#tw:general

[pencil-prince]

You should see me in a crown.

[liquorkisses-poisonedwords]

There are so many things I want to say to my mother right now, and none of them are particularly kind. She talks about her nearly dying as the moment that changed my life. She seems to forget her alcoholism and the way I’ve been looking after myself since I’ve been 13. I want to scream at her and tell her that nearly dying didn’t fuck up my life, her drinking herself into a corner did. There is just so much bullshit in my life at the moment. I’m just so fucking done with everyone - I’m here when it’s convenient and that’s it. I’m absolutely nothing. And this is turning into such a self-pitying rant. That’s not the point of it at all but it is. 

My mother treats me with such disdain all the time and it’s really fucking grating. It gets to the point that I purposely don’t come home so I don’t have to see her. I want to leave home, purely to get away from her. I used to love my mum so much but just over the past couple of years I’ve reached the realisation that her behaviour in my life has been so inappropriate; I was forced to grow up so much sooner than everyone else. That’s probably why I hate people my own age so much - I resent the fact that I’ve had to be an adult from the age of fourteen. I completely resent the fact that I’ve been a mother to my sisters, when our own mother has drunk herself to the point where she’s crying in a corner. 

But no-one ever questioned it because we were this wonderful middle-class family. We hid our unhappiness behind floral curtains and tasty homebakes. I managed to hide four years of self-harm behind good grades and a dazzling personality at school. And then I stopped caring and it all started to crumble down. 

And this year has been shitty. It has been the worst year ever. And now she sits here replaying the night that she nearly died and I feel like the worst person ever. Why? Because I don’t care. I am full of indifference. She says being bipolar is her fault, and then goes on about the failings of my life being her fault. Why can’t it ever just be about me? Why can’t anything just be about me? Does that sound ridiculously self-centred? Only it seems a very long time since anything has purely been based on me. Even my mental illness needs to have some bearing on my mother. It’s like a fucking competition that I’m not even trying to compete in. 

Maybe it’s wrong to be so bitter, but I’m so full of bitterness at the moment I can feel my heart start to hammer. She wants to cry about how she’s ruined my life, but I want to cry because I was always so forgiving about it. I want to sob for thirteen year old me, on her birthday, trying to get her mother not to choke on vomit. I want to hug fourteen year old me who had to wrestle a knife from her mother so she didn’t hurt herself, then proceeded to use said knife to decimate her arm. I want to tell 15 year old me that trying to find comfort in an abusive dickhead isn’t going to work in the long run. I want to shake 16 year old me and tell her to go out and have fun instead of looking after her sisters. I want to tell 17 year old me that taking an overdose is not the way forward. I want to tell 18 year old me that, at the end of the day, you don’t have to like everyone. And 19 year old me...in hindsight, nearly dying in a shower cubicle was not a good idea.

So yeah. Those are the things I want to say. Just a general fuck everyone at the moment. I’m probably angry at all the wrong people and all the wrong things but that’s where we’re at at the moment. 

[showmemytargetarchive]

Rage

People always seem to assume that rage has to be hot, like fire. They’re wrong. Clint’s first experiences with rage were directed at his father, every time he struck or otherwise damaged the people that Clint cared about. No child should have to experience hate, certainly not against his own family, but gods did Clint hate that man. 

The epitome of his fury came the day that he found out his father was dead. Clint had only one word to say on the subject:

     Good.

In that moment, he realized that rage wasn’t always fire.

For him, rage was ice.

[showmemytargetarchive]

why's Clint so upset in that photoset?

     [ The one where he finds out Loki’s dead? That’s actually a really good question, since at first you’d think he’d be happy about it. It’s a pretty complex answer, one I’ll probably put more thought into at a later date for a drabble or something. This is only my interpretation of course, but for now, this is what I’ve got.]

     Clint absolutely, completely despises Loki, as we all know. The bastard ripped Clint’s mind apart and stuck himself in there instead. That alone messed with Clint’s thinking patterns, and brought out some of his darker and more self-destructive tendencies, even after he was freed.

     And of course, the thing that a lot of people don’t get is that hate and love are not really opposites. They’re different, yes, but if you hate someone, you still care—to some degree—what happens to that person. You might not want his/her life to be easy and happy, but you still care. You want fire and rage and wrath and ruin brought down upon them, and if your hate is intense enough, you want to do it yourself. 

     So when Clint hears that Loki is dead by some hand other than his own, he loses some of his own fire, because that’s been a driving force through his despair: “if I can just survive this, I can hunt him down and make him pay.” 

     That’s reason number one, but there’s so much more than that.

     For a long time after the Battle of New York (and probably for the rest of his life), Clint grappled with the memories of what he went through and the memories of what he did. I don’t think people understand the trauma of what Loki did to him. It was, for all intents and purposes and for lack of a better word, a rape. Loki violated Clint in one of the worst ways possible, and Thor so much as mentioning him forces Clint to think back to that time. Normally Clint is (somehow) capable of keeping things together, but Thor was in direct contact with Loki, Thor tried to keep Loki alive, and somehow, despite the true horrors he inflicted, that monster was able to escape the world without truly facing punishment. 

     Or was he? 

     This brings us to the third and probably most important point, one that I think a lot of people may overlook.

     Clint doesn’t really believe Loki is dead. Of course, we know that he’s quite right to believe so, as irrational as it may seem to Thor, who believes he watched his brother die. Clint knows the story—he knows that Loki was cast out of Asgard, and that when he came back he was more powerful than ever. Thor, Odin, Frigga… everyone thought Loki was dead (and let’s be real, falling into the abyss generally does that to people), and they were all proven wrong. In fact, when Loki came back, he brought an army of Chitauri and came very close to conquering Earth—Clint’s homeworld, Clint’s birthplace, a planet under Clint’s protection. 

     Loki is not to be underestimated. 

     And Clint, of course, has seen, actually seen the inside of Loki’s mind. It was a two way door, and when chaos came flowing in, Clint caught a glimpse of the madness beyond. He’s seen the worlds where Loki hid, he’s seen flashes and images—nothing complete, just bits and pieces—of things that would drive any average person completely insane. Clint knows that all of that is lurking just outside his world, and that if Loki is still alive, he will bring all of it back. 

     Every time Loki has “died,” he’s simply resupplied and become more powerful. Every time he’s gone missing, it’s played into his schemes in the end. His supposed death doesn’t mean he’s gone—it just means no one can see him anymore. To an intelligence operative, one who prides himself on being able to see from a distance, a lack of information means a sneak attack and death—or worse. 

     Clint knows that if—or rather, when—Loki returns to face the Avengers again, he will be more powerful than ever. He will be ready for them. And the first person he’ll single out is Clint. One of his greatest assets, the man who (in Loki’s eyes) betrayed him. And if that happens, death will be the sweetest thing Clint could pray for, because if Loki takes his mind away, if Loki makes good on his promise to destroy Natasha—the one person in all the worlds whom Clint loves, admires, trusts, and respects the most—there will be no recovery. No cognitive recalibration. There will be no salvation. 

     There will be only hell.

     So all in all, Clint is terrified. He is utterly and completely scared shitless, and that makes him feel as weak and as powerless as he did when he was under Loki’s control. If Loki really is dead, then Clint has been robbed of his revenge. If Loki is still alive, then Clint will be jumping at his own shadow for the rest of his life. 

     It will be hard—not impossible, but hard—for Clint to find any peace as long as there is any chance whatsoever that Loki still draws breath.

     That was some pretty heavy stuff and a pretty long reply, but I hope this answers your question!