeper feelings for her. I knew our whole friends with benefits wasn't a good idea.

Nothing good ever comes from that arrangement,' he scolded himself while taking Dodger out for a walk on his property. Chris hoped that the cool night air would help relieve the tension and worry he was feeling. It was either a walk or a cigarette, and he promised both his mother and Raina that he would no longer partake in the nasty habit.

The dynamic of Chris and Raina's friendship was a unique one. She was one of the very few that Chris allowed in his world. Over the years, Raina had become acquainted with his close friends from Massachusetts and individual family members outside of his mother, father, brother, and sisters. It was not unusual for Raina to attend one of his Uncle Mike's campaign rallies. That always got the fans on social media talking and wondering if there was something more than friendship between the two.

Chris and Raina's responses were always the same, "We are just friends." It was their go-to answer for years.

It was not until mid-2014 when they decided to add a new element to their friendship: sex.

What started as a fun hookup turned into a full-fledged agreement. For Chris, it was liberating to be with someone sexually with no strings attached. For Raina, she felt safe and comfortable with Chris. There was genuine respect and trust the two had for one another that when sex added to the mix, it did not cause a lot of complications, surprisingly. They took the time to set guidelines and go over expectations that both could abide by and not ruin the aspect of their friendship.

Their guidelines included:

Be transparent with one another as possible. Be open to compromises.

Be open to communicating with your partner.

Never be judgmental.

Be open about what is off-limits and what is acceptable.

Conversations or decisions cannot be one-sided.

Make sure each partner is on the same page.

Check-in with one another. Ask each other about how things are going and how the individual is feeling about the arrangement.

Develop a PR strategy for when friends or family members ask questions about the status of your relationship.

Ground rules: staying over is optional, breakfast in the morning is acceptable, no booty calls as it demeans the overall friendship, and friend-dates are suitable.

Even when Chris was in a serious relationship with Minka or Jenny, he could revert to his non-sexual friendship with Raina. Chris never quite understood how Raina could adapt so quickly whenever he had a new romantic partner. He honestly would not know how he would react if Raina showed up one day with a boyfriend on her arm.

'Liar! You'd flip your shit!' Chris thought, which he did when Raina was rumored to be dating fellow MCU actor Tom Hiddleston back in 2016. Both had been photographed together numerous times during outings and events.

'Six-months of Hell,' Chris bitterly referred that time.

The crazy thing about that time is that Raina did not share anything with him about her relationship with Tom. She kept it all to herself even after they broke up.

"Why does she keep that part of her life secret from me?" Chris asked himself as he walked up the steps on his front porch with Dodger following suit.

"Because it is none of your business how Raina's relationships go down," a voice spoke up, startling Chris.

"Holy shit, Scott! What the fuck are you doing out here?" yelled Chris as he stood in front of his little brother.

Scott replied with a shit-eating grin on his face, "Just getting some fresh air and enjoying the sunset. What have you been up to?"

"Don't change the subject. Why do you automatically assume I am talking about Raina? For all you know, I could have been referring to Shanna," Chris retorted back defiantly as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the porch railing.

However, Scott was not falling for what his brother was trying to sell. "Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Chris," Scott reprimanded and continued, "I know you and Raina have had a friend with benefits situation going on for the last five years. Of course, only when neither of you was in relationships with other people, that is."

"How the fuck did you know about that?" questioned Chris. His eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head.

"Well, I had my speculations, but your reaction just now confirmed everything. What the fuck were thinking. Nothing good comes out of a friend with benefits relationship. Hell, I could have told you that while also saving you the eventual heartbreak that will eventually happen. So again, I ask, what the fuck were you thinking?"

Letting out a huge sigh, Chris moved to sit next to Scott on the porch swing. "I was thinking…that this is someone who I love and care about, you know. At first, the arrangement was, I don't want to say that it was just for fun. With Raina, it felt like a natural progression for our friendship. I don't know. I guess maybe…"

"You hoped that it could turn into something more down the road," Scott finished for his brother.

"Yeah. I felt we were getting to that point, but Raina kept pulling back, you know. Like, she was too scared to move in that direction with me,' Chris confessed as he leaned back on the porch swing.

Scott continued to stare at Chris as he contemplated what to say next. He felt terrible for his older brother and realized Chris's dilemma.

"I wish I could give you some sage advice, but honestly, I am at a loss on what you should do. Raina is special to you. To all of us. But, no one can deny that she has always had a little hold on your heart. The sad thing is that I don't think the poor thing fully understands the effect she has on you. All I can say is to tread carefully. Don't do anything rash," advised Scott and got up to go into the house.

'Too late.' Chris thought to himself.

"Fuck it! I need a cigarette."

#chris evans #chris evans x ofc #chris evans x original female character

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rayalltheway · 5 years

Text

His Dark Materials S1 finale thoughts(AKA Fuck Asriel)

Ok, I am officially completely sold on this show, the finale just solidifies it as something amazing.

Ramblings about my thoughts below(mind that a lot of it will be cussing out Asriel)

Also side bar - I haven’t read the books, or at least I can’t remember much from them, so my view is purely show based. Sorry if that makes my opinion invalid somehow, but I’m judging this show without the book to go off.

- Lyra, my poor baby. At the beginning of the season she was a bright eyed girl just longing for adventure, and now she has PTSD, and was better off when she was still an orphan.

-Iorek is a true father for Lrya(she even basically said so!) and their parting of ways made me break inside. Lee and Iorek better get shared custody with Ma Costa by the end of this show I swear to god

-“Silvertongue feels like my name. It was given to me by someone who actually loves me, which is better than I can say for you." YES MY GIRL POP OFF

- I truly do feel sympathy for Marisa Coulter now. Like, she and Asriel are both doing evil things for their own self proclaimed ‘good’ on opposite sides of the fight, but I can see her motivation much clearer now, how she was ruined in part because of Asriel, and how losing a innocent part of herself through her mistakes affected her. And...well, she did the very least, she had the presence of mind to think of Lyra. And for Asriel, he truly is a failure of a man and a failure of a father. He may care for Lyra, but his “protecting her” comes across more like wanting her out of the way, and...well, you know what he did. Either way, those two better get themselves faced up against the intimidating stance of Ma Costa, Father Coram, Lord Faa, Lee, Iorek, all the adults who adopted Lyra and gave her the love her actual parents don’t know how to give.

- I was honestly expecting Roger’s fate, but that scene hurt. It hurt so bad😭 He and Lrya had such a sweet wholesome friendship, they risked everything for eachother, and now Lyra doesn’t have him, he was killed by her own father. Again, fuck Asriel.

- My dad hyped me up a bit too much for the ‘Final Battle’ because what I thought was gonna be it...wasn’t? The episode was more about Lyra seeing her father’s true colours and having to continue her journey on her own, which is the heart of everything and it was true and good and emotional...but DANGIT I was really hoping to see the Gyptians and the Witches AND the Bears join together to wreck house against the Magisterium, no bars held. Maybe next season?

- The Adam and Eve story is renditioned in Lyra’s world? They’re really going off on real religion huh 👀

- Again, children having to deal with the trauma and the wreckage caused by the adults before them...the irony would be funny if it weren’t so depressing

- I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE GODDAMN PORTAL BEING TOO EASY TO FIND. There’s NO WAY that NO ONE else before Will has been behind that fence and didn’t see the tear in the space-time continuum right in front of them. At least, not logically.

- The prophecy babies, Will and Lyra, are moving forward to their destinies, which are ultimately intertwined. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for them.

- What exactly was Will planning to do after running off? Was he gonna try and figure things out about his father himself? He seemed to be just wandering about aimlessly.

- No but seriously where the fuck are Ma Costa👏Father Coram👏Lord Faa👏Lee Scoresby👏and Serafina👏

That’s about all I got. See you guys same time next year!

#his dark materials #thoughts #his dark material spoilers

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serahsanguine · 5 years

Text

What's left Unsaid, Says It All

What’s Left Unsaid, Says it all part 9/?

Rating; NC-17, NSFW

This Story can be Found at Ao3

Tagging; @today-in-fic @skullsmuldon

p.s. If this is formatted wrong I'm posting through a mobile as my pc broke

P.s.s if you would like updates and be tagged please let me know

**********************************************

Chapter 9; First encounter of a child kind

Mulder stood there on the sidewalk stunned by his own actions and by Scully's sudden change in mood. Why had she gone from wanting nothing to do with him, to kissing him and then back to slapping him all in the span of a couple of minutes? Had he ruined the chance to finally meet his children? Had he ruined the chance of ever seeing Scully again?

He watched as the taxi drove off into the distance, standing there alone and cold when the sound of his cellphone pulled him out of his dark thoughts.

"Mulder, hey, it's Frohike. We've found what we were looking for in the medical records, are you ready for your mind to be blown?"

"It already has been. I know the results, Frohike" Mulder answered through gritted teeth, sounding hopeless and miserable.

"How? And why didn't you tell us that was the reason for our research?"

"Well, we just had a very loud conversation about it... and she finally admitted the truth to me. I don't know, I might've been wrong. I honestly wasn't absolutely sure until a few minutes ago"

The raw emotions behind the words Mulder spoke, told all three Gunmen exactly how much this had been and would continue to affect him. And they all felt terrible for him.

They had seen this type of emotion from Mulder, in the past. It was this kind of emotion that would normally proceed Mulder doing something so unbelievably reckless and get him into trouble - or almost got himself killed.

"Where are you right now? Do you want us to come get you?"

"The Sheppard. And thanks, fellas."

With everything that needed to be said Mulder simply pressed the end call button and stood there... Waiting. He knew the Gunmen would come to get him and stop him from doing something stupid, but he didn't really want to be sober anymore; he wanted to get drunk, so blind drunk that he couldn't remember his own name.

[[MORE]]

***************************************

Scully told the cab driver where to go before falling apart and crying into her hands in the backseat of the taxi. She needed her mom and sister right now, even though what she really wanted was Mulder... but he would always be out of reach.

When she arrived at her mother's house, her face was all blotchy and her eyes were red, puffy and sore. Quickly paying the driver what was due Scully exited the taxi. Maggie had stayed up anxiously awaiting the return of Dana and just so happened to be looking out of the window as the car pulled up. She almost ran to the front door, opening it and engulfing her youngest daughter in a protective hug.

Maggie's heart broke as she listened to Scully's heart-wrenching sobs that were soaking through her blouse. To keep her from getting cold she walked them both silently towards the front door and away from potential prying eyes. She carefully moved Scully into the living room and onto the sofa next to the roaring fireplace.

She left Scully airing there, staring out into the abyss, before going through to the kitchen to make them both a cup of tea. She could tell that Dana was in shock. She couldn't tell what happened but she knew what went on between her and Fox was something she deeply regretted. Maggie heard the kettle whistle and was brought out of thought. Grabbing a towel, she poured the water into cups. When the tea was made, she took the cups through to the living room and placed one in front of Scully on the small coffee table and sat on the chair facing her. She waited.

About thirty minutes later, Maggie guessed Scully had still not come out of her shock state of mind. Suddenly, she heard Will and Ellie start crying and just as she stood up she heard Melissa’s footsteps walking across the landing and into the room the twins were sleeping. She heard small whispers from Melissa and then there were lullabies. Knowing the way Melissa was with the twins made her smile. She was so caring and gentle and content with them. >She would make a brilliant mother some day.

Maggie stayed with Scully till the very early hours of the morning and that was when Melissa sent her mom to get some rest, she would take over. Before Maggie walked up the stairs she took a quick glance at her girl. Missy had managed to get Scully to lie down, her lying by her side with a blanket around them. It reminded her of when they were kids sneaking into each other's beds, or when they sneaked downstairs for snack and both fell asleep on the couch.

The next morning

Missy awoke upon hearing footsteps behind her. Turning around, she saw her mom.

"Hey. sweetie. How is she?" Maggie whispered. Missy shook her head as if to say no change and Maggie sighed. Melissa wiggled her way out of the cocoon she and Scully had made to go get changed and have some breakfast.

A few hours later Missy and Maggie were sat at the small kitchen table sipping two coffees. They heard stirred movements from the living room and then they saw Scully walk through to the kitchen, taking a seat opposite them both.

"How are you feeling?"

Scully looked at her sister and felt like she was going to burst into tears again. Scully was about to speak when she heard the twins so she quickly took herself out of the awkward situation by running upstairs. She was so quick she nearly missed a step on her way up. She walked into the room where her children were and Ellie looked up at her mother wide-eyed. Her and little Will were wearing boy and girl’s version of matching onesies with little grey aliens on. Seeing that took her to resolve away and burst into tears. Both children looked at their mother with confusion.

When Scully managed to calm her emotions, she picked both kids out of the cribs and placed them on their rainbow rug in the middle of the room. Both children instantly felt their mother was upset and moved to Scully, engulfing her in baby hugs and love.

Maggie and Missy had climbed the stairs silently behind her, and stood outside the slightly open door to observe her. They both listened to the conversation Scully had with her kids.

"I met your dad yesterday, you know? I've missed him so much." Scully looked away but she could tell they were both listening, "I told him about you and things didn't go according to plan”.

"Da Da," Ellie uttered innocently.

"Yes, Ellie. I saw Da Da. And I did something very naughty."

Missy and Maggie were still eavesdropping on the conversation, trying not to move too much or make too much noise.

"Ma Ma Nau nau"

"Yes sweetheart. Mommy let daddy kiss her, and Mommy enjoyed it."

Maggie and Missy were physically taken back by what Scully had said. It was evident when they both took a sharp intake of breath.

"Mommy enjoyed the kiss a little too much, but then she got scared and hurt Daddy. Then Mommy said something she regretted and then run away.”

Scully looked at her children who were now invested in playing with their toy blocks and she whispered.

"All I ever wanted was for Mulder to be a father to you," Scully looked at Ellie who was showing her a nice tower. Suddenly she turned around to face the door "Mom, Missy you can come in now."

"How did you know?"

"Neither of you could get jobs as ninjas," Scully said smiling at them.

Even though she hadn’t spoken directly to her sister and mother, a small weight had been lifted off her chest. Missy picked up Will and Scully grabbed Ellie and they took the children downstairs for breakfast. As Scully was walking down the stairs she thought about Mulder and how she needed to fix the situation; not only for her but for the two little bundles of joy they had created.

***************************************************

Mulder’s Apartment

Mulder woke up alone in his dingy apartment. He could vaguely remember The Gunmen picking him up and driving him home after the third beer and the fifth shot. He was cold and slightly sticky. The sun was out and shining directly at him. He brought his hands up to eyes, rubbing in small circles. His head felt like someone had taken a jackhammer to it.

Mulder sat up on the sofa, feeling groggy and dizzy. All the memories of what happened between him and Scully started coming back to him; of how she had lied to him for so long, the fact that he was a father to not one child, but two. He stood up, feeling nauseous, and quickly made his way to the bathroom, tripping over empty alcohol bottles and a few empty food containers. It was possible he also slipped on some x-files folders on the floor. He managed to lift the toilet seat up before emptying his stomach contents into the bowl.

After he had finished, he realised it was mostly liquid of a funky colour. He stripped off his clothes and threw them in the general direction of the wash hamper, missing by miles. Then he turned on the shower on the hottest setting his body could take, and waited a few minutes to step in and wash the filth and grime away from last night's endeavours.

The water hit his face with a welcome sting as his mind wandered to the kiss from the previous night, so full of passion and longing. He knew he shouldn’t have kissed her, but it was a spur of the moment. Mulder had missed her so much. It was definitely more an impulse than anything. He had to admit that he had enjoyed the feeling of her lips against his and swore he had heard her moan. Or maybe that was him.

As the water was hitting his face his hand had a mind of its own and it worked its way down to his cock which was now standing to attention. This happened whenever he thought about Scully. Once he realised what he was doing, he felt dirty and ashamed, but he didn't want to stop thinking about her. So, instead of stopping, he put one hand on the tiled wall in front of him and placed his head next to it, slightly bending over and wrapping his other hand around his girth and started pumping slowly.

His mind was filled with images of her.

Scully and her perfectly round and perky breasts and the perfect little pink nipples. When he saw her the day before he couldn't help but check her breasts out. They were bigger and fuller than he remembered. What he wouldn’t give to kiss and lick them, to make her squirm in pleasure. He would start by kissing her lips and working his way to her neck, then across her clavicle, leaving little bites and small red blotches in his wake. Seeing her naked was amazing, so delicate, so petite... but he knew she could knock you out with one punch.

His hand was working faster now pumping hard and uncontrolled as he thought about the apex in between her legs. Her smell would drive him insane but her taste would drive him mad! She tasted of strawberries and cream with hints of chocolate mixed in. He loved to give her that much pleasure and she would cry and beg for him as he brought her on the brink of orgasm. He would then stop, he’d do it over and over again. He would use his fingers and his tongue, swirling and flicking. Finally he would let her have her way, he would let her climax happen. Hearing his name would send him into his own climax.

His fluid squirted out of him hitting the shower wall, mixing with the running water and going down the drain.

Mulder cleaned himself off quickly, washing his body and hair before turning off the shower. He stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist just as the phone decided to ring. He walked briskly through the bedroom and into the living room, and picked up the phone before it stopped ringing.

"Hello?"

"Mulder, it's me."

"Scully?" His voice was barely a whisper as his mind was running away from itself.

"Yes."

"Scully?" (It can’t possibly be her, can it?)

"Mulder... I've been thinking about last night."

Oh, God. She’s going to tell me some bad news. She was serious about last night and she’s running away again... I can't handle this.

“What about last night?" He was hoping he sounded calm and collected because he was anything but.

"It was wrong of me to… Well, I'm sorry about a lot of things over the past 15 months... I want you to meet them and... I'm positive they want to meet you, too."

Oh God. Is she actually saying this? Is she actually letting me see my children? Is this just a good dream?

"No, Mulder. This is not a dream."

Wait! Did I say that out loud? I don't think so. Damn, she can still tell what I am thinking even with being apart so long...

"Say you come around my mom’s about 1 PM tomorrow afternoon?"

"Yes, of course. I will be there. Thank you, Scully."

Mulder was still clutching the phone next to his semi-dried hair. His heart was beating ten to the dozen, thumping so hard he felt like it was going to jump out of his chest. His stomach was doing flip flops. The reality was not quite sinking in. He was really going to meet his children. But first things first: he needed to clean himself up and do some things around the apartment.

**************************************

The Next Day.

Maggie Scully's House

Scully had woken up early today. Her nerves were on edge and she wasn't able to sleep much. She knew her mom thought it was a good thing seeing Fox again, but she wasn't so sure. She knew Mulder seeing his kids would be amazing, she was just scared.

Maggie could hear the restlessness of her daughter from across the hall. She was happy to see Fox again, it had been so long. She did get worried about him. She knew that he would make an amazing father towards her grandchildren. Maybe eventually make a great son-in-law. She was just hoping that, even after everything, Dana and Fox could rekindle their relationship.

Melissa, on the other hand, had her doubts about Mulder coming around. His temper towards her had surprised her and caught her off guard. What also surprised her was how much anger he had built up inside of him and she was scared that he would take it on Dana. But she was conflicted because she really wanted to him to see his kids. Melissa was so frustrated by the situation and didn't want to say something she would regret that she decided she was going out to meet up with some friends and the local art museum.

The hours passed and Mulder and Scully got more and more anxious as time went on. Soon the clock struck twelve, Missy was already out for the day and Scully had put both kids in highchairs, ready for some dinner. There was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it," she heard her mom say from the other room.

"Thanks, Mom."

Maggie opened the front door to find a very sheepish and very nervous Fox Mulder.

"Hello, Fox. Come in."

Mulder looked at the older women with an apologetic look

"Hello, Mrs Scully. If I am too early, I can come back later..."

"Don't worry about it, I can't have you driving around the block for another half hour, can I?" Maggie smiled up at him and gestured for him to come in. When he did, so she closed the door behind him. "Dana and the kids are in the kitchen. She is in the middle of feeding them." She was so warm and welcoming towards him after so long... He wasn't expecting it but welcomed it a lot.

"Thank you, Mrs Scully."

"What have I told you about that? Please, call me Maggie."

He nodded and walked towards the kitchen. Mulder rounded the corner through the living room and towards the kitchen but what he saw kept him in his spot at the doorway.

Scully was sitting at a small round wooden table. She was facing away from him but her hair caught the sun shimmering red, orange and yellow like a sunset. Sat next to her there were two highchairs: a little girl to her right with her deep chestnut hair in a ponytail, wearing a black dress with an orange fox on it. She wore a small yellow bib stopping the food from ruining her clothes. To Scully’s left there was a little boy, every bit a spitting image of his mother, with deep red hair and piercing blue eyes. He was wearing some deep blue baby jeans and a baby version of a polo shirt with little socks peeking out from the table with small grey aliens on. Mulder smiled upon the sight in front of him. Both babies were splashing their food and Scully was trying to stop them and feed them at the same time.

Maggie watched Mulder as the happiness was evident on his face but he still hadn't moved. There was something else she detected, fear maybe. She gave him a slight nudge forward and it caught him off guard. He stumbled not so gracefully into the kitchen. Both children looked up at him.

"Da Da," they yelled in sync.

Mulder smiled at the two infants and answered "yes" as tears started to fall down his face. Not out of sadness, oh no. They were full of pure joy.

Scully looked up at him and could see the joy and amazement on his face. She smiled.

"You're early," she said teasing

"I'm sorry."

Maggie was watching the exchange from the doorway.

"It doesn't matter. Let me introduce you to the family," Scully said with a smile. “This little boy covered in apple pie is called William, Will for short, Jeremiah Mulder" Scully got the wet tissue from the table and wiped the sticky mess off the little boy’s fingers and face. Once she finished she turned her attention to the little girl. "This little maddam’s name is Ellissa, Ellie for short, Claire Mulder."

"You gave them my last name." It was a statement but also a shock.

"Yes." The reply was short but their eyes locked and spoke a thousand words, and a silent thank you was said. "Will you help me get Ellie out of the highchair, please? And we can take them through to the living room."

Maggie had gone upstairs to leave the two parents to get reacquainted.

Mulder looked at her scared, not having a clue how to unclip this young child from the highchair. Or better yet, not even knowing how to hold a nearly seven month old. Scully looked at him and smiled, suddenly understanding his worries. She showed him how to unclip and how to hold Ellie before proceeding to the living room.

Mulder picked Ellie and she instantly wrapped her little legs around him and her arms around his neck and snuggled her head into the crock of his neck and shoulder. He could feel the warmth coming of this tiny human he was carrying, thinking of how quickly both children had taken to him almost upon seeing him. He was amazed at how much they loved him and how much he loved them in return.

Scully placed Will down on the rug behind the sofa removing any sharp object so that the twins wouldn’t hurt themselves. She placed their favourite teething toys and some block in front of him. Mulder went to place Ellie down on the rug next to her brother but she would not let go of him. Every time he tried she looked like she was about to cry. So, he tried a different approach: he lay down next to Will, stretching his long legs, and placed Ellie on his lap so she could stay with him but also play with Will.

"They seem advanced for their age," Mulder said, looking at Scully who was looking straight back at him.

"Yes, they are. They get it from you."

Mulder smiled at her. It was a sweet but also bitter, and they both knew it. "They're amazing children, a true reflection of their mother." And this time it was Scully’s turn to smile. Mulder had truly meant what he had said.

An hour later William had started fussing and was getting grumpy, no longer playing with any of the toys in front of him. Scully instantly knew what he wanted, Mulder was none the wiser.

"Mulder, I'll be right back."

"Ok, Scully."

Scully picked up William and took him into the kitchen, leaving Ellie and Mulder playing and laughing. Mulder tried making funny noises and faces to make her smile. Scully always knew he was good with kids, but seeing him with his own was a completely different story.

Twenty minutes had passed and this time Ellie was the one starting to squirm. Mulder tried everything to calm her down and nothing was working. She started crying and his heart broke: he didn't know how to stop her. She wrapped herself around his little finger and heart. He picked her up and wondered where Scully was, so he went to find her.

Mulder went through the hallway, and into the kitchen. When he got to the doorway he instantly went shy and slightly guilty: he saw William attached to Scully's breast.

"Oh! I’m sorry! I can come back..." He was bright red and turned shyly to go back into the living room.

Scully looked up and she felt bad for him turning away and going back the way he came. "It’s ok, don’t apologize. I could have told you what I was doing. I guess she started getting thirsty too." She turned and looked upon Ellie hugging Mulder’s side and then looked down and William upon her breast. "This one took longer than normal." She ended her sentence with a small smile.

Mulder sat down opposite her just as William was finishing up. Scully placed her breast back into her nursing bra and clasped it back up. Ellie knew what was coming and moved her hands to her mother and Mulder took that as a sign to swap children with Scully. Mulder watched as Scully did the same thing but backwards to attach Ellie to her breast. He watched, transfixed on the scene. He had so many questions. One blurted out before his mind had time to catch up.

"Does it hurt?"

She looked at him seeing awe in his eyes. He was blushing when he realised what he had said. "No it doesn't. He did at first, but we are pros at it now. The one thing that does hurt is pumping into bottles so Melissa can feed them."

"You… It looks beautiful."

"Thank you, Mulder. That’s very sweet of you to say."

Mulder gave her his full boyish smile and kept William entertained while secretly stealing glances at Scully.

Several hours passed, full of laughter and joy. Mulder helped Scully fed the twins, which turned out to be a lot messier than either adults intended. It was spaghetti which ended up not only on Mulder but the floor, table, chairs and both children including hair and clothes.

Melissa came back about three. Maggie had told her to leave Mulder and Scully alone but she wasn’t happy about it. She went right into the kitchen. But she stopped her initial plan when she saw him interact with his children and with her sister. It looked as if no time had passed between them. She did have to admit to herself that Mulder looked like an amazing dad and they looked amazing together.

Mulder helped Scully bath the kids, they played with ducks and boats and loads of bubbles. Mulder pretended to be a man with a massive beard which sent both kids into fits of giggles. His top ended up soaking wet –but it was well worth it. After the kids had finished their bath Mulder dried and changed Will and Ellie into their pyjamas, and into their cribs. He was going to read them a story but before he had a chance both kids were out like a light. So he turned on the night lights, and their spinning lullabies. Those especially made him smile when he noticed they were mini ufos and small grey aliens dancing in a circle. He stood there a few moments watching his children sleep and how peaceful they looked so quiet and so lovable. He could sit there for hours. It was pure and magic. He turned on the baby monitor before leaving the room and he left the door slightly ajar, just in case.

He slowly walked down the stairs. Seeing all three Scully women talking amongst themselves he felt like an outsider. He didn’t want to outstay his welcome, so he went into the living room with the intention of saying goodbye and grabbing his jacket.

"I really should get going."

"Nonsense!” Maggie exclaimed getting up. “Your top is dripping all over the floor. Dana will help you find one of Bill’s old tops and I will take care of this one."

"There really is no need for that, Maggie." She gave him the infamous Scully look that said do as you’re told and he did. "Thank you."

Scully sent her mother a sharp look of dissatisfaction. She knew what her mother was trying to do, and she didn’t like her to to play matchmaker. "I’m sure I can find something for you to wear. Follow me."

Maggie smiled at her daughter before she left the room. Mulder was close on Scully’s heel, she lead him upstairs and instead of going into the spare bedroom where Bill would normally stay, she lead him into her own bedroom. He got slightly uncomfortable since he hadn’t been alone with scully in a long time. He watched her search through her chest of drawers looking for something. He didn’t know what to say or what to do. He loved this woman so much but she had hurt him so much at the same time. His head and heart were in such a terminal. So, he stood there at the door, looking at her bedroom while she shuffled from side to side. Scully suddenly stopped as she had found what she had been looking for. She walked back to him with what looked like his knicks t-shirt.

"Oh, my. Scully, is this one of mine?" He tried to play it smooth but it came out cheesy and slightly flirtatious.

"Yes, Mulder. It is one of your tops. Probably from when you had dinner at my Mom’s when…" She trailed off her sentence, she didn’t want to ruin a good day with sad memories.

"Thank you."

Scully turned around to give him some privacy. Also she felt the temptation there: to touch him, to feel his toned abs, to feel him tense and relax. It didn’t help that out the corner of her eye there was a full standing mirror, where she could see everything. It was like watching a strip tease in slow motion. Standing there she let her mind wonder and her fantasy overrun her brain. Touching him, feeling him, nibbling and kissing him, scratching her nails down his back... She had to stop thinking like this, they could never be together. It had been a fling that ended badly. Yes, they got something great out if it: two beautiful children. Mulder would never forgive her, though, she knew this in her mind. But her heart still held hope. He had finished changing and told her that she could turn around.

"I really should get going Scully, it’s getting late." He sounded disappointed

"Ok." She sounded disappointed, too. She didn’t want him to go. but she knew he had to. Today had been nice, Mulder spending time with their children and with her. She walked to the door grabbing his coat on the way.

"Thank you for today,” he said on the way out. “I really appreciate the chance you gave me at meeting William and Elissa." Things became suddenly tense and strained, neither knowing how to say bye.

"Thank you for coming. They seemed to really enjoy your company."

"Well. I certainly enjoyed it. They’re amazing children." There was a short pause before he spoke his next words. "I... enjoyed spending time with their mother, as well."

"Mulder please don’t–." She sounded sad, he picked up on it.

"I’m sorry," he quickly changed the subject. "Can I visit them again?"

"Yes , we can arrange a date and time tomorrow over the phone."

"Thank you again. For everything. I really mean it."

She could tell so. His deep hazel eyes spoke volumes, so full of truth and meaning. She really wanted to kiss him right then and there and to forget about the worries. Thing was, she knew he would kiss her right back. But would they be doing it for the right reasons?

"Bye, Dana." He turned and walked towards the car. He took a quick glance up at the sky. It was dark but clear and the stars were shining upon him.

When she saw he reached his car and got in driving away, she closed the door. Standing in an empty hallway she whispered "Bye, Fox."

#msr #today in fic #txf fanfic #txf #mulder and scully #mulder and scully ship #agent mulder #whats left unsaid #msr au #msrmoments #msrfanfic

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mislovet2020 · 5 years

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My Dark Past and My Bright Future

They say everything happens for a reason and there is a purpose for every pain. This is my story of pain and how God revealed to me His wonderful purpose in my affliction.

Since I already shared in this blog a part of my dark past, I want to share this part of my life with no more hate but now with hope and love.

Almost exactly six years ago, February 01, 2014, I was harrased by my college professor inside a taxi cab. I was 17 years old that time and it was my first time in Quezon City that I trusted him na dadalhin niya ako sa sakayan pauwi ng Cavite. He took advantage of my innocence and naiveness. He sexually harassed me by touching my private parts, but that was not the worst part of that day. I was able to escape the ongoing horror because of the help of the taxi driver. But I was trapped by the horror of my past trigerred by such sexual harassment.

In a completely unknown place to me that time, Shaw Blvd. Station, I had flashbacks from my past that I can no longer remember. I saw myself in a bed and I was being abused. It was a clear picture in my mind but I can no longer remember any details. I was in panic and I was reliving the memory in my mind. I was shaking and when I came back to reality, I felt deep fear. I can no longer remember how I was able to go to the bus terminal on my own.

The flashback did not stop on that day. It continued until I saw the face of my abuser. I thought I was making it all in my mind. I realized that I had no memory of my childhood until my 11th year.

I Googled for answers and sought help of a psychologist. It is called dissociation and dissociative amnesia. It is a kind of a mental problem developed in the mind of a person who was victimized by a severe trauma. It is a product of a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. Slowly by the help of a professional, I regained parts of my memory. It was not easy for me to process and accept it. It was painful for me to see how ruined I was and to see the lies of the people I trusted and loved.

Based on the recollection of my memories, I repetitively suffered, almost daily, sexual abuse and rape which started when I was four years old, had a pause when I was in grade 5, and completely stopped when I had my first menstruation. I was abused by not only one person, but few other men whose names and identity I can no longer remember.

Whenever I see news of children raped and died from that incident, I can feel envy in my heart. I used to wish na sana namatay nalang din ako. Sa isip ko, maswerte sila at namatay nalang sila, they do not have to grow up bearing the heaviness of the trauma and abuse and enduring all its effect while living in the world's expectation that you should continue surviving because you have survived the worst.

My spirit and soul was crushed during that season when I was being helped by a professional in regaining back my memories and surfacing my repressed emotions to address it properly. I craved for justice which I was not able to receive. My life was covered in a thic dark aura of anger. But it is necessary. To be angry is necessary. But anger should not last for long. Anger is important to acknowledge that there is something wrong, but it is not an emotion that we should cherish in our hearts.

Because of the pain, I distanced myself from my family. At a young age, I started living independently. However, I also intended to walk away from the love of God.

Before all of these happened, I was a very godly person. I tried to settle my unknown issues with the Lord by always praying and reading the bible. From my rebellious ways when I was in high school, I tried to change when I started my first year in college. I felt His love but when tragedy came to me, I forgot to trust in Him.

Living away from the Lord and my family, I did a lot of terrible things to cope up with the tornadoes in my mind. At the age of 18, I was living in with my then boyfriend. We had a baby, which I lost.

I became alcoholic, and I started smoking cigarettes. I also became addicted with downers.

It 2016 I went back to my province. My lifestyle got worse. But despite of all the bad things I was doing, I know I was still fighting for my future. I graduated as the first and only Magna Cum Laude of my course in my Alma Mater. I took pride of myself that I was self sufficient during those times by doing buy and sell and hair and makeup. Right after graduation when I had nothing to do, I enrolled in a State University and took Education units. Sabi nga nila, para akong dual personality, doble kara. One was an achiever and the other was a devastated person.

When I was in Cavite, I had this "ex boyfriend" nung high school na naging close ko ulit. He became my best friend during those times and he was the one who encouraged me to look for a work related sa tinapos ko instead of pursuing hair and makeup and buy and sell. He also encouraged me to continue law school.

Lahat ng job offers sakin, di ko tinanggap, actually including an offer from the Department where I am currently working. I was already accepted for work in DFA in 2016 just after my graduation, but I told the Human Resource Office that I will not accept the job because I do not want to work yet and that I find myself still earning big through my passion.

2017, more than a year passed, I received a call from DFA. The Department was again offering me a job and that I will have an interview kinabukasan. I was hesitant to go for it pero I was looking at my worsening self who was slowly turning to be addicted in wrong stuff, I decided to go to the interview and hoped that this might change me for the better.

I will never forget the interview question asked to me by the HR Director, he asked me what is the most difficult problem I faced in my life and how was I able to survive from it. I was honest enough to confess that I was an abuse victim and that I became suicidal, but I did not give up in life and despite of it, I was still able to stand up and continue in life and survive college with flying colors. He told me that in the job that I will have, I will deal with traumatized people, also victims of rape and abuse. He told me I am a perfect fit for the job not just because of my good college record but because of my personal experience.

After the interview, I also went to Arellano University and inquired about its program for working student.

I was accepted in an extraordinary job where I found the purpose of my pain. I was able to talk with a lot of distressed individual, some suicidal, majority are hopeless. I had empathy with them and I became effective in communicating with my clients. Some of them became my friends.

I had a travel in Jeddah where we assisted some mentally ill wards. During the travel, there was a ward in the shelter who was raped by her employer repetitively. Her body was shivering. I saw myself in her. I was like that when I was in Shaw Blvd. when I had the first flashback of my trauma. I sat beside her, held her hands and prayed for her in my mind. I told her nothing is ok with her situation, but she needs to stay on ground for her to survive. Tinanong ko siya bakit gusto mong lumaban, sabi niya para sa anak niya. Tinanong ko kung magkakaso ba siya, sabi niya oo pero natatakot siya kasi maalala niya lahat, binigyan siya ng Embassy ng abugado dahil malakas ebidensya niya. Sabi ko sa kanya, tingnan mo yung mga kasama mo sa shelter, ilan diyan ang nirape pero walang pagkakataon kagaya mo na ilaban ang hustisya. Sabi ko sa kanya, magpakatatag siya at ituloy ang laban, di lang para sa kanya pero sa lahat ng katulad niya ang pinagdaanan. Nawala yung nginig sa kanyang katawan at umiyak siya sa akin. Tinuruan ko siya ng mga tinuro sa akin ng psychologist ko dati kung pano babalik sa reality kapag nag didissociate. Di ko na siya muling nakausap pero tiningnan ko records ng case niya sa office, nanalo siya sa kanyang kaso at naka uwi siya ng Pilipinas. I never thought that my understanding of the pain in that kind of situation will give justice and freedom in the life of another person.

I had another case na naging guardian ako ng ward na may amnesia. I really cared for her. I visited her in the mental hospital from time to time until she was able to trust me to reveal some of the memories she already remembered. Alam ko yung hirap na magka amnesia, pero mas mahirap yung kanya kasi sa kanya total amnesia. But I did not give up on her, I made her feel na kahit wala siyang matandaang pamilya sa Pilipinas, na she has friend and family in me. Until she was able to remember her true identity, her real name and her province. Finally, there is hope.

My job has truly served some purpose to my pain. In 2018, a dream of my life came true. I was able to invest to have a space na para sa akin. I now have a condominium. I partly blamed my abuse na we had to co-live with extended family dahil wala kami sariling bahay. I also did well in law school.

I gave up my addiction with downers. It did not serve any good thing to me. The only things I was not able to give up were my excessive drinking and smoking.

But another bad coping mechanism was developed. When I broke up with my long time boyfriend, I found myself not valuing my body. I did casual sex, no strings attached relationship with some men.

I thought I was already recovered in 2018. I thought trauma was no longer ruling my life until I faced turn around events in 2019.

January 2019, I learned that my grandfather, my abuser, was terminally ill. He was suffering from cancer. Again, I was forced to face my reality and felt every single pain from my past. I was thorned between distancing myself from my family or be with them in this difficult time. But I did not know what should I feel with the situation.

February 2019, it was his birth month. My family asked me if I could show up and at least give him love during the last few days of his life.

On his last birthday, February 19, 2019, I went to work and somehow decided not to show up. But I cannot function that time, so I decided to go home. I first went to my condominium to cry out all my anger away. I told myself that such was the time that I should face him and forgive him. However, when I went home, di na siya makausap nang maayos. Noong nakita niya ako, sabi niya sa akin indirectly, na magpatawaran at magmahalan.

Hindi ko alam ano mararamdaman ng mga oras na yun. Ilang oras palang nakakalipas, nag seizure siya at nawalan ng pulse. Nag iiyakan lahat sa kwarto, ako nakaupo lang sa kama. Nung nirerevive siya, at dumilat siyang muli, ako ang una niyang nakita. May luhang pumatak sa kanyang mata habang nakatitig sa akin. Tumakbo ako sa banyo at doon ako humagulgol ng iyak. Hindi ko alam anong emosyon ang nananaig, galit, pagmamahal, pag sisisi, sakit, lungkot, pang hihinayang.

March 05, 2019, he finally left the world. Di ko maintindihan kung bakit ako naging sobrang abala sa burol niya. Noong namatay siya galit parin ako pero lahat ginagawa ko para maging maganda yung kanyang burol. Walang luha at pag iyak ako noong burol niya at libing. Pero pagkatapos noon, para akong hindi makabalik sa normal na ako. Di ko alam kung nagluluksa ako pero kasabay noon pagbalik lahat ng masakit na ala-ala. Nilulong ko sarili ko muli sa pag inom ng alak. Hindi nanaman ako muli makatulog tuwing gabi na walang alak sa katawan.

May 2019, noong mga panahong akala ko nagagawa ko na muling makabalik sa normal, may nangyaring masama ulit sa akin. A person whom I treated as a close friend took excessive advantage over me. He attemptedly raped me and he tried to commit suicide in front of me. Once again, I felt defenseless. I had anxiety knowing the background of his work and the syndicate he works with. All my past trauma surfaced when I was again placed in the same scenario. Because of my fear, I let myself to be used and manipulated by him.

In June 2019, I became close with someone. He was my boss and I always admire him. I was full of fear during those times. One time when we were both drunk, I intended to be with him and not to be dropped at my condominium because I know that this syndicate person was stalking me. I was afraid of my wellbeing and I honestly wanted to escape from his manipulation.

I never thought that this person, my boss, ang mapagkakatiwalaan ko. I had no friend that time who knows the misery I was in. I enjoyed his company and he became the ray of sunlight in my seemingly dark situation. I remember the day na sinabi niya sa akin na mahal niya ako, sabi ko sa kanya wag niya akong mahalin dahil magulo akong tao, magulo buhay ko. I suddenly burst out all my past to him inside his car. I told him how miserable my life is. But he was stubborn, he still continued to love me despite of my dark past. I also fell in love with him until the time we both decided to have a baby. It was fast. But all I saw that time ay ito na yung pagbabago ng buhay ko na inaantay ko. I depended on him sa maraming bagay.

When I learned I was pregnant, I suddenly felt fear. Yung takot na baka mangyare sa baby ko lahat ng pinag daanan ko. Pero nasa flight ako and I was reading a news paper, nabasa ko yung message sa our daily bread regarding fear and the Lord's promises.

Few weeks passed, my pregnancy became toxic. I had bleeding and attempted miscarriage. My partner was with me during all those times. He made us his priority and took care of me which I all took for granted because of one unsettled issue from my past which suddenly surfaced.

I was informed that the professor who harassed me in college was applying for work in the Department. I was in extreme panic. I asked may partner for a favor na harangan yung application niya. But he seems negative with the idea. I became angry with him. Lumabas lahat ng galit ko sa mundo. Galit ko sa injustices, and I questioned bakit hinahayaan ko nalang mamuhay ng normal lahat ng sumira sa akin. Bakit kailangan kong ingatan reputasyon ng mga tao. Bakit kailangang ako yung mag suffer habang sila normal lang. Pagod na ako maging mabuti sa mga tao.

Because of that anger, I found myself again in a depressive state. Again, I lost my reality. I made a major conflict between me and my partner. I had issues with him because I need to adjust for his image and reputation. I know di ako sa kanya galit, pero galit ako sa sitwasyon. Imagine all my life, I needed to keep myself silent just to keep the reputation of people. I deprived myself of justice I deserve, just to protect the image and reputation of people. And there I was again, protecting my partner's image and reputation. Although I understand him and I know keeping the identity of my child's father is the best thing we could do, pero yung anger ko from my past was being triggered by it. I was only in that point na pagod na ako. Pagod na akong magtago. Pagod na akong mag protekta sa mga tao. I lost my love because of anger. I lost my self control.

November 2019, I had a session with a psychologist. He asked me what is my problem. I told him, wala po akong na process na problema. Sunod sunod yung mga nangyare sa akin mula January and wala akong na process na emotion. Sabay sabay pa problema.

November 30, 2019, umiiyak ako while nasa Team Building ng office. Wala na akong mapagkuhanan ng pera, nag pull out yung tenants ko sa condo. I no longer know how I will handle everything at once.

First day of December, I went to a church service in Manila. Ang message is sa Matthew 6 about surrendering worries to the Lord.

" But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and ALL these things WILL BE GIVEN to you as well. "

Matthew 6:33

This striked into my heart. However, the following days were not easy. Nasanay ako na kaya ko ang sarili ko and that I can fix things by my own. I tried fixing all my problems only to find myself extremely exhausted with no positive result.

December 19, 2019, I was alone in my condominium crying in agony for hours, begging the Lord if he really loves me why I should experience all these things. I am crying na pagod na pagod na ako. An ate, a friend, suddenly called me. She wanted to pray for me. In her prayers, she was asking God to give me rest, to give my heart peace and rest and that I may experience God's perfect love and peace.

December 20, 2019, I had a pre-term labor because of physical tiredness from work and emotional stress. I though I would lose my baby. The doctor recommended complete bed rest.

I never thought that total resting is one of the most difficult things to do because sometimes it means taking down your pride and staying still and surrendering your long list of task to do to God. It is acknowledging that although you know you can be self-sufficient, God wants you to go to His embrace, in His resting place.

During my bed rest, I decided to just dwell in prayer and in reading the bible. Since my baby loves hearing me sing when he is awake, one song I love to sing to him is the lullaby Yes Jesus loves me. One time I was singing that song and I cried tears of joy knowing that Jesus loves me and that I can trust in His unfailing love. It also made me realize that His love is not only for me but for all and that I should be a vessel of His love. One by one, I released forgiveness. I forgave my abusers, my family, the situations I've been through. I forgave my partner for not being able to understand me and be there with me when I needed him most. I forgave myself too.

During rest I learned to put all my worries to God. One by one, I see how God works. My tenants returned and they paid their rents. Most of all, I felt peace and love in my heart.

With the father of my child, I was ready to just let him go. But one day, I woke up from a dream and I felt in my dream how heavy his problems are. The Lord made me feel this so I started praying for him everyday and sometimes, more than once per day. When I felt hopeless in our situation, I read a quote "love never gives up." While reading the bible, God impressed me that when you love, it is not about what you need, what you want. When you love, it is always what is best for the person you love. I know that only God's love is best for all and so I surrendered everything to Him. I remain hopeful that we will still be ok for the sake of our child. I believe in God's love for us.

It did not stop there. When I started surrendering to God all my worries, miracles start to happen. First with my tenants. Second, with the result of his exam.

I felt lacking for my child. I felt anxious from the very beginning of my pregnancy because of my dark past. But the Lord did not leave not forsake me. Everything that has happened was just in preparation of what is yet to come.

While resting in God's love, I am slowly finding the purpose of all the problems and worries, and it is for God to reveal His glory in seemingly dead situations.

I never thought that having a true change and breakthrough could be evident in my physical looks. Yesterday, a friend told me that I look different these past few days. He told me I look better and beautiful. It is not because of my face, but because he can see that I am putting myself above my worries. It is not just me above my worries, but it is God above my worries, above my traumas, above my fears, above my problems, above my broken relationships, above my hopes, and above my desires.

It is true, when you seek God first, he will give all the things you need at the right time in the right season.

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the-small-cimarron-paparazzi · 6 years

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i choose to embrace it

Everything is just coming together too neatly.

Let’s try to piece together how the human side of the boxes situation might be like.

Basically, we know that at the start of Carolia Arc Big Cimarron had (just got?) the Wind box

"In this world, four objects exist that are not to be tampered with under any circumstances," said Conrad. "The humans, and the humans of the superpower Shimaron at that, have managed to bring one of those objects under their control. The name of the box is 'the End of the Wind.' If it remains in their hands, they will open it sooner or later."

(quoting BT, c1, n5)

and was sneaking into Shinma with Wincott’s Poison to try to get control of its key. (and yes, they knew it was Con, though they [accidentally? intentionally?] cut off Con’s arm)

The Wincott’s poison they got from Flynn, offering her a deal:

“A secret messenger from Big Shimaron came with a proposition. The Wincott poison is supposed to be in the recesses of the Gilbit Estate. They wanted that terribly. Furthermore, they were in a great hurry. It is the only substance in the world that will let one control another at will. If a body is afflicted by that poison, it will become a puppet of the descendants of the Wincotts. Whether it’s alive or not. I gave them that poison. In exchange for the lives of the Calorian soldiers.”

(BT, c8, n6)

In the same chapter we hear from Hube that Small Cimarron has put their hands on another one, the Earth Box, having got it via the rotten Luis Biron (from novel 4) and ultimately from Suverera, before which the royals in Suverera tried to open it with Hube’s left eye, but failed.

Again in the same chapter Hube speaks of how the Earth Box was originally buried in Suverera’s soil, near the parts of the MA flute (from novel 3), and either because of the box or flute that part of Suverera harbored houseki of strange property (only mentioning maseki won’t do this not how normal houseki would do?), and the removal of box followed by flute made the place stop turning out these houseki.

Although the esoteric stones certainly brought them immense fortune, that was simply a byproduct. Svelera wasn’t mining for stones; they were looking for something much more terrible in the places where many esoteric stones were.

[...]

Yes, they were looking for a box.

[...]

While Svelera was digging for esoteric stones, they finally dug that up. Deep, deep within the rock formation, where only emaciated women and children can reach, in a place like a labyrinth.

And near that place, the treasure of the demons, the Demon Flute, was sealed. As soon as they discovered the box and brought it out of the esoteric stone pit, I had my acquaintance inconspicuously sneak down there and secure the Demon Flute. The power slowly leaking out of the box over hundreds of years may have slowly changed the surrounding bedrock into esoteric stone. Or, the part of the earth fighting against the power of the Demon Flute may have resulted in its quality being changed. At any rate, once the two objects were removed, for some reason esoteric stones completely stopped appearing and the Sveleran citizens lost their jobs.

(BT, c8, n6)

he also said Suverera’s king acted strange mining those houseki (as the cover of looking for the box)

At that time, the kingdom of Svelera had put much effort into the procurement of their esoteric stones for the betterment of the kingdom and many of the unemployed citizens began to work in the mines.

[....]

Anyway, it is no exaggeration that there was something abnormal with the mining of esoteric stones in Svelera. No matter how little rain fell or if the drinking water dried up, at the bare minimum they had to raise the crops for the next year’s seeds. However, the king of Svelera did not protect the farmland or the farmers and continued to do nothing but dig up esoteric stones. If he wanted to dig, he should have at least dug a well. It was as if the finances for the next year were in some way guaranteed.

(BT, c8, n6)

Skipping forward into the story, from Seisa Arc we know this about Seisakoku’s houseki via Sara:

Do you know what power this country has? Manpower and houseki in abundance

(BT, c7, n11)

there being also:

On the other hand, the pale pink ring Saralegui put on my finger has not budged at all, acting like a normal stone. Apparently it’s a precious houseki that can only be mined in Seisakoku, and yet it hasn’t reacted in the slightest.

(BT, c11, n12) though I mildly suspect this can be just a metaphor about Sara

And we know that the Fire Box has been in Seisa for

After staying in the same country for seventy years, I know a lot more about this country than the kids born here.

(BT, c3, n12, not remembering where to find other sources I turned to the timeline of Hazel)

Although to be honest we don’t know what the houseki relevant circumstance in Seisa had been like before this, but this time span is long enough to cover the whole experience with Seisakoku of Sara +Yel+ Probably Alazon.

Also Gilbert might have been able to tell.....? randomly off topic

Back to Suverera c8n6, Hube talks about how

Naturally, the king of Svelera did not know the significance of the box nor the power it had.

[...]

Since Svelera did not have the key – the left eyeball of a certain bloodline – and could not open the lid, they sold it to a large country.

even if they had the right idea of where to look for it and some idea of possibility of opening it with the left eye of whom.

So did they originally came to know about this box all by their own?

(OR: Another possibility- them selling it was not about reasons above but failure in opening it lead to practical worries about having neglected about finances.)

And did Small Cimarron find out about this Earth Box after it was put out to be sold by Suverera or did something else entirely just happen here?

Although certitude regarding this might never be achieved, but we know that in chapter 10, novel 6, Maxine was saying:

「ところで諸君、労働に従事する日々とはいえ、現在この小シマロンを始め、シマロン両国を宗主とする大陸全域が、魔族との聖戦に向けて一丸となっていることはお聞き及びだろう。その一翼を担う諸君にも、非常に関わりのある朗報がある」

But gone are your days of repetitive manual labor! No doubt the whispers have already spread to you; here and now starting with Small Cimarron, this continent with the Cimarrons as its countries’ suzerains, is coming together to wage our holy war against the mazokus. This is a much relevant and joyful news for you, who are after all going to undertake a part in this feat.

and answering Yuuri’s question about if the boxes are in fact things fairly easy to come by, Flynn was saying:

“It’s not easy.”

Flynn had a look on her face that looked like she was going to start chewing on her thumb’s fingernail.

“Numerous countries have been competing and searching for them for decades. They weren’t quickly found. But for them to fall into people’s possession one after another… I thought only Big Shimaron had a box and key.”

(BT, c10, n6)

which means something must had changed between the current situation and that of the last decades (or more innocently it can be just the miracle of perseverance but anyways I’m asking↓).

So this added to Maxine’s talk about how this new (yet-to-happen-or-be-stopped) war the humans were planning to do with mazoku was engineered by Small Cimarron,

Would this something be SARALEGUI?

Though Sara claimed he didn’t remember anything from his early years in Seisa

“But Saralegui, why didn’t you mention to me that you were born in Seisakoku? Not only that, back when we were in Shou Shimaron, didn’t you say that be it your country or yourself, this is your first time contacting Seisakoku?”

This means that throughout that long journey before, he was always lying to me.

“Yuuri, I never lied to you. That’s because all that happened when I was young, so I don’t have any recollection of it myself.”

(BT, c7, n11)

but for one thing he was fluent enough in Seisa language to write up a treaty for both Seisa (able to read it and thus held possibility of exploiting flaws?) and Shinma to sign. (or it can always be forgotten and re-learnt later in life but anyways I mean to say↓)

Then there were mentions of the shinzoku twins-lords corresponding after Saralegui became king in Small Cimarron

「だからって、十三年間一度も連絡取らないはずはないだろう。双子の兄弟がさ、一方は父親の国の王子様で、一方は母親の国の王子様だぞ？国交が無かったのは本当だとしても、白鳩の一羽くらい飛ばすだろう」 Even if you say so, it’s hard for me to believe you never had any contact throughout these whole 13 years, the pair of you twins being the princes of your father’s and your mother’s countries. Even if you didn’t have an alliance, do you expect us to believe there wasn’t even a single letter?

「飛ばしたよ。わたしが即位してからだけど」 We did write letters. But that was after I became king.

(c7, n11)

Also in the catacombs he was showing signs of some knowledge about (at least this part of) Seisa

“Although I heard that there are ruins underground, I never thought they would be this large in scale.”

After walking for around an hour, Saralegui seems to sigh with emotion. In contrast to me now, his condition is much better than it was a while ago.

(BT, c10, n12)

Which leads to the conclusion of this post (finally), that

If he had any impression about the circumstances of houseki yield in Seisa and a legend of miracle box, or if anything along the lines was brought up in any casual (?) correspondence with Yel,

→having the advantage of insight about a country with plenty of houseki (Seisa) and experiencing the lack of it (houseki being rare and valuable at opening of c8, n3) in the world outside Seisa

→Saralegui might be able to realize what the Suverera’s houseki mines really mean (or he might be guessing like us everyone else and happening to come to the same conclusion as marumafan-san did in here)

and this could lead to him discovering about the key to finding boxes. or just the one box to par and panic and affect Big Cimarron.

Sara being Sara, it seems legit if he just found out about the Suverera box and sold the royal family a lie making them locate and extract it only to inevitably let go of it for Small Cimarron to get.

(Although he actually seemed to not know if the arm would work...or can it be intentionally done so only to wreck Carolia and punish Flynn? Then, how about his way of pinpointing where the soushu forces strike? Was it in fact a successful opening of Earth box because things more or less went his way?)

So the last thing is, if we remember Guenter said in novel 1 that Yuu-chan was summoned back to the other world earlier than planned because Humans were making a move (it must be somewhere in n1 but I don’t seem to kind the source)

the situation named Saralegui might very likely be the reason everything STARTED TO HAPPEN

And though it’s not the point of this post but since we’ve got this far there’s no need in holding back before asking:

Are we really not having the slightest chance of Shinou being all benign (+only YANDERE about Daikenja or whatever old acquaintances) and really arranging all things trying to save the day?

(OR: Another possibility- Shinou somehow made Saralegui happen and that lead to everything else.)

why it is suddenly Shinou or Sara I somehow want to be able to love them both

MY GOD THAT WAS HARD FOR MY STARVED BRAIN TO SORT OUT

AS SOMEONE ORIGINAL ONLY CONCERNED ABOUT SARA’S PERSONAL HISTORY AND CHANGES IN STATE OF MIND I’VE REALLY COME VERY FAR

At the VERY end I’d like to quote a certain Professor Quirrell from chapter 26 of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

"Mr. Potter, one of the requisites for becoming a powerful wizard is an excellent memory. The key to a puzzle is often something you read twenty years ago in an old scroll, or a peculiar ring you saw on the finger of a man you met only once. I mention this to explain how I managed to remember this item, and the placard attached to it, after meeting you a good deal later."

Because he is probably very right.

#too long #Big and Small Cimarrons might not be what I expected #wonder if Berard IV would have made different decision because right now it looks like Berard II decides what happens in Big Cimarron #also i guess Maxine slipped on important info in that c10n6 #or did he do it on purpose #only realizing now it's not only Sara but all these villains have lines with too many five-dollar words #somehow maruMA is steadily reading more like a mystery novel #but again aren't all novels ultimately mystery novels?#and bleeping Beethoven I'm starting to wonder if in the BC library the files about the Wellers were read by Conrad or someone else #I SALUTE ANYONE WHO HAS THE GREAT PATIENCE READING ALL THIS #please negate me with max ammo #because the joy lies in the ride before sensei and only sensei tells us the real destination #kyou kara maou

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undermoonlitsky · 6 years

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Because it’s November, I wanna drop my favorite story I’ve ever written because it’s still relevant.

Mockingbirds

The day was as it should be; quiet and bright, but still cold and restless. Multicolored leaves littered the streets, creating a scene any artist would relish in. Mockingbirds were still singing in the trees. The air tasted similar to that of syrup and smelt of freshly cut wood. The sun hung low in the day, despite still being fairly early. The clouds were swollen with rain, and hung over houses threatening to burst. Once Anne arrived at the house, she was flooded with memories from her childhood. Things like Christmas and movie nights, reminded her of the happy childhood she was given. The door opened before she even knocked, and before she could utter a word she was hit by the force of three long awaited hugs. Her two sisters and even her older brother met her at door. Their screams momentarily deafened her. That only lasted for a second before they began looking behind her. “Where is he?” Belle, the youngest, and most kind and optimistic of the children, inquired. “You said he was cute.” Eve, the eldest and most categorizing of the bunch, strained her neck to catch what her little sister brought with her. “I want to make sure he’s good enough,” Gabe the only boy among the few, and Anne’s twin. Anne felt her heart quiver with the breeze, and she smiled in a nervous fashion, “He went out to get the butter that Ma needed.” She didn’t know how to tell them, so she ignored the subject, “Are you guys going to let me in?” “Oh, Anne, we’ve missed you.” Behind the offspring, came the creator. Jezebel, their mother was a stout and round mother of the four. She had ruled the house with a heavy, but very lenient hand. She usually meant well, and there were no harsh words anyone could say about her. Next came her father, Cain, looking like most fathers do; tired with a splash of love in his eyes. He was stronger than anyone of them, but sometimes weak in spirit. Anne ran into embrace the two, hoping they had forgotten. Of course, they didn’t “Where’s this boy of yours.” Ma said. “He’s not hiding, is he?” Dad said. “He went out to get that butter you needed, Ma.” “What a sweet kid. Now come on, help me cook. You’re the best cook out of all of them.” The kitchen was modest, as was their life. They were humble people, with kind upbringings. They meant well, and no one had many harsh words about them. They spent their days going to church, helping out at the schools, feeding the homeless, and whatever they had time for. They finished the food relatively fast, and were finished setting the table, before the butter had arrived. Belle had complained about the Christmas music. Eve ate the cranberry sauce, even though Ma said she wasn’t allowed. Gabe and Dad watched the food more than they watched the game. It all seemed perfect. When the doorbell rang, Anne’s heart dropped. She had almost forgotten about him, but she didn’t forget to run. She got to the door, a moment before the rest of them did. Before they could see him. Maybe, she thought, maybe this wouldn’t be so tragic. Maybe there was hope for him. Tobias looked up at the door innocently. He held the butter in his hands like it was a gift to Jesus himself. She looked at him, how naive she had been. He looked so different from them. How had she not seen it before. Not just his pale skin, but his dopey smile, his inability to fake anything, his voice, his actions. No, they would not accept him. He seemed to notice this in her face, “They don’t know.” “I didn’t think it would be that bad,” The door swings open without another word. And there’s no more hiding. At this moment Anne remembers all the bad things that happened in this house; the fighting, the ridicule and embarrassment, unappreciation, Christmas and Thanksgiving. She remembered the fear, the same fear she’s feeling now. She looks up into their eyes. How happy they had been moments ago. Anne realized then that it was fake. All of it, their enthusiasm to meet him, their happiness for her, and mostly the open arms they were going to greet him with. What a charade they had pulled. “This is Tobias,” she looked back at him, and saw the yearning for acceptance in his eyes. “Oh.” Belle, was already sizing him up. Without a word, she imagined what type of person he was. Behind her, Gabe grunted, as if to show dominance. “Why don’t you come inside,” It was becoming clear how this night would go. Eve had already run in to tell Cain and Jezebel the “news”. She came back only to tell us that dinner was on the table, and it was time to eat. Tobias made a joke about butter, but no one laughed, not even him. Anne clenched his hand, hoping to give and receive support. Ma dropped her spoon, and raised her hand to her mouth. Dad dropped his head, and lowered his expectations. Only Ma tried to feign her disappointment, “You must be one who, uh, stole Anne’s heart.” “Yes, it’s so nice to meet you Mrs.Odieux” His hand reaches out to shake hers, but she passes him, pretending not to notice him, and puts down the mashed potatoes. They avoided him like a deadly disease. Like they would combust into flames if they touched him. The grace was said, but instead of the jolly, hand holding family, they became solemn and isolated. The first question fell out of Eve’s mouth, “Where did you meet Anne?” He hesitated, surprised someone was talking to him, “Well, when I used to work at our local coffee shop, she-” “So, you don’t have a real job?” Cain feigned innocence. “Here we go,” Anne muttered. “Well, at the time, I guess not, but now, I’m working full time at a law firm.” “So, you’re a lawyer?” Gabe took his turn up to bat. “Yes” “I hate lawyers.” Dad bluntly said “Dad!” “What Anne? They are liars and money hungry. They have no respect for-” “With all due respect sir, I am a defender of innocents. I am a defender of those who want to be innocent. I do it not for the money, but the freedom of others.” “Don’t forget murderers,” Jezebel nodded, not looking at anyone, “You also defend murderers.” There was a moment of silence, as if they had given up. No, as if Anne had given up. Tobias still had hope. The next round started with Belle, “So, how many girls have you dated?” “Belle, you’ve got to be kidding me!” “It’s okay, in my high school life until now, I’ve dated six girls.” “And were any of them…?” “Black? No.” Ma gasps a little. “It’s not a dirty word, Ma.” Anne can barely eat. She wants to leave, go home with him, and never return. And finally, Gabe breaks the wall, “What are your intentions with my sister?” Everyone puts down their forks to hear Tobias’ answer. Anne almost chokes, and begins drinking water as a result. “I plan to marry her.” Ma cried. Belle prayed. Gabe walked away. Eve gasped. Dad yelled. Anne choked. Tobias beamed with confidence. “Not if I have any say!” Cain jumped from the table. “Why?!” Tobias proceeded to do the same thing. “Because... Because…” “Because I’m white? What if I was black? Then would there be a problem?” “No! If you were any other race, there wouldn’t be an issue!” Finally, the truth. “Dad!” Anne too rose from the table, “That’s enough. All of you.” “Listen here, and listen well. You will get out of my house-” “Dad!” “You will never see my daughter again. You will no longer put these demonic thoughts in her head-” “I’m putting demonic thoughts in her head? Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re denying me the chance at anything, because of what my ancestors did?” “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” At this point Gabe had returned. “You will be no better,” Belle had stopped praying. “You could never be good enough,” Eve had come out of shock. “You will ruin her,” Ma had stopped crying. “Tobias?” Anne had stopped caring what they thought, “Let’s go.” “This isn’t right you know!” And Tobias had given up hope. “Don’t bother coming back for Christmas!” Anne didn’t know who yelled it. They all sounded like one body now. Snuffing out light and crushing hope. They had not meant well, and they had many harsh words to say. They saw the world through clouded eyes, and refused to hear clearly. They spoke with death kissed tongues and needle infested voices. Their eyes no longer lit up with joy. No, they had not meant well.

Sorry it’s so long, have a nice day

#long #story #november #short story #racism #no such thing as reverse racism #yeet #have a great day #how are you #read #long reads #long story #please read #hi

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theharellan · 6 years

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Prying Open the Past

repost of a thread written on @theshirallen‘s old blog, in ian and solas’s modern thedas verse. started as an ask that escalated into solas telling ian about his status as fen’harel. mostly complete, updates (if any) will be posted in the thread tag.

“Are all you so secretive about your name?”

Ian pouts from where he reclines, head pillowed against Solas’s thigh. “Vher wouldn’t tell me either.” Nor had an internet search or the university’s website. A curious thing indeed.

“We are an unusual group, if you have not noticed. Does it bother you?”

“A little.” He admits, a small shrug pulling into his shoulders. “Not enough to matter. I just…”

He doesn’t do well with secrets. They frighten him, make him certain there is something dangerous lurking behind them. He worries over them far more than they usually merit, and even as he tells himself that it doesn’t matter, his teeth dig into his cheek as he frets about why it might.

“I…”

He brushes his fingers absently through Ian’s hair, tousling the curls that spring right back into place when he is through. His brow wrinkles, as a choice passes over him. “I am sorry. It was wrong of me to keep it from you as long as I have, though it may take some explaining.”

“No, don’t–don’t. It’s–it’s okay.”

He is hasty in his assurances, face flushing as he worries that he’s pushed too quickly. “It’s not…you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just…just…get worried, is all. And I’m going to do that anyway, because it’s the thing I do best. It’s okay. Really.”

“I know.” But the full truth must be explained if this is to last, and with every passing day he becomes more convinced that is what he wants.

“You are not forcing me to do anything. Remember, ma vhenan, I am nothing if not stubborn.” In spite of his doubts, a smile breaks across his face as he laughs at his own expense. “There are photo albums– in a drawer in the coffee table–” He nods towards it. “Perhaps we should start there.”

“O-okay.” He isn’t certain, really, but Solas’s fingers are gentle in his hair, and he smiles in that way that never fails to feel like calm. Ian waits until Solas releases him, until the fingers that toy with his curls lift away, before he sits up. He doesn’t go far, leaning only so much as is needed to reach the indicated drawer, fingers never quite touching it as he pulls it open with his magic.

“These?” Ian asks, palm gesturing upwards to lift them and bring them closer. Despite the guilt that stirs yet within him, curiosity blooms as well. He shifts, closing the distance between himself and his boyfriend, questions formulating that his isn’t quite ready to give voice.

Magic manipulates what hands are too tired to do themselves. He watches as Ian pulls forth an assortment of albums. Solas catches them, and pulls the newest one into his lap. He flips it open, and begins with what is familiar, hoping to ease Ian into the unknown. These pages he does not linger on, but allows them to pass slow enough that they both have an instant to take them in. Photos of Miolvun shopping with a dog sitting obediently in their purse, of those he calls family sharing a meal together, and photographs of Ian, the frame intimate, though innocent. He leans over to plant a kiss upon Ian’s brow while he still has the chance.

As he goes farther back, many of the same faces remain, but their costumes change. “I forgot I had that jacket,” he mutters as he comes across one of himself in a denim jacket, complete with jeans. His pace slows, and he pauses upon an old-fashioned selfie of himself and Vher, his nose bloodied, but both their lips parted in a wide smile as some kind, faceless third party holds a protest sign over their heads. It read: Dirthara-ma, a curse chanted for a cause that had long since been solved.

By now his point may beginning to sink in. The years between now and then grow longer by the day, but the faces are as young as ever. Details change, of course. He remembers when Miolvun’s hair was so long its very existence rebelled against the concept of gravity. He looks upon the memories of fondness, despite the faint anxiety that twists in his gut.

His hand stills over the next photo album, that is beginning to show its age. The binding is worn, bent from too much time spent reminiscing. “Shall I go on?” he asks in a quiet voice, looking at Ian from the corner of his eye to gauge his feelings.

The kiss at his brow is quick and gentle, and he leans into it without lifting his eyes, absorbed in a story as only photographs can tell it. Heat flushes his face at his own photos–it always does, it’s always strange to see himself the way Solas looks at him–but it fades as his attentions are drawn to the rest of the pictures.

His hand reaches over to land atop Solas’s, stopping him from turning the page too quickly. Denim on denim–not much unlike the styles he’s seen in his mother’s collection. His father had worn a very similar jacket, once. Around the time Ian was born, or maybe a little before. Ian pulls his fingers back, thumbnail catching between his teeth as he tries to think, to process what he’s seeing. Time isn’t passing–or rather, it is, but only around the center of the pictures. Solas, his friends, his family–it flows around them, demonstrated in the setting, their clothes and the developed film.

When Solas reaches for the next album, Ian looks up. He isn’t certain what his face is doing–there’s something knotted in his chest and he can feel a pinch at his brow–but he’s more concerned with Solas’s expression. There’s tension in his profile, though he makes no show of it.

“How–um. How far back do–do they go?”

It’s the wrong question. Well, it isn’t, but it’s not quite what he wants to ask. What he wants to ask is…something bigger. Something more frightening. Something he isn’t certain he can give voice to.

“Farther than most photo albums would for a man my age, as I’m sure you’ve noticed,” he mutters. Solas can feel Ian’s eyes upon him, and senses the trepidation. He cannot bring himself to look, to see dread in Ian’s eyes, knowing he put it there, would– no. He cannot even bring himself to think of the image. Pale fingers grip the album in his hands, clinging to the familiar. “I’m showing this to you,” he begins as he pries open the cover, revealing photographs as worn as the album they are kept in. “Only so that you do not… laugh at what I am about to tell you. Forgive me if it is overwhelming, if there is a better way to tell anyone this I haven’t discovered it myself.”

Words stick in his throat, and his breathing becomes more deliberate than before. As he searches for an explanation, he flips through photos that fade to black and white print. Suddenly, he has hair, though not much. It is shorn short, almost military in style, even if the closest he wears to a uniform is an armband with a symbol that bears a faint likeness to the stake Andraste was burnt upon. He posed with a qunari woman, long since passed, whose massive arm was gentle around his shoulders. In spite of his nervousness, he smiles at the reminder of her broad grin.

“I awoke not long after the turn of the last century.” He comes to older photos, back when his hair still grew wild around his shoulders. In these photos, he is alone. There are fewer (he remembers how cumbersome cameras were) and in places of photographs are sketches of ruins, people, and, in one instance, a prison cell. “I was joined shortly thereafter by those I call family, though I confess I have no blood relation with any. Not that I have pretended to.” Though Miolvun is a sibling to him, it would take a great deal of trickery to convince anyone they were cut from the same cloth.

Solas is silent for a long moment, eyes fixed upon his memories, unable to deny the anxiety that they will ruin his chance to make more. He searches for a way to further his story, and instead of an answer, he finds a question:

“What tales have you heard of uthenera?”

He doesn’t speak right away–couldn’t, even if he wanted to interrupt. He waits, eyes traveling attentively over each new photograph as his ears cant forward as though desperate to catch the words of explanation Solas offers.

Ian isn’t certain what precisely he’s afraid of, but something in Solas’s hesitance, something in the careful construction of these sentences and the presentation of the pictures and the deliberate pace of Solas’s breathing has Ian’s throat tightening and his chest burning and his head a little bit fogged. Overwhelming seems an inadequate way to describe the way the world is shifting around him, how thin the air seems and how unsteady his place upon Solas’s couch.

“Last century…” it doesn’t sound like his voice–thin and trembling and distant, though he feels the words find shape against his teeth–and he can’t lift his eyes from the album open against Solas’s lap. Ian has hardly seen a quarter of this century, and…

He sits up, though he doesn’t move too far away. Distance appears between them only where he lifts his cheek from Solas’s shoulder, in all the places required to straighten his posture, bare feet pulling closer as he folds his legs, and he lifts his eyes to search Solas’s face, uncertainty folding the skin between his brows.

“Uthenera? Not–um. Just what…what Mamae used to….” Like most things attributed to Dalish lore, subjects like the the ‘endless dream’ were hardly touched on in formal classes, even those focused on Elvhen history. “I thought it was–was just a story for children.” Uttered almost in a whisper, a weak, confused protest.

Ian’s fingers rise, as though he might brush the heat from his cheeks, or at least conceal it. Considering uthenera a children’s tale had felt perfectly sensible this morning, but as he glances back down at the photo album he feels foolish. His breath shakes on his inhale, and his fingers curl, and his thumbnail finds its way back between his teeth, paint chipping against his bite. “How–um…How long had you been–?”

“They are more than stories.” Though he frowns at the reminder. “A fact that is slowly being accepted, though not as quickly as I had hoped.” It would be nice, he thinks, to live openly. For his past to not be something someone had to be trusted with. Solas feels Ian’s absence keenly, as much as he tries not to notice him pull away. It is only an inch, an adjustment that might have meant nothing had they been curled up together watching a movie, but now? Each idle movement can speak novels, no matter how much he tells himself not to read into Ian’s tics.

Ian’s question is half-asked, but Solas can imagine its conclusion. He snorts, though it is a humourless noise. “It will take me time to do the math, suffice to say millennia had passed since I laid my head down to sleep.” His hands left idle, they begin to flip through the photos again, reflecting on the many lives he had lived since he had awoken, wondering how most people settled for just one. “When I fell asleep elves had an empire, and now–?” He shakes his head. “I was angry when I awoke. Angry that facts had become stories, that people with the same faces as I were looked upon with mistrust. Eventually, that anger became purpose, it’s what led me here.”

He stops himself, breathing in before his explanations keep him from what must be said.

“But you asked about my name. My last name is an invention, created to satisfy modern standards of what makes a name, and Solas…” He pauses, fingers curling around the worn edge of the album. “I was not always known as Solas– although, it is my name.” A quick addition, almost stumbling, remembering the accusations of lying from the beginning. “A name of my choosing.”

“Oh.” He says around his thumbnail, hardly hearing himself. “Um. Wow.”

Ian looks down, to the mussed fabric of his dress, and he smooths the wrinkles there where it folds over his bent knees like he’s trying to clear a stain. The stitching stands out stark in texture against his palm, and he repeats the motion, glad of something physical to feel while his mind spins. When he moves again, it is to trace the print of the pattern, index curling along a traveling string of tiny flowers. “I–I wouldn’t have guessed. I mean–” That’s stupid. He’s stupid, and– “I–um. It fits you. Your name, I mean. I like it. I always have.”

He is still looking down, but from the corner of his eye he watches as Solas’s hands curl around the edges of the old albums, the way color flees his knuckles.

“Um. That–that was a lot. To–to share with someone. Are you–” Everything he’s trying to say is tripping over everything else he’s trying to say, and he has to stop, to breathe in and out, and begin the sentence again. “Are you okay?”

He snorts at the quiet exclamation, the weak laughter curdles the fear in his stomach. ‘Wow’ could mean so many things: disbelief, disgust, perhaps even wonder, though he dares not guess. Not while Ian’s hands idle over his dress, anxiously picking at patterns that Solas cannot see. He tears his eyes from the worrying before he can pick apart what each movement means.

“Thank you,” he mutters. The compliment is unexpected, and he cannot accept it as graciously as he wished. Of all the things he feared about this conversation, however, the revelation that he was not born with this name was not among them. As the decades passed, people had become more open to the idea of names not always being what you were born with.

Yet more unexpected than the compliment is the question that follows it. His gaze snaps from the photo album to look at Ian as his stomach does flips. “I–”

Solas has no answer. He has had this conversation, or ones like it, before. He knows how to respond to scorn, or confusion, but concern? For an instant, he almost replies with a platitude, but remembers this conversation is not about hiding. “I am nervous,” he admits. “I care about you, your good opinion… it means something to me. To think I might ruin it by revealing more about myself is more than enough to frighten me.”

A pause, and then: “Are you all right?”

Ian nods, understanding the fear.

“I–no. Yes. I don’t–I don’t know.” He holds up his hand, lifting it free of the patterns he had traced to show Solas the way his fingers tremble. Glancing up, he meets Solas’s gaze for just a moment before he looks back down. “I’m–I’m scared. But–but that’s–I don’t know. It’s me. I’m always a little–a little scared.”

“I wasn’t expecting–when I asked. I don’t know what I expected. It’s just a lot. It’s okay–it’s just. It’s a lot, and I’m scared.” His hand falls, and he curls a fist around the fabric at his lap, mussing his dress all over again. “You don’t have to be nervous. To just be you. I like you. I wanna know about you. I wanna know everything. I just–it’s a lot, and I’m–I get scared. I’m sorry.”

Solas lays his hand upon his lap, palm up, inviting Ian to fill the space between his fingers. It is not an invitation he expects him to take, but to offer nothing– it strikes him as wrong. “It is as much to hear as it is to tell, or so I imagine,” he says softly. Ian’s hands tremble so terribly, it takes effort not to reach out to hold them, but knowing it is he who took the spark of fear in Ian and lit it ablaze, he manages.

“There are not many who would expect it, I imagine anyone who did would be one themself.” Or the sort to expect everything, he thinks. Ian is neither, far more likely to reflect doubt upon himself than others. The anxiety tightening his throat is not enough to stifle the smile that spreads cross his face.

“I like you, too,” he says. It is too mild a phrase for the feeling that Ian inspires. ‘Butterflies,’ as humans call it, that lift his heart with an unsung song. Yet now, with so much said, he worries what another confession will do. “There is more, but if you would rather take some time before any more is said, I understand.”

Solas’s hand almost brushes his knee, laid across his own lap with fingers spread. Ian hesitates, his hand hovering above his lap in uncertain trembles before he reaches, fingers fitting easily where they always had before. It helps, remembering how well their hands fit. That much, at least, is familiar. The same.

He sits there for a minute, or maybe two, and lets his mind stop racing. He breathes, and he leans a little into Solas’s shoulder, and he runs his thumb along Solas’s knuckle until his own shaking begins to settle.

“I think–I think…” His hands have stilled, but his voice has not. Ian swallows, shakes his head. “I think I’m gonna–gonna make some hot chocolate, first.” He pushes himself from the cushions, squeezing Solas’s fingers as he fails to release his hand upon standing. “Do you want some?”

The offer is accepted more tentatively than he had hoped, but he still smiles at the sight of their fingers interlocked. It grounds him in the present, his one of many reasons why living is so grand. He does not hurry for an answer, sighing gladly when he feels Ian’s cheek on his shoulder. What he stopped himself from saying still reverberates inside his skull, waiting for the moment it might fight find its voice: I love you.

But Ian trembles beside him, fear shaking slender shoulders, and he wonders if that might scare him more. If love will calm, or complicate the process.

Ian stirs at his side, disrupting his thoughts, and his eyes move with him as he stands. A gentle laugh passes his lips. “You know I will never pass up that offer,” he says, trying not to focus upon all that Ian doesn’t know about him.

Before he releases Ian’s hand, he lifts it, pressing his lips against his fingers.

“Please, fenor.”

#v; what are we going to do with all this future? ( modern )#i have found a home in him ( ian x solas )#theshirallen #prying open the past ( thread )

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ask-the-kids-from-304 · 4 years

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Juniper’s inspiration

I figured I’d share the song and character that helped inspire Juniper, I also sort of word vomitted her backstory so this entire thing will be under a Read more

Song that inspired Juniper

Hey look Ma, I made it By Panic and the disco

The lyrics of “Hey Look Ma, I Made It” basically covers Brendon Urie’s success and failures in the music industry. The title is self-explanatory as it shows him finally proving to his mother that he has been successful despite the hardships.

Read more at: https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/hey-look-ma-i-made-it-by-panic-at-the-disco/

The song made me think of her in chapters 2 and 3 finally moving on finally accepting it and being happy with her new life and friends.

Character that inspired her

Lydia Deetz from the musical version of Beetlejuice

Loves stuff most girls wouldn't like the idea of ghosts, horror stories and the work of Edgar Alan Poe

Had a better relationship with her mom than her father & losing her mom ruined the bond because he tried forcing the kids to move on without grieving

Loves photography but her true passion is painting

Juniper grew up around Larry but wasn't actually introduced to him until she was 5 and he was 4 when their moms thought it'd be good for them to actually be friends since they were two of the only 4 kids in the complex, unsurprisingly they got along like fish and water bonding over video games and music after Larry introduced her to his genre of choice.

They would go on to become practically inseparable and even bring Chug and Todd around to play expanding the friend circle as they grew up, Juniper was one of Larry's biggest supports after his time in juvenile hall and after his dad vanished but was devastated when he and Lisa left for a year because she was too used to always being around him.

After his return Ashley Campbell was added to the circle of friends, Juniper would happily welcome having a female friend and the group would all do artistic stuff like paint whenever Ash visits. Juniper knew Travis as she grew up, his dad had been looking for a babysitter and her dad signed her up so she also grew up with Travis and knows him.

Juniper developed her crush on Larry when she was 11 and he was 10, luckily he reciprocated her feelings and within a year they were dating and their moms thought it was adorable especially since a year after the kids had met and gotten close they'd told their parents they were married and gonna live in the tree house Jim was gonna build.

Due to them both having long hair they often fussed with each others hair or Juniper would simply brush and play with Larry's making him absolutely melt, Lisa has plenty of photos of them as they grew up together and Charlotte had copies.

When Juniper is 16 (in 1991) while she's spending a snowy day outside with her friends, her boyfriend, and her little brother her mom (who was slowly being consumed by the darkness) went into the bathroom in their apartment and hung herself. Mr. Fuller would be the one to find his wife and have to break the news to his children, Juniper would beg her friend Maple (Larry's ex they'd dated the year he lived with his grandma) to cut her hair and got a beautiful undercut.

When Sal moves in her little brother Carlton met him after he got the basement key from Lisa but introduced the boy to his sister before they'd invite Larry up and introduce the blue haired boy to him, the events of chapter one and 2 happen and the Fuller's move into 304 next to the Cohen's.

Juniper's fully against killing Packerton during the events of chapter 3 so she's relieved when a car crash handles it for them, she'd never liked bologna and her brother was too picky to eat it so they never ate the schools "bologna" when it was served.

Juniper marries Larry shortly after they graduate (in the band au they also marry Ashley) and Juniper moves in with him once he's the only one in the basement.

In the canon that follows the game Juniper's unaware of Larry's suicide because she actually walked Sal back to the house he shared with Neil and Todd and had stayed to set up the bedroom they were giving her and Larry when Sal returned and they got the texts from Larry.

When Ash arrives and doesn't know how to react to seeing Sal so distraught she has to take Juniper away to her own house, Juniper isn't there for the Addison apartment massacre (which costs her both her father and brother) but due to knowing about the cult and always believing Sal she knew it had to be done.

She works to prove his innocence when she's not in the treehouse trying to get Larry to show up, the night Sal's executed she's given his prosthetic since she's his only living family. She gives it to Travis the day she learns Ashley's going to burn down the treehouse, she leaves a suicide note in the group's house on the fridge then right before they lit up the tree she hugged Ash and stole the matches claiming she wanted to say goodbye to him one last time she slits her arms (similar to how ash does in chapter 5) then burns down the treehouse joining Larry in the void and she fights with him and Sal from the spiritual plain against the D.O.G.

In the happy ending and band ending AU the demon is destroyed fully in chapter 2 and after the bologna incident they no longer deal with the cult because they disband due to not having a way to summon the darkness, in 1999 Juniper has a little boy they name James Henry Johnson that's Larry's spitting image.

In the happy ending AU the Johnson's stay in the basement and raise their son there, they also have a daughter a few years later named Charlotte Lisa Johnson

#Misc #OutOfBatteries #Long post

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defenestram · 6 years

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So, I did end up making a Giroux family tree, and then I decided to write some blurbs about the more memorable Giroux family members of recent note. TW: Death, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Guns, a lot of crime, just... some of these folks are rather angry and unsavory and... yeah. @roseywaters look what you made me do.

(Also, I’m stupidly fond of all of these idiots, but I’m especially fond of Percival and would let Mag throw a chair at me.)

Desmond Giroux - March 31 1922 - December 31 1979 - Level 0 - N/A

By all accounts, Desmond knew he should have considered himself lucky. He escaped the war without so much as a blemish on his skin (although that didn’t stop him from waking up screaming in the night with sweat streaking down his brow) and had a beautiful wife and darling children who photographed like a goddamn dream.

In truth, it was never enough. Desmond Giroux grew up knowing that there was something terrible and awful coming for him. He looked for it around corners as a child, and then he thought he heard it in gunfire in the war. He mistook the screams and squeals of his children as calamity, calamity, calamity, and the breathy sighs of his wife as the yawn of a draining throat spilling ruby all over the kitchen tile.

Desmond Giroux grew up with the understanding that his only purpose in life was to die, but death never seemed to come for him when he thought it would. Instead, his friends died in the war. His co-workers in the factory drew back from machines with bloodied fingers and screams of agony.

After so many years of death failing to show up, Desmond grew complacent... and then he grew cocky. Crime offered him more money than factory work ever could. All he had to do was pick people up, keep his eyes low, shut up and drive to wherever his boss wanted to go. He saved up his money -- well, he spent some of it in the bar after long, hard days -- and let it curl like a promise in a can of emptied coffee grounds.

He wanted to take Joséphine and the kids somewhere nice, somewhere better. He wanted to give his son -- so quiet, so sharp-eyed, so clever -- an education that he never had.

He wanted, but he never did. The money sat in the coffee tin in the car because it never felt like enough to Desmond...

But it was enough for the man who walked up to the door of Desmond’s car and tapped on the glass until he rolled the windows down.

Desmond hardly recognized the barrel of the gun pointing directly at his head.

He smiled -- ruefully, but still a smile -- because death had caught up to him at last. After so many years of waiting, it snuck up when he had forgotten entirely.

The son of French immigrants, Desmond (named after a family friend) grew up anxious and afraid of his own shadow. Despite this, he still had a streak of wildness to him which resulted in him reaching above his station to socialize with a woman of fortune. Eloping young, the newly married couple were briefly separated by the war, but managed to make up for that lost time by having many, many children. After coming home from the war, Desmond grew dissatisfied with the hum-drum factory work and longed for something more, and eventually became a driver for a local crime lord. Greed kept Desmond from sharing his money with his family, and his ill-gotten gains were lost entirely when he was gunned down and robbed, leaving his wife a destitute widow with many children to raise on her own.

Joséphine Giroux (Earl) - November 24 1929 - January 26 1985 - Level 0 - N/A

She watched her husband’s coffin as it was shakily lowered to the ground. There were a million things Joséphine could have looked at or thought about. She could have regarded the mockingly beautiful blue sky, or the flutter of her black shawl in the winter’s wind. She could have ruefully pondered the fact that she had once been of high society stock and how she had ruined it all by running away for love, love, love. Instead, she watched the pale, white wooden coffin as it thudded down the six feet pit and came to a final rest, and it was only then that she registered the weight of her oldest son’s hand on her shaking shoulder. Normand always supported her. Normand always helped without being asked. Normand was her angel.

Once a high-society debutante in New Orleans, Joséphine Earl ruined her prospects by running away and eloping with the son of an immigrant with no social standing or monetary gains. She and her husband lived in reduced prospects, but were largely happy and had many children, whom Josephine struggled to raise after the death of her husband. Her eldest and favorite child, Normand, “worked many jobs” to support his mother and family, eventually working afar from France and other locations on “business.” If Joséphine knew what her son was doing, then she played ignorant and took her secrets to the grave.

Normand Giroux - May 25 1956 - November 22 2015 - Level 5 - Teleportation

He teleported back to France in his later years to visit Parnella’s grave and to lay fresh flowers on her grave. The sight of the headstone brought back memories of their younger years, and the haunting whisper of her voice in his ear:

You’re so serious and so quiet. You never talk. Why don’t you talk for a change? I’ll listen.

He remembered how she’d set his cup of coffee down as he read a book on the outside terrace of the cafe she worked in and how he regaled her with some silly story that he was waiting for a family friend – Ophelia.

He remembered his daughter’s smirk, remembered the hook of her eyes, remembered the cool snap of her fury as she balled her fists, stood abruptly and changed the color of her skin.

What about me? Would you drive me out too? Would you hate me too? She asked, throwing her furious gaze on Parnella, who in turn shrieked at him like a woman who has just witnessed her child battered and bloodied in the streets. She used to listen to him – head propped on her arms, elbows propped on the table, her shift at the cafe having long ended – but now he knew then that she would never listen to him again. Not like she used to. You ruined our girls! You ruined us! You ruined our family! You made them exactly like you.

Exactly. Like. You.

He remembered the punch of those words as he stood in front of her grave, chrysanthemums in hand. He knew that in France, chrysanthemums were the flower of funerals and mourning, but Normand was and always has been a reader. He could read symbolism better than he could read the emotions in a face. He knew that in Asia, for instance, chrysanthemums represented grief.

And he was grieving in his own way, although he made peace with his decisions long ago and stuck with them, even when all he wanted was to turn heel and come back. His mother once told him that conviction was the mark of a great man, but she never said anything about truth.

Normand knew that chrysanthemums symbolized truth, and after long years he sat down across from his wife, knowing full well that she wore her wedding ring right up until the day she died, just as he still kept his tucked in the pocket of his suit – just above his breastbone.

For her and her alone he told the truth. He knows the truth came too late, but she deserved to know, so he sat down and told her everything – why she found blood on his shirts, about his fear for his eldest child, about how Mireille still haunted him, about the little girl he left in America. He told her every truth he never told her while she was still living, still breathing. And for one last time, Parnella listened just as she did all those years ago. This time, though, he was the one who closed the distance to kiss her. It took him by surprise when he was younger – the warmth of her, the softness of her against someone who had always been described as cold-eyed and sharp – but now…

Now all he felt was the cold stone against his lips and the warmth of tears against his cheeks. In that instance, he knew that Parnella wasn’t listening at all, and that he had unburdened the weights of his soul to dust, bones and cawing ravens in an empty graveyard.

Death, my old friend,

He could feel the weight of its hand on his shoulder. Each day, the fingers pressed down with more insistence. Family was supposed to be his legacy, but it was as Parnella said all those years ago: You ruined us!

He knew what his legacy had become: silence and stone. Without saying another word, Normand rose to his feet, dusted the grass from his suit and removed his glasses to wipe the tears from his face. He left again, and did not look back.

The husband of Parnella, and the father of Ophelia, and Mireille Giroux as well as Maxine Price/Maxine Moretti-Giroux, Normand was born as the eldest of many siblings in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was very fond of his mother, and always strove to make things easier for her. A wise man, Normand did well in school, but his parents limited prospects meant that he would never be able to attend higher education. His father’s death further put a wrench in his plans, as well as a power that suddenly awakened within him without explanation. Instead of seeing teleportation as something to weather, Normand turned inconvenience into a skill and used his teleportation abilities to break into locations that nobody else could get into, quickly falling into the life of a criminal. He ended up graduating from theft and burglary into assassination as a way to keep his mother and siblings, particularly his beloved sister, in a comfortable life. His sister eventually found out about his doings and banished him from her life and her family.

Cast out from his family, Normand absconded to France (a country that his family had once immigrated from) and continued his “business.” He ended up meeting Parnella Giroux at a cafe while waiting for a mark, and the two were quickly married and soon had two daughters.

Normand took an extensive trip to the Pacific Northwest to chase a mark, and it was during this time that he met, befriended and started an affair with Laurel Moretti -- a bartender and card shark in Seattle. She bore him a daughter, Maxine, whom he placed in the care of a couple in Tacoma as a way to keep her safe from the Agency, who was closing in on Moretti due to her advanced powers.

Normand returned to France for a time, and then ultimately moved his family to the States in an attempt to escape his life of crime. His youngest daughter with Parnella, Mireille, ended up running away when her powers surfaced, prompting Parnella to blame him for ruining their children and making them like him. This was the first time Normand realized that his wife knew of his powers.

Normand ended up running away from his wife when he realized the Agency was closing in on him. He spent some time on the run, occasionally taking out Agents who he deemed to be a threat to himself or to his family or just at a whim. While he never saw his daughters again in person, Normand did hear Mireille’s voice through a mirror when her captromancy powers surfaced.

Normand escaped the Agency’s claim of New Haven, but knew he couldn’t stay on the run for long. Having watched over his family at a distance for a years, he attempted to teleport back to New Orleans to rescue his sister’s powered children, Magnolia and Percival Winston, but ended up getting into a scuffle with the Agency. Normand managed to escape the skirmish, but Magnolia (the only Winston sibling he managed to reach) was pulled from him before he could teleport them to safety and she was subdued and processed as a criminal.

Normand later roused Agency suspicion again while he was shopping for food. After a chase, he managed to abscond back to his hotel room where he ended up taking his life rather than letting himself be killed.

Parnella Giroux (Fabron) March 12 1959 - June 14 2008 - Level 0 - N/A

Parnella had never been a photographer, but she had many photographs, and she kept them crowded around her bed in her last days. They were a pale and yellowed and wrinkled form of silent company in the hole left behind by a missing partner, but there was a certain warmth that came when she revisited the photos of her and Normand -- so young, the tiniest hint of a smile on his lips while she modeled his glasses for him and tossed her hair over her shoulder. The hardness wasn’t in his eyes back then. It was better for her to remember him that way instead of remembering him as the man who made her wait, the man whose stories never added up to anything that could be true, the man who had been nothing more than a ghost for years.

She had photos of her eldest daughter, although she didn’t need them. Still, it was a passing amusement to run her fingers over the old polaroids of her impish daughter who looked the picture of innocence with her dark curls and brown eyes. Innocent for a time. The girl grew up into a trickster, who grew up into someone all elbows and knees and unwavering confidence that life broke and bashed into someone raw and rough and full of sharp edges. Ophelia sat sleeping in the chair near her bed, and even in her sleep, Parnella could see the lines forming in her daughter’s brow as it furrowed and furrowed, but never relaxed.

And then there was Mireille. Parnella’s youngest daughter was more a ghost than Normand was, but there were photos near the bed that showed her as an infant sitting on her father’s knee as they read through books together, or standing hand-in-hand with her elder sister as they raced away from waves on the beach (Phee giggling, Mireille screaming as the water lapped her ankles) or sitting for a formal portrait with her hair perfectly braided and bowed and her dress without so much a wrinkle. Mireille had her father’s smile -- soft and slow and easy to miss -- and like her father, Mireille was nothing more than a haunt and a regret.

“I had regrets too, Parnella.”

A woman’s voice whispered through the room, unheard to anyone else. The first time she had heard it, Parnella was certain she had gone mad, but she remembered the other woman too, even if she had never directly met her. She remembered the lipstick that she had once found on Normand’s collar -- a shade of red too bold for her to wear -- and the photograph of a child that was not hers, but who still carried the shape of her husband’s eyes.

Those were things she tried to forget once, but now she struggled to remember as she withered.

“I can’t do much to make up for what I did -- what I had to do for the sake of balance. I don’t expect you to forgive me, and I can’t bring back what you lost. My reach is so limited here but... I can give you more than faded memories. I can give you dreams, if you’ll let me.”

Parnella didn’t so much as nod. The other woman was one of them -- just like her husband and just like her own daughters. The other woman didn’t need a word or a nod to know just what she was thinking.

Still, there was one thing that Parnella tried to send before she fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of her family -- whole and happy and together around the table once more...

Her last thought was of forgiveness. Parnella forgave her husband for his lies and secrets, and for leaving. She forgave Ophelia for all of her trials and rages and the years of petty jokes. She forgave Mireille for being something that she could never hope to understand. She forgave the Other Woman who had left lipstick on her husband’s collar and carried a child that looked more like him than her girls could ever hope to.

The last person Parnella forgave was herself, and then she slipped away.

The wife of Normand Giroux, and the mother of Ophelia Giroux, and Mireille Giroux, Parnella disliked the long hours that her husband spent away on his “business trips” and suspected that there was something far more sinister about his work, but never said anything out of fear of confrontation. She hoped that moving to America would be beneficial for her husband and daughters, but ended up running into a different problem when her youngest daughter’s powers surfaced. Faced with something she couldn’t understand, Parnella reacted to her daughter’s powers poorly, resulting in Mireille running away from home. Normand would disappear later, leaving Parnella abandoned and alone in a country that was not hers. She grew sick and was cared for by her eldest daughter, Ophelia, in her last years, before eventually dying.

Laurel Moretti - August 10 1965 - Level ??? - Mental Manipulation, Mental Blocking, Telepathy, Omnipathy, Power Negation, Mental Projection

Nobody liked playing chess with Laurel. Her brothers hated sitting still and thinking when they could do, do, do, and all of her friends learned after one game that there was something uncanny about the way that Laurel moved and played her pieces. It was one thing to watch the young woman play, but something else entirely to sit across from her and watch as she decimated the most clever of defenses with nothing more than a passing glance and a soft, almost apologetic smile on her lips.

Nobody but Normand liked to play with her, but that was because Normand knew. He didn’t know like Laurel did, but he knew enough to know that there was the game, there were both sides and the hands above the board trying to move the pawns...

And then there was Laurel holding it together -- the balance (or sometimes the lack thereof) that kept things going. She knew how it began and she knew how it would end. She knew how things would spark and kick up another flame, and she knew how that flame would be smothered in the end. She could take a passing glance at a single person and know how they would live and love and die -- information gleaned in a single blink, faster than she could read a book.

She knew to hug her mother just a moment longer, knew to hug her tighter and tell her in uncertain terms that she loved her before the car accident that took three lives in one terrible collision. She knew the precise moment the police would knock on their door to take her father away for murdering the drunken driver who caused the entire upheaval. She knew the troubles, trials, and tribulations that would befall each of her brothers, and the bar that they would eventually call a livelihood. She knew she would be found at that bar as well, slinging shots and shuffling cards in smokey back rooms.

All of this before she was five years old, and Laurel did nothing to stop it.

She couldn’t.

She was not the hand to push the pieces into place. She was the force that made sure the game was held together.

Laurel Moretti was not just powered; she herself was a power.

“I saw what you did, Normand Giroux,” she told the bespectacled loner at the bar one night as she toweled fingerprints off of liquor bottles and shot glasses. “I know what you do and what you will do, and I saw them. I saw your daughters fighting the great battle, our son at their side.”

It was a lie, but one that Normand didn’t need to know.

“They turn the tide, Normand. They make a difference in everything. They are... they are the greatest, but only together. Alone they are formidable, but together? Together they are the greatest.Together they help to put an end to it all.”

Months later found her passing a pink-swaddled bundle into Normand’s suit-covered arms. She knew she had only moments, but Laurel was calm until the end.

“She’s not what I promised, but she’s still the greatest, Normand. You must protect her.”

She knew he wouldn’t, but Laurel knew all things. She knew Normand would run, knew he would deposit the child into the arms of parents who would not love her, but would love the money that was offered to them.

She knew the precise moment when a different nurse came into her room with a syringe for a “routine test”. Laurel knew that the test would put her to sleep, and that she would remain asleep for years, locked in the most formidable of The Agency’s secure vaults.

Her body remained hooked in and slumbering, but Laurel was never truly trapped.

After all, nothing can contain a force.

Born in Seattle, Washington, Laurel Moretti went down in Agency records as one of the most powerful -- if not the most powerful -- mutant they ever detained. Her powers awakened within her in her early years, giving her an extreme knowledge of the world and how it worked. Despite this, Laurel flew under Agency records and had relatively normal childhood, despite tragic familial misfortunes. Her father was arrested after the death of her mother, leading her to be raised by five older brothers who established a family bar in a rough part of town. Despite her severe intelligence, Laurel was content to keep a job as a bartender in the family bar, and would occasionally also deal hands in the illegal card games going on in the basement of the bar (a job that she got after unfailingly catching everyone who ever hid cards or tried to sneak extra cash).

Eventually, Laurel ended up meeting Normand Giroux when he took some downtime at the bar following one of his assassination jobs, and -- knowing the weave of the future and things to come -- Laurel entered into an affair with him, despite knowing that he was also happily married. While there were no romantic feelings between either party, the two remained great friends through their affair and Laurel’s resulting pregnancy, and she ended up advising him on many of his jobs.

Despite promising him a son (something that she knew Normand had always wanted), Laurel gave birth to a daughter on Christmas Eve. Laurel only experienced a few tender moments with her daughter before frantically passing her off to Normand with instructions to keep her safe. Laurel was abducted by The Agency shortly after his departure, and was kept heavily sedated during her assessment before finally being transferred to the Agency’s most secure vault.

Her location is currently unknown except to the most decorated of Agency personnel.

Despite her long-standing captivity, Laurel manages to frequently project herself out of her confines so that she can continue to observe the world and nudge it back to balance as she sees fit.

Ophelia Giroux - July 14 1983 - ??? - Level 7 - Shapeshifting, Vocal Mimicry, Self Duplication

It was a strange thing to be broken down into so many pieces.

Ophelia stood on the battlefield and stared at the still-ongoing carnage. She watched as her friends fought Agents, as Agents turned on one another, as entire street corners turned to ash under the weight of powers and as people ran screaming right and left in the calamity of it all.

She saw herself strewn across the battlefield. She was a rip or a ripple, and she was still shifting in some instances. Sometimes she made herself look like a Morrill -- pale skin, dark hair, blue eyes -- and other times she was another Agent stabbing an enemy in the back when they least expected it. Another her tried to go toe-to-toe with a blood manipulator, only to get caught in the last second.

A single trickle of blood dripped down and out of Ophelia’s nose and out of the side of her mouth when her copy’s life was snuffed out in a crush of fingers into a fist. It was a wound that was echoed across her other selves, a wound that was shared but dampened from so many selves.

She turned her head and saw... Ophelia didn’t know how to describe Max in truth. She was their father’s daughter, but she wasn’t. The younger woman had the shape of their father’s eyes, and some of his mannerisms, and that was enough for Ophelia to turn sour towards her in their first meeting -- she had known instantly - but she carried none of his crimes or coldness, and despite her clipped tones and the cruel japes she reserved for the Price woman... despite it all...

Ophelia knew what it was like to be alone, to be the last one left, to be standing at the edge wondering if it would be better to sink or step off in the hopes of flying. She knew what it was like to be twisted and turned and used against the people she loved, and she knew what it was like to not know that you were loved to begin with.

There was a swell of pride that shot through Ophelia when she saw the younger woman dart across the warzone and stare right at the blood manipulator, who shortly crumpled to the ground in an unconscious heap, but then...

Then she saw her, and the gun she pointed so expertly at Max’s head across the battlefield. Ophelia didn’t need years of work in taking life to know that distance meant nothing to the cold-eyed woman who planned to put a bloodied signature across her half-sister’s forehead.

X stood for so many things beyond were a bullet could be planted, and although Ophelia had long dreamed of ending the life behind the trigger, she knew what her place was now.

She had never moved faster. She felt her body collide into Max’s as she roughly shoved the woman away and then to the ground. She knew it would look like an attack, even if she didn’t have her signature knives or a gun. She knew it would look aggressive. Ophelia knew her last act would look like hatred, when in reality she was just trying to live up to her name: she was just trying to help.

She was taller than Max today. The bullet tore through Ophelia’s neck, and its bite hit her quicker than collapsed organs and stung colder than any knife. Her knees buckled, and her hand instinctively rose to her neck to keep blood in her body.

She saw Max struggle to right herself, but beyond that, Ophelia saw Mireille who had seen it all.

“Father named you to see,” Ophelia wanted to say. Her lips formed the words, but the only thing that came out was blood over her teeth. She smiled -- not a smirk, but a weak grin painted red -- as she saw the realization form on her beloved sister’s face.

Her vision faded before she saw Mireille’s features contort to disbelief and then grief and then rage...

The last thing Ophelia heard was a shriek of anger before every window, every mirror, and every last lens of a camera that could hold a reflection shattered and sent glass in a shimmer of shards scattering across the battlezone and into the bodies of enemies and allies alike.

And then she was gone.

The eldest daughter of Normand and Parnella Giroux, Ophelia Giroux was known in her youth to be a tomboy and a trickster who got into nothing good. She transitioned well to American life when her family left France, eventually getting into college on scholarship due to her grades, involvement with soccer and theater, and other exploits. She ended up dropping out when her younger sister ran away and devoted her adult life to trying to track her down. A shapeshifter, Ophelia ended up using her powers to nefarious ends to make money when her father abandoned the family and her mother came down sick, and then eventually took to a life of crime out of despair when her mother finally died. Ophelia briefly reunited with her sister before being brain washed by the Agency and turned into one of their soldiers. Despite this, Ophelia ended up turning traitor after awakening a new power and discovering that she had a half-sister in the Agency’s employ. It was Ophelia who begrudgingly combined Max’s hope for a better Agency with Mireille’s notions of rebellion, and the three sisters ended up fighting for their freedom together for a time.

Unfortunately, Ophelia was thought to have died in one of the many battles against the Agency in an attempt to keep Max safe from a fatal shot. All of her duplicates disappeared from the battlefield, however, and no body was ever found, leaving her status as missing. Neither Mireille nor Max think that she is truly dead, but is instead keeping a distant watch.

Mireille Giroux - February 16 1986 - Level 7 - Intangibility, Captromancy/Captromancy Teleportation, Captromantic Mediumship/Precognition

“Tout a commencé avec nous devant un miroir ensemble”

The memory played across Mireille’s mind as clear as the glass in front of her. She had been a small and skinny young girl in a pretty dress and braids flanking her face. All she had wanted to be was a princess who lived in a fairytale and lived happily ever after, far, far away from the sister who ruined her dreams with her boyish antics.

Her sister stood by her side. Ophelia was still taller, still dressed in muddied clothes and shoes, still brunette, but her skin was a bright and vibrant green that refused to fade away or change. Ophelia looked like a thing of nightmares, but Mireille knew her fairytales and she knew her stories. She knew that those who looked so monstrous usually held a good heart, even if that heart could be so vexing at times.

She made a promise then that she would keep her sister’s secret safe, so long as she was told everything.

Two sisters stood together in front of a mirror and made a single promise.

Now a single sister stood alone in a quiet house after a victorious battle. Mireille had grown from a skinny slip of a girl into a beautiful young woman, and this was reflected back to her. Her long hair was tied up into a ponytail, and her clothes were sensible -- black, more for movement, flat boots rather than the heels she longed to wear -- but there were still hints of beauty even under her red eyes and the exhaustion etched in her expression.

The fights of late had been hard won, and they were won with cost. Scars laced up Mireille’s arm, cousins to an old bullet wound she had gained a few years ago during a rescue operation. She didn’t want to heal those, just like she hadn’t healed the bullet wounds. They were important. They represented something. The bullet wound had marked the first time that Mireille had stopped running and fought back, while the newer wounds were...

She remembered Ophelia falling, red gushing from her throat. She remembered screaming, and the sound of her scream being carried out of anything that could carry a reflection, and then glass shattering all around.

She had wounded herself with her loss, but came back to see the fight and the cause through, but at what cost?

Mireille refocused her gaze on the reflection and furrowed her brows.

“My father named me to see,” she whispered, and the hot puff of her breath clouded the surface of the glass, forming a deeper and more unnatural mist. It was yet another gift of The Agency. Her powers had advanced on their own, but they jumped them into something far beyond what she ever could have achieved on her own...not once, but twice.

Now she saw more than what was. Mireille saw what had been and those who had fallen. Sometimes she spoke to them in whispers. Sometimes Mireille could see what would be if she focused hard enough.

“Our father named us for what we would do,” Mireille continued as she leaned forward until her brow was gently resting on the mirror’s surface. “He named Max for her ability, he named me to see, and he named you for what you were. You helped me with so much, Phelia... you helped so many at such a cost to yourself, and you never asked for anything in return.”

The only thing Ophelia had ever wanted was to not be alone, and Mireille had only turned her back on her. Mireille ran away and revolted while her sister endured and protected. It had always been her hand in Ophelia’s, and never the other way around.

And now Ophelia was gone, and there was so much to do. There was a city to rebuild, families to reunite, and lives to live. People looked to her as if she was something and someone great, as if she was more than a terrified thief who ran from all of her problems or avoided them by side-stepping towards the finer things in life.

They looked to her like she was a symbol, or someone to be followed. Mireille stared back each time and realized that she didn’t know where she was going.

She had never felt more lost.

“I can’t do it alone,” Mireille whispered, her voice cracking and breaking as tears blurred the edges of her vision.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the mirror, almost as if Phee were on the other side waiting to catch her in her arms.

Instead, she felt another hand slip into her own so slowly and tentatively. Mireille didn’t need to open her eyes to know who it was. She felt the silver rings against her skin and knew it was Max standing beside her.

No words were spoken, and no thoughts were sent, but Mireille knew what Max wanted to say.

And perhaps Max was not Ophelia, nor would she ever take her place, but they were better damaged and together than broken and alone.

They would fix it together.

This time when Mireille opened her eyes, she saw two sisters standing in front of a mirror, and in the background, a third face...green eyes, a nose not quite right, and a smirk...

Mireille blinked, and the face was gone, but it was enough.

They would meet again one day, she knew.

The youngest daughter of Normand and Parnella Giroux, Mireille would have been content to marry young and live a glamorous life as a housewife and stay-at-home mother to beautiful children had her powers not surfaced and thrust her into the life of a runaway. In truth, Mireille’s brush with the odd started when she walked in on her sister’s powers going out of control and turning her green for the better half of a morning. The two girls stood in front of a mirror and made promises. Mireille promised to keep her sister’s secret, and Ophelia promised to tell her everything about the weird power she had acquired to change her appearance. The two sisters became inseparably close due to this...

At least until they moved from France to California at their father’s behest. Finding herself in a strange country and forced to speak a language that she struggled with, Mireille faded into extreme extroversion until her own powers kicked in. Her mother reacted poorly upon finding out, and rather than staying and facing down the stares of someone who hated her, Mireille ran from her home and never looked back. She learned what she could from the streets and through connections, and eventually learned that her powers of intangibility worked really well with thievery and burglary. Mireille quickly became a terror to the rich, often sneaking into their homes and stealing their valuables to fuel her lust for a glamorous life.

And Mireille was content to live as such. By the time she made it to New Haven, Mireille had long mainted the practice of turning a blind eye to those who were mutant like herself. She lived in luxury and decadence and skirted incarceration all while wearing the highest of heels... until The Agency took her captive for the better part of a summer, which reminded Mireille just how vulnerable she really was. She ended up escaping as part of a group effort, and then going back in a rescue effort, which then saw her labeled as a dangerous criminal, thus truly ending the life of the glamorous burglar.

What surfaced from the ashes was a burgeoning revolutionary. Mireille joined a group of like-minded mutants, The Reapers, and became known to them as “Mirage.” They helped her train her powers and advance them, and she ended up gaining new powers of captromancy before a revolution in October..

And it was at this point that the Agency took control of the city and turned it into a mutant training camp. Mireille’s powers were jumped again as a result of Agency meddling, and she became extremely unstable as a result of them. Despite this, she fought to gain control of herself and started to help organize the efforts of a revolution to help free New Haven. She soon ended up being joined by Agency defectors, including her sister, Ophelia, and (unknown to Mireille) her half-sister, Maxine.

Together, the three sisters fought to liberate the city. Ophelia ended up falling in one of the final battles, during which Mireille’s powers advanced again and gave her the ability to see and speak with the dead as well as view glimpses of the future.

With the city of New Haven finally liberated, Mireille has taken to helping people rebuild their lives. She also gained her high school degree through an online school and started writing her own books... and still enjoys fashion and fine wines.

Percival Winston - June 15 1986 - Level 6 - Intuitive Aptitude, Power Mimicry

“Mom always said I reminded her of my Uncle Normand, but she always said that he died a long, long time ago from some foolishness. She always looked down when she said it -- just a quick sweep of her eyes to her shoes and then back up. It was something I picked up on a long time ago. It was a tell. I knew she was lying.

I know when everyone lies. Mag’s voice raises when she lies, Dad isn’t even creative enough to lie, but Mom? She looks down like she’s done something wrong, or like she got involved with something terrible. So I knew. I figured it all out. I always do.

I know about Uncle Normand now. One of my bookies is a telepath and I borrowed his abilities. I saw exactly what happened with Uncle Normand and how much he loved my mother when they were growing up. My Uncle practically raised my mother after their father died. The man who was supposed to be a cautionary tale for me became a hero.

I unintentionally followed in his footsteps. I’ve always been called bright or smart. I was studying to become a lawyer. I could have gone anywhere, but I chose to stay home because I couldn’t bear to miss my mother or my sister. I could do without my father, and I don’t see why Mom hasn’t divorced him yet. I know she’s disappointed in me too. We still talk on the phone...she lets me know repeatedly just how much of a disappointment I am and that she hopes we’ll gain some sense to come home and fight this in a better way.

If it were just me, that might make more sense. If they had hurt me, then it wouldn’t have mattered...

Instead, they went for Magnolia. She showed up at my apartment one afternoon while I was studying and she was shot in the arm and coated in sweat. She didn’t come through the front door. She came through the outlet in a surge of electricity.

I’m not a stupid man. I’ve read the news about mutants. I knew what she was and I knew what I was too. I accepted my sister into my apartment, took care of her arm as best as I could without healing abilities, and got her some clean clothes. The Agency questioned me and asked if I had seen her. The spun a story about her being a dangerous threat, of course, and then escaping custody. I could believe the escaping custody part, but not the dangerous threat. My sister used to be all bark but so little bite. She put all her anger and passion into dance. Back then, she wouldn’t have even hurt a fly. She might have yelled at it, but hurting it? Never.

I told them that, and I also lied and told them I hadn’t seen her. They raided my apartment that night and took both of us in. Apparently getting picked up in New Haven works a little different than New Orleans. You get picked up in New Haven and you get processed and offered a job or at least some form of monitored freedom. Mag and I were made examples of. My efforts in law were completely destroyed when they slapped us with criminal charges. We were let go, which is merciful in its own way, I suppose, but The Agency made sure that we were marked for what we were.

So we ran. We settled elsewhere, were brought in by a mentor, and we were given a new purpose. The Agency branded us both as criminals, so why not play the part?

I used to be an adviser and my sister a muscled enforcer to the local crime syndicate, but my mother was right: I am my Uncle’s nephew. I’m far too ambitious for my own good. Mag and I turned on the man who took us in. She subdued him, but I was the one to end his life.

After all, the world taught me lessons in misery. It’s only time I graduated and returned them with interest.”

A cold and calculated young man, Percival is essentially shades of his Uncle all over again, but worse. A mutant whose powers surfaced in his teens, Percival kept things to himself and pushed himself towards realizing his dream of becoming a lawyer. His dreams were derailed when Mag was apprehended by the Agency, only to escape custody when her powers surfaced. Percival put his dreams at risk for the sake of his beloved sister and hid her in his apartment, only to get brought in and processed for harboring a criminal when the Agency raided his apartment. Neither sibling had participated in criminal activity prior to this, so they were offered jobs within the Agency, but both declined. Rather than being detained in the Vault, both siblings were released, but with criminal records that kept them from going back to their old lives.

The siblings ended up running away and plating new roots in a different city, where their powers attracted the attention of a crime lord. In true Giroux fashion, the siblings embraced their new-found lives of crime and climbed the rungs in their “family” before ambitiously staging a coup and taking over. Percival now runs a series of criminal enterprises while his sister manages all the muscle for the operations. While the Agency might have changed their ways following the New Haven incident, Percival still holds little love for them and does what he can when he can to derail their efforts.

Maxine Price (Maxine Moretti-Giroux) - December 24 1987 - Psychic Shield, Telepathy, Mental Manipulation

“Have you ever thought of formally changing your name?”

Max blinked and stared for a few moments, the office still save for the occasional sweep of her finger over the ring on her thumb. It was a Tim habit, and one that she had never managed to rewrite out of her brain, but the action of spinning, spinning, spinning was an absent comfort during what was shaping up to be the first performance evaluation after the new director stepped in.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked after another blink.

“Changing your name,” the director continued as they plucked a file from the filing cabinet to their side, slapped it down onto the table and slid it forth, making sure to shift it so that the contents were turned for Max to peruse.

But Max did not peruse. She uncrossed her legs so that she was sitting properly rather than criss-cross and firmly planted her feet on the ground. She sat up out of her slouch and rested her elbows on the desk on either side of the file, but she didn’t look down.

She continued to spin her rings, a frown marring her face. She could feel the pressure of Sam’s mind somewhere else in the building -- absently making airplanes out of his paperwork while worrying -- but pulled away from it in favor of the mind in front of her.

The Director wasn’t putting up any blocks. They sat straight-back and stared at her, but there was nothing from keeping Max out of their mind, much less out of their files or the truth.

But Max pulled herself back from it and shook her head.

“It’s not who I am,” she replied, her voice quiet as she laced her fingers together over the contents of the page, obscuring the text. “It’s not who I was and not who I will be. I know what I am now and who I’m not. I know my own dangers and threats and weaknesses. I know who my friends are, and I know the people who love me. I know what I am and what I can do.”

Max gained more conviction as she continued to speak, until she finally lifted her head and pierced the Director’s mismatched eyes with her own.

“Maybe it’s not my true name, but it’s one I’ve fought to hold onto and make my own. Even if I erase myself again...--”

Again, Max frowned, and again she focused her mind towards Sam’s in the building, only to smile at the familiarity of his thoughts.

“I can put myself back together just like before, Director. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”

One of the strongest and most formidable telepaths in Agency employ, Maxine Price was actually born Maxine Isabelle Moretti/Giroux. Her father, Normand, placed her in the care of a local couple in the hopes of keeping her out of the Agency’s hands. Max grew up under the assumption that she was Maxine Price, the youngest of the Price children, and found herself struggling with her identity at an early age when her parents refused to even recognize her efforts and accomplishments. Regardless, she grew up close to her siblings who showed her plenty of affection even when their parents did not. Despite their affections, they could do little to pull Max out of her perfectionist ways. Max grew up with perfect grades and was a model student at the boarding school she was sent to...

And then her powers kicked in, and she learned the truth. The Agency took her in from there, keeping her as a ward as a means to grow and harness her budding powers. Max flourished under their care, both mentally and emotionally, and later opted into joining the Agency because of her experience. Her powers also grew, giving her the ability to manipulate the mind through a single glance. She quickly gained a reputation for her prowess, and was quickly assigned to New Haven to help assist with the stabilization of a mutant named Tim Floss.

What should have been an easy assignment went all wrong. Max’s youth and inexperience and isolated upbringing collided with her powers in the worst way. She found herself pining over Tim, and then rewriting her own mind to match his. Tim gained periods of mental stability due to Max’s influence, while Max masked the fact that she was slowly losing her own grip on who she was and was fading as an individual.

When Tim died in the Aqua fire, Max felt like her existence was a mistake and that she needed to die too in order to be a match. She requested a transfer to Portland and eventually found herself on a bridge contemplating whether or not she wanted to jump.

Max still doesn’t know what kept her from jumping, but she met Sam Logan the next day, and the two became inseparable friends ever since. The two even went back to New Haven together when it fell to Agency control. Initially content to follow her assignment to the letter so that she could get out of the city that she now hated, Max found herself assigned to be Tim’s helper again. She also saw firsthand that the force that she believed to be a vehicle for good was actively oppressing mutants like herself.

She also found her family, first in the form of her sarcastic and mocking older sister, Ophelia -- a propriety act initially employed by the Agency as one of their soldiers. A quick look into Ophelia’s mind revealed mental tampering and trauma, which Max repaired, returning the eldest Giroux sister to her correct state of mind. The two then defected, eventually joining the rebellion that was being started by Mireille Giroux and a handful of other mutants*.

Ophelia, Mireille, and Max fought many battles to save New Haven and liberate it from Agency control, and while Ophelia ended up falling in one of the battles, Max and Mireille continued to fight on. The sisters’ efforts saw New Haven liberated and the Agency reformed to help mutants with their powers rather than hinder them. A new director was put in place of the old one, and Max retained her status as an Agent, along with her BCA partner, Sam.

The two still go on missions throughout the country.

Magnolia Winston - September 12 1994 - Level 3 - Electroportation, Electrokinesis

“The first and last time I met my Uncle Normand was the day he died. He picked me up from school, said I was special, and then got me shot in the shoulder when the Agency came after us. The Agency labeled me a criminal, and then labeled my brother a criminal for harboring me. So yeah, I’m bitter. Yeah. I’m angry. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know I had powers. I didn’t know I was anything! I was studying fucking dance in college -- fucking ballet. But it’s fine. The Agency threw my brother and I some shoes to wear for this dance, and they beat us and bruised us until they fit. Fine. I’ve danced on broken toes before. I can do it better than anyone, and I can do it with a smile.”

An angry young woman, Mag is the mouth and muscle to her brother’s criminal empire, despite being younger, smaller, and scrappier than he could ever be. While her powers of electroportation and electrokinesis don’t immediately seem particularly powerful, it’s her usage of them and her keen mind that makes her a true threat... and her penchant for punching, kicking, or just generally throwing random objects at people who vex her or her older brother.

#ww stuff #these goddamn giroux #character: mireille giroux #character: Ophelia Giroux #character: Max Price #character: Percival Winston #character: Mag Winston

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therabidjackalope · 5 years

Text

Baby Mine

The doe stood firm, her flaming sword pointed at the necromancer like an accusatory finger. “This ends now, Malthamus! No more of your tricks.”

The necromancer's smile was just visible beneath his cowl, his lips like wriggling grubs. “Ah, my pet, I think you will find that I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve.” His arms suddenly shot forward and inky blackness shot from his fingers like ink. It flooded the room and swirled around the furious MidKnight. Nadirah slashed at the liquid darkness with her sword but it had no effect. Within the space of a breath she was surrounded by an empty nothingness.

Furious at losing her prey, the doe spun around, looking for something, anything, that could lead her back to her intended query. “Get back here and face me, you coward!” She screamed into the void.

As if in answer to her demand, a wooden door slid noiselessly forward from the gloom, coming to a stop a few feet from the angry doe. “Finally.” She growled, stomping to the door with her blade at the ready. Forsaking caution, she grabbed the handle and jerked the door open before stepping through.

The doe froze in confusion. Instead of cold stone beneath her hooves, a floor of soft straw and grass crackled softly beneath her weight. The darkness had been replaced by warm sunshine that filtered in through open windows. Sturdy and comfortable looking furniture decorated a familiar looking room. But it was the other occupants that gave her the most pause.

They were calves. Tarous calves. A pair of young males wrestled on the floor while a female sat on one of the chairs playing with a doll. Near her feet, a milk calf gnawed an old kordox bone that had been cut and smoothed into a teething ring.

“Hi Mamma.” The young female greeted her, waving her doll in the air before turning her attention wholly back to the toy.

“What... what is this?” Nadirah muttered to herself. She turned her head and saw that the door stood closed behind her, sunlight leaking in around it's imperfect edges. “What trick are you playing now? Where am I?”

A soft thump against her hoof pulled the MidKnight's attention downward to the teething milkcalf. He was looking up at her with wide brown eyes, slapping his tiny hand against her foot to get her attention. She bent to pick up the tiny infant, holding him at arm's length to study him more closely.

The calf giggled as he was lifted and wiggled all of his limbs happily. He was covered in a coat of soft red downy fur, the edges of his hands and feet showing hints of grey that would turn to black as he aged. A single pink smudge on his nose was the only other marking he bore. “Ah-ma!” He cried with another giggle, short, pudgy arms reaching out towards the MidKnight. “Ah-ma!”

“Ah-ma?” Nadirah replied softly as she looked at the youngling. “Mamma?”

“Ah-ma!” The calf said again, beginning to kick his feet in an attempt to propel himself forward.

Nadirah's face softened, her scowl falling away. Slowly, she pulled the calf to her chest, cradling the infant carefully in her arms, her eyes fixated on his own. “Ah-ma.” She said dreamily. The calf giggled and stretched out a tiny hand, resting it softly on her nose, between her large nostrils. Slowly, as if she had forgotten how, the MidKnight smiled.

Her heart, which she had thought as long dead as the rest of her, swelled with pride and love as she stared down at the tiny calf. Her calf. Her son. “My little baby boy.” She whispered to the calf.

“Ah good, you're home.” Came a new, yet familiar voice. “How was the market?”

The MidKnight snapped her head up, twisting her body reflexively to protect the infant from whatever new threat had just presented itself. Bracing the calf with one arm she reached for her sword but grabbed only a loose flap of leather.

The grey-furred bull watched her with amusement, his eyes falling to the giggling baby in her arm. “He's getting so big, isn't he?”

Nadirah blinked in disbelief, but the bull was still there. He wasn't a mirage. “Jorthon?” The name was both question and accusation.

“Yes?” He replied, his gaze returning to her face with a loving smile.

“But... How are you...”She paused, a stirring of memory pulling at her. He looked older than when she had last seen him, a spear run through his chest and death in his eyes. But even as she tried to delve deeper into the memory, it faded like a dream. Had he somehow survived his wound? Yes, she thought, he must have. They were mates now and these were their children.

The MidKnight didn't know where those thoughts had come from. It was wrong, somehow. She was supposed to be somewhere else, facing some enemy. She looked down at herself, for some reason expecting armor instead of the decorated dress she wore.

She looked back up at Jorthon and frowned, shifting the infant to her other arm. “What's going on?” She asked him. “Why isn't anything making sense anymore?”

Jorthon just continued to smile at her, his expression changing from affection to patience. It was another voice that answered, one she felt she should recognize, and yet the familiarity was just beyond her grasp. “This is what could have been.” The voice whispered in her ears. “What could still be, for you. Just stay by my side, warrior, fight for me and I will give it all to you, once I've remade the world.”

“Stay?” Nadirah repeated, looking around her for the source of the voice. It alarmed her that her mind was growing fuzzy, full of half-memories and disconnected thoughts.

“Yes.” Jorthon said, moving closer and placing a hand on her shoulder. “You do want to stay with us, don't you, my love?”

The calves all stopped their activities to circle her, the twin males tugging at her skirt while the female grabbed her free hand. “Yes, mamma! Stay with us! He'll make things alright again! You'll see!” They chanted up at her. The infant simply gurgled and placed his tiny hand back onto her nose.

Nadirah looked around her at her small family. Jorthon, her mate, her daughter Terthan, the twins, Raynoh and Keython, and the milk calf in her arms. She knew them all. They lived with Jorthon's tribe and everything outside of their life together was but a fading nightmare, finally escaped. Nadirah had found the peace and love she had always been searching for since the loss of her own tribe. She felt...happy.

Somewhere in her mind she felt a lingering presence slither away, leaving her alone at last with the family she adored. A gift. And it was all hers, she merely had to accept it. Accept what, she thought to herself. What gift? Why did everything feel so wrong when it was absolutely perfect?

Gazing down into the large brown eyes of her milk calf, her precious little baby boy, she felt a tear crawl from the corner of her eye and slide silently down her muzzle. She wanted nothing more than to embrace them all. Embrace her wonderful, perfect life and simply live. She could finally rest. But why?

Gently pulling her hand free of Terthan's grip, she slowly reached up and grasped the infant's chubby wrist, holding his hand in place as she softly brushed her nose across his palm. Inhaling deeply, she reveled in his scent. Her precious baby boy. She closed her eyes and let out her breath slowly.

A spark of anger flickered to life deep in her chest.

As she opened her eyes again, she turned her gaze back to the large, inquisitive eyes of the infant. He looked up at her with a mixture of innocence and adoration. He had known nothing but love and safety in his short existence. But as she looked down into his eyes, his large brown irises began to fade to white, then his bleached eyes began to glow with necromatic magic. His baby fluff fell away in patches, grotesque chunks of skin began to peel off and flake away, exposing bone and rotting muscle underneath.

The spark caught and began to grow into a flame.

She looked up at Jorthon, her beloved mate. His own eyes had become miky white. His casual jerkin and loincloth had been replaced by battered old training armor. A crude spear stuck out of his body, although he still smiled at her.

The flame became a blaze.

The cheerful sunlight began to fade as she looked down at her other children, their bodies as ravaged as the infant's, their glowing undead eyes staring up at her pleadingly. “Stay with us, mamma.” They repeated, their sweet voices becoming croaks and hisses as the air passed through ruined throats and rotted jaws.

The blaze of her anger turned black with hatred.

“Malthamus.” She whispered. The necromancer's image floated up through the haze of her hidden memories. Slowly the fog began to evaporate, taking away the cheerfulness of the vision. The sun quickly faded away, becoming an inky darkness. A sickly fog rose around her feet, turning the soft straw of the floor to a slimy black rot. The warm, comfortable dwelling crumbled away, covered in dust and mold.

“Malthamus.” She said again, louder as she took strength from her fury. More memories came welling up from the darkness of her mind. Jorthan, once her only ally, the only friendly face in a cast of hostile strangers, her only friend, lying dead on the grass because of her carelessness. Her death wish had been granted to the wrong soul.

“Malthamus!” She yelled, clutching her undead infant tightly to her chest as she saw her own resurrection, brought back with no will of her own. Trapped in a body she could not control, her world reduced to pain as she was forced to commit atrocity after atrocity with only the necromancer's voice as constant company. His venom dripped into her ears.

“He'll make it all better, mamma.” One of the calves said. “You'll see.”

Nadirah softened and looked down at her brood, smiling sadly at them. Her emotions blazed brightly, her hatred and anger fueling the bonfire within her. “No, my loves.” She said softly. “He won't, because he doesn't know how.”

The blaze grew higher until it threatened to consume her from the inside. Around her was the tattered remains of her dream. Her most secret desire. That the necromancer had taken it from her and corrupted it to use against her only deepened her need for vengence.

Closing her eyes, she gently kissed the tiny milk calf on his forehead, her lips brushing against exposed skull, and bent over to set him down on the floor. Her armor rattled softly as she knelt to hug each of the older calves, then she rose to face her dead mate. She reached out and stroked his cold cheek, accepting what could have been.

Nadirah felt the weight of her decision as she turned away from them all to face the door once again. Inside, her love for her imagined family shone with the brightness of the twin suns. Hidden deep inside, she had nourished the dream, fed it with scraps of hope and longing. With a tenderness reserved for precious things, she grasped it and lifted it from the depths of her soul. “I love you all.” She said softly to her imagined progeny. “And I'm sorry that I can't stay.” With her message delivered, she closed her eyes, and threw everything into the inner fire.

The fire erupted within her. Throwing back her head, she let out an anguished roar that shook the room. “I'm coming for you, Malthamus!” With one mighty kick, the door was reduced to splinters, and the last of the illusion fell away into nothingness.

#For RM #Still a WIP

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regrettablewritings · 7 years

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How to Be a Good Catholic, Pt. I (Sonny Carisi x Reader)

AN: “I am a shit Catholic,” I think to myself, continuing to eat my steak burrito on this previous fine Good Friday. “The shittiest Catholic,” I insist, unable to get up to attend Easter Sunday Mass after pulling an all-nighter. This goes out to all the other shit Catholics/Catholics who are trying but not always consistently succeeding. Disclaimer: The examples listed are somewhat inspired by my own experiences. Well, some of them are. I am, in no way, saying that these necessarily apply to everyone. But if these sound eerily familiar, welcome to the sorority/fraternity, we have habits. Literally! (Happy belated Easter!)

@ohbelieveyoume and @xemopeachx (special shoutout to the latter for dealing with my running Catholic things by her!)

PART 2 HERE

As the only son in a household of three girls, Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. had a few extra expectations placed on him besides being an absolute gentleman of God. Specifically, that he meet, fall in love with, and bring home a good Catholic that would win over his parents and sisters and then marry said good Catholic. It was in Sonny’s hopes that you would be that very person: You were sweet, patient, smart, funny, had a good head on your shoulders, could at least recite the Lord’s prayer . . . Okay, maybe it was the bare minimum, but considering what few people he was able to meet outside of his busy schedule, you were the best. Besides, it helped that you liked him right back. Enough, in fact, to agree to date him and do so quite happily for the last couple months. Maybe it was a short period to become so optimistic, but Sonny couldn’t help it: You were, in a word, wonderful.

This description, among plenty of others, was what ran out of your boyfriend’s mouth when he finally took you home to meet the folks, six months into the relationship.

“ – and then this one over here,” Sonny gently patted your shoulder, proud smile in place, “before I could even do anything, she just books it and tackles the guy after a block’s worth of running!” The rest of the Carisi clan broke out into amazed laughter, causing you to blush and smile. You directed your vision to your hands, neatly folded in your lap so as not to pluck at the cloth placed over the dinner table.

Not to jinx it, you couldn’t help but note, but things are going surprisingly well thus far.

You never wanted to buy into stereotypes, but sometimes the one about Italian mothers being protective of their sons seeped into your thoughts, particularly due to Sonny’s occasional light reference of such.

“She may say bring up what church you go to,” Sonny had warned you before. “And by ‘may’, I mean as certain as Barba is certain to hit the scotch tonight.” Dang. You sincerely hoped that she didn’t have a personal vendetta or anything against Our Lady of Merciful Embrace, then.

Apparently, she did not as she had yet to fling any accusatory glances your way or ask any questions that would put you on the spot. She, alongside Mr. Carisi, Bella, Gina, and Theresa, had been all smiles and hugs the entire evening. Of course, you also had to thank Sonny for hyping you up and continuously highlighting your more interesting features like a good salesperson. Though you initially had some hesitancies about him recounting the story on how, during your second date, you chased down and tackled a purse-snatcher out of pure spite . . .

You mustered up enough confidence to cut through your shyness, allowing you to lift your head up and see the riot attempting to be tamed.

Dominick Sr. wiped his eyes free of laughter-induced tears, coughing out rhetorical queries of how “such a lively woman would go for a scrawny noodle like Sonny.” To which, your blush would only deepen, tightening your face into a coy smile. Sonny, on the other hand, remained quite proud of his father’s apparent approval at the cost of a slight jab at his own person. The evening was going well. Too well.

It had to end sometime.

Mother Carisi began to swallow down a few giggles, having decided that the end of the little retelling would be the perfect time to begin dinner.

“(Y/N), would you like to lead us in grace?” she requested. An innocent enough invitation, albeit one that made you nervous simply out of the principle that you would be under observation. But as you made the sign of the cross and prepared to close your eyes, you saw your beloved boyfriend in your peripheral vision, granting you one last smile of pride in you. You were thankful that Sonny had been blessed with an all-inspiring smile. It was almost as if he truly was emitting light and you were the flower he had graciously decided to give all of his energy to.

The appreciation did not go unnoticed. In fact, it translated itself into confidence, resulting in you delivering grace with finality: “God is grace, God is good. And we thank him for our food. Amen.” You didn’t say it quickly, nor did you stretch it unnecessarily. It wasn’t a long prayer of thanks, and therefore you felt no nerves when you repeated the sign of the cross and lifted your head.

You did, however, feel nerves when you noticed six pairs of eyes focused on you. Some were in heads that were still somewhat bowed but the fact that they were directed at you was undoubtable. The essence of slight confusion held within them was also quite blatant. The cold disconnect in the reception of your recital provided a cold front, removing the warmth and confidence that Sonny had previously instilled in you.

Trying not to visibly close back in upon yourself, you uttered a quiet, “. . . Did . . . Did I do something wrong?”

To which, Mother Carisi’s head rose completely, gently waving her hands to show a negative. “Oh, no! No, sweetheart, you did fine, it’s just . . .”

“It’s just not how we usually do our grace,” Dominick Sr. explained. It wasn’t in a cold way or even accusatory. Just as it was: a matter of fact.

“Oh . . .” You knew you were going to regret asking but – “So then how do you say grace?”

“Bless us, O Lord, and these gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty,” Gina offered. She bit her bottom lip as if unsure as to whether it was in her place to finish it. When nobody objected, she completed, “Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” the Carisi clan murmured in unison. You, too, uttered an amen, though one so incredibly quiet that no-one seemed to take notice that it occurred after their collective one. And even if anyone had, the temptation and richness of the meal Mother Carisi had put together stomped it out of complete acknowledgement. At least, to the others.

You continued to sit prettily, humor stories in your sheepish demeanor. Sonny continued to be proud of you. If Sonny was, indeed, the sun and you were, in fact, a flower, you felt as though you would’ve been the kind that closes up after being exposed.

“That went great. They love ya!” Sonny exclaimed. You hummed a response that suggested being neither here nor there and continued to pinch the foil on the edges of the plates on your lap. Mother Carisi insisted that you take plenty of food home and that if there was a particular dish you liked, to come right over and get the recipe. She was a very nice woman with a very nice family. So why did you feel off?

This became a question worth asking in Sonny’s mind as well, much to your dismay. As much of a goofball as he could be, Sonny was still a detective – he was already used to observing behavior from far more heinous figures; figuring out his girlfriend was bothered by something was child’s play.

“Hey,” he asked, taking his eyes off the road to quickly glance at you. “What’s the matter?”

You had two options: Say that nothing was wrong and potentially ruin the evening by pushing Sonny away; or be honest. Damn your good girl behavior.

“I messed up grace,” you pouted.

“That’s what this is about? C’mon, nobody cared about that. Besides, you didn’t mess anything up, you just . . .” Sonny shrugged, “did . . . something a little differently . . . But it’s fine, it’s fine.”

“My parents never even really taught me the version you guys use . . . They just said that the ‘God is grace’ one was good enough. Heck, I don’t even remember learning that grace in Sunday school!”

“Really?” Sonny questioned. “Huh . . . I remember my folks drilling that into our heads. An’ then Sunday school’d seal the door shut so that there’d be no chance of it ever seeping out. But – ” another shrug “ – everybody’s experience is different. No harm done. What matters is that your heart was in the right place. And that Ma likes you. Almost as much as my dad does.”

“You sure about that?” you questioned. Why couldn’t you leave well enough alone? “Because I may not know your mother very well, but I do know mothers in general: They have a tendency to mark down each and every one of their children’s significant others’ screw-ups. It’s only a matter of time before that little slip with grace comes up in a discussion about how I’m a bad Catholic.”

“Hey,” you heard your boyfriend begin sternly. “Ma isn’t like that, I promise. But seriously, there’s no such thing as a bad Cathhhh – ” He dragged the word to a pause. There was that instance with the sex trafficking members of the Church. And an unfortunate but still widely acknowledged amount of scandal . . . Plus, there were plenty of awful people who professed themselves to follow the Catholic doctrines of faith.

“There’s no such thing,” Sonny repeated carefully, “as being a bad Catholic just because you say your grace a bit differently. That’s just ridiculous.”

“Yeah, to you, maybe!” you whined. “You’re a friggen Level 10 Catholic on a scale that only goes up to 12!”

“I wouldn’t say that – ”

“And I’m still stuck Level 4!”

“(Y/N),” Sonny sighed. He managed a quick look at you before turning back to the road. “Listen: It’s not a matter of being a ‘good Catholic’ or even being Catholic at all! I chose you because you’re a great person and I love a lot of things about you. An’ on top of that, you try. That’s literally the most I could ask for. So please: stop worrying about something that doesn’t even require worrying! Ma giving you her cannolis to take home? That’s a sign of approval!”

You sucked in your bottom lip and worried it between your teeth. For as good of a sales person as Sonny had been earlier, he sure wasn’t making you purchase anything he was insisting upon now.

Not noticing, he went on, “So long as you’re not being the type of gal I arrest, you’re doin’ fine. I swear it.” He threw in that light-causing smile for good measure and you threw a weak one of yours back, even if you knew he couldn’t see it too well when he allowed himself to quickly look towards you. You were thankful that he couldn’t better observe your expression. If he could, he would’ve known that you were still beginning to bubble with worry. But, then again, you had never had the most pristine image of self. Maybe he was right? Maybe you were a good Catholic after all . . .

1. Attend Mass on a regular basis, not just for Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day

So the fact of the matter was that, yes, you had been raised Catholic. However, your family was nowhere near as hardcore as Carisi’s. Your family sort of did the basics: go to church as much as possible, make sure you at least practiced the rituals up to First Communion, and try to see how things would play out from then. But for the most part after you got deeper into your teens, most extracurricular stuff depended on you and your increasingly busy schedule. By the time you’d finished college, you’d become what some might call College Catholic: if there wasn’t a near enough Catholic church or one whose commute towards was too ridiculous to complete on a regular basis, you mostly relied on visits home and maybe an occasional dip into the Good Book itself for your spiritual nourishment.

“Besides,” you’d come to argue, “God is everywhere. I shouldn’t need a building just to talk to him.”

You didn’t dislike Mass, but you were definitely amongst the population who understood that it wasn’t always the most entertaining place to be. Of course, the argument for that would’ve been that church wasn’t there to entertain you, it was there for worship and community. Fair enough. But that didn’t mean you were going to pretend to be enthralled by the sermons and the feeling of guilt that was practically thrust upon you with every visit. Add that in with the exhaustion of adult life and how little free time you got, and the deal you’d set up for yourself was that if you woke up an hour before 11 o’clock services at Our Lady and could still feel your feet you would attend services. Unfortunately, with your craptastic sleep schedule and in ability to get up after three alarms, this deal was scarcely followed through with.

You thought you’d be doing yourself and your spirituality a favor by agreeing to go with Sonny to his church the morning after dinner with his folks. You even convinced yourself that attending 9 o’clock service would be good for you, or that it was a deserved punishment for not attending even the later services on a regular schedule.

But then you opened your eyes and, without thinking, released a hiss of displeasure as the morning light enthusiastically groped your eyeballs. And, with equal brightness, your boyfriend knocked on your apartment door, ready to pick you up. You almost wanted to punch him for being so damn pleasant, even as he waited patiently for you to finish getting ready.

“You don’t need to get dolled up,” Sonny insisted. Though he certainly didn’t seem to mind it, looking you up and down as you entered the living room, dressed in a white dress with a blue flower pattern and pearls. You didn’t think it was too much, but it was just classy enough to hopefully avoid getting whispered about.

You clumsily offered a smile. “Well, they call it ‘Sunday best’, don’t they?” You inwardly sighed at the sight of Sonny nodding with agreement. If you could get through this service, you’d be one step closer to being the good girl you could approve of. And who knows? Maybe church with Sonny would be great, simply because he was there with you.

2. Recite the Nicene Creed during Mass

You tried not to jiggle your leg. Tried so hard not to tap your feet against the hard tile floor. But lord almighty (no pun intended), if the droning that had been occurring for the last half hour didn’t make you feel on edge. It was weird how restrictions worked: Normally, you weren’t an excessively mobile person if you could help it. But the moment you were expected to sit still and keep quiet? That was when you were suddenly convinced you needed to run a marathon and monologue Shakespeare.

You looked at your boyfriend to see how he was holding up and immediately regretted it. You should’ve known that Sonny, born and raised in church, would have become skilled in the art of keeping stellar composure. His figure was postured as though he’d receive nourishment with every word that flowed beyond the pulpit, hands folded carefully on the back of the pew before you two without a single finger twitching or tapping from anxiety over being stilled. Beautiful, blue eyes focused intently on the speaker, Sonny didn’t seem tempted to observe his surroundings at all, no desire to find refuge from boredom in the stained glass depicting saints and martyrs.

You were able to snap yourself out of your reverie just in time to hear an aged voice say the particular line that insinuated the next part of Mass: the recitation of the Nicene Creed. You made a pleased smile within yourself upon this acknowledgement: You knew the Nicene Creed like the back of your hand, it was practically Pavlovian at this point.

And so, like the good Catholic Sonny knew you were, you began alongside the rest of the congregation:

“We believe in one God –” you began.

“I believe in one God –” Sonny and the rest of the congregation began.

You froze. I?

“ – of all things seen and unseen –” you continued.

“ – of all things visible and invisible – ” the others continued.

From your peripheral vision, you could just barely make out Sonny returning the gesture: A side eye of interest. But whereas you had complete confusion mixed into your glance, Sonny’s held curiosity. You whipped your eyes back to the jacket-wearing back of the gentleman standing in front of you and creased your brows by a millimeter.

“We (I) believe in one lord Jesus Christ – ”

“ – begotten, not made, one in being with the Father – ”

“ – begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father – ”

Oh, ffffffffffffffflubbernuggets. Was that an okay thing to think in the Lord’s house? Flubbernuggets? Who cares? When the crap did they change the Nicene Creed!? It was then that you realized that you might’ve been off your Holy Game even longer than initially surmised. On top of that, out of all the things the Catholic Church needed revisions on – that was the thing they thought needed to be updated the most!? You tried to keep the confusion and growing frustration about this decision off of your face for the rest of Mass.

Sonny made this particularly hard when, during the exchanging of the sign of peace, he placed a peck on your cheek and whispered, “A traditionalist, I see?” You wondered if St. Lucy would’ve minded it if you threw yourself through the nearby decorated window made in her image. It wasn’t like she looked at it constantly to become attached to it or anything . . .

. . . It was at that moment you realized that could be taken the wrong way and simply wanted to crawl under your pew and die.

3. Go through with Confirmation

“Hey, Counselor, whaddya think?” Sonny beamed, bringing his briefcase into view. Barba barely glanced at it before looking back to the case files he’d just been handed. And he was hoping for a quieter day at the office, too . . .

“. . . What am I looking at here?” came the dull response.

Sonny’s brows creased, though his smile remained ever present. “Whaddya mean? I got it monogrammed! See?” He pointed to the strip of leather upon which the metal clasp was attached. D.O.G.C.

“. . . ‘Dog C’?” Barba questioned after deciding to humor his follower.

“Very funny,” Sonny replied dryly. “Anyway, no, it’s – ”

A gentle knock sounded from behind the office door before opening to reveal you as the source.

“Sorry ‘bout the wait, Mr. Barba,” you offered, ushering yourself in. “The line for Danishes was ridiculous.” You placed a paper bag containing the confectionaries on the edge of his desk away from any files that could be damaged by the sticky oils.

“It’s fine. In fact, you came in just in time: Go distract your boyfriend, he’s going on about this,” Barba waved a hand dismissively, “case.”

“It’s monogrammed, just came in last night!” Sonny stated proudly.

“Oh, neat!” you replied, eager to share his enthusiasm. You observed the lettering: “Dominick Orsino . . . What’s the ‘G’ for?”

“Confirmation name: Genesius. Patron saint of lawyers.” You hummed and nodded.

“And comedians,” you noted.

“How fitting,” Barba threw in, not looking up from his work.

Ignoring Barba’s usual third-party heckling, Sonny inquired how you knew that bit.

“Well, when I was looking at Confirmation names, I took it as an opportunity to memorize weird saints. Like Denis or Agatha.”

“Neat! So what’s yours?” The curiosity glittered in Sonny’s eyes, as if you had a secret to share. It was therefore disheartening for you to feel your stomach bubble at the realization of what he was getting at.

“Pardon?”

“Your confirmation name, what is it?”

Crapolla. You placed your hands together, tapping the tips against one another as if their padding would drown out the similar thumping of your embarrassed heart. It shouldn’t have made you nervous at all, it was just a name. But, considering where you were in your process comparatively, the fact that it was a name you didn’t even have just felt . . . wrong. Particularly in that it was your completionist Catholic boyfriend who was asking for it.

“ Oh, uh . . . I . . . neverwentthroughwithit,” you blurbed.

You watched the curiosity dim. As if it were on one end of a teeter-totter, the other end rose within you: Guilt.

“Pardon?” Sonny asked. It wasn’t harsh or anything of the sort. It was only in a tone that any person would use if they’d misheard something. If only you could convince yourself that this conversation was, in fact, as regular as it probably was.

“I never went through with it,” you mumbled. “Confirmation, I mean. I just . . . I’unno, there was never any real time . . .” Your voice trailed as you came to realize how lame that excuse sounded. No time to advance your spirituality and connection with the church? No time to attempt to exempt yourself from eternal damnation? You made time for that! As you began to rub the back on your arm, you started to wonder if attending drama club and babysitting services were worth it if they meant keeping you from religious extracurriculars.

“Oh,” was all Sonny had said. You noted that there wasn’t any disappointment, giving you temporary space to feel less bad about yourself.

“It’s probably for the better,” stated Barba, who’d taken an opportunity to look up from his work once more. “Giving yourself a Confirmation name just gives your mother one more sign that she’s angry with you. Can’t tell you how many times I had to hear ‘Rafael Iachimo Eduardo.’ You dodged a bullet, (Y/N).”

Before you could even offer a complimentary smile to suggest humor, Sonny snapped his fingers.

“I got it,” he said, “Rose. (Y/N) (M/N) Rose (L/N).”

You and Barba stared at the man incredulously. “Rose?” you questioned. Sonny nodded, quite sure of himself.

“Patron saint of flowers, but was known for her beauty. I think it sounds fittin’ for ya.” He threw in a smile that mingled together pride in his claim, and absolute flirtation. And with that adorable grin of his, the temporary safe haven he’d created closed, dropping you back into the pit of shame. Damn him for being so (and perhaps too) accepting. It made you feel a little less lovely than what he was implying.

You weren’t sure whether Barba’s request that you two “continue your flirting elsewhere” was a good thing or not, being that it broke the moment but also allowed Sonny to ask if you’d join him for lunch. You tried to spend the rest of your hour together feeling like the name he thought would suit you, only to once again feel like a wilting flower.

4. Go to Confession regularly

You had always been a bit iffy about Confession, even as a child. But the reasons had shifted as you grew. When you first started out, you just felt nervous at the idea of telling anyone your sins. Feelings of guilt you’d attempted to bury from stealing your classmate’s cookie during snack time, or lying to your mom about brushing your teeth before bedtime would all arise with every whisper you gave to the listening priest. You didn’t like the feeling of being ashamed.

As you grew older and more skeptical of authority, this unease with the practice became more passionate out of the recognition that these priests were human. This, aside from the acknowledgement that water was wet, became one of your most pointed cases: Humans, no matter what position in life, were all capable of blackmail. Even though you had no desire to commit anything tremendously questionable or heinous, you had even less of a desire to trust someone with such sensitive information.

By the time you’d reached adulthood, it simply became that you didn’t agree with the suggestion that only Catholics were capable of salvation due to their practice of Confession. If God was truly all-loving, then it didn’t make much sense that he would limit his children for their decision to not tell some other bag of flesh about what they’d done when they could simply talk to him about it and ask for his forgiveness.

Sonny, apparently, had never faced the temptation of deterring from the ritual. Or, at the very least, he had never experienced one of the same caliber as you had. The man went to confessional every month as advised. Twice a week alongside frequent visits to services if a case was becoming particularly grueling on his spiritual state. You figured maybe there was something that you, in your adolescent hesitancy, had caused yourself to miss. Maybe Confession was like certain foods: You dislike them as a child but, as you grow, your tastes shift and it becomes more bearable. Only one way to find out.

“You know, you don’t have to do this,” Sonny insisted for the umpteenth time that day. You huffed in response, attempting to speed your steps up as the cathedral came into view. Back before all of this Catholic guilt (before you even started dating!), you had voiced your feelings on Confession. It was not in the form of a critique, but more so an admission as to why you had your qualms about it with a conclusion that while it was not for you, you could understand if someone else found comfort in it and commended them for upholding a potentially strenuous ritual.

For this, Sonny was grateful and tried to return the favor by not pushing you to partake. It was therefore somewhat puzzling to the man when that evening you mentioned needing to stop by the church on your way home to do Confession. Well, puzzled and suspicious. After he questioned you sternly as to whether you had committed someone drastic, followed by your insistence that you’d done nothing wrong and simply wanted to give the practice another go, he calmed. Somewhat.

“I mean, if you’re really about this, I won’t hold ya back,” Sonny offered. You wordlessly marched up the stairs. Your mind had been made.

“Why do you sound so against it?” you muttered lowly.

“I’m not against it,” Sonny maintained as he followed you up the cathedral steps. “I just remember how you once said that you didn’ really like Confession or anything. And to be honest, this just seems a lil out of the blue. I figured maybe this might have something to do with the dinner?” Balls. Balls to him and his beautiful, supportive spirit that made him analyze the shit out of you.

It took everything in you not to freeze up and confirm your datemate’s suspicions. Rather, almost everything; there was just enough in you to keep you moving as well as to create a smile that was meant to assure, but contained cracks if one knew where to look.

“Sonny,” you managed to giggle, stopping outside of the doors. “This has nothing to do with the dinner.” Yeah; it has to do with the fact that that dinner made me realize I need to up my God Game. “I’m allowed to change, right? Besides, you always seem so fulfilled after attending Confession, I wanted to see what I was missing. It’s been some time since I’ve done it after all.” Sonny pressed his lips until they flattened into a line of uncertainty. Yours, however, remained curled with attempted spontaneity as you grabbed the door handle and began to pull the heavy wood towards you. “I’ve done some growing; maybe something about it’s changed for me.”

Nope, you thought to yourself. Same old cramped, musty box. You had to remind yourself not to swing your legs in the confession box, convinced that doing such a juvenile thing would be frowned upon in a container symbolic of repentance. That, and if you weren’t mindful enough, your feet would hit the confessional door and make a thud that would surely resonate within the spacious sanctuary. You didn’t need Sonny, standing outside, to become frazzled at a sudden booming. You sheepishly looked at the gated window to your side and tried your best to hold back a scoff. All these years and this was still the highest method of keep anonymity for these situations, huh? Thank God the Church decided that it was the Nicene Creed that needed updating, and not the Medieval equivalent of a witness protection filter that served as a barrier.

You felt a little bad for thinking these thoughts when you took a moment to analyze them. Maybe you could tell Father about them? . . . Oh, crap. What were you going to tell the pastor!? You had been so intent on proving a point by attending Confession that you’d actually failed to really conclude what you were going to confess! It wasn’t like you were sinless, you knew that much. But there was no way in anything that you were able to release the cavalcade of corruptions that you had accumulated over the years. You needed something simple, something that would ease Father in to your sordid life. Something to make you sympathetic enough so that once he got the dirty details, he’d feel too awful to use them as blackmail –

“Good evening, child,” came a warm, elderly voice from behind the gated window. In all your worrying, you failed to recognize that Father Murphy had taken his place in the opposite section of the box.

“U. . . Good evening, Father,” you responded back. Disliking how nervous you sounded, you reminded yourself over and over that he’d heard plenty of nervous voices before and that you were making a mountain out of a mole hill over this entire thing.

“What brings you in this day?” Father Murphy inquired.

But what if making a mountain will help in reaching Heaven!?

“Oh, Father,” you began. You wanted to smack yourself for coming off so dramatically. “I have committed a sin and am taking responsibility to beg for forgiveness.”

“Very good. Might I ask what sin you have committed?” . . . Well, crap.

“I-it’s . . . Uh . . .” It was at that moment that you realized being put on the spot in the House of the Lord was different from being put on the spot at your job. More feelings of damnation if you’d have to place a finger on it.

In the midst of your stammering, you heard the priest offer, “Take your time. These things can come with difficulty, child.”

Dangit, why does he have to be so nice about it!? you wanted to scream. How the heck did Sonny do this every month? Had you ever even seen him commit a crime!?

. . . Wait a second!

“Father, I stole: My boyfriend had saved a cannoli for himself for after work and I couldn’t help myself – I ate it!” Dammit. And it’d sounded so good in the heat of the moment. You were a grown woman; why were you coming in here with a confession children in Sunday School used? Before you could stop yourself, you added in, “I went out and bought a new one for him, though. Walked six blocks in the evening so he’d have a cannoli ready for him as soon as he stepped a toe through the door.”

If you didn’t know any better, you could’ve sworn you heard Father Murphy huffing to supress a chuckle.

“I see . . . Indeed, stealing is a crime. Though, I must commend you for taking responsibility and setting things right – ”

“I also snuck a bag of cherry sours from a bodega into the movies once because I didn’t want to pay the unreasonable concessions price,” you weakly blabbed.

“That, uh . . . It’s against theater protocol but I wouldn’t call that a sin necessarily.”

“Oh.”

As you exited the confession box, you caught sight of Sonny kneeling in a pew. Apparently he figured that so long as you were doing your thing, he could do his own and get a word in. That, or he felt obligated to as the feeling of pulling out your phone in even an empty church was too awkward.

“Hey,” he chirped after performing the sign of the cross. Lifting himself off of the kneeler, he resumed his place by you. “So, how’d it go? Didja get what you were lookin’ for?”

You bit your bottom lip and cast your eyes to the side. “Well . . . Maybe I still need some time trying to figure out where I stand with confession.”

“Ehh, that’s fine,” Sonny shrugged. He placed an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close with an affectionate nudge. “C’mon, it’s getting late out. Maybe we’ll stop and get Chinese on the way back.”

You smiled. “Sounds good.” A beat as you began to walk towards the sanctuary doors. “. . . I also got a mad craving for cannoli,” you whined.

“We can stop for that, too, then.” Good old Sonny. Sonny, who was apparently nice enough to avoid corrupting the sanctity of confession to ask what you told the priest as his keen hearing picked up the sounds of snickering from the confession box as the two of you walked down the aisle.

#this piece is the longest piece of fail #21 pages you guys #21 pages of this literal self-drag piece #dominick carisi x reader #sonny carisi x reader #sonny carisi imagine #sonny carisi imagines #svu imagine #svu imagines #law & order svu imagine #law & order svu imagines #law and order svu imagine #law and order svu imagines #Regrettablewritings

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superman86to99 · 8 years

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Adventures of Superman #500 (June 1993)

OVERSIZED ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! Featuring the return of Superman! And Superman! And Superman, and also, Superman! But first: The Badass Adventures of Pa Kent in Hell. The last time we saw ol’ Pa, he’d just had a heart attack and seen a ghostly vision of his dead son (that’s Superman, for those joining us), who grabbed his hand and pulled Pa towards him. Now Ghost Superman is like, “Whelp, nice seeing you dad, gotta go.”

Superman is taken “into the light” by a couple of demons disguised as robed Kryptonian ladies. However, Pa refuses to give up on his son and follows them, only to find himself in a battlefield covered with corpses -- those of his Korean War buddies. Pa is (understandably) confused and thinks he’s back in the war, carrying out a mission to rescue some captured “airman”. Private Pa then comes across a farm littered with more dead people, including one that reminds him of his brother Harry... mainly because that’s exactly who it is.

In case you hadn’t noticed, something fishy is going on here. A demonic-looking enemy soldier tries to kick Pa out of wherever the hell this is (get it? hell?), but Pa just punches him into oblivion and soldiers on. Sometimes you just gotta punch some Nazis, folks.

Next up, Pa runs into Lady Blaze, the satanic mistress/recurring Superman baddie. Blaze generously offers to help Pa find his son in exchange for one million do-- I mean, his soul. Pa apparently thinks “eh, I don’t love him that much” and prefers to jump into the void beneath him.

At this point, Pa is saved from pinballing from sad memory to sad memory for all eternity by Kismet, the nice cosmic entity Superman met a while back (“our favourite naked outer space lady in a cape”, as Don Sparrow puts it). With Kismet’s guidance, Pa finally finds Superman, but he’s in the middle of some sort of weird funeral procession carried out by more demons disguised as Kryptonians (and Superman’s old furry friend, the Cleric).

Superman has completely fallen for the show these guys put on, and is prepared to let them take him to the “Kryptonian afterlife”, but Pa eventually breaks the spell with his hollering. More punching ensues!

Superman gets rid of the demons, but he still thinks that Pa should go back to the land of living without him. He’s been gone for too long, and it’s not his place to deny death. Superman’s Kryptonian father Jor-El suddenly shows up to reinforce this notion, telling Superman to join him and his biological mother, Lara, in the afterlife. It is the natural way of things.

Naturally, Pa Kent ain’t having any of that.

Pa practically carries Superman through the portal in front of them. Cut to: Pa waking up in a hospital bed in Smallville, whispering “Clark is back” to a freaked out Ma Kent and Lois Lane.

Suddenly, Superman sightings are reported all over Metropolis -- it’s like he’s in four places at once! Lois refuses to give herself any false hopes, but just to make double-sure her fiancee is still dead, she decides to take a peek inside his tomb. Inspector Henderson opens the casket for her, and it’s... empty?!

TO BE CONTINUED! But first...

Epilogue 1: Two rival gangs are fighting over turf when one pulls out some futuristic super-weapons that literally blow the other guys to pieces. As the cops roll in, out of the rubble emerges a hulking figure saying “DOOMSDAY! GOTTA STOP DOOMSDAY!” Holy shit, it’s Superman! He’s back! Also, black!

Epilogue 2: As an evildoer tries to carjack an innocent citizen, a caped figure flies to the rescue... and blasts the absolute crap out of the would-be thief with some energy blasts, throwing him off the roof of a building. The familiar figure explains that he’s “risen from the dead” and been changed by “the fire and darkness” -- OK, that has to be Superman. There’s no other explanation.

Epilogue 3: There’s an emergency at Project Cadmus, the genetic experimentation facility that recently held Superman’s corpse: some type of secret cloning experiment has broken out before it/he was ready. We see this brash young clone being led to the outside world by the Newsboy Legion, and upon hearing the way they refer to him, he exclaims: “DON’T EVER CALL ME SUPERBOY!” Because he’s actually Superman! Oh my God!

Epilogue 4: A tourist family stops in front of the Daily Planet and reflects solemnly on the plaque marking the spot where Superman died... until a man in blue tights lands from the sky, rips out the plaque, and burns it with his heat vision. We then see that he’s got robot parts all over his body; you know, as if he’d been brought back to life after being pummelled to death by a monster. Whelp, that’s it. That’s Superman, right there.

Character-Watch:

First appearance of these four mysterious Supermen: Black Superman, Blind Superman, Brat Superman, and Beep-Bop-I’m-a-Robot Superman. Or is it?!

Creator-Watch:

This is a suitably epic finale for Jerry Ordway’s original Superman run, which started way back in 1987. Ordway went from artist to co-plotter to writer/artist to just writer, along the way pioneering the house style that all Superman series will use throughout the ‘90s. This is often called the “Byrne” and/or “Jurgens” era, but I’d argue that Ordway was the single most influential creator involved in this period, and although what comes directly after his departure is cool as hell, we’ll definitely miss the heart, humor and realism he brought to even the most obscure background characters.

Speaking of which, this wouldn’t be an Ordway comic without a shit-ton of subplots, so here we go...

Plotline-Watch:

One detail I never caught as a kid: one of the “Superman sightings” at the end of the issue is clearly a drunken Bibbo in a Superman shirt.

The Final Misadventure of Jose Degaldo: He’s been beaten, burned, broken (literally), had buildings dropped on him, and dumped by both Lois Lane and Cat Grant, but Jose “Gangbuster” Delgado has finally had enough -- he’s ditching Metropolis. A regular crime-punching adventure goes wrong when Jose accidentally beats up an undercover cop posing as a drug dealer. Upon learning there’s a warrant for his ass and getting shot by another cop, Jose decides to call it quits and leave town (using the bus ticket Inspector Henderson recently gave him). He’s actually going to Fawcett City along with his creator -- he’ll show up again in Jerry Ordway’s Power of Shazam, but that’s it for Jose in these pages! Goodbye, Suicide Slum’s rose.

Incidentally, Cat Grant is feeling rather down since she split with Jose, and her boss Vinnie Edge uses the opportunity to invite her to dinner. She agrees, even though A) her relationship with Vinnie’s son did not end well, and B) he’s a disgusting perv who just grabbed her butt. Don Sparrow says: “The interplay between Cat Grant and Vinnie Edge hasn’t aged well -- though in some ways it seems timelier than ever.”

The “favor” Vinnie mentions above is not what you might think: he wants Cat to talk to Jimmy Olsen, who has neglected his duties as star of the hit Turtle Boy TV series ever since a certain pal of Jimmy’s was violently killed. Jimmy isn’t in the mood for light-hearted TMNT copyright infringement, though, so the series is currently on reruns.

Those Turtle Boy reruns are watched by the cellmate of Oswald Loomis -- aka Superman’s least intimidating rogue, The Prankster. Loomis, once a children’s entertainer himself, doesn’t appreciate ‘90s television and tries to electrocute said cellmate (who, in my memory, was Vinnie’s son Morgan Edge, making this scene slightly less random).

Pa Kent smashing the ghostly Jor-El with a shovel that materializes out of nowhere is, of course, a shout out to John Byrne’s classic Man of Steel #6, when he does the same thing. I want a full series about Pa dispatching Kryptonian ghosts the same way. His maligned brother Harry was also mentioned in a Byrne comic, World of Smallville #1.

As usual, I’m forgetting or lazily leaving out plenty of important details, so check out Don Sparrow’s section after the jump for way more!

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

Even more than Superman #75, it’s this issue (and the storyline that follows) that most define this, my most beloved era of Superman comics for me. Perhaps it’s because I was actually opposed to Superman’s death, rather than excited about it, whereas with this issue, I was only completely excited, and totally curious about how they’d bring Superman back.

Still more nerdy background: as we’ve mentioned in previous blogposts, I live in the same city as Super-teamster Tom Grummett, so the fact that he drew this comic was big, big deal in my hometown. Our local comic store (which sat below Tom Grummett’s art studio upstairs) had Tom in on the day it was released to sign copies, so it was a major event. Though I was only a lad of 13 at the time, both that day, and in the years since, I bought enough copies of Adventures of Superman #500 to insulate my house with them (and so did the rest of the world, making the resale value not quite what Superman #75 was). How big of a deal was Superman’s return in my hometown? Well, we made the evening news…

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The direct market edition cover features a stunner of a painting by the great Jerry Ordway, of a ghostly Superman reaching out to Pa Kent from beyond the void. It was billed as being a removable translucent screen, but I don’t know anyone who was successfully able to remove the vellum without ruining their cover, but the softening of the add-on is very effective. The newsstand edition (remember when comics could be purchased on newsstands?) has a decidedly story-driven cover, which must have perplexed the many non-regular Superman readers who came out in droves for this big issue. It features Superman and Pa Kent floating over a background of enemies (including the demonic Blaze, which, to the uninitiated, must have been pretty spooky) with Pa Kent inexplicably in a Challengers of the Unknown looking jumpsuit. Confusion aside, it’s still a great cover, and a nice hint at all the zip-a-tone goodness we’ll find inside.

Throughout the issue, the real world and the afterlife are given very distinct visual styles, with the ‘real’ world being inked and coloured normally, and the spirit world with lots of zip-a-tone shadows and gleaming bright colours. It’s such an effective way to delineate the storylines, and man, I love how the extra shading looks on the afterlife pages. It’ll be hard to single out only a few pages, because, honestly, this is one of the best drawn comics of the era.

In the first few pages, I was struck that, despite seeing Superman in full uniform at the end of Superman #77, the Superman Jonathan Kent sees on the ‘other’ side is Clark Kent, which is a telling note about how he sees his identity. The image of Pa stripping away his Clark garb is a great one, with the mist and swirling clouds establishing we are indeed, not in Kansas anymore.

The direct market edition also has some differences within the book, in addition to the difference in cover—it has a number of full page splashes inserted into the storyline, which are missing from the newsstand edition, and each one is a stunner. The first one is Gangbuster descending a fire escape on page 6, having ignored the warnings he got from Inspector Henderson in the Superman specials that preceded this issue.

The most interesting thing about these splashes, aside from how just about every one of them would have made for some killer poster art, is how seamlessly Jerry Ordway matches the scripts. Many of the splashes contain dialogue, but if those sentences are removed (as they are in the newsstand edition) the story still makes sense, which must have been a real challenge. [Max: Oddly enough, the one flaw I’ve found in my giant Death and Return of Superman omnibus so far is that some of the dialogue from these pages is duplicated, presumably from combining pages from both editions.]

Page 9 features another great Gangbuster image, and the fight choreography in the pages that follow has a real sense of place and pace.

As we return to Pa Kent’s near death experience, the visuals go a good job of selling the story’s dreamlike conceit—“reality” is pretty flexible where he is, so as Jonathan spends time there, his thoughts get muddled in with memory, and he can lose his purpose. It really feels like a dream in that way. Also, having heard about Jonathan’s brother previously, I thought he’d look a lot worse. There’s a strange cutaway to the Prankster in these pages, and while it’s a funny little scene, it has no bearing on the story, and Prankster doesn’t pop up again in these pages for a very long time---if memory serves, until the ill-fitting reboot of his look some 80 issues later. [Max: We saw him during the Dominus storyline, but I’m not sure if that counts.]

I also love how Grummett seems to draw Prankster as looking like UK comedian Terry Thomas, which is a great fit. It’s always tricky to translate such goofy-looking characters into real people, and here, perhaps for the first time, Prankster looks like a human being and not a doughier Alfred E Neuman. (Do prisoners really get their own portable TVs? Surely this scene demonstrates the danger of such a luxury!)

The scenes of Pa Kent falling into a pit and being pulled out by Blaze are chilling, but, like the rest of the issue, doesn’t it just make you fall in love with tough, no nonsense Jonathan Kent? It’s a mini-Godwatch when he pulls a Luke Skywalker and choose oblivion over joining forces with Blaze. (Extra points for Jonathan asking the question on the minds of a lot of Superman readers—is Blaze the devil or what?)

Next up is an appearance by what would seem to be Blaze’s opposite number, Kismet, our favourite naked outer space lady in a cape. Both sides of the two-page splash are pretty stunning here.

The ersatz Kryptonian funeral is pretty interesting too. Here, Grummett walks a fine line, having the Kryptonian stuff accurate enough that we know what it’s supposed to be, but just off enough that we know something strange is going on.

Once Clark figures out that the wraiths mean him harm (has there ever been a nice wraith?) it’s so, so great to see him back in action after all these months without him. Major kudos to the colourist, here especially, but throughout the book, for the unique colours which look great here on Superman’s uniform. Plus, I always like the times when Superman loses his cape.

The visual effect of the portal back to reality is just amazing, and from their perspective, probably pretty accurate. Next to the blinding light of the afterlife, earthly life would probably seem pretty dark. That last image from the direct edition, of Superman flying through the void with Pa Kent is just such a stunner. And from a story standpoint, this is just so definitive of the Super-team. That a story about bringing back Superman is told in the most personal, meaningful way, with a chubby, balding old farmer as more or less the lead character. It’s a total rejection of the grit teeth and substance-less Image comics trend of the era in its’ wholesomeness. And I love this is how they chose to bring him back. My very favourite detail, that I came back to again and again was that the heartbeat that returns to Pa Kent’s monitor goes across his panel, into the panel of Superman’s tomb. So subtle, and so, so awesome.

The four page previews kicking off the Reign storyline are almost an issue unto themselves, but I love how all the eye-witness accounts from page 45 are later seen within issues, and give clues to very different Supermen.

If you’ll allow me just a little more nerdiness, DC sent comic shops some previews of this issue to create excitement, and these pages included scans of the end section with the new Supermen. The only catch was, on these previews the figures were totally whited out, so you couldn’t see what he looked like. So having read those short previews, I thought they were all referring to ONE new Superman, who I assumed had been changed by his experience with Doomsday. It wasn’t until I got the issue home that I realized they were launching four different storylines.

The art on these is pretty interesting. This is really the point where Jon Bogdanove shifts into a really loose, less constrained style, which honestly works quite well for the larger than life character of John Henry Irons. And that first look at him—you can definitely see why they thought that Shaquille O’Neal would work for this character.

Next is a spooky look at the Last Son of Krypton, who I 100% believed was the real Superman, mainly because of his appearance. The panel of Superman lowering to finish off the thug is a great, eerie look, and I dig the Gandalf the White style dialogue here, too.

I love everything about the “Metropolis Kid” section, because it’s all built-in, and even gives us hints of this character’s “tactile telekinesis” with the grating not being damaged from his blow. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but man, it’s a great costume too.

Lastly, the Man of Tomorrow segment, which is such great, great storytelling, as, until the very last second, you don’t realize anything is amiss, in spite of the facial expressions of the tourists. [Max: This guy freaked me out even before I saw his full face, and I just realized why: the panel of him turning to face the family reminds me the end of this traumatizing BTAS episode.]

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

It’s interesting to me that this issue establishes that Jonathan Kent fought in the Korean conflict, and not, as was established in the World of Smallville mini-series, World War II. It’s amazing that enough time had passed by this point, that they had to move the timeline up. I suppose if Pa Kent were still in modern stories, he’d have been a Vietnam veteran by now. I’ll admit being surprised watching Smallville that Jonathan Kent had never been in any war—I thought for sure they’d have made him a Gulf War veteran or something.

Even completely in shock and grief and confusion, Lois Lane really rocks those stretchpants.

GODWATCH: This is the big one, where, as hinted to in past issues, the belief system that the Kents raised Clark within is made explicit. First on page 22, in a moment of despair, Lois admits she wishes her faith were stronger, and Martha relates that their beliefs included Heaven, and that Clark himself, to her knowledge, subscribed to those beliefs. Finally, when Pa stabilizes, Ma Kent thanks the Lord, on page 42. [Max: I also find Pa’s theory that Clark only ended up in this limbo because he’d been raised as a mortal pretty interesting.]

“Sure—have some of my hootch, why don’tcha?” A very funny exchange. [Max: I forgot to mention High Pocket’s essential contribution to this issue, when he fishes Jose out of the river, gives him booze, and tries to recruit him for some larceny! Shame on me.]

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