#tw: death of a parent

[shares-a-vest]

a sad steddie ficlet for mother's day

tw: discussion of the death of a parent

Eddie Munson doesn’t have an easy time of it on Mother’s Day.

Steve figures as much as he gingerly walks up the front steps of the Munson’s home and raps on the front door. He’d woken up far too early for a day off work and perhaps selfishly, he felt lonely waking up to an empty house on Mother’s Day, a day he hadn’t spent with his own mother in three years.

As he knocks on the front door, the fly-screen frame making a tinny sound under his knuckles, he tries to convince himself to be thankful that his mother is here.

Well, not in Hawkins. But she's somewhere. He just isn’t sure where seeing as yet another business trip turned into a getaway weekend with friends that turned into an exotic vacation before going right back around to being an extended business trip.

He stops mid-knock, panic creeping into his chest as he considers the early hour - 8am being far too early for notorious not-before-noon Eddie.

But before he can take a step backwards and slowly make his way to the safety of his precious Beemer parked conspicuously right outside, the door opens revealing a worried and rushed Wayne, dressed for work.

The man closes his eyes, seemingly relieved at Steve’s presence. He makes quick work of scooping up his work boots (always sitting just inside the door) and crowds Steve on the small front stoop.

“Steve,” he whispers, leaving the door ajar, “Glad you’re here, my boy. Got called into work.”

“Is… is Eddie up yet?” Steve stutters.

“He’s inside watching TV,” Wayne replies, voice low, “Gotta warn you, kid, today is very hard for him.”

He cranes his neck to peek inside. Eddie is sitting on the couch, cradling something in his lap with a throw blanket over his knees. His eyes are glazed over, staring at the TV as he twists strands of his hair around his finger.

“Eddie,” Wayne calls, voice laced with the faint hope of a response, “I’ll be back tonight, okay?”

Eddie gives a half-hearted grunt, “Whatever.”

Wayne forces himself down the front steps and off to his truck, hesitating one last time as he opens his truck door and waves goodbye.

Steve steps inside, giving a small and admittedly just plain stupid wave from his hip. Eddie's eyes snap straight at him, glaring like he could shoot laser beams from his eyeballs if he tried hard enough.

“Oh, great,” he says, feigning a harsh edge as he rolls his eyes, “You’re here.”

Steve knows this tactic well, Eddie had done it a lot when he was recovering in hospital. But the pang in his chest, the feeling of rejection, of being turned away, hurts nonetheless.

He nods, more to himself to force himself into the kitchen to fix Eddie some breakfast. He decides on a bowl of Honeycombs, no milk. He will settle for the odd crunching mouthful of dried cereal bits if it means Eddie eating something.

“Why aren’t you at home serving up Mommy’s breakfast in bed?” Eddie seethes as Steve places the cereal box back in the cupboard.

He ignores him for as long as it takes him to move from the kitchen to the couch.

“Eds, my parents aren’t home,” he replies, letting the cereal bowl hit the coffee table with a pointed thud.

Eddie shirks away, clutching a big square book to his chest.

It’s a photo album.

After a long moment of only the sounds of a rather noisy toy commercial on the television filling the room, Eddie sighs heavily.

“I know.”

“Do you need me to leave you alone?” Steve asks, tone even and serious, despite not wanting to do such a thing, especially as his question conjures up a well of tears in Eddie’s already glassy eyes.

“Steve, I…” Eddie starts, voice low as he scrubs a hand over his face, “I won’t be very good company today.”

“It’s okay,” he says, lowering onto the couch.

He looks Eddie over - he is restless. Knee bopping on the spot, hair more matted than Steve initially thought. He isn't wearing his signature rings or his wristwatch. And he looks like he hasn't had an ounce of sleep.

Eddie mumbles something he doesn’t quite catch and shakes his head, the frizz and tangle caused by worried fingers adding an extra bounce. He fluffs the blanket to cover them both.

“Can we just sit here?” he asks, leaning in.

He wipes his nose on his (an old blue sweater of Steve’s that had long ceased being his own) sleeve.

Steve wraps a protective arm around him as he shifts closer, “Of course, baby.”

Eddie snuffles, barely getting out his words for tears, “I was going to look at pictures of my Mom.”

He covers his face with his hands, letting the album go. Reflexes kicking in, Steve catches it just before it slides off the blanket. He sets it by his side, leaning in close to ask, “How about I take some pictures out for you to look at, hmm?”

“‘Kay,” he agrees meekly.

Steve soon discovers why Eddie has been sitting here just holding the photo album labelled 'Precious Memories'. It is filled with pictures of his father, Al - mostly looking like a fun-loving young man, far from Eddie’s descriptions and Wayne’s understandably harsh words. There are many pictures of Al and Wayne, often featuring an older man Steve assumes is their father.

He can’t help the odd giggle that escapes him looking at pictures of baby Eddie, including one of him crying with a face covered in chocolate. 

Eddie barely registers, instead looking ahead to the Sunday morning cartoons on the television. Usually, he’d be laughing at Looney Tunes outwitting each other with sticks of dynamite, but today he just curls in on himself further and further, pulling the blanket up tight to his neck.

There is only a sprinkling of photographs of Eddie’s mother, starting about halfway through the book. Her dark brown hair is striking, similar to Eddie’s, only straightened out with its styling.

Steve gets to work flapping back stubborn sheets of acetate stuck to thick pages in order to free each picture. He picks them out one by one until he has a pile of about a dozen, all curling from years-old backing glue and tape strips.

“Here you go, Eds.”

He hands over a picture of Eddie, aged about six and dressed as a witch alongside his beaming mother donning a long grey beard and an electric blue wizard's hat.

A smile teases at Eddie’s lips, skin pulling at the scar on his jawline.

He reaches for a single Honeycomb.

“Thank you, Steve,” he says, pressing the photograph to his chest.

[romirola]

Hello, Tumblr friends. I have a rare Romi life update that I’d like to share with you. It is sad news, so I will put it under a cut and tag it accordingly. 

My father died. 

I have been a primary caretaker for my father for quite a while as he endured a variety of health issues. As grateful as I am to know that my father is now at peace, I miss him a lot. There’s a constant, raw emptiness that I can’t quite describe, as well as a profound love that transcends mere physical death. For now, I am figuring out how to function without him while sorting out all of the next steps that arise from parent’s death. It’s hard. I’m leaning on the kindness and support from loved ones, the comfort my faith provides, and the strength my father taught me to have while facing all things.  

You might notice disruptions in my normal updates to my Redactedverse fics, response times to asks, DMs, and general interaction around the dash. Or, you might not. Or, maybe both at different times. Frankly, I’m not sure if I will follow my instinctual impulse to take some time to be alone or to cling to the meaningful connections and joy of seeing people’s creative work that I can always count on finding here. It’s difficult to say. What I can say for sure is that any disruption will be temporary. I enjoy writing/reading fics and thinking about the blorbos way too much to ever stop. Please feel free to comment/reblog/DM/ask just as you normally would. Even if I don’t read or respond right away, I always welcome your presence in my life. I always have and I always will. 

I am going to set up periodic reblogs of this post in my queue in hopes that those who need to see this message will see it at some point. 

Thank you for your understanding. I’m grateful to be able to connect with you all, especially as I enter my David Shaw era. 

[nowritingonthewall]

What do you think about the way Poe literally jolts up as soon as Finn holds him after the explosion in TLJ?

Could it be some sort of trauma related to what he endured while being captured?

Baby boy has pure and utter panic in his eyes before he sees it's just Finn, I honestly think that the aftermath of everything that's happened to him in TFA is not discussed enough.

Oh my goodness, a Poe ask, thank you so much, Nonnie 🥰

And omg there are so many thoughts that come up while watching this little scene!

To some extent his reaction can probably be explained by the fact that he is still right in the middle of an extremely dangerous situation. His adrenaline levels must be going through the roof at this point. So after what just happened, it may even appear to seem normal for his body to be in fight or flight modus at this very moment when he jolts at Finn.

However. By the time we get to the events occurring in TLJ, Poe has been in constant flight or fight modus for years. This poor and sweet and wonderful man experienced his first major traumatizing event when he was only eight years old and had to witness the death of his Mom. And his teenage years weren’t exactly smooth sailing, either, the few months that span the events in “Free Fall” alone were just one life-threatening situation after another and he was never really presented with any opportunity to recover from any of those. So when he is brought onto the Finalizer in TFA, he is most likely already suffering from severe C-PTSD.

And then, of course, there is his interrogation, which would have been enough to break any man, even one without a history of trauma. And Poe just keeps on going as if nothing happened after that. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that TLJ takes place only a few days after the events in TFA, but, uhm… to come back to your question, yes, I absolutely think that his reaction is a trauma response!

And I couldn’t agree more, it isn’t discussed enough, that’s why we need a whole Poe Dameron tv show (with 10 seasons minimum, please)!!!

But even though it isn’t discussed enough, imho the aftermath is plain to see in Oscar’s acting. Just in case you haven’t come across it yet, may I recommend this excellent post by @userpoe laying out several symptoms of PTSD that Poe shows in all the movies. I’d even go as far as saying that most of his actions that seemed to be out of character or earned him hate by the “fans” can be traced back to Poe being a deeply traumatized man. Like, e.g. his very short temper with Threepio. We know that’s not how Poe usually acts towards droids. Apart from his incredibly sweet way of interacting with BB-8 (and his love interest in “Resistance”) we literally see him behaving very different towards Threepio himself in the Poe comics. And, of course, there is that very character-revealing moment on Kijimi in TROS, and the pain you can see in Poe’s eyes when Threepio is taking “one last look at my friends”. This movie has so many moments that were most likely added for a cheap laugh by the writers but that fit so smoothly into Poe’s history with PTSD, whether it’s his annoyance with Threepio or his display of trust issues when he wonders whether Rey’s been using her jedi powers on Finn and him.

I am sorry, I have digressed way beyond your original question.

But, may I just add, apart from Poe showing clear signs of trauma, it’s also a little heartbreaking to watch how he doesn’t even take a moment to think of himself when Finn asks him whether he is all right? Apart from the wounds to his heart and soul, his body must hurt like hell after being subjected to that explosion (and I bet he didn’t even take as much as a little casual trip to the med bay) and he doesn’t even stop to give Finn a short “I am okay.” He immediately jumps to thinking about what needs to be done to save everybody else. (And of course, then there’s that wonderful moment when we see Leia mirroring his thought process which will never stop making me emotional.)

[in-love-with-writing-whump]

TW: CHILD WHUMP, DEATH OF A PARENT

Whumpee stood at the corner of their mother's bed. She stared up at the ceiling, unblinking and silent. Her face seemed stiff, her smile gone.

"Ma?" Whumpee asked, their tiny hand grabbing her shoulder. She was cool to the touch. They frowned. "Ma? Wake up, Ma."

Silence met them. They stared at her, waiting for her to move. Nothing.

"...Ma?"

They sit down next to the bed, crying quietly until they eventually drift off to sleep. When Caretaker, a friend of their mother, comes to visit, they find a sickly Whumpee instead, and reluctantly take them in.

[jomiddlemarch]

They do become more real 

“Your mother loved you,” Joel said. 

He’d said it before, but not to this child. The words felt familiar even as everything else around him felt different. And that was before he considered Grace sitting on the couch, very demonstrably going over an inventory for the clinic, a second pen thrust through the bun at the back of her head and forgotten as she checked-off and struck-through and generally made it clear she was Not Listening.

She had a mind like a steel trap, the fiercely hinged jaws of which he now appreciated viscerally and would be able to go over every word of the imminent exchange while they lay together in bed later tonight, the bun taken down, his fingers stroking through her silky hair. The pen would sit in a mason jar in lieu of dried flowers, the only bouquet available in Jackson after the frost.

Right now, though, there was Ellie to attend to.

“You don’t have to like, butter me up about it. It’s fine, I’m fine,” Ellie said, shrugging for good measure so he would Get It. Joel wasn’t exactly sure when the women in his life had started requiring capitalized verbs in his relatively laconic internal monologue, but he wasn’t about to argue with it. 

“Anyone says that’s lyin’,” he replied. It was risky, talking about lies with Ellie, given what he’d told her about what happened in Salt Lake, but he’d started to figure she didn’t always tell him the truth and the world they were in wasn’t one where the truth was critical to survival. Loyalty, kindness, a sure hand on a trigger or holding a knife would all beat out honesty and he wouldn’t find anyone who’d disagree, not even Ted at his most sentimental.

Ellie gave him a look equal parts dismissal and skepticism. Her face had filled out some since they got to Jackson, but she’d leaned into being a kid, more so after they’d moved in with Grace and had the rough shape of a family, Tommy and Maria coming over for Sunday dinner, Joel playing the guitar in front of the fire on the wet, miserable nights of late fall. She’d never had anything like it, back in the Boston QZ, growing up at the FEDRA boarding school, but he had. As Ted would likely say, this wasn’t Joel’s first rodeo.

“I used to talk to Sarah about her mother,” Joel said.

As expected, that got Ellie’s attention but unlike his older daughter, Ellie aimed for a cool slyness where Sarah had liked to pounce and then grill him for all she was worth. Grace glanced at him, a flicker in her dark eyes asking this a good idea? before she went back to the legal pad on her lap, the furrow in her brow a confirmation that they were running low on something critical that would be difficult if not impossible for them to gin up a replace for in Jackson.

“Yeah?” Ellie said. It was all she was willing to offer but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t let go. Tenacious, that was the word for her, she took hold and she hung on for dear life, even if she didn’t always hold her own life dear enough to his liking.

“Yeah, she was curious, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Too proud,” he said.

“Or maybe she didn’t want to bug you. Maybe she thought it’d upset you if she asked,” Ellie said. Grace smiled and then quickly frowned, as if he wouldn’t have noticed either expression. As if he hadn’t stayed alive all these years noticing everything, even if he wished he could just shut his goddamn eyes.

“Maybe,” he said. He hadn’t let himself think about it like that, not directly, but Ellie had that way about her, making him consider something like it was new or like it wouldn’t hurt unbearably. In that long ago time, when he’d worried about shitbum sub-contractors showing up for a job, sung along with his pick-up’s radio, thrown out another couple of bananas that had rotted in the fruit bowl, Sarah had made demands she knew he could meet and few others— tacos (always carnitas) on Tuesday, overly expensive sneakers, a kiss at bedtime.

“Why’d she have to ask?” Ellie said.

“Because her mother was gone,” Joel said.

“She left?”

“We lost her,” Joel said. After all this time, it was still hard to talk about, which was the most unexpected consolation, his grief impervious to the world ending and ending. “She died when Sarah was about six months old.”

“But that was Before,” Ellie said. She’d unconsciously picked up on Grace’s framing, because she would never have allowed herself to copy Grace that way, the awareness making it an affectation and her temperament and adolescence making it impossible for her to put Grace into the role of a parent, even if they all knew that’s what she’d become.

“People still died Before. There were lots of things doctors couldn’t cure or fix,” Joel said. 

Ellie looked at him and then down, staring at her hands or maybe her feet in their giddily striped wool socks, he wasn’t quite sure, except that she was giving them both time. Grace too, Ellie might expect her to weigh in on what it had been like to be a doctor Before, when there were pharmacists and endless lengths of suture, pills spilling out of a bottle and down the drain an annoying inconvenience and not a death sentence. Joel knew Grace wouldn’t speak, not about hospitals and med techs and old pneumatic tube systems that were sometimes more reliable than an electronic order entered at the nurse’s station, freight elevators and vending machines filled with the sweetest, saltiest snacks, bags of saline gleaming like moonstones. She wanted to hear about Sarah and her mother and she wanted to hear Joel’s voice as he talked about them. She wanted to know Sarah’s mother’s name and what he had called her, whether they were the same.

“What did you tell Sarah about her mom?” Ellie asked, almost politely.

“How excited she was to be a mom, to be Sarah’s mom. How good she was at her job, how smart she was. Strong. How she made the best sweet potato pie I ever ate, and that’s not something to mention to Ted, he’d take it as a fuckin’ dare and he’d stop making that dried apple strudel Grace likes,” Joel said. “How she was cooler than me.”

“Cooler than you? Impossible,” Ellie replied, full of piss and vinegar as his great-aunt Rubina used to say. Face like a hatchet and a tongue to match, she’d always been that relative his parents and their siblings gave a wide berth, but she kept the cookie jar full and she saved the funnies from the newspapers for Tommy and him to read, lying on their bellies, while the grown-ups talked on the porch on hot nights.

“Sarah’s mom was impossible. Impossibly bright. Beautiful. Fucking scary when she wanted to be. When she wasn’t even trying to be,” Joel said. “She loved that girl with all her heart and I did my best, but I could never tell Sarah how much that was. How it was a goddamn travesty that she lost her mom—”

“You think it should’ve been you,” Ellie said. 

He shrugged a little. There was no use arguing sometimes. 

“You think she would’ve been better off with her mom, happier or safer or maybe even alive right now,” Ellie said. It hurt, but not as much as it could have, because she was looking at him as serious as death and she’d saved his life more than once. It should only ever have been his job to look after her but he’d been there after she killed the cult leader and he’d gotten her out of Salt Lake. “You’re wrong, even if she didn’t make it. You couldn’t ever be not as good at keeping someone alive.”

It was the clumsiest way he’d ever been told someone loved him, but he’d take it. 

“Your mom loved you as much as Sarah’s loved her,” he said.

“You don’t know that,” she said. They’d have to talk about how they felt this way, these indirect comments, these pointless arguments, Grace a witness, a referee, the control rod in the nuclear reactor; how they cared for each other was too big for the little words there were. As long as he lived, he’d be sleeping on his deaf ear, listening for Ellie in the night.

“Yeah, I think I do,” he said.

Ellie ducked her chin down and looked up at him, her eyes bright, her expression skeptical. She wanted to be sure, of her mother and of him, because he’d pushed her away at the beginning, told her to shut up, sit down, stay put. Grace had left her the larger slice of cake or pie or the last cookie, ate the heel of the loaf when Ellie wrinkled her nose at it, shoved over whenever Ellie crowded her on the couch, told Ellie about every disgusting object she’d ever fished out of someone’s ass to Ellie’s obvious, ghoulish delight; she was sure of Grace.

“You can’t prove it,” she said. If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would have put her hands on her hips, as if he needed the emphasis.

“There’s plenty I know without being able to prove,” Joel said.

“Yeah?” Ellie said. He’d almost won her over. It would just take a little more, except he had to get it all right. The tone of his voice and his expression, how he held his hands, the length of the pause before he responded.

“Yeah.”

*

“That was an impressively succinct closing argument you made, counselor,” Grace remarked once he’d blown out the lamp on the bedside table. There was still enough moonlight to see by, though she was cast in silver now instead of gold and she was propped up on her side, the pose provocative, her ancient sweatshirt layered over a flannel nightgown more intimate than lingerie and far warmer.

“I never wanted to be a lawyer,” he said. 

“Seems like there’s a lot you never wanted to be. You still get the job done, whatever it takes,” she said. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, thinking of the way Ellie had smiled when he reminded her about needing to wake up early for her work mucking out the stalls at the stable. The way she’d managed to bump into him as she walked to her bedroom, shuffling along in her sock-feet. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

[onlycasuallyobsessed]

My dad passed away today, so I am a bit of a mess right now. Thank goodness for wrestling tonight so figuring out something to watch to lose myself in is settled.

[a-little-specificity]

Today it has been 2 years since my dad died.

I still can't believe it most days. How someone can be here, such a constant presence, and then they're just poof. Gone. Forever.

Watching the life literally drain from someone so quickly like it was never even there in the first place is an experience I never want to have to have again.

It's something I think about literally everyday. Those last few days of him in the hospital, in a covid unit, having to don layers of PPE to just stand in his room and watch as he slipped further and further away from us.

It took him 8 minutes to be pronounced dead once we stopped life support.

8 minutes.

It was a lot faster than any of us thought. Merciful in a way, that we didn't have to sit for hours just waiting, but also so fast that we were all blindsided by the brevity.

I had him for 24 years and he was gone in 8 minutes.

[signourneybooks]

The Great Weather Diviner | ARC Review

Thank you to Simone Jung and Books Forward for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway. Book: The Great Weather Diviner: The Untold Origin of Punxsutawney Phil by Rob Long and Andrew DolbergRelease Date: November 7th 2023Tags: Fantasy | Middle Grade | Animal Characters | Family | Adventure Trigger/Content Warnings: War | Slavery | Flooding Mine…

[kyuusou]

✈️ — ever traveled anywhere interesting?

//

I travelled two times with my family to Thailand for three weeks. It was really great! I guess the most memorable aspect of the trip was seeing my dad so, so happy. He loved Thailand so much (it was his fishing paradise) and we even had plans to go and live there all together with the rest of the family. I’d go anywhere if it meant my dad would be happy. Alas, my dad’s health declined rapidly, and we had to put our emigration plans on hold. He never recovered and passed away, and with it, the plans to move overseas. A part of me wants to go there and spread his ashes at his favourite fishing spot.

[whooshingnoise]

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. (My phone auto-filled that word, but I felt like I should type it myself.) My husband went with me to the cemetery, where the grass hasn’t grown back yet and the marker still isn’t in place because I only ordered it in December and the foundation company is giving the caretaker the runaround. My sister took him flowers.

I didn’t know what to do when we got there. I didn’t feel like talking to him there, because the most important part of him isn’t there, and if I were going to have a conversation with him, it wouldn’t be in front of Spouse. That’s between me and my dad.

But I talked on the way home. I’m not even really sure what I thought I should feel like at this time. I don’t know that I’m ever really going to get over it. I don’t know that I’m ever going to feel anyway but sad and guilty about it. “I couldn’t save him,” I said, as we drove away from the town I grew up in, from my parent’s house, the house where I grew up, that was finally foreclosed on this month. “And what does ‘saving’ really mean, when we all end up there anyway?”

Spouse had no real reply to that, and he apologized, but that was fine. He did the important thing, which was listen and not judge me for speaking honestly of the Dead.

[absolutedream-art]

Previous

Paleo reveals a bit about his family.  Copper comforts his friend.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

My parents wanted to euthanise me, because I was 18 and ‘it was about time’.

[moider-time]

Y'know what I want? I want sick Bruce Wayne.

I want a Bruce that babies his kids when they're sick. He goes all out. 6'4 muscle-bound Jason Todd is getting tucked into bed with a kiss on the forehead to check his temperature and whines if Bruce forgets.

As good as his memory is, Bruce can't exactly remember what Thomas and Martha used to do when he was sick. They had a routine but the intricacies of it constantly escape him. As little as that may be, it does pang every now and again that he's forgetting them, forgetting how they loved him. He doesn't want that for any of his kids.

So he babies them, treats them like the little kids he knows they aren't and rarely if ever got to be. He deals with any vomit, tears or just general irritation that comes with being sick. It gets to point where when the kids are sick and Bruce isn't home, they can barely function.

Dick: THIS IS IT- THIS IS THE END

Wally: dude you just have a cold?

Dick: JUST A- JUST A COLD?!? WALLY, ARE YOU INSANE?? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO MANAGE WITHOUT MY HOT CHOCOLATE AND HOME MADE BUNNY MARSHMALLOWS??!?

Wally: ok one, bunny marshmallows? adorable. and two, i've seen you walk off a fractured collarbone, two bruised ribs and a twisted ankle???

Dick: ....yeah but the marshmallows

Wally:

But Bruce? Oh when Bruce is sick, he powers through. But when he's so sick he considers himself a liability, he curls up in a small, dark room like a pregnant cat. It's practically instinct for him – when he's compromised like that, he needs to be in a place that he's knows is safe.

Very Sick Bruce also goes into Mama Bear Mode. He wants his kids in his sight at all times or he's practically inconsolable. If they're not with him, then they might be in danger, anything could happen – how can he protect them if they're not there? Just anxiety out of the wazoo.

I can see him trying to drag his 7 kids into one room so he can keep an eye on his babies.

Damian: baba we cannot all possibly fit-

Cass: -we will

Damian:

Damian: who's going first?

The kids do make things more comfortable. Fluffing his pillows, getting him tea and making sure he has his stuffies. Bruce appreciates it but he just says that all he needs are his kids. That always has them sobbing.

(happy holidays to my cold twin @bruciemilf i was inspired by our mutual sickness lol)

[lady-wallace]

Time In a Bottle Chap 19. (JJBA)

The doors to the room opened and everyone turned to look at who was coming in late. Giorno expected the funeral director, or maybe another of Trish's aunt's coworkers, but it was neither.

It was a tall man with long pink hair in a suit even Giorno could tell was expensive. Everyone stared at him as he looked around the room, ignoring them until his eyes landed on Trish.

Bruno leaned in. "Do you know that man?"

Trish shook her head, her eyes wide. "I…I don't think…" She glanced toward her aunt who was currently talking to Leone's parents, not having seen the new arrival.

The man started over, and Giorno and the others, Risotto and his friends included, all hemmed Trish in between them, as if something was actually going to go down. There was an undeniable power that accompanied this man and Giorno felt a sudden surge of protectiveness.

"Are you Trish?" the stranger asked.

Trish didn't say anything, but she nodded.

The man held out his hand. "You don't know me, but I'm your father."

~~~~~~~~

Read on Ao3

Read on FF.net

[itsbebebrainrotting]

God i just want to ramble about the sunny lenay conversation today so excuse me for a second... It was just so sunny and oh my god it was rped perfectly.

They were with tubbo hanging at phils but tubbo went afk and phil chayanne and tallulah ran off. Sunny asked tubbo where they went and got told they were probably having family time, and since sunny doesnt really have much family other than tubbo to have their own family time, they asked for family time with their ma (lenays floating corpse under tubhaus). They built a little platform to stand by her and started making up a conversation they were having with her about how she became a mermaid (died) and how they can become a mermaid to join her, because by becoming a mermaid they will be safer from attack.

The entire time tubbo just doesnt know what to do because his daughters playing with a corpse so just plays along. The vibe of the stream really encapsulates how morbid it is - theres no music, tubbos voice is really sad and hes just sat there reading her signs as they discuss becoming a mermaid and how they need to catch the person who stole their ma's legs.

Its all silly childish make believe that really just highlights that sunnys so little too. Too young to be spending their free time with a corpse.

And the entire thing just feels... lonely. Sunny doesn't have many friends. Or at least comparatively they have a lot of non-friends compared to the other eggs. The only parent they have is Tubbo. They feel so alone and they try so hard to make friends and all that culminates in is them wanting family time and making up a story about mermaids with their ma's corpse.

Just a little girl playing mermaids with her mothers dead body.