#writing out that ‘missing scene’

[flowersforchar]

“i almost got him to admit it the other night” always throws me through a loop. what do you mean by that? how did you accomplish that? what is going on in that apartment when we aren’t there to see it?

[mcdonaldsnumberone]

LUCKITTY-CAT!

❤︎ a multistep guide for adisorn to help you a new cat adjust to their new lifestyle. ❤︎ adisorn moore x gn reader ❤︎ wc: 2k ❤︎ content warning(s): yandere, kidnapping, one (1) mention of blood, petplay (not in the sexual sense)/adisorn treats you like a cat, written before full game release/based on adisorn as portrayed in the free demo ❤︎ adisorn moore is from the game online obsession being developed by sourmiiiilk

Prepare space for the cat beforehand.

This was arguably the easiest step for Adisorn Moore. Thanks to the excuse that he was moving in, no one batted an eye about him buying all sorts of locks, security measures, and a truckload of otherwise pretty suspicious material. He did have to do a couple laps around his new place to decide which of the rooms was best to keep you in.

His bedroom was tempting, but he doubted that he could get much done if he had to potentially fight you each time he wanted to sleep or get a change of clothes. However, he did like the idea of being able to eventually get you into his bedroom, to spend time closer to you and with you. Maybe if you settled in nicely enough, he could use the idea of his warm bed as a potential reward for your good behavior.

The bathroom would be a good choice to ensure that exits and entryways were tightly secured, but he also didn’t want to have to give up the comfort of his bathroom just yet. Besides, the bathroom offered just too many outlets for you to make drastic choices, and he didn’t want you thinking you could take the easy way out after all the hard work he’s put in.

The kitchen was easy to eliminate, so that left Adisorn with his guest bedroom. He didn’t have to do much to prepare the room. A few contractors and a bit of money was all it took to eliminate the single glass window, and a few YouTube tutorials gave him good insight into how to replace the locks on the door. All he had left was to set up some cameras and keep the room’s furnishings to a minimum, and he had the perfect set up for a new cat to pick up.

He doesn’t like that the room looks so barren. It’s the perfect antithesis to just how vibrant and rich you were as a person, but at the same time, Adisorn understands that sometimes he has to take the extremes in order to get what he wants.

He’s sure with time that you’ll come around to understand him.

You always have.

2. Provide enrichment for your cat. 

The first few weeks were the worst. If only you knew how much it broke Adisorn’s heart to have to wear you down like this. He never expected this whole ordeal to be easy, but knowing it and actually carrying the deed out were two completely different things.

You tried every trick in your book to win back your freedom. 

He stood on the other side of the door as you bargained with him. You begged, pleaded, cried, screamed, groveled until your voice went hoarse. Of course, your freedom wasn’t something he was willing to negotiate with you in the first place, but you were desperate. You needed to try everything you knew. Nothing was too sacred or too profane to yell out. Day in and day out, you’d hurl curses and praise at him, trying to find any weak point in his mind to wedge yourself into so that you could somehow do something. Anything. 

You offered up money. You swore that you would never tell the authorities if he just let you go. You threatened him, saying that it was just a matter of time before your family and friends would figure out you had gone missing and then everyone would be hot on his trail.

When that didn’t work, you turned to more physical methods. He could hear you grasping at the walls, slamming your fists against the concrete in hopes of finding a weak point that might let out just enough to let you escape. You’d scratch like a real cat at the door until you’d bleed, evident by the dried crimson droplets Adisorn would discover underneath the crack of your door. You’d fight him whenever he’d come around to let you wash up or to drop off food, biting and screaming and clawing and crying like a wounded animal at death’s doorstep not quite yet ready to have its life snuffed out entirely. 

It wasn’t worth trying to rationalize anything to you at this stage. He just had to wait it out. You were smart, and soon enough, you’d realize that there really was nothing you could do to help yourself. No one was coming to save you, you were too weak to find a way to break out or overpower Adisorn, and all you had left to depend on for your own well-being was him.

Sure, Adisorn was to be feared and hated, but the one thing worse than Adisorn right now was to not even have him at all. The dread would settle in with time, as long hours would net you nothing but a sense of hopelessness that you couldn’t quell on your own. 

And at that point, Adisorn was more than happy to welcome you with open arms and a faux apologetic smile.

After all, even seeing him for a little bit was a big upgrade than being left all alone in a starkly empty room with nothing but your panicked thoughts. 

3. Perform regular grooming and care.

It took him a while to trust you to be left to your own devices. Even with him breaking down your immediate walls, you still had enough fight left in you that he couldn’t fully let his guard down. You would turn anything—from an old toothbrush to a ragged comb—into an opportunity. 

Adisorn detested having to treat you like this. He fell for you because you were so capable and kind, so empathetic of everything he did, so the last thing he wanted to do was strip you down to nothing but a shell of yourself and have to take care of you like you were a doll. It wasn’t an easy line to balance by any means, but with enough trial and error, reward and punishment, he was able to drill some semblance of a routine into you.

You no longer tried to scratch his eyes out whenever he let you out to brush your teeth and wash your face. You no longer tried to twist the towels in the bathroom into something to strangle Adisorn with. You no longer tried to steal the parts of the toilet in hopes of using it as a weapon.

It was almost domestic after a while. You’d stand next to him, eyes bloodshot, and brush your teeth at the same time he did. He always made sure to pick out toothbrushes with your favorite colors, and Adisorn would even ask you every now and then if you wanted him to change the color. 

He did his best to let you out for hygiene at the same time every day, and as the weeks and months bled by, your expressions of rage, disbelief, and disdain quickly turned into that of anticipation and almost a kind of longing. 

Like you had missed his presence.

4. Allow for exploration and play.

How much time had passed since the fateful day that he had snatched you up all for himself? The numbers, the pain, the tears and struggle were nothing now that he had you where he wanted. He could vividly recall the excitement he had felt when he first moved in, scanning his entire apartment to decide where he wanted to keep you and just how good it would feel to slowly open you up to the other sectors of his abode.

And finally, that day came. 

He didn’t miss the way your eyes would widen when you first stepped into his spacious bedroom. Your gaze fell over all of his belongings: his closet filled with all kinds of clothes, a big bed with soft pillows and matching sheets, walls that weren’t a drab shade of soulsucking grey, and the occasional bit of StarBlitz merchandise. 

You must have missed having your own bedroom. Having your own things. Having your own normal life. 

“I figured you were getting lonely in the guest room. And, well, you really aren’t a guest in this house anymore,” Adisorn cracks a bad joke, in hopes of getting a reaction out of you. It’s really a 50-50 as to whether or not you’ll reply to him or treat him to a dose of cold silence, but it’s a gamble he’s willing to take each and every time. 

Your lips tremble as you take a shaky step forward. It reminds of a shy kitten wobbling on its unstable legs as it ventures out into the wide world. 

“It’s so big,” your voice is quiet and weak. Nothing like the strong, lively voice he had gotten used to before he had kidnapped you. “And… it smells like you. There’s so much here.”

“Consider it yours as much as it is mine, snowflake.” A strong hand comes down on your shoulder, pulling you in close to his side. “I’m letting you have this much because you’ve been so obedient lately.”

You look up at him. It’s true that over the long, long course of your imprisonment, Adisorn has taken painstaking measures to ensure that the fight in you has left. You don’t know whether to laugh or be grateful. Having him open his bedroom up to you feels like a mockery, like he’s showing off everything he’s stolen from you and expecting you to fall to his feet and treat him like some merciful god. But at the same time, you, of all people, aren’t in the place to argue. 

Not when you don’t even have any of this in your current room.

“...Thank you, Adi,” your lips move numbly, and the words tumble from your mouth like stones. They weigh against your conscience, as if the admittance of your gratitude was somehow a stain against your soul. “It’s wonderful.”

“You’ll be sharing with me, of course. But y’know, still better than nothing.” He gestures vaguely around the room with his hand. “Sharing a bed is better than sleeping on the cold floor. Getting to pick out your own clothes from my selection is better than you having to wear whatever I get you.”

He pauses, before he peers at you with fond eyes. It takes everything in you not to visibly shudder underneath his touch. It makes your skin crawl to think that at some point in your life you had been foolish enough to trust him, to hold affection for him, to consider him a friend. 

“And above all, you’ll have me to keep you company regularly. You won’t be so alone.”

When did this nightmare start? When had you turned into something so weak and pathetic? At what point had you grown too confident in yourself, to lose sight of the predator lurking at the edges, the lone hungry wolf licking its maw in anticipation for its next meal? 

And at what point did you learn to accept it? His fangs against your body, bleeding you dry of any will to retaliate, are just as sharp as ever, disguised under a screen of generosity in hopes that it could lure you into a sense of security. Maybe Adisorn was never the tough wolf you made him out to be. He never considered this sadistic farce to take place on equal grounds.

In his mind, you needed him. You couldn’t make it out there all on your own. You couldn’t take care of yourself, couldn’t understand the workings of the cruel world evolving around you. You needed someone to guide you in the right direction, to become the guardian angel you didn’t realize you needed, to love you in the way you had once loved him.

You needed him to take care of you. To scoop you up in his arms. To lavish his affection onto. You were never a capable, human counterpart in his eyes. Even from when you first laid eyes on him in your small town, he saw you for who you truly were. No better than a helpless, mewling kitten, calling out to him to be taken, to be loved. 

To be housebroken.

x

[redgoldblue]

so assuming Avery is actually pregnant / doesn't early-trimester miscarry (which is not a given), there's two reasonable ways this can go, right. number one is she gets an abortion, the plotline is used to pull them all back together again, and they all have some collective hurt/comfort about it. number two, the one i would write - don't get me wrong, i'm all for women getting career-driven abortions, but hear me out - is the one where she does have the baby. under the cut bc it got long.

she goes to med school at first while pregnant - Max is right, it can be done, people in my cohort did it - and either gets lucky with the timing of the actual birth being during holidays, or just works her way to getting time off for a few weeks around it. And then... there's a baby. And you know what else there is? There's two dads (because we're 100% Mamma Mia-ing this bitch. they never find out who the bio dad is and they never seriously try. Baby comes out with Avery's exact skin tone so that's no clue.), and an entire cruise ship worth of backup babysitters. So Avery goes back to med school, and leaves the baby with Tristan and Max.

And, yes, raising a baby while also running an infirmary with a rotating cast of temporary substitute nurses filling Avery's role isn't the easiest thing they've ever done, but Robert loves fulfilling grandparent duties any time he's not on duty; Rosie gets one of those strap-on baby carriers and walks her (i don't know why i've decided the baby is a her but i have now) around the engine room pointing out parts and explaining concepts and hey, the baby never complains about her Michigan stories; Corey gets a cart and a bundle of clean sheets and pushes her down the corridors until the smell of laundry powder automatically makes her start laughing.

Max and Tristan make a pact to send Avery at least two photos a day - which ends up getting supplemented by everyone else who's with Baby - and FaceTime her most days, and whenever she gets a few days off she meets them in port. (The most expensive part of baby-raising ends up being her flights to wherever the Odyssey happens to be at the time, at least until Robert finds out and figures out a way to start paying her 'maternity leave', despite her insistence that the whole point of this is that she isn't maternity-leaving and he should probably be paying himself that and anyway, isn't she technically not an employee right now?)

And the thing is, during this time, Max and Tristan start... realising some things. Like how neither of them feel like they've lost their only partner, because they.. haven't. Like how the co-parenting's been working out better than either of them expected, because they fell instantly (minus a few minor bumps) into a shared rhythm. Like how sometimes they look at the other one holding Baby and feel like their heart's about to explode.

Also, they've both started sleeping in Max's bed. Because Baby's spent so much time sleeping in the corner of the infirmary that now if she wakes up at night and can't see both of them, she starts crying inconsolably. And obviously Max's suite is more suited to multiple inhabitants, and they're usually too damn exhausted to even remember the first time they were in this bed together.

(usually. most of the time. and when they're not, they don't make it the other's problem)

So at the end of the first year of this, the last two days of the year's last cruise have been packed with crisis after crisis after demanding patient after crisis, and as soon as they finally wave the last passenger off they hand Baby gratefully over to Robert and go crash out in Max's bed.

Avery was supposed to be meeting them on board tomorrow, but her last exam gets unexpectedly moved up by a day (believe me, med school loves to pull that kind of shit on you), so a couple hours after the passengers have gone, she shows up to surprise them. And finds Robert (a known ody3 shipper) first, who lets her take Baby with minimal captainly sulking about it, and while she rocks and kisses Baby, tells her (as a known ody3 shipper) that the two dads will be on the Pelican deck, but they're probably asleep.

Avery kinda frowns at him, but doesn't question it, and takes Baby up with her to Max's suite to find them. And they are both fast asleep, on either side of Max's bed with a space carefully preserved between them (because it's usually where Baby would be and they're both terrified of accidentally rolling onto her in the middle of the night). She's also exhausted after exams, so she crawls into it, lies on her back with Baby on top of her chest, and goes straight to sleep.

Tristan and Max wake up before her, and when they look across at each other, at Avery and Baby between them, they both simultaneously realise, oh. oh. oh, this - this three, two-and-half, four people, all together - this is it. this is the love, this is the children, this might even be the home - the second, third, fourth bucket list items to happen in this bed.

[acid-waste]

I'm so mad actually I can't believe some people took this scene in chapter 3 and turned it into a who's right about their grief when the scene in chapter 4 literally has ivypool saying I don't mean to make it all about me- haven't thought much about how dovewing is handling her own grief- people read chapter 3 and to me it seems as if chapter 4 doesn't even exist and the rest of what ivypool says in chapter three after saying this doesn't as well

“Dovewing, I’m truly sorry that Rowankit died. But losing a sickly kit—a kit you’ll be reunited with in StarClan one day—is different from losing a full-grown cat who was just coming into her own as a warrior. A cat who doesn’t exist anywhere—who is just gone.”

ignored this and what was said and called it a day

[kivaember]

i need to post my smtv rambles on here instead of keeping them to twitter but was replaying CoC and i find the scene after the Surt boss fight how Dazai comments on Koshimizu's willingness to listen to other people's opinions as a sign of poor confidence in his own leaderships. I feel like it really informs you on what dazai views as a "strong leader"...

like, in CoC Koshimizu is anything but uncertain about his leadership. He's definitely confident and assured in his choices, but he's also willing to encourage his subordinates to develop their own thoughts and opinions on their situation (which aligns with his whole Myriad Gods ambition). To many people that's actually a sign of a strong leader, but for Dazai to think the opposite is a really good characterisation point for him.

At the start of the game he makes a throwaway comment about how he's always caught between his parents who dislike each other, and how he can never make the right choice, as whoever he sides with will always end up with the other parent angry at him. He doesn't trust himself to ever make a right decision, and he'd rather have someone who's driven and self-assured make the choice for him. He's not at risk of upsetting people then, because it's not him who's deciding, it's someone else - someone strong who will brush away any protests.

Dazai wants to be in the "right" for once. He wants to be absolutely right and beyond reproach, and Abdiel offers him that because she is so certain that she is always right and absolute. He doesn't want someone telling him to think about his decision and decide for himself if it's right or wrong - he wants someone to decide for him to take the responsibility out of his own hands.

I'm rambling, really, but I just found it funny that Dazai of all people accused Koshimizu of "lacking confidence", and it sent me down a thinky rabbit hole. I know its a meme to dunk on Dazai (and for good reason, That Scene alone from CoC is fucking hilarious despite it trying to be serious), but I genuinely do like Dazai as a character and think he's a really good Law rep bc:

He represents the kind of person who's craving for guidance, and that desperation and fear of being hated or looked down upon for never picking the right choice makes him so easy to be swept up in Abdiel's wake. Idk. I just think it's cool.

[bennetsbonnet]

I was having such a lovely day until I read the casting news for the new Pride and Prejudice adaptation...

Netflix you're already on thin ice after what you did to Persuasion but... I am not filled with much confidence...

[darkveracity]

Say what you will about fate/stay night's sex scenes but playing the game without them means you miss out on the critical information that under all that armor Saber looks like a crossdressing twink in a trap doujin. She has the body of a skinny teenager on three months of HRT. Anyone who draws her with tits is a coward

[grimark]

also the fact that you can't criticise rtd as a showrunner without somebody popping out of a hole in the ground to be like "oh but steven moffatt also had issues as a showrunner—" can you shut the fuck up for a second this isn't "sherlock is garbage and here's why" i'm talking about a different guy entirely

[whomeidontknowthem]

The second part of tech's pov is actually here, this time including Murderbot being lovingly disassembled while conscious! (an experience that was definitely nothing but pleasant, don't worry about it)

It's officially a series now, I think there'll be five parts total? But don't trust my word, the process is mysterious and unpredictable.

A feed alarm marking the end of ter shift blinked to the center of ter vision just as Ginson pried open the chest panel. Ter tool slipped, jamming into exposed synthetic muscle held to the side by the SecUnit’s one functional hand. Ginson turned off the reminder, rubbed ter eyes with the back of ter hand that hadn’t yet been covered in blood and fluids, and sighed. 

“Everything alright?” Minoa chimed in. Ginson could feel him working in the shared feed workspace, but he was keeping an eye on what te was doing. Which was, of course, not awkward and distracting at all.

“Yes, yes,” te sighed again, and brought the clock to the foreground of ter attention – it was an hour into ter usual rest period – and set a new timer, counting seconds to the morning. Te had a little less than eight hours to finish every diagnostic te could think of and compile the report, and even fewer if te actually wanted to get any sleep.

Which was why te picked up the tool, nudged the Unit’s hand into a more convenient position and pushed the chassis open manually instead of hooking up the specialized machinery and starting the full maintenance cycle that would require at least another half an hour and take the SecUnit offline. 

Blood dripped down from where the organics tore. The SecUnit helped ter maneuver its parts to provide access. Minoa whistled, feed activity slowing down, and peeked over ter shoulder. “That’s… fuck, they actually have, like, organs?”

“Language,” te warned distractedly (Minoa groaned), then answered, “Yes,” and leaned forward to get a better view. The diagnostics couldn’t tell where the damage was, and te hoped looking at it would make things obvious, but there were no visibly leaking parts, and the inorganic tissue was still in the way, even if this one was partially transparent, so te reached to move it aside – thankfully, it was made to resist impacts, not being cut through (if the most inner parts of a SecUnit are being cut, there’s likely nothing more to be done) – moved the tool carefully around the tubing, pulling the tissues away with the other hand, and–

“What’s this?” Minoa exclaimed. 

Ginson stilled ter fingers before te could accidentally cut something that should not be cut. “Nothing you need to look at,” te snapped and immediately regretted it. Judging by Minoa’s silence, it was entirely too harsh. That’s why Ginson hated working with people – te wasn’t good at it, especially when te was busy! Te put the tools aside and faced him.  “Sorry. I don’t mean to yell, it’s just… sorry.”

“No, no, sorry I interrupted,” Minoa laughed, and te shifted awkwardly. “It's late, and you have to work. Ugh,” he made an entirely exaggerated face of disgust. “Eleven pm at work is the exact time and place to be cranky.” 

That just reminded Ginson that te wasn't the only one staying after hours, and Minoa wasn't even paid for this. “If you want to call it a day–”

“Nuh-uh!” Minoa exclaimed and emphatically tapped his lips. “Nope, never, you're not getting rid of me so easily. You think I all but begged to be in your wonderful company just to give up like that?” 

Ginson sighed, but this time it came out exasperated. “Offering help isn't begging.”

“That's besides the point.” Minoa waved dismissively. “Also, where else do I get to poke around in one of these?”

And, to prove his point, he poked. His finger landed at the side of the mostly exposed lung, and he immediately flinched away, making a face. It startled a laugh out of Ginson. “Don't do that,” te had to warn. “These things are delicate on the inside, and cost a fortune. I need to prove it hasn't been damaged, not get it damaged.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Minoa grinned back. Ginson found some part of terself relaxing. “I'll limit my poking to data, then. Your magical fingers are definitely much better suited for this task.” 

Te waved him off, but couldn’t hold back a smile.

At seven hours thirty-eight minutes before the solicitor was due back at the office, Ginson had to accept that a purely visual inspection would lead ter nowhere, and ushered the SecUnit towards the table. It hesitated slightly, still holding its chest open with one hand, and Ginson put its severed arm aside, clearing the space.

At seven sixteen Ginson had gone through most of the circulatory system piece by piece, still finding no explanation for the lowered performance. It wasn’t surprising – the numbers weren’t significant enough to warrant so much effort in any other circumstances, but the manager had been clear: te was to investigate and list every smallest issue, and prove that (ignoring the mangled arm that happened during the assignment and could not be blamed on the company) no, there was no malfunction, so no, the company wouldn’t be paying for the mess. 

Ginson really hoped there wasn’t any malfunction, because if there was… best not to think of that.

At seven ten, Ginson was waiting for the liquid pump to pause the flow on one third of its pipes, so they could be rerouted to an external pump, when Minoa made a surprised sound. Te made sure the errors from the temporarily reduced blood flow cleared out, then asked, “Something interesting?”

“Uh, I guess?” Minoa’s attention was on the feed. “Dunno. I’m gonna– yeah, that, I’m gonna run it against the archives, but maybe?.. Give me a couple of minutes.”

At six forty-seven Ginson fiddled with the disconnected pump, still warm and dripping liquids. It looked perfectly good in ter fingers, but the diagnostics did return an improvement now that it was out of the picture, so, here. A meaningless problem solved. Te wiped the pump and ter hands and focused on the report and the list of other things that returned less than perfect status. Could the left knee joint being 1.7% too tight cause a SecUnit to misinterpret the order? No. Did anyone care about ter opinion or basic logic? Also no.

Stars, te was tired.

“So,” Minoa said and then paused for a good half a minute. Ginson looked at whatever he was working on in the feed – graphs and automatic reports by programs te wasn’t familiar with, structured in ways that didn’t feel intuitive. Minoa sent some of it to the display surface. “Got a minute?”

“I’m listening,” Ginson sighed. 

“Okay,” Minoa smiled and rubbed his hands together. “So, first of all, I wasn’t actually sure what I was looking for?” He looked apologetic. “I ran the code you sent, and the results were all very clear, and then I thought: surely I can do better than this! And you know I don’t really know how to interpret the logs, but it’s the exact kind of data I work with, so I ran some of my code just to see what’s up with that. And you know its performance is generally abnormal, right? Turns out, that’s not the only weird thing!”

That was interesting, Ginson told terself, and it was. Just, at any other hour, you know? Once te'd had a good long nap, then it would be interesting.

“I don’t have all the data from all the SecUnits,” Minoa continued, “but what I did have on hand has yielded fun discrepancies. This,” a graph appeared on the display surface, “is feed activity. This is what you’d see in new SecUnits, and some of the old ones here. This one would fit more with the first bunch, which is weird–”

“Individual differences,” Ginson interrupted. 

“Huh?”

“They are all different. I don’t suppose it shows up for you, but it’s critical in my work. Every Unit is a bit different. They perform differently. They approach things differently and in different ways.” Te shrugged. “Neural tissue. You really can’t get them acting the same, no matter how much structure and how many constraints you implement around their decision-making process.”

“...Right,” Minoa said. 

Ginson thought he looked disappointed, and felt another pang of guilt. Te fidgeted with the pump again, bits and pieces moving inside of it with every twist of ter fingers. “And other differences?” Te tried to sound enthusiastic or at least like te wasn’t dying for a soft pillow and some quiet.

“Right! Okay, there's quite a few to look at, but the most interesting one from those I could check is, I think, the cleaned up data for research on the governors and their effects. The primary focus was the cumulative damage to neural tissue and whether it was worth doing something about, but we tracked many metrics, and one of the things we tracked was hormonal response. The stress levels are higher in older SecUnits as a rule, but they fluctuate a lot, and, looking at the governor module’s influence, there’s always this spike right before it activates, and a long period of recovery afterwards, no matter which level the punishment was at.”

Ginson snorted. “So basically you’ve discovered that they have stress reactions to pain?”

Minoa blinked and looked at the SecUnit. Ginson did, too. It was still lying on the table, unmoving, tubes going out of the hole in its chest and to the external pump. It was still online. Suddenly, it made ter uncomfortable. 

“Well, yes. The thing is: this one doesn’t. Or, if it does, then less than other SecUnits. There’s little to no correlation between its governor module and stress responses. By that I don’t mean it doesn’t have stress responses, because it does, and they’re– there’s a lot of those. And I mean, a lot. If I were a MedSystem looking at a human, I’d give them anxiety meds.” He paused and blinked some more. “...Can constructs have anxiety?”

“The hormonal responses are calibrated for optimal performance,” Ginson dismissed. Te squinted at the graph, then closed ter eyes and accessed it in the feed instead. That, somehow, didn’t make it make more sense. “Individual differences,” te muttered. 

“I suppose,” Minoa sounded sceptical. “Do you know how long it’s been like this?”

“No idea. Logs aren’t kept in full for long.”

“So no logs pre-RaviHyral incident?”

That made Ginson pause. The SecUnit was a mess when te’d gotten ter hands on it first. Being infected with code that took control of its systems and forced it to kill indiscriminately – that was something out of a horror show, and none of them got out of it unaffected. Some were decommissioned as their performance reliability never returned to acceptable figures. Every other one had their memory thoroughly purged. 

Half of those showed repeated problems afterwards, which was how they ended up in ter basically personalized care. Ginson knew them, pulled them apart and put them back together with ter own hands, and hated seeing three more of them gone, never returning from other contracts. Te compiled reports of their state afterwards, and all looked like unfortunate accidents, and were unfortunate accidents. It still felt a bit like ter failure. Maybe they were still underperforming, some error stuck in the organic parts of their systems that Ginson couldn’t access, and the mistakes were the consequence of ter lack of ingenuity. 

But out of the ten Ganaka Pit SecUnits, there was one outlier. It hadn't been an outlier early on – In fact, it was one of the units struggling to return to baseline functionality – but then something happened and it shot beyond the baseline, enough to get Minoa's attention. It was great at its job, and Ginson never found out how it got there.

Te stared at the graph now, and wondered. It made ter feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Neural tissue can be unpredictable,” te repeated. “Especially after extreme adversarial circumstances. And it largely controls its own hormone release so it can self-regulate, and that’s what it did.”

Minoa didn’t look any less sceptical. “You made this sound like a very natural response that every Unit has,” he pointed out. “But then shouldn’t they have the same stress response to their governor module being activated? All the others do.” He gestured at the graphs.

“Well, what other explanation is there?” Ginson asked and immediately regretted it. The discomfort turned into painful pulsing between ter ears. This day couldn’t be over soon enough. “Whatever,” te waved ter hand. “It doesn’t give us much. I’m going to run the proper diagnostics on the endocrine system, but it’s not like it could have forced it to jump into the blast radius against an order.” 

Except hormones affected decision making (that’s why they were there to begin with), and so, yes. This could in fact make it jump into the blast radius without paying attention to an order. If it didn’t have the appropriate fear of the governor module’s punishment protocol, it was the exact kind of thing that’d make it disobey. 

Ginson winced. The only worse result te could deliver was finding out it was a rogue that got caught in an explosion in an attempt to commit mass murder. Oh, ter supervisor would love that conclusion. 

The good thing about hormones was: they were in the blood, and that blood was already conveniently running through a machine capable of taking every test needed. By which Ginson didn’t just mean the SecUnit, though of course it could track its own levels, but the external pump could double as a diagnostic tool. That was just great, and a wonderful way to appear like a good diligent worker that took time to run double tests instead of enjoying ter rest – if a single supervisor would think to realize how much effort hooking it all up would have taken if Ginson hadn't already done that. 

Half of the Unit’s hormone levels were of course elevated. Te’d already talked about individual differences – this was exactly about that. This SecUnit didn’t like going through any tests or repairs. It’d found those stressful since Ganaka Pit, and usually Ginson tried to keep it offline for everything that didn’t require its participation. Te felt a bit bad for keeping it awake like that. Poor thing must have spent the whole time in fear, but, well – it’s not like te had much of a choice here. Te’d take ter time if te had any. 

The test was simple and automated, but took time. The hormones flushed away from its system, then flooded it again. The SecUnit twitched minutely when they plateaued at the highest concentration, and Ginson patted its hand briefly. “Sorry, it’s not going to be a pleasant test,” te muttered. 

Minoa gave ter a startled look that made ter cheeks warm up, but didn’t comment. 

The hormones slowly flushed again and as its results returned almost clear, Ginson dropped a modified governor module diagnostic in its feed. There was an immediate spike in adrenaline that the machines quantified, which was also great because here, proof that Minoa’s findings were a fluke and all of it worked beautifully. The systems connected to the governor, exchanged messages, orders (limited to those the Unit could perform without moving physically), received responses, all in a timely manner and with elevated stress. 

Then came the test of punishment procedures. The shocks were administered at regular intervals, with growing magnitude, the governor module registered every one as completed with not a single problem, except…

“There are no pain-related spikes,” Minoa pointed out. 

Ginson could see that. 

The test finished, and returned all clear. “The endocrine system is being tested, that must interfere with the regular hormone production,” te lied. Because it didn’t, and the first spike was a proof that te’d not messed something up in the settings. The SecUnit had a fully functional hormone production system that could deliver as much adrenaline as needed, and somehow, magically, it didn’t have the natural, innate-to-all-constructs (and humans and, te was sure, animals too) responses to pain. 

“Should we test for it separately?” Minoa offered and clapped his hands. “If that’s the reason it’s been performing better, we should look into it!”

Ginson cleared ter throat. “Minoa…” 

“Come on, call me Tom.”

“Uh,” Ginson blinked and for a whole second looked away from the SecUnit. “Right. Sorry, – could you get me some coffee?”

Minoa stared for a few seconds before smiling. “Sure! How much sugar?”

“Three.”

“On it, boss!” 

He left and closed the door behind himself, and Ginson lowered terself on a chair and slowly, articulately, allowed terself a singular thought: holy fucking shit. 

Okay, te could still be wrong. Te wasn’t dismissing the idea that it was all a fluke, and a natural difference, and there wasn’t a singular test that came out anything but clear, and, most importantly, the SecUnit hadn’t actually killed anyone it wasn’t supposed to. It did ignore an order. And it did show the complete lack of natural responses to pain–

Wait, was it pain generally or pain from the governor? Te had full access to the logs, and te knew the exact timestamp te needed – ter alarm had gone off at exactly eleven, – and, yes, there was the spike in response to the tool slipping and hurting it, and then it lowered its pain sensors even further. So it felt pain alright, and had all the natural and universal reactions associated with it. Except when it came to the pain delivered by its governor. 

So, returning to that thought: holy. fucking. shit. 

At six hours and two minutes, Ginson spent an entire minute staring at what had to be a rogue SecUnit, lying on ter table, chestplate to the side, hooked up to an external pump and currently riding another hormonal high. That made no sense. There was not a single universe in which it made sense for a fucking rogue SecUnit to allow Ginson to do any of this to it! To continue allowing this, for months! 

…Was this why it hated being tested so much? Was it scared of being found out?

At five fifty te was carefully connecting the tubing back to the SecUnit’s liquid pump as the door opened again. “The sugariest coffee I could find!” Minoa announced. He placed it on the table without being told to do so, and peeked at what Ginson was doing again, and drew out a disappointed, “Is this a no for additional testing then?” 

“Not tonight,”” Ginson replied. “There’s already a lot to do–”

“Awwww.”

“–and hunting for mysterious possible problems – that likely don’t even exist because all the diagnostics are clear – would not just be a waste of time, it would be- it would be utterly unproductive, is what it would!”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I was just curious–”

“Well, I’m not! If it works, don’t fix it! My job here is to make sure that it was working within normal operating parameters during the contract. And it was! There’s a whole fucking lawsuit–”

“Hey, language,” Minoa tried for a joke.

“–and who do you think would be blamed if it were to have malfunctioned? Do you think it’d be whoever demanded it stopped in the middle of saving the workers? There was no malfunctioning involved, just some stupid contradictory orders, and that’s it. That is it!”

Minoa was silent for a while after te’d finished. “Sorry. I was just curious, is all. We don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to, tonight or ever.”

“There’s no need to check that, because it’s nothing but bullshit,” Ginson said and made sure ter voice sounded confident. 

Minoa was silent again. Ginson stared at the SecUnit in front of ter and felt sick. It stared at the ceiling, never once meeting ter gaze. A regular, normal, obedient SecUnit that helped with its own disassembly because a tech had asked it to, who just happened to receive conflicting orders that one time. Te’d checked the logs, there were conflicting orders. It was just that simple.

“Okay,” Minoa said finally. “I’m sorry. Is there something else I can help you with?”

Ginson felt awful. He’d done nothing but try to help and cheer ter up, but it was just… not a good night for that. “No. It’s fine, I’ll finish here myself. There’s just a lot of tedious checks, you’ve already helped enough,” that sounded wrong. Te winced. “Sorry, I’m really grateful, just…”

“No-no, I get it,” Minoa assured. His voice sounded odd. “Well, I suppose it’s time to spare you from the fun of my company.” He laughed. “Hang out at some point later?”

“Sure,” Ginson agreed and turned toward him. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he echoed and left.

At five forty two Ginson suddenly had no distraction from wondering whether a rogue SecUnit would jump up and kill ter the moment its blood was safely running all inside its body. It hadn’t yet. But it really wasn’t convenient to murder someone while they were conducting your own repairs. 

Ginson spent a few minutes sipping ter coffee and mulling over that possibility, and every other possibility that bloomed in ter imagination, and then got to work. 

At one hour thirteen minutes te submitted a final report that said that yes, there were minor problems with the SecUnit’s systems. Its pump was performing 2.3% worse than standard. Its left knee joint was too tight. A patch of skin on its back had been regrown at some point with slight defects. But there was nothing more than that, and nothing that would have made it malfunction and do what it shouldn’t have, and definitely not a single tiniest thing that would make the company liable for the damages, and even less that would point to ter, good Tech Ginson, as not having conducted a thorough enough check of the SecUnit’s functionality. 

It was a great report, all in all, with the result of every diagnostic attached. And te didn’t even get murdered while writing it, so maybe it really was the truth.

[kierancaz]

Crowley Having To Be A Dad For Once (Crowley Comforting Yuu)

I don’t know what this is, I was just really bored and it happened so if it sucks I’m sorry. I used they/them and she/her pronouns throughout the whole things, idk neither sounded right if I used just one set of pronouns so I just used both T_T.

Also yah ik Crowley is ooc bc he’s basically a deadbeat uncle but this is MY fic and I’m a SUCKER for parental Crowley and the idea of him not really being good at it at first but as he grows to care about Yuu more he becomes more willing to try and be a good parent for them.

No trigger warnings, ig this is fluff? Uh probably not very good but it’s ok I still hope u like it. Oh and this takes place at the end of Book 6, also reader is referred to as Yuu.

It was finally over. Everything was finally ok. Grim was back with Yuu, all of the people who had been brought to Styx were back in their dorms, a little banged up, but safe. Yuu was finally home with the people they considered their family.

Crewel, Trein, and the others had given them a major scolding when they got back. Being sure to pull Yuu aside into the headmasters office to yell that them specifically, but Yuu couldn’t find it to be mad or even upset with their scolding. Yuu couldn’t be upset when she felt cared for again. The only one missing from that meeting was Crowley, but Trein as assured that he would be back soon. Which brings us to where they are now.

Grim was in Pomfiore sleeping soundly, but Yuu was standing in the wreckage of Ramshackle. Staring the remains of their only home here in the face. She knew it was bad, the remembered it all from the Chirons attack, but somehow seeing everything destroyed after the dust had finally cleared after the whole situation made reality hit that much harder. She took a deep stepping through the door looking around at all the damage.

“Yuu!” The ghost came speeding toward them, they couldn’t hug her so instead the just zipped around her a could times. She laughed, the ghost coming to a stop in front of them, “we’re so happy you’re back! We thought you guys were leaving us for good!”

“Where’s Grim?” One of them asked looking around with concern, the others followed suit like maybe he was just hiding.

“Don’t worry he’s fine, he’s back in Pomfiore sleeping off his big adventure.” Yuu chuckled and the ghost relaxed and smiled, happy to hear their little friend was safe and sound and would be back with them in no time.

Yuu looked around again, at the huge holes in the walls and ceilings. At the stray cauldrons that had broken the floor and the way the stairs that lead to her bedroom were completely destroyed. She pressed her lips into a line, tears starting to well up in she eyes.

“Yuu? What’s wrong?” One of the ghost asked. And that’s what did it, she broke down crying.

“I’m sorry,” she choked out wiping her eyes and trying to breathe even. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry your home is destroyed, I’m sorry I can’t do anything about it—”

“Hey, hey, it’s ok. It’s not you’re fault.” One of the ghost said. Yuu just shook her head, crying to hard to say anything coherently. There wasn’t much the ghost could do besides remind her it wasn’t her fault the house was destroyed and that it’ll be rebuilt and everything will be ok.

“Yuu?” The new voice made her go still and the ghost silent. Turning around Yuu saw none other than Crowley standing in the doorway.

“Oh- Headmage- I, uh,” Yuu struggled to wipe their eyes free of tears and steady her voice. She hiccuped as she tried to breathe but with a deep breathe she was able to sound at least somewhat normal. “Sorry headmage, is there something you need?” She asked, turning to face him fully.

“I- no. I was just making my rounds on campus to see the damage. Trein informed me Ramshackle was badly damaged, I can see he was quite right.” Crowley said as he walked through assessing the damage, stoping when he came to stand beside Yuu.

She chuckled weakly and sniffed, tilting her head down and swiping at her eyes again. “Yeah… yeah, sorry.”

Crowley gave a questioning hum, “what’s there to be sorry for?”

“I- I don’t know… just am,” they said, their voice quiet.

“Yuu,” Crowley said. His voice more gentle than usual, more concerned. “Are you alright?”

There was hardly a second after Crowley asked before Yuu practically launched themselves at him, throwing their arms around him in a tight hug. Crowley stumbled back with surprise, his arms raised awkwardly like he didn’t know what to do with them.

Yuu was crying again. She just felt so powerless against everything. There was nothing she could do to fix her dorm, there was nothing she could do to stop the Chiron’s from taking the house wardens, nothing she could do when they took Grim. All of the feelings she had been pushing down for the sake of staying focused during the whole Styx mess finally boiling over.

“I- I guess I’ll take that as a no…” Crowley said tentatively.

Yuu apologized again, but couldn’t seem to bring herself to let go of him. Why him she had chosen to break down in front of she didn’t know. It’s not like he had ever been a comforting figure in her time here, or even a very useful one. But slowly, unsurely, Crowley hugged her back, patting her head in a soothing manner. It was enough to make her want to cry even harder.

It was silent between them for a while, with only Yuu’s sniffling and hiccups to be heard. After a few moments Crowley seemed to relax, trying to be gentle as he hugged her back and pat her head, telling her that it was ok and Ramshackle would be fixed and her and Grim would be back here in no time at all. He didn’t know how he would do that but he would get in contact with Styx and work something out, after all they made this mess.

After some time Yuu let go, stepping away from him and wiping their tears and taking a deep breath. “Are you… ok? Now?” Crowley asked, Yuu nodded.

“Better… thanks.” The air was slightly awkward. Crowley didn’t exactly know how to recover to his normal ‘aren’t I so gracious’ personality after watching his most situationally unique student have a full break down.

He cleared his throat before walking over to them and placing his hand on their back, guiding them to the door way. “Why don’t you go back to where you’ll be staying and get some rest. You do have a place to say until Ramshackle is fixed, correct?”

Yuu nodded, “yeah I’m staying in Pomfiore…” there was a long silence, like maybe she wanted to say something else. But she didn’t. “Thanks, I’ll, um, see you in class.”

Crowley nodded and watched as they left down the steps before calling out them. He only spoke when they stopped and turned to face him. “Don’t worry about Ramshackle. I’ll handle everything and make sure it gets fixed,” he said spreading his arms, “after all I am very generous!”

Yuu just blinked at him for a moment before breaking out into a laugh. After some time they had grown to find Crowley’s antics annoying, but after the moment that just happened his usual return to form was much welcomed. She waved at him as a final goodnight and started her walk back to the mirror chamber feeling much lighter than she had before.

Crowley was left with his many thoughts standing in Ramshackle, but he didn’t dwell on anything for to long. But he would check on the prefect and Grim officially tomorrow, that he made sure to promise to himself.

Yuu snuck back into Pomfiore, back into the empty room she was staying in. Grim was exactly where they left him curled up on the bed under the fluffy duvet. She smiled as they climbed into the bed, curling around Grim to cuddle him as he snuggled sleepily back into their arms. For once though, they believed Crowley would follow through on his word with Ramshackle, and that everything would be alright.

[king-midas-fortnite]

Curse Time

There’s a harsh rumble that is felt through the ocean and along the deck of the ship before a bright light blinds you. When you open your eyes, you’re standing in front of an open window that is a few stories high, overlooking an ancient city you know no longer exists.

For just one hour, you can explore the place you used to call home when you ruled it as a King.

King Midas blinked several times through cloudy vision as the city came into view. Someone's voice from far away was just starting to grow more audible. They were saying his name, a woman. She sounded concerned.

"Midas! My love, what's wrong with you?"

His vision finally cleared. The woman was standing in front of him, a hand on his shoulder while her other palm was pressed to his forehead. She fretted over him while he could only focus on the long dark hair that sat tied up on her head, weaved into braids by strings of green ribbon. Her arms and fingers were decorated with gold bands, a white and green gown over her body with a gold clasp holding it together over her shoulder. Her skin was a lively tan, speckled with freckles, and her face...Kind, emerald green eyes with an intensity behind them that read to him as a wisdom beyond her years.

"Damodice..." The name of his queen slipped past his lips before he was fully aware he had remembered it. Seeing her face had dredged it up from the depth of his ancient mind.

She took both of his shoulders then, concern lacing every beautiful feature, "Midas, please. You're scaring me. You stopped speaking in the middle of your sentence. You've been standing here in silence--"

She was cut off as he pulled her into his arms, his face burying into her shoulder. His voice broke on barely a whisper, but there were no tears. His mind had not fully caught up, "Damodice, I'm so sorry."

She didn't say anything at first, wrapping cautious arms around him, too. Fingers carded in his long hair, she gently shushed as the King began trembling in her embrace, "It's alright. Tell me what's wrong, my darling."

Midas clamped his mouth shut. He hadn't a single idea what to tell her. She allowed him time to breathe, which he took gratefully. After a long moment, he straightened from her. Both of his hands, warm and unladen with gold, cupped her face. He smiled and pressed a soft kiss to her lips, whispering against her skin, "I'm sorry, I did not mean to scare you. Merely light-headed."

"You do not sleep enough." She replied.

Some things never change, "I know, my love."

Midas pressed another kiss to her forehead as he tried his best to take stock of how he got where he was. He'd been in the atrium of the yacht, talking with Valeria while Tina, Brutus and Marigold stood chatting on the stairs. They'd all felt a rumble beneath the ship, there was a flash, and he'd heard a voice. Undoubtedly another curse. This one had sent him two thousand years into his past. It had sent him Home. It told him how long he had. How long was it? How much time did he have to--

"Where is our daughter?" The question again left him before he was even conscious of asking it.

Damodice hummed, having relaxed into his arms with her head resting against his neck, "ζωή is supposed to be in lesson, but I'm sure she's found a way to escape. Probably sitting out in the garden."

ζωή. The name that only he and Damodice had called their little girl. It meant life. He had forgotten, and this broke his heart.

"I'm going to go see her." He spoke carefully, trying not to allow any of the desperation he felt into his voice.

Damodice nodded and took a step back to allow him to pass, "Are you sure you're alright, Midas?"

"Yes." He lied before kissing her once more.

His lips lingered against hers until she pulled back with a little laugh and playful push to his shoulder, "Okay, okay. Go see your sunshine."

Midas took a second to truly take in her features, committing each to a more recent memory that he hoped to carry back with him. He smiled as he turned from her with hurried steps over stone floors.

"I love you, my king!" His queen called to him.

He stopped to look over his shoulder, "I love you, Damodice."

--

Marigold was where his wife said she would be. She sat out in the garden, her small frame crouched down while she stared hard down at a butterfly that seemed unaware of her analyzing gaze.

Her hair was as dark as her mother's, free falling over her at a length almost as long as she was tall. The ends touched the grass where she knelt.

Midas had stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. Immediately, there was a seize in his chest, an immovable lump in his throat. She was so, so small. And so alive. At six years old, he knew with tremendous anguish that she wouldn't be for much longer. There were not many days of her precious life left before he would take everything away from her.

Midas could not bring himself to speak. He had not laid eyes on her face outside of night terrors and disturbing dreams in two thousand years. He didn't know if he could take her eyes on him.

However, the decision was made for him when the butterfly took flight off the blades of grass and flit towards him. Marigold followed its path up and over her head, spinning around on her heels as large, golden eyes met with his.

His daughter’s eyes filled with joy as she ran to her father, while his own blurred with tears. He knelt down just as she reached him, crashing against his chest with small arms thrown around his neck, "Papa! That butterfly was blue, did you see? Like the sky!"

"I did, blue like the sky." He said, breathless as the air in his lungs started to feel like the sea. He hugged his daughter close, "My beautiful girl, my world..."

Midas began to sob in earnest, his knelt position falling to both knees while he held onto his child as if she were a lifeline. Marigold, confused and concerned, gripped the fabric of his gown with small fingers. Her tone came out so similar to her mother's, wiser than her few years, "What's wrong?"

Midas couldn't answer, once again at a loss as to what he'd even say. He simply cried while he held her. Minutes passed before she shifted in his arms, and he let her go. But she didn't leave, Marigold only took a step back enough to look him in the eyes. Hers were pricked with concerned tears of her own, but she reached forward with two small hands, and wiped her father's from his cheeks.

"Why are you crying?" She asked in a stern whisper.

"I..." Despite everything, Midas smiled, "I just missed you. So, so much."

"You're being silly," She said with a careful little giggle, "I just saw you this morning! Before lesson."

"Before lesson...I know, but," He took both of his daughter’s hands in his own, "There is just never enough time."

She hummed as if considering what he said.

Midas gave an airy chuckle, "Come here, my sunshine."

He brought her into his arms again. Marigold again wrapped hers securely around his neck and laughed as he easily lifted her up and stood from the ground.

--

He took his time walking through the open air halls, Marigold happily sitting up on his arm. Statues of different Gods stood between marble columns. As they passed each one, Midas would nod his head to them and ask, "Who's that one?"

His daughter answered enthusiastically, "Aphrodite! Artemis! Poseidon!"

As they passed a statue of Zeus, Midas kept up the game, but Marigold's face turned stern. She crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly looking a lot like he imagined her mother did when scolding her for not going to lessons.

"You really don't know?" She asked.

Midas nearly laughed before struggling to hold his expression in mock-ignorance, "I must have forgotten. You know so much, can't you help me?"

"I suppose..." She narrowed her eyes at him in such a way that made holding back his laugh even harder. Then she sighed and papped her palm to his forehead, "But the King should know these things."

"Ah, but a king is blind without his sunshine." He said with a smile, bowing his head against her hand, "You are a most gracious princess."

That seemed to satisfy her need to discipline, and she smiled again, "That's Zeus. He's the leader. A king, like you!"

Midas laughed, and they continued on. He didn't care to spend any time thinking about how his impression of all these Gods would change over time. They weren't what was important. Though, the last statue was of Hades. He was depicted with a far more friendly appearance than he had come to know. Long robes like the one Midas wore now, rather than leather. No mask, laying bare a face that rested in a neutral sort of approachable.

Midas hadn't continued their game, stuck looking at the statue for a moment before Marigold papped his forehead once more, "Do you know that one?"

He exhaled a single laugh, "Yes. That's Hades, God of the underworld."

"Correct, you passed!" She exclaimed with both hands thrown above her head.

Midas smiled and brought her in to kiss her cheek. He was passively relieved that Dionysus hadn't been deemed important enough for his own statue in this hallway.

The two of them rounded a corner to enter the palace proper, and Damodice had been walking to meet them. Midas warmed at the sight of her while Marigold beamed and shouted, "Mama!! Papa forgot all the Godses names! But don't worry, I helped him remember."

"Is that so?" His queen laughed as they met, and she stepped to give Midas a kiss.

"Mhm!" Marigold nodded fast, "He said a King is blind without light."

"Without sunshine," He gently corrected, "Without you, princess."

"A princess can only help when she goes to lessons to learn." Damodice said, at first looking to Marigold with arms crossed, but then to Midas with an equally chastising look. He grinned at just how accurate his daughter's imitation had been.

Marigold groaned, "Papa, tell her how smart you said I am."

"The smartest in the kingdom." He answered with a smile to his daughter, but also a knowing nod to his wife, "But, your mother is right. You can only stay the smartest while constantly learning, ζωή."

A louder groan from Marigold, and she went limp in his arms. Midas laughed as he quickly had to adjust to make sure she didn't fall, "Ah, the drama! I'm not taking you back now, princess."

"You're not?" The two girls asked at the same time, one obviously more excited than the other. Midas looked between them before pulling Damodice to him with his free arm. He held both his queen and his princess in an affectionate embrace.

"I'm leveraging my authority to spend some time with my family." Midas whispered with his nose nestled into Damodice's hair. She smelled of the spices he remembered she'd carefully tended to. Her planters would be hung around the windows in their palace bedroom. Many memories of this place were coming back to him. He hoped to the Gods that he'd be allowed to carry them back when the Zero Point stole him again.

He heard Marigold giggle excitedly, bouncing in his arm while Damodice let out a resigned sigh. She wrapped an arm around the King's, smiling up at him in a sardonic sort of way, "I suppose that's fine. You really shouldn't make a habit of this abuse of power, you know."

"I know." He replied with a smile on his face so soft it seemed to strike his queen as unusual. She stared at him with a slight tilt to her head.

Damodice opened her mouth to speak when Marigold interjected with a tug to her father's ear, "Can we go back outside? I want to show Mama the blue butterfly."

Looking to her for approval, Damodice nodded with another smile. Midas turned and led the way back where they came. The weight of his daughter in an arm once again his own was something he knew would never fatigue him. He allowed the feeling of Damodice holding his other as they walked to soak through him. He knew they had little time, but he would do everything he could to enjoy being with them for as long as he could.

---

They'd gotten back to the garden, Marigold having demanded to be put down to find the butterfly. Midas and Damodice sat together on a stone bench to watch as she bounced through the grass like a cat after mice. There were several butterflies, but none the right color, and she moved on from them with dismissive huffs.

Midas' eyes were locked onto her. He’d have liked to keep her in his lap while his family sat together, but it was better this way. Watching her do what brought her joy for the first time in two millenia was a true gift.

Damodice's voice and her hand on his shoulder drew his gaze to her, "Midas, I apologize for repeating myself, but...Are you alright? You haven't seemed yourself this afternoon. Did something happen at your meeting this morning with the stratigos? Is there something I should know?"

Midas knew he could not let silence linger to fuel her worry. He turned to her and held her hand, bringing her knuckles up for a kiss, "No, my love. Everything's fine, I promise." He briefly paused, looking back out to Marigold. Internal conflict raged inside his mind.

He could not tell her. He wouldn't know where to start. Nothing he could say would make sense. She would only believe that he'd lost his mind and that her king was lost to her. As well, he did not know for certain that attempting to warn her and stop his horrific mistake wouldn't cause whatever it was that put him here to punish them in some way. However…what kind of monster was he to not try? How could he sit here and enjoy their company while doing nothing to prevent the atrocity he’d commit? How far into the pits of selfishness could one man descend to, to have the audacity to bask in the love of a life that he destroyed? This conflict made his body burn and his chest ache, though he did not show it on his face.

"I'm just tired, αγάπη μου." He smiled, a placid look to his features that she seemed satisfied with.

The two of them heard Marigold shout in high-pitched glee, both turning their eyes back to her. She bounded over with hands clasped in front of her, "Look, look! I got it!!"

They both leaned forward as she came to a stop in-front of them. Midas felt a devastating ripple through his body, a violent pulse in his mind and heart that he knew meant he'd be ripped from his family within moments. His queen and daughter were totally unaware as the little one opened her hands. A blue butterfly fluttered up from her palms, wings of broken crystals. The Rift Butterfly lifted itself in the air to fly clumsy circles around him. The two people he treasured most watched as it went, while he was stuck looking between the two of them. He was trying to memorize every detail as he felt the same fading in his mind as he had on the yacht.

They looked at the butterfly with an expected amount of amusement. It must have appeared normal to them, while the crackling sound of splintering reality filled the King’s ears. The seconds ticking by felt long, but not nearly long enough.

Damodice met his eyes, and concern came back, wiping away the calm Midas wished she could have kept for the rest of her life, "Midas?" She reached for him immediately with her hands on his arm while Marigold's touched at his knees. He picked his daughter up and pulled her up into his lap, once again using his free arm to draw his wife close. He held them both as tight as he could while he struggled to keep from trembling.

"I’m sorry, suddenly feeling lightheaded. I might lose focus again like I had an hour ago, Damodice." Midas spoke softly, knowing that if he raised above a whisper, his voice would crumble apart with the rest of him. His mind raced through everything he wished he could say to them. All the apologies he'd screamed at the feet of his daughter's golden corpse until his throat went raw. All the pleas that fell on the Gods' def ears. All the events he would give his life to prevent, but he had mere seconds left.

"I love you both so, so much. I’d give my soul for things to be different. I’m-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..." He knew he'd lost his fight with composure, could feel his shoulders shaking with his breaths, and could do nothing about it. The King could just barely hear the voices of his wife and daughter, and felt small hands gripping his gown with warm palms on his cheeks, but he could no longer see them. Very quickly, other sensations faded, too, and everything went black.

-----

King Midas blinked several times through cloudy vision as the interior of the Marigold came into view. Someone's voice from far away was just starting to grow more audible. They were saying his name, a woman. She sounded concerned.

He turned his head up, and his vision finally cleared on Valeria's face leaned over him. Warmth registered over his cheek where she held his face, "Midas?! Oh thank God!"

She looked towards the staircase, hair sending embers down with the movement. They landed on him, but did not burn, "He's awake!"

Midas heard rushed footsteps coming from the stairs. He must have collapsed, Valeria catching him while the others rushed for water or some such thing. His head throbbed behind his eyes, and he had to shut them with a small grunt.

"Midas, κούκλα, are you okay?" Valeria was speaking softly, though with a frantic edge. One hand squeezed where she held his shoulder, the other smoothing over his cheek.

"I'm alright, αγάπη μου." Midas said with a placating smile. He moved to sit up, but the pain in his head flared, and with a hiss, he allowed himself to lean back into Valeria's hold in their lap.

Marigold knelt at his other side, "Definitely another curse of some kind."

"I am so fucking tired of these." Valeria gritted, nails pleasantly scratching over his scalp while she corrected his hair.

"As am I..." He pinched his brow against the pain, and finally sat up. When he opened his eyes again, Valeria was holding his crown out to him. When he took it to place it back on his head, he noticed a tremble in his hands. He ignored it as he stood with gentle help from the other two.

"What happened?" Marigold asked.

Midas looked at her and blinked, "I'm...not sure."

Valeria’s arm linked with his while she still made gentle adjustments. She tucked loose hair behind his ear, whispering so only he could hear, "You're crying, Midas."

The King brought his own hand to his cheek. There were indeed tears there. He wiped the moisture away, frustrated confusion running through him along with a profound, and impossibly heavy mournful sorrow. He had no idea why, "I had a dream, I think...I can't remember."

[sexisbetteronthemoon]

on a roll. i think i just finished drafting chapter 27 as well. gonna see if i can draft chapter 28 before heading back to edit 26 for posting.

[asgardian--angels]

and you're telling me jayce could resist kissing this viktor

[toddtakefive]

thinking about todd and his resolve toward… not quite isolation, but being alone in a room full of people again. he goes along to the study room to sit on his own and do his homework, he sits at the poets table and follows along with what’s being said while keeping quiet, he goes to the meetings at all but doesn’t necessarily contribute (in fact, if you watch him when cameron is telling the story ‘from camp in sixth grade’, you can see that he recognizes it before any of the other poets but doesn’t voice it until they all have). he’s not alone, necessarily, if you want to get technical about it, he’s just lonely, and he’s generally okay with that. he doesn’t have friends and that’s fine, he doesn’t participate in class and that’s fine, he doesn’t have a relationship with his family and that’s fine—he could live without any real connection and he’d have been, more or less, fine.

the thing about when he says “i can take care of myself just fine!” is that he isn’t really wrong, you can infer that he’s been doing it his entire life anyway, it’s that ‘taking care of yourself’ isn’t the same thing as really living or being happy. todd’s an introvert, certainly, and even as he gets closer to the group he defaults to sitting quietly in the background, but he’s also denying himself community out of fear not introversion. todd isn’t friendless because he’s an introvert, although that definitely plays a part, he’s friendless because he pushes anyone that might want his company away. if anyone has every wanted for his attention in the first place. (neil’s unwavering interest in him is unique (even when it comes to the rest of the poets, who are fine with todd coming along and joining the group, but aren’t really hellbent on him being there in the beginning) and his refusal to accept it is a direct result of being so lonely growing up.)

there’s obviously something to be said about the implications of his parents neglect, and the more than likely fact that he grew up friendless, and how those both play a part in in him being so skilled at dodging social interaction/being so avoidant of it, but by the time we see him in the movie he’s all but accepted his fate as being alone his entire life. he’s already accepted being the family disappointment, and he’s already accepted he’ll never amount to anything, and he obviously doesn’t like it, but he’d have managed living with that knowledge without the confirmation that it was all wrong. would he have been miserable? almost certainly. but he’d have managed. he’d done it for that long already, anyhow.

[shorthaltsjester]

you’re telling me the bridgerton writers really said “we’ll have benedict suggest john throw rocks at francesca’s window as a bold declaration of love” knowing full well that eloise was throwing rocks at penelope’s window in season one and had eloise staring longingly after penelope all season and have had eloise essentially always be short with colin and made it canon that as a child she wanted to be a knight with penelope and they said they’d be spinsters together and i’m somehow supposed to buy that she wasn’t in love with penelope? sure

[bookinit02]

in honor of my s5 announcement this week, here’s one of the scenes from the first episode! hope you all like it🫶🏻