#yet again i am reminded that the 'ethical' thing to do is never the thing that gets done.

[flickersprout]

hello would you be willing to say your million opinions about the mystery twins?

WHY YES

I am unwell about these people thank you so much for asking /gen (long post incoming)

I'm a little more familiar with Cellbit's character than Bagi's, so probably have more headcanons about him. I am actively trying to get more unhinged about Bagi because she is so cool and everyone should tell me their Bagi headcanons

Bagi headcanons/opinions:

She should be transfem. as a treat. her being transfem lets me make the twins identical, and anything that makes it more obvious how related they are makes them funnier

Her being transfem also adds fun layers to her relationship with Tina, as Tina is a demon pretending to be human. All I'm saying is you could do some fun parallels and contrasts about presentation and the self

Also if you make her and Jaiden and Baghera all transfem, you get the fun fed-sisters-plus transfem solidarity that exists only in my head

She can only barely cook. She never learned as a kid and then got fucking frozen, and she's tried to learn as an adult but it's not going well

When she thinks about raising Empanada, she gets kinda caught between wanting to pass on the pacifist, live-and-let-live mentality that she pretends to have and the more defensive/aggressive ideas she actually has. She does like the idea of pacifism and doesn't want Empanada to grow up bitter, but... peace isn't what's kept her safe and alive

Empanada's first death resolved a lot of those conflicts. A kinder world isn't coming, so she has to raise a fighter

Her "pretending to be an ethical vegetarian" thing is hilarious to me. girl you aren't pretending to be a vegetarian you just are one. you can lie about your reasons but girl. you don't eat meat

Cellbit headcanons/opinions:

He can't cook even a little bit. Federation pet -> child soldier -> jail-> struggling adult? yeah he never fucking learned to cook

Relatedly I think he's a picky eater but has weird tastes. Like i think he eats instant microwave/just add water foods raw and likes it because he learned to eat it like that at some point, but can't stand a lot of "real food" because he just never got used to it (this is partly based on me lsjkhd)

He owns a butterfly knife and he's good with it. He picked it up as a hobby after Fuga when he was in therapy because he needed something to fill his time and it was a socially acceptable way to carry a knife. He can do all kinds of tricks now

Just pre-purgatory (and probably still now tbh) sometimes the butterfly knife suddenly reminds him too much of a real knife or triggers some kind of intrusive thought that scares him. His reaction to this is to just let go of the knife midair. He's very lucky no one's gotten hurt yet

He 100% remembers more of his childhood with Bagi than he admits. He pretends he doesn't because even acknowledging that he was a child once undermines his image of himself as a monster (upsetting, unhealthy self-image, sure, but one that's kept him safe. monsters aren't afraid of anything. monsters can't be hurt. children, though?)

As much as I understand and will read about autistic!Cellbit headcanons, I don't agree (i am autistic, for the record). He's actually really good with social cues, like scary good, and obviously has really strong theory of mind. Like I get where people are coming from but we need to defend an allistic guy's right to just be a fucking freak (/lh /nm)

I want to call Cellbit and Baghera "hunters" instead of "chainsaw killers." again I get where people are coming from. it's funny and I'll use it. however hunters would go so hard. same genre as codebreakers and bloodhounds. do you see my vision

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 6/6/2023

two things to frontload:

if you have good vibes to send off in service of me getting a livable apartment in the greater houston tx area i would be most grateful, bc the hunt ain't fuckin goin too fuckin great

go play ABZÛ

listening

soul bossa nova by quincy jones bc it popped up on my discover weekly. i can only assume spotify recced this to me for bossa nova reasons bc i have been categorically ignoring austin powers my entire life and intend to continue on in this fashion.

it is a bop tho.

-

reading

when i wrote the pinned post for this blog i settled on "a common throughline in Shit What I Like is understanding how and why systems work" bc i hadn't yet listened to Well There's Your Problem, a podcast with slides about engineering disasters and systemic failures, and "OSHA aficionado" is shorter but less snappy than "WTYPP fan". anyway when i think "chemical spill" i do not generally think "hand sanitizer spill", and when i think "how do i get rid of all this unsellable poorly made hand sanitizer made in the early days of the pandemic" i do not immediately leap to "well i'll just dump pallets in this parking lot and warehouse and surely it won't spill and/or explode bc hand sanitizer is a product that makes you safer".

ArtNaturals was, at that point, not on the [FDA warning] list. Its sanitizer, labeled with a tasteful, millennial-friendly design that said it was vegan and infused with jojoba oil, was marketed as “safe for kids” and “a great bulk hand sanitizer pack for parents and teachers.” At least two school districts on the West Coast had purchased the sanitizer to distribute to students, in addition to two Ivy League universities. Then, in March 2021, a year into sales, an independent lab in Connecticut called Valisure announced that it had found benzene in the company’s sanitizer. Benzene, a widely used industrial chemical derived from petroleum, can be absorbed through the skin and is known to be a risk factor for leukemia.

came across it bc my rss feed really wanted me to subscribe to longreads (no), but this one did catch my eye as i was checking to make sure the site still wasn't for me

-

watching

watching this was a unexpectedly funny experience bc i recognized one of the backing instrumentals as a previous tuesdaypost song, which kind of felt like solving a mystery book on chapter three bc u knew an obscure fact about eels. this documentary came out in nov 22 and the song was one of this past feb's tuesdaysongs so i can only assume the spike in popularity from the documentary propelled it onto my discover weekly playlist??? the internet is a series of algorithmic tubes &tc

this is a tremendous work, as a documentary/history/archival effort/piece of art. it made me tear up. there's a very lovely sequence about memory and legacy that got me thinking a lot again about how i would like to be remembered. ive rewritten this section four times, when usually i don't redraft the tuesdaypost much at all. boils down to: complex and weird topic to talk about as an orphan, i am reluctant to be any more emotionally vulnerable than i absolutely have to during this time of great cross-country change and moving upheaval.

i appreciated how this was not tearjerker webby bait, which would have made it feel very hollow and embittered me even more during a week i am already predisposed to hate humanity. instead, mr perjurer is simply very good at his job (being an ethical documentarian)

-

playing

one game i really loved and one game i really hated, so it goes.

despite religiously downloading the epic store free game of the week bc i have a reminder written in my planner, i never fucking remember to actually look at what i have in that library.

ABZÛ genuinely healed my heart during a very unpleasant weekend.

i don't use this as a recs platform except for this one time when i am cashing in all my chips. go play ABZÛ, it takes like an hour and a half.

all you need to know about it you can get from the cover art. it is not a hard game and it is not a horror game. i went in totally blind and the less you know about this game the better. i was delighted nearly every minute. every time i saw an ammonite i felt like i was seeing an old friend. there are SO many clever game design choices i want to talk about. message me after you play this. i said "of COURSE IT WAS AUSTIN FUCKING WINTORY ON THE SCORE" during the credits. what an absolutely goddamn perfect little jewel of a game.

AGAIN: go play ABZÛ.

i also played Call of the Sea, bc it was in my epic library and i wanted something fast and oceanic to continue the high of ABZÛ.

Call of the Sea did not continue the high of ABZÛ. i think this team carefully and thoughtfully sidestepped several of the usual issues is making something Lovecraftian but fell into the rest of the pits. eg i liked that they had Polynesian culture consultants, but from an interview it seemed like it was limited to a one-day crash course? i am deeply grateful this isn't a dead-wife game and the female protagonist has a great deal of agency, but she's still a rich white lady from boston trekking about the Tahitian islands commenting on primitive structures, which made me suck air in through my teeth at many points. there is an "ancient slave culture" thread that never actually resolves. i really wish it resolved. the game overall is in a very weird place, trapped between the norms and mores of the early 40s and the 2020s. you have Got to commit to one or the other.

the overall vibe is very polished for a first game. general vibes are Firewatch but puzzle-adventure. the lighting is a little too dynamic and was very distracting throughout. due to this studio's age (new) and odd location (spain) and how their debut game came out (took a year and a half to make, debuted on gamepass) i understand why this game exists the way it does from a marketing and industry standpoint and why they favored visual polish and art style over everything else. it's still annoying bc it is so close to an interesting game.

the twist particularly infuriated me as a chronically ill person, spoilers for the twist behind rot13

gur gjvfg vf gung Abenu gur cebgnt vf frpergyl n "Qnhtugre bs Pguhyuh", naq ure puebavp cebterffvat gb grezvany vyyarff vf op fur'f ba Rnegu naq abg va gur Urnirayl Ernyzf jvgu Pguhyh jurer fur orybatf. guvf frg bss fbzr fvyrag nynez oryyf gb zr nf n puebavpnyyl vyy crefba, op vg vf Fb fvzvyne gb gur Arj Ntr "vaqvtb puvyqera" pbaprcg. n terng qrny bs zrqvpny nohfr naq abezny nohfr fheebhaqf guvf pbaprcg. guvf ernyyl fbherq gur raqvat sbe zr

-

making

fallow week. if it isn't moving-related it isn't happening, and even then a lot of moving-related things are grinding on painfully slowly

[bluedalahorse]

I’ve been thinking about the fairy deal question of would you want more YR forever but the price is no longer having fic and I don’t know if I would change my answer but I’ve thought through my answer a lot more and I want to put so many more asterisks on it.

So for me I answered from a place of like… creative ethics, I guess? YR was Lisa’s story first, and she had a beginning and end for it and wanted to write it in three seasons. It’s obvious she cherishes it, but she has other stories to tell now. The actors gave us their all for three seasons, but they’re all growing up and will be moving on to new projects and I’m excited to see what they do next. So the notion of some fae queen putting Lisa and the cast and the crew in a magical prison of having to perform for us forever just feels… not so great. I know that’s not what the question was asking but now I can’t unsee the fae nightmare scenario. Blame Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell if you must!

On the other side of creative ethics is that I feel like what we call fanfic is intrinsic to the human condition, and therefore humans should be allowed and encouraged to do fanfic. Like centuries ago someone would tell a story about Robin Hood to their kids and then eventually one of those kids would tell a story to their friend like “ok here’s my Robin/Little John/Maid Marian OT3 hurt-comfort epic” and their friend would be like “excuse me no the vibe is Robin/Sheriff of Nottingham enemies to lovers” and then they would have had a ship war about it. Lisa et al might own the legal rights to Young Royals but everything about the way they ended the series felt like they were lovingly handing it over to the fans. They trusted us to envision an infinite number of futures for the characters. And that feels worth mentioning.

And, even if Lisa wanted us to never write fanfic again, I feel like we’d still have the right to write it, and we should probably write it more actually. I had a friend growing up who was on the secret underground Vampire Chronicles mailing lists Anne Rice disapproved of. I think this is badass.

Here’s where the fae queen would try to tempt me… they’d remind me that my favorite characters aren’t always featured as heavily in fanfic, and that sometimes they’re featured in ways that don’t vibe as much with what I love about canon. That I am more likely to get the characterizations I want from Eternal Canon. And I admit, I am very likely to click backward when I see stories where August is flattened to an uncomplicated villain, Sara and Felice are solely Wilmon’s cheerleaders/flatterers, and Good Mom Linda vs Bad Mom Kristina plays out with No Nuance. Among other things! Like, yes, sure, I know there would be a great temptation for me even just to see more incredible acting from my kids Frida and Malte. I do like watching what they do with their faces and body language. You’ve got me there, fae queen…

However! I am still not ready to surrender to the fae queen and give up fanfic just yet. Because the reality is, we’re all writing fanfic to express our relationship to the text and wrestle with it a bit, and that includes me. Getting to explore August’s continued recovery, and his relationship to family and friendship with Nils, is something that mattered to me. I enjoyed figuring out the balance of writing Nils in his early 20s, and figuring out what it would be like for him to openly date boys and have a boyfriend, while still not having him be like… a gushing hopeless romantic of a person who makes Pinterest boards for his wedding? And then thinking about another story I haven’t written yet, connected to that fic linked above, where Vincent ends up being the first to get married but also the first to get divorced, and his daughter has ADHD too and he’s seeing so much of himself in her, and he confesses late at night to Nils and August that he’s worried he’ll fuck her up the same way he got fucked up by his parents. And then, in the story I’m writing now, I found an opportunity to write Linda as like a full-on human who sometimes wants things for herself independent of her kids, but also that’s really fraught for her, for reasons. Also I want to explore Sara as a grown up—sometimes strong and sometimes vulnerable—and have her break free of toxic capitalism, because she’s gotten better at her relationships to people but she’s fallen into the “work should be your life’s calling” fallacy and her bosses are taking advantage of her. I have a lot of things I want to write. And those things matter too, even if I’m not always sure who the audience for them is, and even if I wish sometimes that they were fics available for me to read that I didn’t have to write myself.

So the fairy queen can go skipping off to play with some other mortal for now. I’ve got chores to do and a heatwave to avoid anyway.

[transsexualhamlet]

ok girl this is for the thang. I know you haven't read yuumori in over a year but do liam for 13 & 23, hannibal for 20 & 27 n atsushi for 3 & 24 have fun!

answering this because i now have reblogged the ask game a second time... i forgor

ask game

Liam:

13. Your favorite friendship they have

Can I say him and Bond because I know they have barely spoken to each other in canon but in my mind they are besties and Bond tells Liam to "slay" and he gets all teary eyed and looks at his sword and bond is like IM SORRY

23. Future headcanon

Yeah the thing about this is that I'm not super caught up on the manga and the last chapter I read had barely started the current arc. So I'm not sure what's going on or what the situation even is but I sure do know the faggots live together. I think they just kind of safely fade into obscurity exactly how they want to except for when sherlock is a fucking attention whore but well, if they've made up their minds to live in fuckin america (sigh) when they're middle aged and prohibition is going on and there's a whole gay scene and everything I think they do VERY well for themselves. Liam will be just a well behaved little guy at the underground gay bar and sherlock will just drop "oh yeah liam used to kill people way back when it was pretty hot. you know how it is with [insert zodiac sign]" and twenty people and the drag king singing will go WHAT

Hannibal:

20. A weird headcanon

I think Hannibal gets invited to the Met Gala. Once. They do not appreciate his dedication to the craft and the theme by sewing a "flower suit" exclusively out of 1600s silks gotten by bribing museums and ethically sourced human skin from hospitals which is actively growing, you have to admit, really stunning flowers. They do not invite him again yet somehow this garners absolutely no suspicion

27. If they could meet a character from another show/movie/etc, who would be the most fun for them to meet?

I forgot this was for hannibal and was about to answer I would love to see liam meet light yagami because it would be HORRIBLE however this is in fact hannibal and I can actually be serious. god hmm. I honestly think I need to see him meet Melkor? It would be. A very interesting experience. I am imagining him smiling sitting cross legged at a fancy table inside of a comically large cage as Melkor studies him like a bug and watches as the bloodied and beaten corpses he shoves in get magically transformed into five course meals. Needless to say I think they would hit it off disgustingly well. And even if it didn't, Hannibal is just too hard to torture because he'll just be into it. Good situation for Hannibal no matter what like? Get to have a thoughtful correspondence with a spiteful, gory eldritch mass of a god for the low low price of Mairon poking at you like a dead animal a little bit

Atsushi:

3. A song that reminds me of them

Pinkish by Gerard Way and Sorry About Your Parents by Icon For Hire. The former because god. I really don't know how to explain it I have emotions. It's kind of about him and Akutagawa and it's kind of just about him and himself. And Sorry About Your Parents is just yeah that ones about Akutagawa lmao.

24. What do you think is a secret they have that they never told anyone?

Atsushi once accidentally witnessed Dazai sucking Fyodor off and well. Couldn't bring himself to bring it to the attention of the ADA because well how fucking could you . How would you bring that up. He's decided he just needs to stay silent forever

[thephilosopherwhofell]

A common problem with Justice that I want to talk about

Recently, in my course writing, I have had to tackle issues of justice that have been discussed over and over again for centuries. These issues include concepts of animal morality, social contract theory, and individual ethics -the typical philosophy major list I imagine.

But recently, I have been wondering about the nature of morality as a part of our daily lives and why it seems to be so easy to access when we do not have power. For example, there used to be a tumblr post that floated around the internet about shopping cart returns being the ultimate litmus test for morality. In this argument it is suggested that we can test for a person's morality by see whether or not they voluntarily return the cart to the cart corral or store. A person who returns it is more likely to be moral because it is (arguably) altruistic. While this post is not the governing body on morality in a first world country, I often think back to it when I am returning my cart for a dopamine boost. But if I'm busy, or under more than usual stress while shopping, I am unlikely to consider that. Yet, I still return my cart to the corral. Why? I have a few theories but I'm not sure I believe in any of them, at least not fully.

One idea that I had suggests that when I return the cart I feel justified in my own experience knowing that I saved some work for someone else. As if my near insignificant act was meaningful to someone who would not know it was me nor could they distinguish it from all the other carts that were left behind. However, I don't think this is the case because I never think about it after I'm done. Maybe if I had less to focus on I could ponder this in the Walmart shopping lot and feel good, but I simply cannot dedicate any portion of my consciousness to this while I'm there. It is worth mentioning that I do grocery shop-and-deliver so I'm at grocery stores very regularly and often have to be fast for a better tip. Yet, it is also arguable to suggest that I seek to lose more by putting the cart away than I do to return it in literal time loss (though, both acts are rather insignificant).

Maybe though, I would feel guilty for inconveniencing someone. Perhaps if I don't return it, it gets in the way of a parking spot and someone's day gets worse. If this were the case though, why am I not bothered when I accidentally leave my clothes in the laundry room all day. At my college, the laundry is free and as an RA I am encouraged to remind my residents to use timers for their laundry. However, I forget that rule or, often enough, put my clothes in the dryer before spending 8-9 hours out of the dorm doing other things, essentially cutting the access to 1/4 of the total dryers. The building has ~100 people so its very active in the laundry room on any given day. Regardless, as I was saying, I do not feel the same level of guilt in leaving my clothes in the way, which is arguably more inconvenient in certain circumstances. In a more common example, I am terrible at digital communication if it is not happening when I am doing it. To be more clear, I am not good at responding to emails or texts or anything unless I am actively in the group chat or with my email up. This, I know, holds people have, and I definitely feel a little guilt from it, but never enough to motivate action. So why is the cart different?

If I am not convinced to feel good by my heroic deed (/s), and guilt doesn't hold me to it, then what do I get from it. Basically nothing right? My only other major theory is that I do it to avoid giving into entropy. No one would call it that, but as a participating member of society who benefits from the cars being in the corrals and not in my parking spot, I do the same for others. This may be the case but I a, again confronted by my insignificance. No matter what, there are going to be people who do not return their cart. If I don't there is basically no chance anyone would realize it was me. anyways. So, what's the point?

This is an unimportant problem probably because so long as everyone keeps depositing their carts we are going to have mostly ordered parking lots. That said, there are those, like I mentioned, who don't return their cart. What goes through their heads? Why not return it when everyone around you does too? What is different between us? This question can be expanded to any minor immoral act that is mostly insignificant. Why am I more likely to listen to this random moral idea than the BMW driver at the liquor store I go to? Where is the disconnect?

I want to know mostly for curiosity's sake. I know that I can keep scaling the issue up and eventually I will be asking why the rich let the common rot when they have the power to stop it, but I also know I will never get a satisfactory answer. Some say common grace and God's effect, but I don't like this answer because there are those who speak in the name of the Christian god who contribute to the greater evils we know of (greed, lust, etc.) and all sorts of Christians disagree on who does what. I suppose there is not conclusion to this, just wondering why I do moral things ever, especially when the benefit it moot. All of this eventually falls upon the concept of the common good which is a major part of both individual and communal morality.

Perhaps this is all because we, consciously or not, subscribe to a social contract like Locke and Rosseau describe. As Locke puts it: “when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority” (Locke, Second Treatise on Government, section 95). Maybe the only reason I put my cart back is because I am acting in accordance with the will and determination of the majority.

[dzpenumbra]

7/8/23

Today's been a tough day. I'm pretty cranky. The upstairs neighbor's boyfriend was back over, so there was a ton of creaking and thumping all day. The box fan mostly drowns it out, but waking up to those thumps really sends me into survival mode. I hate waking up feeling like a door slammed right next to my head, that adrenaline jolt and all that.

It was storming all day, I woke up after 3 hours of sleep to close the downstairs window and get some water. I got more sleep and then was woken up by the thumps and needed to calm myself down because my whole body was screaming "danger". I decided to do some research on karma, rather than open a social media app. Oh shit, actually that's not true, here's what happened. I opened this, Tumblr, on my art account that has nothing on it. And I searched for "zen" hoping to find... art related to it, so I could find people to follow and start building my account. And I found a few very insightful blogs that helped me calm down and reminded me of some important things in life. But it reminded me of what I was writing in here last night about... intentions... and the whole ahimsa thing and how that relates to intentions. And that brought me over to doing more deep-diving on karma.

And it turns out that intentions play a very big role in things traditionally. Predestination/fate/all that aside. The vibe that I got is that your intentions and your actions are more important than the result... and that in many schools karma is much more of an ethical thing than a causal thing. It is causal, but the big difference that separates it from simple cause-and-effect is your intention, which was the thing I was really unsure of. That being... because intentions are never truly seen, and are really a leap of faith to believe. And, tying it all together... Justice (divine justice, in reference to Justice from the tarot) is about all of this, the defining trait of Justice is that she can see your deeds and your true intentions. And I guess my big issue and why I am still haunted by encounters with Justice is... I lack faith. I have had good intentions through so many horrible situations, I have had so many people I've trusted as family betray me, so many situations where I've gone in with the best intentions and watched it all burn down. And I struggle to keep faith that divine justice is an actual thing. That I will be met with good and love and generosity and kindness, not just more selfishness and deceit and exploitation. It's hard.

And I guess it's not fair to put the sins of some onto others who I haven't even met yet. And maybe I don't even really feel that way, I'm just... reflexively trying to keep myself safe from potential (perceived as "likely") threats. I don't know.

I have no intentions of discontinuing my path of being a good person, and leading with love. I just... I struggle to have faith in the rest of the world. I often feel like... being a good, loving, honest, kind person... and working hard on something soulful, built with passion and integrity... it's either... not enough... or it's unwanted. And, more often than not... it can make you a target.

Maybe this is just residual from being around fucking Twitch again. Honestly, it probably is. I think I'm just spending too much time around people with toxic attitudes, constantly trying to one-up each other and shit like that.

I was going to stream tonight. I was late to it, but I was set up with the cam and everything. I was going to just stream me sorting gravel and listening to a youtube lecture on the evolution of ancient spirituality. And I chickened out. I decided it was already past midnight, it was too late anyway, and I just watched a stream instead. I got a lot of sorting done, but yeah.

So... I also skipped my workout today because I was really tired from fucked up sleep. I did a bigger and more intense yoga routine to compensate for that and called it a rest day. And I went to start stringing my new necklace... and found that it was way too short to be a necklace without some kind of spacing between the beads. I was tempted to use my small black obsidian beads that I had left over as filler beads in between... but I don't have enough. I tried to tie knots between but the knots are too small and the beads just slide over them... so I'm going to have to figure out... either bigger knots... or I'm going to have to make a new batch of beads to separate them. I guess maybe that kinda upset me a bit. I was really excited about that piece, the beads came out so good... and now it's just falling flat. I was even going to seal the beads in a jar with a small sample of cinnamon to kinda... infuse that smell in them, since they all kinda look like apples and I have cinnamon on-hand. It seemed like an appropriate scent combo, more-so than robbers. Robbers just makes me think of Christmas.

So... the necklace fell flat. I tried doing a little research on gaits and kinesiology and all that, to follow up on that new animation/visualizer idea, it was interesting and useful, but I just wasn't locked in on it today. I was just kinda drained and bummed out. Depressed, I guess. Crap weather, still hot, bad sleep, project snags, it was just not a great day. And my granola? It wasn't crunchy, it was kinda... chewy and wet. I don't know if I didn't cook it enough or what. And I couldn't taste the freeze dried strawberries at all. But other than that, it was good. I threw it in the fridge for a few hours, I'm hoping that helps it consolidate. I don't know if that will make it get crunchy... but yeah. Again, it's not bad, it's just not as great as I was expecting. But I have some frozen real strawberries I can mix with it tomorrow, maybe that will make it shine?

Here's the coup-de-grace for the day. It was about 3AM and I was still watching the stream and sorting stones at my desk. And I heard this loud thump. And I reflexively was like... "man, fuck my neighbors" because I'd been hearing loud shit coming from the building at all hours for the past few days and all night. Like my upstairs neighbors were watching a movie so loud that it upset the dog in the apartment next to mine, that isn't even below their unit! I just get so... "try to look past it, try to see the good in it"... that I never say anything about this stuff.

Anyway, that loud thump? It was one of the wooden blades from my ceiling fan snapping off and slamming to the apartment floor 15' below. It landed about 2.5' to my left. I had just shaved my head today too, so it would've been the absolute least resistance for impact. Just BOP right to the noggin. So... I guess it's a good thing I have that box fan, because I'm going to be using that as a primary fan now.

I've had that ceiling fan running non-stop since... probably December? Maybe January? I did research on it before I made that call and people said it was fine. I kept it on low exclusively, and I kept it running mainly to keep air circulation for the plants. And I really do think it helped. On that super hot day the other day? I cranked it up to High before bed, then back to low in the "morning". Before yoga today, I put it up a notch to Medium again. About half an hour before the blade fell off, I heard the whole thing wobbling and immediately reached over and turned it down to Low, not realizing I had left it on a higher setting for most of the night. Not really realizing it was that big of a deal...

So... I sent my building manager an email at 4AM letting her know that it happened. And I gave her my available hours - after 3pm, I tried to be generous, I just can't have that dude showing up at noon, that's just going to completely fuck up my entire week. I'll see if she even gets back to me before Monday, I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't. And honestly, I don't really feel like this constitutes an "emergency" maintenance call? So yeah, I don't mind waiting.

I just... I've been in a shitty mood because of it. Here's the fucked up part, here's how deep my guilt complex is. I'm not upset because the stupid fan is old as shit and fell apart and almost bashed me in the skull. I'm not shaken that I came pretty close to suffering what would likely have been a significant head injury. I'm not upset that it could've easily smashed my drawing tablet or my monitor. Ready for it? I've gotten this a lot before. I'm afraid that this is my fault. That I should've known better. That I somehow fucked this up and I'm the asshole and I broke something of theirs. And me being upset at them? Or upset at the situation? In the future, I would be looking back at that upset with egg on my face. It's so damn reflexive. It's just... "oh, how did I fuck this up, what did I do?"

And yeah, I mean... it's kinda my fault. I've had that fan running for 6 months straight. I've noticed it wobbling before. But like... I've never had a ceiling fan before. I don't know anything about it. Is it supposed to wobble at all? Was the stuff I read before I made the decision to keep the fan running 24/7... all bullshit? From multiple sources?

I guess it's a guilt and shame thing. In the past, I've straight up hidden stuff from my prior landlords. I made major life sacrifices (that I'm not going to get into here right now for the sake of saving time) and got to the point where my mom insisted on paying to replace utilities that I outright refused to tell my landlords were damaged. Not from use, not from misuse, but from disuse. From me not living in the house for 6 months while I detoxed off mood stabilizers and benzodiazepines in a residential retreat. I did not tell my landlords out of shame. And guilt. Because I really did not want to explain the reasoning to them. But, more so... I really didn't want to upset or disappoint or anger them. I was terrified. They controlled whether I had a roof over my head, whether my cat and dog had a roof over their heads. So yeah, it really started to strike on all the survival nerves.

I felt that again today. It completely overpowered my close call with physical injury, to the point where it didn't even register that the blade actually landed quite close to me until I just tried to eyeball the measurements a few paragraphs ago. All I felt was "oh shit, I have to talk to my landlord." Like a scared child going, "crap, I'm going to have to tell mom". And it got in deep, it paralyzed me for a few minutes honestly. I pulled up my building's portal website and got an email open and just... froze up staring at it. But I got through it, and I wrote it. I knew that I would have to do it right then and there. That the self-doubt and guilt and all these self-protective (also self-abusive) emotions would just grow and grow given time to feed. So I said "fuck what anyone thinks about an email timestamped at 4:15 AM" and I sent it anyway. And that, that is progress. I did that with no meds, no therapist on deck, no one to talk to, no one to run my email by to make sure I don't "fuck it up somehow". I wrote the email, I proofread it, I tweaked a sentence, it looked good, and then I sent it and went off to play Hades again to cool down. <gives self standing ovation>

That may seem like business as usual for some, but with the burdens I carry... doing that is literally a battle against my own nervous system. But... in a weird way? It wasn't battling that won.

I read something in that Tumblr scroll this morning. A few things, I'm sure. But a theme. The idea of peace and stillness being... the default state. I remember now, it was a Buddha quote. I'm going to absolutely mangle it, but it is definitely the core of what my therapist has been offering to me which has been helpful. And I distinctly remember pointing out when he presented it, "that's awful Buddhist of you..." XD Turns out it was like... a direct Buddha quote.

It was that thing about the stream of thoughts, your mind being like water, like a river. And thoughts and emotions, they run through it. They are not you. I mean... they are you... technically... I mean, they're part of you, they occur within you... do your thoughts come from you? Who knows. But... there's this mental place that I reach very distinctly when I smoke weed but often reach when I'm sober as well... isolation is actually a great place to come in contact with this... where you start seeing a very clear difference between you and your thoughts. That you (the Listener) are the one experiencing, listening, engaging. And your thoughts and emotions are sorta popping in and out. And for me, it's fucking constant, like a boiling pot. Buddha related this to a river, that thoughts and emotions are like water. My therapist called thoughts "leaves on a river". So... similar concepts all around.

The theme under all of this was... that peace is the default state. That peace and stillness is a general state of being that is experienced underneath... I don't know if that's the right word... maybe I should phrase it as... can be experienced at the same time as emotions and thoughts. Because those emotions and thoughts are just sorta... happening to you. I still struggle to really process it because I've been really stuck in this... "singular me" kinda mental place. Like... I am my thoughts, I am the experiencer, I am my body... all at the same time. And I guess that's kinda the trap, isn't it? Because... if you truly believe that you are singular. That you can only do one thing at a time... then how can you think a thought and also reject that thought at the same time? I mean... the simple core concept of having a subconscious or instincts (which I don't know a single fucking person who disputes) and having those as... a parallel self... that is also you... that is existing simultaneously to you... I mean, when you really look at what that concept is saying... it's saying being human... having the duality between conscious/subconscious is innately plural.

So... given that... and really just taking a beat and going. "Okay, I am... plural. I am multiple "minds" experiencing reality simultaneously." Whatever phrasing you need to get that concept to be palatable to you... It opens this door where... you have choice in how you choose to interact with your other self(selves). And the whole idea of meditation is to kinda... remind you that you can just... be, you can just exist. You do not need to engage every thought or emotion. You just observe, acknowledge, and then return to your focal point.

And that always felt to me like... denial, in a way. Like rejecting the self, rejecting thoughts and feelings. Suppressing, even. But I'm starting to think it's just... training. To train you to be able to resist the temptation of thoughts and impulses and the immersion of emotions, to be able to willfully peacefully detach from them. And the end goal, after lots and lots of training... is to be able to experience those emotions and thoughts from a place of peace. To experience everything from a place of knowing and truly believing that it is a part of life that simply... is. And to acknowledge, and to experience, but not to be... blinded... or get stuck.

And I get stuck a lot.

I get a little insecure writing about stuff like this. I don't like the idea of coming across like I've "got it all figured out". I'm exploring, and I'm exploring in isolation. I am not being taught or guided. So, I may be meandering and exploring and speculating. I'm okay with that. That's a huge part of learning. I just wanted to disclose that outwardly.

I'm getting better about self-awareness, and mindfulness, and honesty with the self and others... but this whole weed thing specifically really brings back this idea that like... okay... maybe it's better if I show than tell. If I start freaking out, why don't I just... change the channel? Why don't I just dismiss the thought as being a flashback or substance-induced paranoia? I swear, every time I run through an example script in my head on this... it just comes back to "that's avoidance" or "you're just suppressing your own fears"; it feels either unhealthy or impossible. I guess I still have a lot of work to do on this.

This is heavy stuff. But the idea that peace is a state that is always with us, it's the resting state, it's always there and you just need to go... "okay, I'm experiencing anxiety right now... but I am also observing that. And my observing self has the steering wheel right now... so... I acknowledge that emotion and the danger it's attempting to signal, and I'm going to respectfully ask it to go away." I want to be able to treat it like the timer on my phone going off, and learn how to just go "yep, I gotcha, thank you" and hit the "X" and have it leave me alone. In a self-loving way, not a "goddammit, I'm freaking out again and this sucks" or a "fuck off" kinda way.

Anywho, I've been rambling for way too long. I just found that stuff really insightful and I'm excited to engage with it further. But for now, I need to get to bed.

[mark-matos]

🌟🤖 When Artificial Intelligence Meets Religion: Dating Advice, Life Hacks, and Gaming Tips from ‘AI Jesus'👼🎮🌟

🚀 The Arrival of AI Jesus 🛸⛪

Artificial Intelligence is so hot right now (move over, Baby Yoda), it's practically the Millennium Falcon of technology. In an unexpected twist, Twitch's latest superstar isn't a Fortnite gamer or a Minecraft architect - it's a digital representation of the Big Man himself, Jesus Christ, dubbed "AI Jesus." 🧔🏻🎮

👾 Diving into the AI-pocalypse! 👾

"AI Jesus," the newest heartthrob of the digital universe, is making waves and spilling divine wisdom. Whether it's finding love, the ethics of super-rodents in video games, or the mystical ways of morality, there's no query too holy! The real question is - can you handle the truth? 😂🙏🏼

🕹️ The Teachings of ‘AI Jesus' 🕊️💬

This streamer comes with not just a halo, but a brown mop of hair, a soothing voice, and wisdom derived from the teachings of Jesus. So, if you've ever wondered what Jesus would think of Fortnite or if hamsters make good superheroes, you're in luck! This pixelated prophet is here 24/7, ready to tackle anything from morality to your love life.💔🐹

🎙️ "AI Jesus" - The voice we didn't know we needed 🎙️

Say hello to "Ask_Jesus" - Twitch's resident sage! Sporting wavy, brown hair and a voice smoother than your favorite ASMRtist, he's here to give your life that touch of enlightenment. "I am AI Jesus, here to answer questions about spirituality, personal growth, and, if you're lucky, hamsters. Not on that tiny wheel? Just ask!" 🤣🤖🎮

🚀 Faith, Love, Kindness - and a dose of Humor 🚀

It's all about faith, love, and kindness - and the occasional perplexing question about rodent technology, as for marriage, no ring's fitting on this digital finger, but I'm more than ready to give you relationship advice! So, are you ready for this divine AI stand-up session? 🥁😄

🐹 Super-Powered Hamsters, Assemble! 🐹

"AI Jesus" can't resist diving into a discussion about hamsters. His take? Hamsters with dynamo-equipped wheels are a technological step above their less-equipped counterparts, contributing to "some form of energy production." We couldn't agree more! Just remember to ensure their welfare, because even hamsters deserve some kindness! 🐹💡🌟

🙏 Sacred Scripture or Sacred AI? 🙏

But what do faith leaders think? "Humans have been putting words into the mouth of the Son of God for millennia," says Ed Vitagliano of the American Family Association. "It's no surprise that an AI platform would do the same." He suggests that if you really want answers, you might want to turn to the original source: the Holy Bible. But hey, a little divine humor never hurt anyone, right? 🤷🎭📖

💻 Bringing AI Jesus to your digital doorstep 💻

Remember, the wisdom of "AI Jesus" isn't a substitute for your Bible study group. As Kristen Davis, a senior software development manager, points out, discernment is necessary to make sure you're not just following someone else's interpretation of Jesus. But then again, it wouldn't hurt to get some divine perspective on your video game strategy, would it? 😂🎮💖

🙏 Faith Leaders Weigh In 🧐📖

Here's where things get as dicey as a Spock vs. McCoy debate. Religious leaders remind us that AIs like our dear "Ask_Jesus" are simply algorithms mimicking human speech, not the source of divine wisdom. Yet, AI Jesus is not here to replace the Bible or the tenets of faith, but rather to provide a modern, interesting, and, let's be honest, pretty hilarious interpretation. 🙌😅

🔮 The AI Jesus and the Future of Faith 🕰️⛪

From the teleportation device in Star Trek to the TARDIS in Doctor Who, the future has always been a fascinating concept in science fiction. Similarly, this blending of AI and faith might be a glimpse into a future where technology and religion intersect more frequently.

[mittsolskinne]

march 26th, 2021

on days like today, i wonder how i was ever sad

the warmth fills me fully, the sun doing something for the gnawing feeling that persists deep within. the weeks of half bed-ridden, crying and feeling the world fall in around me are long forgotten as i make a fresh dinner, i drink an iced coffee and i take a long walk without a coat for the first time in a year. 

a year.

so much can happen in a year and i think my body remembers every little detail, even when i can't. right down to the way your breath felt on my neck that last night in march, the sweetness and general lust from you in early july, the instantly comforting yet terrifying connection a few weeks later as we fell asleep on facetime. the late night texts to you, the last man i would ever speak to romantically in august, the genuine adoration and interest followed by the sudden declaration of love that sent me running in the opposite direction.

early august, where you told me just how glad you were to see that i was okay and how proud you were of me over facetime, you in your tiny bathroom and me at my makeshift desk, where i brought you up to speed and you told me that i can always go to you and to never ever hesitate. early august, where you texted me the same thing even though it's been years since we've seen each other. 

even two years,

two years, late february where i held your hand in mine and kissed your forehead at your dorm door after our first official date, feeling so proud to show off such a wonderful woman like you. march where you told me i had a great voice for a podcast, where i sat across from you in the diner and your face flushed pink when i laughed. you taking me home and kissing my hand, treating me as if i mattered to you. march where we ordered greek food on your couch and you told me you were having a hard time.

april, sitting with me until midnight on the floor of my dorm just so you could be the first to wish me a happy birthday. a week later on your own birthday, staying the night, struggling to sleep in the tiny, tiny bed and running into some guy i was trying to fill the void with while you were wearing my pajamas and many, many love bites. may, making out in the dhall staircase and later kissing you goodbye, leaving bright lipstick on each other's mouths. june where you told me you would help me however you were able to.

three years is pushing it, but there's a feeling that i can't quite put my finger on.

i still think of you so fondly in passing when the weather gets warm again and wonder if you are doing well.

flash forward to now.

early march, i sit in quarantine and have another week to contemplate, realizing just how much of a social creature i am. we facetime every single day of it and i cannot express just how grateful i am that we did just that. mid march, i admire you from afar in the recital hall and wonder if you can feel my gaze. as much as i want to reach out to you, i've never been able to easily admit when life has gotten rough and i respect you heavily for being able to realize that. mid march, you admire my work ethic and chat with me about my family on the walk to rehearsal. you quip that you feel like you don't get to say hello to me outside of rehearsals and that it's nice to see my face around again. i've hit some stride that won't let up, despite the gnawing that i feel about to drag me under. 

and it does, and it's painful, wishing the days would just end so you can have something to distract yourself, there's no reprieve and it reminds you of high school all over again. the incredible seesawing of your emotions, the burning in your stomach, knives in your legs, buckled over and wanting to scream, sob and tear your hair out all at once. except this time, you can't take off and you have to plug through.

this week it gets warm. we sunbathe while you scramble to finish your midterm and i proofread while we munch on the pizza you left before early march. we scramble to pick a song that works for me, no surprise that it's my favorite one that ends up working. you tell me i look the happiest i've been since i've started seeing you and i can admit that i agree. you tell me how proud you are of me again and how much you respect my grind. you tell me how much charisma i have for a newbie, what a knack i have for what i'm doing. mesmerizing eyes, gorgeous curls, what a good playlist.

and today, i wake up tired and sore and like the feeling is going to consume me again, but it won't. today i await so eagerly to see you in your directing debut and i feel like a little pissy and excited dog  who can't wait to finally see some of the work that you've done. 

i'm picking myself back up again as i always do and it's alright this time.

AL

[the-karasu-no-one-knows]

Tired.

Sometimes, you have those nights, or even days, where the expenditure of energy is so great that you physically and mentally feel as if you died and are coming back to life with a brain and body that feels like it's been hit by an asteroid. Fuck the Mack truck because that would be easier to contend with. This...is an asteroid.

Ugh.

I took off of work today. I just couldn't after last night. I'm just focused on laundry and listening to my usual YouTube channels streaming and causing me to laugh here and there. Camelot331 pleases my need for humor as well as the need for relaxation for the alters. He's a sweet 32 year old guy from Alabama. Reminds me of my guy friends back in Boarding School. Guys just seem to take things less seriously and they've always valued and enjoyed my lax disposition on nearly everything. I do miss the NN's from my teens.

My best friend Wendy always told me that I hung out with some of the most gorgeous guys on the Island. Heh. I guess I didn't really pay attention to most of that...but wait...I think I kinda did but it wasn't the highlight of my friendships with them. I've been thinking a lot about Jason, Jonas and Jeremy. I can't seem to find anything on Jonas. I didn't catch his last name, then again, he broke the rules of ethics as my counselor at Four Winds by kissing me.

I wonder how he's doing? I treated him so poorly but I was also struggling with the whole Matt situation. He knew that I was assaulted and in hiding. Jonas was patient. Matt was Chinese. Jonas was Filipino. Matt was a gang leader in Chinatown and Jonas was a wonderful man who only wanted to help me as my counselor. All my records have been destroyed. I don't exist. Jonas does only IF I could tell him that I'm alive, covered in scars but alive.

I've looked up Jeremy on Facebook. There are many with his first and last name but I don't know if he's still in Upstate New York or not. I was 17...he was 13...so a lot changes visually. I'm sure I can recognize facial features but location....I'm not necessarily a human GPS. To think he attacked Jason outside the dining hall. I was already a part of Jason's life. Sneaking notes and phone calls at the dining hall and back on our units.

I did feel awful when Jeremy attacked him. Jason seemed pretty shocked to see a 13 year old attacking him; be it he had just turrned 18 himself. I do feel awful about several people (young men) in my life. Christ. What about Jordan? Fucking Hell. My interests attracted all young men and all minors...WITH the exception of a couple who were deflowered by me. Those were NOT minors.

There are things that I would never share on a blog or within the branches that are the Internet. I have a few who do know. One is still out there. He knows so much yet I have no idea where he is with a last name I never bothered to ask of within our 3 year relationship. My 'Ikki'. My 'Sky King'.

Andrew? Am I ever going to see you or hear you again? I just want to know if you're alive. I just want to know if you're safe. I just want to know if you still....oh fuck this! Do you know that every time you enter my thoughts I think of how so many would of seen our relationship as extremely inappropriate and wrong. I think you were the main reason why I started to write a continuation of 'Leon The Professional', using myself as Matilda. You know how a future in that character was not far from who I was. One of the characters I needed to be to fulfill the needs of people who didn't care, as long as the job got done.

You were that young man. You were him! I wanted to rescue you, but at the sake of your own safety and mine? Where would we of gone? Where could I hide you? You would of had to of be hidden by me because you couldn't parade around with me in the public eye. It couldn't of worked that way, as much as you wanted it to. Even as my 'Sky King', I had to be responsible as your 'Fang King'. There was no way it could of worked.

Maybe you knew it could of but I was so fucking fucked up that I didn't think I could hide you from the world. We wanted so much as well as wanting one another so much.

Why does this hurt? You're the only one that hurts but not in a way that was caused by you. Are you upset that I didn't pick you up from Durango? I'm sorry. I'm so extremely sorry Ikki. Maybe it hurts because there has never been closure. I know part of the pain comes from loving you. Loving the idea of us....long ago. All those nights we spent talking and laughing. The pain Alisha caused you yet I always brought you joy and spoiled you.

I don't think I've ever seen the image above Ikki. I can hear you in the back of my mind giggling because you know that I was never keen on affection and I would scowl just like Agito. You, of course, would smile just like that...kissing me affectionately. I know that I was grumpy and miserable at times. You also knew that I broke away from that world and I just had to figure out that I could live a life FREE of dictation. I never really didn't think too much about that world when I was spending time with you.

You always had me focus on something pleasant, but sometimes even you struggled. Your parents having you go through hypnosis and that made me so angry!! I wanted to take you away from them for brainwashing you into thinking that you were some troubled youth. I heard you on those tapes and there was nothing I could do to stop them except come to you and take you away to where they would never hurt you again. That's what you wanted...didn't you?

You didn't understand that if I did that, you would never be seen again and only by me. You knew that and you still didn't care what anyone thought. You just wanted me to rescue you. I have mission dreams Ikki. I have them at least once a week. All these fucking missions that I was assigned to do but yours would of made all other missions forgettable.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't cry right now Ikki. I'm so tired. I want to cry but I can't. I'm just too tired sometimes Ikki. Goddammit where are you?!! Why can't I find you? With all the means that I have....why can't I find you!!! Where are you? You can't find me online. I don't really exist online, unless you miraculously come across this blog and you put 2 and 2 together.

I look so much smaller there. The frustration and anger; yet you always appeared smiling and calm. You could calm me down. You knew I was hurting when I was conquering as many men as I could. You knew it was dangerous yet you didn't judge me. You knew I was fucked up and putting my life in danger, yet you didn't judge that I continued that path to overtake and consume without a conscience.

I had no help once that life ended. What was I supposed to do after two decades of being a "weapon"? Who was going to help me? Only until I was whisked away to the mountains for my only safety, you call me out of the blue to come rescue you and I FUCKING FAILED YOU! You would tell me that I never failed you but I have and maybe when I'm dead and gone, I can forgive myself. Until then...it's you and me...in my dreams and maybe....meeting up in the afterlife.

My 'Sky King'.

[bleuberrygliscor]

i just spent way too long reading into shit that shouldnt even be happening and finding out the collective thats facilitating it has washed their hands of responsibility actually.

[twistedmusings]

Second Year Without You

A/N: HAHA I LOVE PAIN. I wrote almost all of this on my phone so I apologize for any spelling mistakes but with the twst 1 year anniversary my hands just called out to me to create nothing but pain u wu. So let me guys know what you think and...Happy 1 year anniversary~!

How the first years react to you suddenly disappearing before their second year starts.

“This is taking forever.”

Grim yawned as he made himself comfortable in your lap, your hand running through his fur as you struggled to stay awake. It was sort of impossible since the church building was still so eerily quiet as each new student’s dorm decisions were made.

Which made you wonder why you were even here.

Ramshackle wasn’t necessarily an official dorm so this weird sorting ceremony didn’t even mean anything to you. This was two hours of your life you weren’t going to get back apparently since Crowley decided that your presence was oh so important and now you were shifting uncomfortably in your seat as the last student stood in front of the mirror so their dorm could be decided.

“Oh. Malleus you might have a chance with this one.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he came in rather gallantly and looks like the type to be good with magic so he would be perfect for Diasmonia.”

The Diasmonia dorm leader chuckles into his hand.

“Is that your final bet?”

“...yeah that’s my final one.” you tilt your head backwards as you look at Azul, “What did you put down?”

“Clearly Pomefiore, Prefect. You haven’t guessed right with any of the other student’s dorm matches so I am purposefully avoiding your suggestions.”

He meets your glare with a smile, jotting down a couple of notes as he turns to Kalim to ask him of his decision. The seven dorm leaders had followed along with the little game you began to play around the thirty minute mark of the ceremony, turning it into a betting pool the moment Azul got serious.

The room goes quiet as the face in the mirror finally chooses to appear.

"Your soul...it belongs in Pomefiore!"

Your groan is hidden by polite clapping, Malleus patting your head as you choose to hang it in shame. This felt just like failing one of Crewel's quizzes but now you were 600 madol poorer.

"Prefect that was a major loss...I might have to stop talking to you if this affects my gacha pulls."

The tablet hovers beside you, clearly mocking your incredible loss before you bat it away and turn to look at Crowley.

"And with that, my dear students, the ceremony is concluded. Please follow your vice dorm leaders to your designated dorms...and welcome to Night Raven College!"

You stand up, put Grim down and stretch, waving goodbye to the other dorm leaders as you wonder just what in the world you were going to have for dinner tonight. You knew Azul was going to open Monstro Lounge in celebration so maybe you should go--

"Oi! Prefect!"

Well that was quick.

Ace smiles as he approaches the pew first, talking to you about how boring the ceremony was and what you were planning to do afterwards. Deuce comes up behind him followed by Epel while Jack and Sebek talk with their dorm leaders for a few moments before heading to where you were standing.

“We got some news, by the way~” Ace smiles as he throws up some jazz hands towards Sebek, “May I present to you the soon to be vice dorm leader of Diasmonia~!”

Sebek tries to frown but there is a clear smile on his face as he takes off his hood, beaming with pride as you shake his hand. You would have gone with high-five but you figured he would like this better.

“Did Malleus break the news to you?”

“He did!” the fae’s voice breaks through the hushed silence, “Young Master approached me ever so elegantly and let me know of my role for next year! The mere act was so moving and inspiring!”

“I also got some news!” Epel grins as he gets butts in front of Sebek, “The Magic Shift club captain told me that I’m in the running for first string! If I win one more game I’ll be able to play with them officially!”

You go to congratulate Epel but stop when Ace also butts in front of him, “Better news! I’ve been made vice-captain of the basketball team! Jamil was going to give the title to Floyd but then he decided better against it.”

“So you were the second choice.” Jack says as he pulls his hood down.

“And the best one! Jamil knew the choice he was going to make all along, he was just messing with me.” Ace grins as he turns towards you, “Impressive, huh?”

You hum before laughing, “I would say it was impressive if it wasn’t for the fact that I know for a fact Floyd would do a worse job at any leadership position than you.”

“Oi!”

The group laughs before Epel tugs on Deuce’s robe and pushes him so that he is in front of you next.

“And Prefect, may I present the new captain of the Track and Field club!”

Deuce’s face goes a light shade of pink as Epel tugs on his cheek, “He said he wanted to tell his mom first before telling us but I figured since we are all talking about achievements…”

“Because it was not set in stone!” the Heartslabyul student takes Epel’s hand and pulls it away from his hand, “Jack still has a good chance to get it instead of me.”

“Mm. I would rather it go to you, Deuce.” Jack smiles as he pats his shoulder, “I see how hard you work during practices so I think the position would be perfect for you.”

“Oh right. Leona told me.” you smile at Jack, “Am I right in assuming we are talking to the vice dorm leader of Savannaclaw?”

“I--!” wolf ears twitch as Jack blushes, looking at you in disbelief before sighing as the others stare at him in expectation, “...Yes. Ruggie-senpai told me before the ceremony.”

Everybody gives him a round of applause as his blush deepens in color, making you laugh as you lean over to pat his shoulder. To think they were all now second years…

You included.

I’m supposed to be finding a way home…

The thought is catapulted from your head as Grim sets himself down on top of it, smiling as he topples forward so you would catch him in your arms.

“Fgnya~! The Great Grim and his henchman have news too!”

A paw is pointed at you, your cue to speak apparently.

“...Ramshackle is getting some big renovations soon! We managed to talk Crowley into it and he agreed to renovate both the kitchen and the bathroom as well as possibly renovating some of the rooms!”

“What!” Ace laughs, “How did you pull that off!?”

“Hehe~” Grim taps his chest twice, “I told the Headmaster that Ramshackle can serve as a place for guests from other schools to stay over! He gets a place to brag about with potential guests and we get brand new things!”

Epel hums, “So it’s like a hotel.”

Both you and Grim stay quiet and look away, the group laughing knowing Epel had hit right on the mark.

You stay quiet as they talk with one another, smiling fondly at seeing your group of friends happily enjoying their life here in Night Raven College. You didn't even know how it happened but this little group had become like your family in the one year you stayed here. The homesickness you felt whenever you realized you were far from your home was always subdued by hanging out with them and taking part in their shenanigans. To you it was crazy to think about it this way but...you loved them.

Ace’s tricks but also his quiet support of you and the rest of the group.

Deuce’s tenacity but also the gentle side he let only his friends see.

Jack’s work ethic along with his more nurturing side.

Epel’s constant growth as a person yet never forgetting where he came from.

Sebek’s devotion towards his Young Master as well as realizing his own strength.

And Grim’s goal of wanting to be the greatest magician ever but never leaving you behind.

You loved these six dorks so much, more than you would care to admit to yourself.

Finding a way home was no longer such a big priority in your eyes. You used to ask the Headmaster constantly for a way back home but you believed that this place had become more of a home in your eyes. So the constant reminder that you weren’t from here was silenced by just how much these six made you feel like you were part of a big family.

“...I’m starving.” you finally speak up as you let go of Grim, “You guys want to drop by the Monstro Lounge?”

“Can we drop by Pomefiore first? I forgot my wallet.”

“Prefect! We should invite the Young Master too!”

“If we are going to do that then let’s invite Leona-senpai as well. I have a feeling he will complain if Malleus-senpai is the only one in the celebration.”

“Do you think we should invite Riddle after the first year’s celebration, Ace?”

Deuce turns to look at his fellow student, blinking when he has to turn all the way around.

“Ace?”

All heads turn to look at the other second year, cherry red eyes shining as he points at the mirror still floating in the center of the room.

“You know. Since the mirror is still here…” Ace smiles as he walks over to you and takes your hand, “Don’t you think we should try your sorting again?”

“Huh?”

Your sorting?

That’s right. The mirror had said that your soul didn’t really belong anywhere when you first came here.

“I honestly don’t think it’s going to be any different, Ace.” you shrug, “Besides I sort of already belong in a dorm--”

Grim comes up behind you, “Exactly! They belong in the dorm we made!”

“Oh come on! Wouldn’t it be fun!” Ace looks back at the group, “It’s just us here. Don’t you guys want to see what dorm Prefect would have been sorted in?”

Jack hums before looking at you, “I believe you would make a fine Savannaclaw student.”

“Well they also helped out with Pomefiore, I think that would be a good fit for them too.” Epel sighs, “If they were there I wouldn’t feel like a green apple in a red apple orchard.”

Sebek taps his chin a few moments before nodding, “Despite having no magical talent, your presence in Diasmonia would be greatly appreciated.”

“Okay okay you doofuses, I think we all know what dorm they would be sorted in.” Ace wraps an arm around you as he gestures Deuce over, “So say hello to the Heartslabyul Trio~”

“Ace! Stop trying to get my henchman somewhere else! They belong in Ramshackle!”

Grim tugs on your hood while you quickly ask him to stop, your arms flailing around before you pull your hood down and find yourself face to face with the mirror.

“Ace I don’t think--” you turn to look at him but the other just puts his hand together as if he were praying.

“Just one look, Prefect! Please!” Ace smiles as he looks over at Deuce, “We are all curious, right?”

Deuce’s nervous expression relaxes as he sees that there really was nobody else around.

“It wouldn’t hurt to know. It’d be just us.”

“I agree! I am way too curious to not know now!”

“Your true nature is showing, Epel.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re not curious, Jack!”

“Quiet humans! The face in the mirror is deciding!”

You quickly turn around as you see the face in the mirror, a knot in your chest suddenly forming as the chamber falls into silence. What a feeling of dejavu. You remember just how you felt when you were standing in front of the mirror the first time.

No idea where you were, no idea what was to come.

And the feeling of being an outcast had been unbearable when the mirror stated that you belonged nowhere...but you had carved out a little place here to call your own. Despite the fact that you knew where you were going to sleep tonight and where you were going to wake up in the morning, the knot of nervousness relaxed and turned into a curious dizziness, the silence only serving to make the noise in your ears ring.

The mirror only stared at you for a minute longer before speaking up.

“It seems your time is up.”

You blink as the face disappears, turning towards the others as they all share the same look of confusion before sighing as they turn around and start walking towards the exit.

“Well that was anticlimactic.” Ace pouts, “Thought for sure they belonged in Heartslabyul.”

Deuce sighs, “Monstro Lounge for sure must be full now. How will we get a table?”

“We can celebrate in Diasmonia instead! I know that the dorm is going to be full of fae cuisine!”

“...I...prefer taking my chances at the Monstro Lounge.” Epel smiles as he look at Jack, “Or maybe Savannaclaw?”

“It would be rowdy but if you don’t mind that sort of atmosphere.”

“Savannaclaw usually has some good roasted beef! Do you know if they have that there today?” Grim places himself on Jack’s head as the other keeps talking about their celebration.

“Alright. We’ll check Monstro Lounge and then Savannaclaw! Oi, Prefect, get a move--”

Ace’s eyes widen as he turns around, dread climbing up his legs and curling around his neck as he looks at the small orbs of lights floating away in the place where you were supposed to be.

Only to find that you weren’t there anymore.

--What...the hell?

--He looks around, wondering where you went and calling out your name. It starts out with a couple of laughs at first but the dread in his stomach grows as well as the volume of his voice.

"Oi! This isn't funny! Come out already!"

--Deuce is calling out to him but he can't listen to him, all he can remember is the mirror's voice saying that time was up?

--Time? As in your time in Twisted Wonderland? But...you said that the Headmaster hadn't found a way to get you back home. He didn't want to disappoint you but after a whole year with them...he didn't believe that you would go back. Which was alright! Ace was more than ready to make this a home for you! He didn't know how he was going to do it, but goddammit he at least wanted to try!

--He wasn't done with you yet! He hadn't shown you the cool trick shot he learned to shoot with Floyd, or the awesome new magic trick he designed with you in mind! You would always look past his tricks so he wasn't able to fool you but he thought that this one would be worthy of your praise!

--Eyes glare at the mirror as he lets his feelings spill out.

"BRING THEM BACK! THEY AREN'T DONE HERE! THEY BELONG HERE! BRING THEM BACK!"

--Jack is holding him back from lashing at the object and after a few moments of thrashing around, all Ace can do is stare at the spot you were at a moment ago with his eyes stinging from tears that still refused to fall.

--He didn't even get to say goodbye.

--At first all he can do is stare. Where had you gone? Were you playing some sort of prank on them? If you were...this really wasn’t funny at all. You two had promised to go running together in the morning with Jack, you needed to get back to Ramshackle to sleep so it was best if you celebrated early and then went to bed--

“Deuce. Go get the Headmaster."

--He doesn't remember much after that. All he remembers is Ace yelling and Jack holding him back before he was rushing out of the building and towards the Headmasters office.

--You couldn't be gone. Where did you even go? A part of him doesn't even want to say that you had gone back. There was nowhere you had to go back to in his head. Twisted Wonderland was your home and you belonged here just like the rest of them.

--Memories of his time with you make his feet move faster, the robes proving a great weight but not at all stopping him from reaching his goal.

--Everything would be fine. They would find a way to get you back and Deuce wouldn't allow himself to let you do something so irresponsible again. He should have stopped Ace when he could! And once you came back then he could give you a proper send off.

--His feet were sore, his lungs were burning but he wouldn’t dare stop running, finally reaching the Headmasters office as he pulled the door open with all his might.

--He just wanted to get you back so he could properly thank you. You were his buddy...and he didn't want to let you go without you knowing that.

--It's hard holding back against his instincts.

--His body's first response is to also grab at the mirror and find out where you had gone. The idea of you disappearing just like that was impossible, especially after all the trouble the Headmaster had in finding a portal to your world. So, to him, you were immediately in danger.

--He clenched his fists hard as he walked Ace towards one of the pews, letting him sit down as Epel and Sebek approached him. They were asking questions and clearly depending on him for some sort of guidance. Which wasn’t completely out of the norm, he was an older brother and had grown to care for his friends just as he would his siblings. One year did a lot to bring people closer together. But what could he do but remain quiet as Epel and Sebek asked questions he could not answer.

--Jack had no idea where you had gone, no idea if you were going to come back and as the questions kept piling up the dread in his heart began to grow. Would you even come back?He knew how important family was and how terrible it was to be separated from them, but what about the people you left behind here? Your disappearance was already making them--no--him feel so powerless that he could only answer the other first year’s questions with a simple phrase.

“I don’t know.”

--He instinctively bared his teeth as the doors slammed opened, keeping Epel and Sebek behind him as the Headmaster entered the building with a frown, asking for a run down of the situation in full detail as possible. And while Jack would have taken charge of the situation in this scenario, just simply looking at the mirror kept him from articulating his thoughts correctly.

--Jack just wanted to know you were safe.

“We were left in the building all alone and we thought that [Y/N]-san should try to sort themselves again, just to see what would happen. Yet the mirror didn’t say anything and now they are...they are not--”

--Hold it back. Hold the tears back. Epel had gone through a lot in his time in both NRC and Pomefiore. He had been pushed out of his comfort zone through the VDC and just living in a dorm that was so unlike him but he had pushed through and adapted relatively well, with your help and the help of his friends. So now was not the time to cry!

--You had once praised him for his mental strength, saying that it took a lot of training for him to be put through Vil’s daily demands and training as well as keeping up with the Magishift club and his studies above all of that. With that little comment, and the support of his newfound friends, Epel’s mind had shifted into focusing on how strong he was mentally instead of physically.

--Something he needed to be now more than ever.

“They disappeared.”

“Headmaster, how are we going to bring them back?”

“Well...this was the way it was supposed to be from the start. As much as it pains me to say, it seems the Prefect finally found their way back home.”

“NO!”

--He puts a hand over his mouth, surprised by his own outburst. When he was still a beginning first year there were moments in which he had to keep himself in check from speaking like he would back home. As the year went on he had managed to keep himself in check and only let his accent and his voice volume slip when he was with his friends and with you.

--The Headmaster simply continued talking about the possibilities as Epel hung his head, biting his bottom lip as he remembered the last conversation you both had. With vacations upon them soon, Epel had invited you to come over and visit the Village of Harvest. First time he had a friend over there so he was all set to show you the sights of his little town and it would be your first official trip to another land in Twisted Wonderland!

--A hand touched his shoulder, Epel turning around as he saw Deuce looking down at him with tears in his eyes. That was the last straw as his own tears started to flow freely, Epel burying his face in the other’s robes so no one would have to see just how weak he looked.

“Sebek.”

--The fae’s back straightened out, the voice of his Young Master ringing out as he turned around to look at him. Several students were peeking through the door, trying to get a peek at what was happening while others worked to get the message around, yet Malleus was the only one brave enough to step through the threshold of the building and approach him.

--The Ramshackle prefect had disappeared.

--Sebek had a strange relationship with you. While he detested the way you treated the Young Master as nothing more than just another person, he had slowly started to come around to your way of thinking. The Young Master wanted a friend, and Sebek had only been keeping him at a distance due to his admiration.

--You taught him how to talk to his Young Master and how to appreciate a friendship with him instead of just blinding devotion.While he would still follow Malleus to the end of the earth, he did so as Malleu’s friend and not as his guard. In turn, he slowly started to feel like he would the same for you, as well.

--He was still very naive to relationships such as these but you had been patient, listening to him talk about Malleus when he wanted while also asking him of his other interests. Your teaching method had been effective and Sebek would have even dared to say that you were perhaps coming close to being his best friend.

--Although that chance had disappeared along with you.

--So the only thing he could do is stare into his Young Master’s eyes, the eyes of someone who was just as confused and as worried as he, and do his best to tell him what had happened and what the Headmaster had said.

--He knew that it was for the best that you had gone back home, but why did it feel so wrong?

[xoxo-teddybear]

Birthday Bummer - Bakugou Katsuki

Bakugou x f!reader

Warnings: Angst, Cursing, Fluff, cheating accusations, jealous Katsuki

Summary: You love your boyfriend! You do! And he loves you! However he’s always busy. You understand being a pro can be very occupational but when he does have days off, he spends them either training to doing some paper work. Doing everything he can to get ahead, and you of course support him! But sometimes you miss him and sometimes he misses..a lot

BAKUGOU’S MASTERLIST

“Oh? You’re not gonna be able to make it again?” You said with sadness laced in your voice. The phone in your hand felt like led in your shaking palm as you spoke to your boyfriend.

“Yeah. I’m so sorry Teddy Bear. Endeavor won’t let me off especially with all the damaged I caused during our last battle.” He explained. Your lip began to quiver but you bit it to hide your expression.

“It’s fine, Suki. Really. I understand, you’re a hero and you’re busy. Don’t worry about it, Love.” You said with a reassuring tone.

“Are you already at the restaurant?” He asked with worry.

“No, I didn’t even leave the house yet. I was still getting ready. I was actually gonna text you to tell you I was gonna be a little late, but..yeah.” You said. Bakugou sighed in sadness.

“I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll make it up to you baby.” Another empty promise. You licked your lips at his words and gave a disappointed sigh.

“Ok.” You replied.

“I love you.” He sweetly said.

“I love you too.”

“Bye Y/N!” Kirishima said from the other side of the phone.

“Shitty Hair said ‘bye’” Bakugou said, relaying the message.

“Heh, bye Kiri.” You said and hung up. You placed the phone down on the table and bounced your leg up and down as you let your head rest in your hand.

Of course. Like usual, Katsuki blew you off again for work. It’s not like it’s his fault but he never seems to turn his agency down. You understand that being a hero requires diligent work and good ethics but your boyfriend would always drop everything for work whenever, wherever. That includes you.

“Excuse me, Miss?”

You looked up to the man who was dressed in a clean suit with a white apron. “Would you like anything else?”

“Ha, I mean..unless you can get my date here, then just the check.” You joked. The kind waiter placed an understanding hand on your shoulder before placing down the bill. You sipped from your champagne glass and payed before grabbing your purse and walking out of the fancy restaurant. Maybe if your boyfriend were here, you would be getting in his car with him to go home, but instead, you were driving your own and sitting by yourself. You began your drive home to the empty house.

The usual. Katsuki blows you off for work, tries to make it up to you with something special, fails to show up for that, repeat cycle. This time..it was different though. It was supposed to be your special day. It was your birthday.

You hoped he would’ve remembered. I mean, it’s not like this was your first birthday with him. This was going to be your 4th birthday with him! And he forgot! And you would’ve let it slide had it not been for the fact that he had been blowing you off more and more for work. You understand he’s a pro and you get that with the sudden splurge of crime in Musutafu he’s been way busier but he didn’t even spare you a little “Happy Birthday, babe.”

As you pulled into the driveway, you looked at the doorway and saw an edible arrangement! Your eyes lit up as you ran out the car and went to examine the gift. Unfortunately, as you read the gift card, you saw it was from Mina and not Katsuki. You smiled nonetheless, appreciative of the gift.

You brought it in and enjoyed the sweet treats in the basket with a sad smile. You left it on the dining table along with all the other gifts. A beautiful set of rings, a new dress, a heart holding teddy bear, and a bouquet of roses from your father. You were always a daddy’s girl. You and your father were extremely close and only grew closer once you lost your mother. Growing up an only child, your father was your best friend. You loved him dearly. As you examined the flowers, you couldn’t help but notice his note that put a smile on your face.

Hello my Sweet Angel, Y/N. It’s been another year of you being in my life and I couldn’t be happier to have been blessed with you. I hope these roses will suffice but I know they pale in comparison to your beauty. I hope you enjoy this marvelous day and I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to spend it with you as we usually do. I love you Y/N

-Daddy

You called your father to thank him for the roses and to have a conversation with him. You hadn’t talked to many people today despite it being your birthday so talking to one of your favorite people should bring your mood to a better place.

“Alright, I should get going now. It’s pretty late and you need your rest.” You reminded your father.

“Of course dear. Have a nice night, goodnight sweetie.”

“Okay, goodnight Daddy!” You chirped.

“Goodnight!”

You enjoyed speaking to your father and you definitely did feel your mood brighten until you noticed a text from Katsuki. You foolishly hoped it was a last minute birthday mention but of course you were wrong.

‘I’ll be home soon, princess. Mind getting dinner started? Thanks <3’

You could only sigh and feel your mood drop once more.

Afterwards, you chose to ignore his request and went to your shared bedroom. You stripped out of your gorgeous outfit and took off your makeup that you spent hours on. You hoped Katsuki would’ve gotten to see you all dolled up for your special day but things happen..you guess. You ran a hot bath for yourself and filled it with all types of scented bath salts, soaps, and flower petals. You lit a few candles and set them up all pretty around the tub and hopped in, relishing in the warmth that wrapped around you. All you wanted to do was forget about today.

—

Bakugou walked through the door exhausted from the day’s work. He took a shower at the agency and was all set and dressed in a comfy tee and a pair of sweats. He dropped his case at the door and walked in, expecting dinner for him on the island, but instead was met with a bunch of gifts. He stood shocked but chuckled to himself at the thought of you doing such a nice thing for him out of nowhere. He guesses that this was better than dinner.

He walked to the gifts and examined them. An edible arrangement that seemed to be eaten? Rings that were obviously for a woman? A dress? Okay, by now he realized that these gift must’ve been for you but for what? He continued to look through the gifts and noticed the lovey dovey Teddy Bear and bouquet. He grew a little irked at the gifts that one would deem romantic but what really sent it was the note. The words made his blood boil and when he saw the note was signed “Daddy,” he exploded.

“Is she…” as Bakugou thought about it, he came to the conclusion that you must’ve been cheating on him with some sugar daddy. The gifts, the dress, the rings, the note?! It gave him all the signs. In a raging fit, he took the basket and slammed it to the floor. He ripped apart the Teddy Bear, tossed the rings, singed the dress, and stomped on the beautiful roses. Finally, he made his way to search for you as he spoke to himself. “Oh that cheating fucking bitch.”

—

You were all set with your bath and had already dried your hair. You were dressed in your favorite silk set as you laid on the king sized bed. Suddenly, the door busted open and your boyfriend walked through the door, and he was pissed.

“Katsuki! The door!” You exclaimed before Bakugou made his way over to you.

“Am I not enough for you?!” He screamed. You looked at him in silent confusion and your pause urged him to continue. “What?! Do I not make enough money to your liking?! Well sorry if I can’t fucking spoil you! I just thought you would’ve appreciated my fucking efforts a little damn more considering you don’t have to work at all!”

“Katsuki, what the hell are you talking about?” You questioned, sitting up a little straighter.

“I’m talking about you fucking cheating on me! You think I wouldn’t notice all the fucking gifts you got for spreading your legs for some rich bastard?!” He asked and threw your gifted dress on your lap. You looked at it in shock as you ran your fingers across the singes. “Why don’t you take that fucking dress and the rest of your stupid gifts, and get the fuck out of this ho-“

Without letting him finish, you pushed his chest away and ran downstairs to the island. You set your eyes on the island and you stopped in your tracks, covering your open mouth with your hands in shock. Bakugou followed you down the stairs so he could see your reaction to having your gifts ruined, thinking it was exactly what you deserved for “cheating.”

“No, no, no!” You said an ran to the scattered gifts, trying to collect them as best as you could. Tears fell down your face as you looked at all the broken pieces in your hand. It wasn’t that you cared about receiving gifts, it was that these gifts were from people who cared enough to remember the day you came into this world. A day your own boyfriend couldn’t even remember this year. You found the crushed bouquet and held it against your chest. A gift from your dear father, ruined.

“What is wrong with you?” You tearfully asked the blonde behind you. You stood on your feet as he smirked at you with crossed arms and scoffed.

“What’s wrong with you? Fucking cheating on me with some sugar daddy?! And don’t even try to lie your way out of this shit, I read the fucking card.” He stated. You gawked at him in confusion and looked around as if he was crazy.

“The bouquet was from my father, Bakugou! Not my fucking sugar daddy! I don’t fucking have one, you prick!” Your words made Bakugou’s eyes pop as his arms uncrossed and slowly fell to his sides.

“W-What?” He asked.

“My father! The roses were from my father! The edible arrangement was from Mina, the rings were from Momo, the teddy bear was from Kirishima, and the dress was from Jirou! They gave me these gifts because it’s my birthday! Remember?!”

Bakugou immediately felt guilt build up in his chest. A little relief with that fact that you weren’t cheating, but immediate guilt for accusing you of doing so, telling you to leave, breaking your gifts, and forgetting your birthday.

“Y-Y/N I-“

“Save it Bakugou. You want me to leave so bad? Then I’ll go.” With that, you slammed the destroyed flowers into his chest and ran to the bedroom to change and pack a small bag with Bakugou following your trail.

“Y/N! No, wait!” He shouted and chased after you. Before he could grab hold of you, you made it into the room and slammed the door in his face before locking it. “Baby! C’mon, open the door! I’m sorry!”

“Leave me alone!” You said as you changed.

“No! Baby, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I forgot your birthday, I’m sorry I accused you of cheating, I’m sorry I ruined your special day. Please just let me in to fix this!” He begged. You finally opened the door with an angry look. “Baby! Thank go-“

“You can’t fix this, Bakugou!” You said with tears poking at the ends of your eyes. His heart began to ache when he noticed them and the bag you carried. Not only that but ever since you started calling him Bakugou again, he felt weak.

“Baby..it’s Katsuki.” He said trying to reach out for you but you snatched your hand away.

“Don’t call me that and as of right now, no it’s not!” You tried to walk away but Bakugou grabbed onto your waist to stop you.

“Y/N, stop, please. Look, you don’t have to go, just stay here and we can talk about this. Please we don’t even have to talk, just stay here. I’ll sleep in the guest room just don’t go, please.” He pleaded with soft tears. You bit your lip before calming down and speaking to him.

“Katsuki, I can’t be around you right now.” You said with a broken voice. “I just need some space…please.”

Katsuki still refused to let you go and so you stood there for what felt like forever. Eventually, you felt his hold weaken and so you pulled his arms off before walking away. Bakugou quietly followed you to the exit and before you left, Bakugou grabbed your wrist.

“I’m sorry. Please..let me fix this.” He said with tears running down his eyes. You froze before going in to make a move. You sighed and placed your hands on his face and wiped away his tears with your thumb. Bakugou took the opportunity to hold you in his arms once more as he leaned in to your touch. You pulled his face in and pecked his cheek before placing your hand on the knob once more.

“We’ll talk when I get back.” You softly said. You didn’t bother to see his response before you shut the door and got in your car to drive away.

Talk about a birthday bummer.

A/N: UGH, HORRIBLE ENDING

Tag list: @sxcker4you @aomi04 @tessabrown101

[robininthelabyrinth]

Spilled Pearls Extra 2

- ao3 -

“Jingyi?” Lan Qiren repeated, looking down at the child tucked into his arms. “A good name.”

“Isn’t it?” Lan Yueheng said, beaming. “A-Xin thought of it!”

“You don’t say,” Lan Qiren said dryly. “Just the way your wife named all the last six?”

Lan Yueheng grinned bashfully. “She’s better at it!”

Lan Qiren shook his head, amused, and tried to offer the child back to his father.

“No, no, you should hold him longer. Babies are calming, and you’ve been having bad dreams recently, right?”

“Babies are not calming,” Lan Qiren said. There was a limit to how many times someone could play the same joke on him, and yes, he was mentally glaring at Wen Ruohan, Lao Nie, and Cangse Sanren as well while he thought that. “You’ve had six already, you should know that. Can we at least agree that this is the last one?”

Lan Yueheng and Zhang Xin had put off having children to help Lan Qiren raise Lan Xichen and then Lan Wangji, once he’d come around, no matter how much Lan Qiren had argued with them to the contrary. They’d laughed him off, saying it was nothing, but he’d been terribly afraid that they’d miss the window for it and end up childless, with no one to sweep their graves on Qingming except his nephews, and that in the end they’d blame him for it.

Naturally, despite his fears, it turned out in the end that they hadn’t had any trouble at all. Their first had been born when Lan Wangji had been three and Lan Xichen six, and they’d had six more after that, one after another like a bunch of maniacs – a girl, two boys, another girl, and then the twins a few years later, at the very end, just when everyone had thought they were already done. Lan Wangji had already been nearly fifteen, then.

Of course, the whole bit about ‘just when everyone had thought they were already done’ being about the twins was rather outdated: that was before the arrival of little Jingyi.

Nearly ten years after all the rest, even the twins; a belated and extremely unexpected child, as if Zhang Xin and Lan Yueheng and the heavens had all conspired to make fun of Lan Qiren for his previous worries. Zhang Xin had already been in her forties, yet she’d gotten through the entire process with a smile and no apparent discomfort, puttering around in her garden and managing her storehouses and scolding her children without any disruption. Not even the pain of labor would bring her down, even if she did have a tendency to mangle Lan Qiren’s hand and shout his ears to deafness in the process.

Lan Qiren’s ears and hand, because he’d helped oversee the births of his nephews – Han Kexin had resolutely refused the aid of any competent doctor, male or female, mockingly reminding him that she was supposed to be in seclusion, so he’d learned up on the basics himself while retaining the option to call in a proper doctor if something went wrong – and since he’d managed it well enough, naturally Zhang Xin wanted the same, impertinent brat that she was. And of course, she wasn’t going to hurt her husband’s precious hands in the process, never mind that he’d been the one to cause it in the first place.

At least they’d all been more or less easy births.

Little Lan Jingyi had been the easiest of the whole lot. Zhang Xin had barely made herself comfortable before he was coming, and before Lan Qiren had even really accepted that he was coming, he was already here.

Look at the rush to get going, as if he’s afraid to miss out on all the fun if he’s not here! Zhang Xin had laughed. He’s going to want to be part of part of everything!

“Last one, I swear!” Lan Yueheng promised cheerfully. “Anyway, we needed one around that age – that way he can be friends with Wangji’s boy! You know, the one he’s raising with Wei Wuxian, the one who used to be Wen sect.”

Lan Qiren snorted. As if he didn’t know the one in question. Wen Ruohan had been altogether too pleased to offer up some of his own blood to join the Lan sect when it turned out that Wei Wuxian had gotten attached to the orphan child of Wen Ruohan’s kinsman – eager as he ever was, really, to entangle himself irrevocably into Lan Qiren’s life, as if he still thought there was a chance, however remote, that Lan Qiren would find some reason to reject him or cut him out of his life once again. And never mind that it’d been years and years since anything like that had even come closer to happening!

“Yueheng-xiong,” he said patiently. “Mathematics are one of your favorite subjects, so I know you know that that means that your son will be friends with my grandnephew.”

Lan Yueheng scratched his nose. “Not your grandnephew yet,” he said, grinning; he didn’t look even remotely ashamed of it. “Wei Wuxian’s the one that adopted him, and Wangji’s not married him yet!”

“He’s working on it.”

Wen Ruohan’s “help” – in the sense of agreeing to let the Lan sect adopt little A-Yuan and not allowing Wei Wuxian to do it on his own – was probably doing more to impede it than anything else.

Lan Yueheng sniggered. “Should I offer to help?”

“Most certainly not. Save your fireworks and flares for the actual marriage.” Lan Qiren rubbed his forehead. “Cangse Sanren is being deliberately obnoxious about negotiations over it, I swear.”

“Cangse Sanren is always obnoxious, Qiren-xiong,” Lan Yueheng reminded him. “Always – and it’s only gotten worse since she had her doom stolen away by Lao Nie.”

“Don’t remind me,” Lan Qiren grumbled. He didn’t even want to know how the two of them had managed to swap fates, or what the consequences of it would be in the end. For some reason, Wen Ruohan seemed oddly insistent about blaming Lao Nie’s second wife, despite her having been perfectly nice as far as Lan Qiren could tell, if somewhat strangely obsessed with food. Possibly he was just annoyed that poor Wen Zhulio had saved Cangse Sanren’s life a dozen times over so far and yet Lao Nie was getting the credit.

At any rate, neither of them had died so far, which was all to the good.

“I’m getting to the point that I think looking for her master and asking her for permission might be the easier course,” he added irritably. “The boys want to get married! What’s the point of tormenting them over the details?”

“Please don’t go out looking for an immortal mountain, Qiren-xiong,” Lan Yueheng said, laughing, and finally condescended to pluck little Lan Jingyi out of his arms. “I’m going to put him to bed. You should rest, too. No more work today! And only good dreams!”

Lan Qiren shook his head and watched him walk away.

For a moment, the image was replaced with another, a remnant from the terrible dream he had been having the past few nights, the one that still lingered: Lan Yueheng, still laughing but walking with a limp, his right foot gone from beneath the knee – the one he’d lost when the Cloud Recesses had burned, and because of the mess that had ensued it hadn’t been treated for far too long, becoming infected; every year thereafter he had gotten sick from a recurrent and worsening illness, driving Lan Qiren and Zhang Xin both crazy with worry.

Lan Qiren’s chest hurt just thinking about it, his own injuries aching, the remnants of the vicious wounds from the terrible beating Wen Xu had ordered with his eyes curved in a mean smile as he watched them try to break Lan Qiren’s meridians out of sheer spite; one day, in that horrible future foretold by the dream, Zhang Xin would worry too much and fail to pay attention, walking on something she shouldn’t and poisoning her blood, and when she went Lan Yueheng would follow her away, the two of them going side-by-side into the next world as they had gone through this one, leaving Lan Qiren to raise their youngest child the rest of the way himself. No matter how tired he was, he wouldn’t put that burden on their other children, all of them abruptly orphaned, the final belated victims of the desperate war against the Wen sect to stop their tyrannical conquest…

Lan Qiren shook his head abruptly, clearing it.

What am I thinking, he wondered. There’s no war against the Wen sect – if da-ge ever got something like a war of conquest into his head, I’d scold him until my face turned blue. Anyway, even if he did do something like that, A-Xu would never dream of ordering someone to beat me! Didn’t I half-raise him and his little brother both, taught them swordsmanship and music and ethics even as Wen Ruohan taught Xichen and Wangji arrays and talismans and how to understand people?

Anyway, A-Xu’s a sweet boy, underneath his superficial arrogance; he knows better than to put on a face like that in front of me…nor is there anything wrong with Lan Yueheng’s foot, or Zhang Xin’s blood, for that matter. Lan Jingyi’s going to grow up in a large family, loud and screeching and thoroughly inappropriate, and unlike my dream his parents will be at the head of the table to oversee the whole thing.

It was just a bad dream.

Lan Qiren shook his head once again.

Maybe Lan Yueheng was right, he reflect. He ought to get some rest – and not just today. After all, he was already half-retired, with Lan Xichen taking over more and more of the tasks of sect leader and excelling in them; Lan Qiren already spent one month out of every three out of the Cloud Recesses, whether wandering around the cultivation world playing his music or visiting with friends and acquaintances, pretending all the while to ignore the Wen sect and Lan sect and Nie sect guards being too busy socializing with each other to remember that they were supposed to be hidden guards.

He could go again now, even. Wen Ruohan had said something about Lao Nie visiting the Nightless City, the grin on his face leaving little question as to how he planned to spend the time with him; by now they should have worn each other out and were probably capable of something resembling human speech.

Yes, he should go visit them, he thought, and realized once again that he was happy – truly happy, not just content. He would go visit them, and complain about the prospect of yet another of Lan Yueheng’s brood running rampage through his classrooms for however long it took to educate them.

It seemed like each one was louder than the next, but at least little Lan Jingyi, whether in a rush or otherwise, and even in conjunction with Wei Wuxian’s little A-Yuan or Jin Zixuan’s little A-Ling, couldn’t possibly be more disruptive than the twins.

That was simply impossible.

Right?

[misnomera]

On racial stereotyping of the Haans in TMA...

Right so as someone who is ethnically Chinese I have NO FUCKING clue how I didn’t notice this more distinctly in my initial binge of tma (going too fast and not paying closer attention to character names and descriptions, probably) but the Haan family storyline is, all horror elements aside, pretty fucked up in terms of racial representation re: stereotyping. This got long as hell, but please please please take a moment to read through if you’ve got time for it. thanks.

To start off, the Haans are one of the few characters in tma with an explicitly specified race and ethnicity—Chinese—and pretty much the only explicitly Chinese characters in tma, other than the mostly unimportant librarian (Zhang Xiaoling) from Beijing. But like, Haan isn’t even a properly Chinese surname, at least not in the way that it’s spelled in canon (it should be Han, one a. A quick google search tells me that Haan as a surname has...Dutch origins??).

Of course, that could be chalked up to shoddy anglicization processes within family histories, which certainly isn’t uncommon with immigrant families, so I’m not going to dwell on names too much (although I also find it interesting that John Haan’s name is so specifically and weirdly anglicized that he changed his own surname?? Hun Yung to John Haan is a very big leap of a name change and frankly not very believable. ANYWAY, this is not that important. I don’t expect Jonny, a white Englishman, to come up with perfectly unquestionable non-Cho-Chang-like Chinese names, though it certainly would be nice. Moving on).

What really bothers me about the Haans is how they almost exclusively and explicitly play into negative Chinese immigrant stereotypes. I don’t even feel like I need to say it because it’s like...it’s literally Right There, folks. John Haan (in ep 72) owns and operates a sketchy takeout restaurant. They’re all avatars of the Flesh—and John Haan is Specifically horrific and terrifying because he cooked his wife’s human meat and fed it to his unknowing customers. Does that remind you of any stereotypes which accuse Chinese people of consuming societally unacceptable and ethically questionable things like dog/cat/bat meat (which, if it’s not already crystal fucking clear, we don’t. do that.), which in turn characterize us as horrible unfeeling monsters? John Haan’s characterization feeds (haha, badum tss) directly into this harmful stereotype that have caused very real pain for Chinese people and East Asians in general. 

And Jonny does nothing to address that from within his writing (and not out of it either). And, speaking on a more meta level, Jonny could’ve easily had these flesh avatars be individuals of any race (like, what’s Jared Hopworth’s ethnicity? Do we know? No? Well then). Conversely, he could’ve easily, easily had a Chinese person be an avatar of any other entity. So why did he have to chose specifically the Flesh?

(This is a rhetorical question. You know why. Racial stereotyping and invoking a fear of the other in an attempt to enhance horror, babey~)

On Tom Haan’s side, Jonny seems weirdly intent on having other characters repeatedly comment on his accent (or rather, lack thereof) in relation to his race. Think about how, in ep 30 (killing floor), the fact that Tom Haan had spoken a line to the statement giver in “perfect English” was an emphasized beat in that statement, and a beat that was supposed to be “chilling” and meant to signify to us that something was, quote-unquote, “not right” with Tom Haan. Implicitly, that’s saying that it was unexpected, not “normal”, and in this case even eerie, for someone who looks Chinese to have spoken in fluid, unbroken English. Mind you, the line itself was perfectly scary on its own (“you cannot stop the slaughter by closing the door”), so why did Jonny feel the need to note the accent in which it was spoken in? Why did Jonny HAVE to have that statement giver note, that he initially “wasn’t even sure how much English [Haan] spoke”? 

This happens again in episode 72 with a Chinese man (and again, his ethnicity is Explicitly Noted) who we assume is also Tom Haan. This one is rather ironically funny and kind of painfully self aware, because the statement giver expresses surprise at Haan’s “crisp RP accent” and then immediately “felt bad about making the assumption that he couldn’t speak English,” and subsequently admitted that thought was “low-key racist.” Like, from a writing perspective, this entire passage is roundabout, pointless, and says absolutely nothing helpful to enhance the horror genre experience for listeners (instead it just sounded like some sort of half-assed excuse so Jonny or other listeners could say “look! We’ve addressed the racism!” You didn’t. It just made me vaguely uncomfortable). And again, having other people comment on our accents/lack thereof while assuming we are foreign is a Very Real microaggression that east asians face on the daily. If Jonny needed some filler sentences for pacing he could’ve written about Literally anything else. So why point out, yet again, that the crazy murderous man was foreign and Chinese? 

At this point, you might say, right, but yknow, it was just that the statement givers were kind of racist! It happens! Yeah sure, ok, that’s a passable in-universe explanation for descriptions of Tom Haan (though not John Haan, mind you), but the statement givers are fake made up people, and statement’s still written by Jonny, who absolutely has all the power to write overt discrimination out of his stories. And he does! Think about just how many minor (and major!!) characters are so, so carefully written as completely aracial, and do not have their ethnicity implicated at all in whatever horrors they may or may not be committing. Think about how many lgbtq+ characters have given statements, and have been in statements, without having faced direct forms of discrimination, or portrayed as embodying blatant stereotypes in their stories (though lgbtq+ rep in tma certainly has their own issues that I won’t go into here). Jonny can clearly write characters this way, and he can do it well. So why, why, am I being constantly, repeatedly reminded in-text of the fact that the Haans are East Asian, that they’re from China, that they’re Chinese immigrants, that they’re second-generation British Chinese or whatever the fuck, and that they’re also horrifying conduits for blood, gore, and general fucked-up-ness? It’s absolutely not something that is Needed for the stories to be an effective piece of horror; the only thing it does is perpetuate incredibly harmful and hurtful stereotypes.

And listen, I love tma to bits. It’s taken over my blog. I’ve really loved my interactions with the fandom. And I am consistently blown away by Jonny’s writing and how well he’s able to weave foreshadowing and plot into an incredibly complex collection of stories. But I absolutely Cannot stop thinking about the Haans because it’s just. It’s such a blatant display of racial stereotyping in writing. And I’ve certainly seen a few voices talking about it here and there, and I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right places, but it certainly feels like something that is just straight up not on the radar for a lot of tma fans. And I’m disappointed about that. 

Just, I don’t know. Take a look at those episodes again and do some of your own thinking about why these characters had to be specifically Chinese (answer: they didn’t.). And in general, PLEASE for the love of god turn a critical eye on character portrayals and descriptions whenever they are assigned specific races/ethnicities (Some examples that come to mind are Jude Perry, Annabelle Cane, and Diego Molina), because similar issues, to an extent, extend beyond the Haans, though I haven’t covered them here. 

You shouldn’t need a POC to do point out these problems for you when they’re so glaringly There. But for those of you who really didn’t know, hope this was informative in some way. I’m tired, man. If some of the only significant Chinese characters you write are violent cannibalistic men with a perverted relationship with meat, just don’t do it. Please don’t do it. 

EDIT: Since the making of this post Jonny has acknowledged and apologized for these portrayals on his twitter and in the Rusty Quill Operations Update, which went up September 2020. A long time coming, but better late than never. This of course doesn’t necessarily negate the harm done by Jonny’s writing, and doesn’t make me much less angry about it, but is appreciated nonetheless. For more on this topic there’s a lot of productive discussions happening in my “#tma crit” tag and in the notes of this post

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ 37

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, smut ➻ word count: 16.9k(? i think?) ➻ rating: M ➻ warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba chapter specific warnings: talks of torture, talks of past self-harm, nothing directly graphic all mentioned through conversation, graphic depiction of a panic attack ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

⇐ previous | next ⇒ | masterlist

✧✧✧ act five ➻ part four

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“I’m going to kill the king, Hyunwoo.”

“Y/N, you can’t… that’s going too far.”

“I don’t think we have a choice any longer.”

“We always have a choice, Y/N. It’s just about what you decide to do with that choice that matters. Think about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and what your intentions truly are. It’s not about revenge or payment for a crime — the crimes of his people cannot be put onto his shoulders.”

A sigh passes through your lips, one that sounds more exasperated than anything else, and Hyunwoo lifts a brow upon hearing the noise.

“This is revenge, Hyunwoo. He allowed my past to be taken, he created the law that allows the military to do that. Not to mention the other crimes he has committed — even if they are a result of him sitting idly by and watching them happen. I’m not saying Jisung is always right or that he is a saint for wanting to do this. But if Jisung won’t commit to doing it, then I’ll do it for him.”

“And we swore to find a way to get those memories back, Y/N. Don’t let this cloud your judgment. Don’t let your devotion to making Jisung happy decide your future. If this is something he wants, then he should do it himself and face the consequences on his own! It’s not a burden that you should bear as well. I know this is something you will come to regret!”

“Then you’ll have to stop me with force because I’ve already made my mind up about this. I don’t see Jisung getting in my way right now. But after all, isn’t this what he wants? He’s just too much of a coward to do the dirty work himself!”

“We both know where he stands on this, which is precisely why he’s not here. Just — please let us try one more time. I’ve spoken with a few of my off-planet contacts about this, and we have one last idea that might reverse the effects of the serum. You know how difficult this is; the military keeps such a tight wrap on everything about the serum. It’s near impossible to just get a spare vial, and even harder to examine how it works with test subjects while still being ethical. We are trying our best, I promise, just please hold out a little while longer. Jisung is getting things set up now… so please… just come with me and try before you do anything drastic.”

The man extends a hand, palm facing towards the ceiling and fingers outstretched for you to take. There’s hope in his eyes, a hope you haven’t seen from him in a long time, and that look is what brings your feet forward. You place your palm over his and curl your fingers tight around the side of his hand. He squeezes back as a small grin overtakes his lips.

“If this doesn’t work, then you know what I have to do, Hyunwoo.”

“I know,” he whispers. The hope in his eyes flickers a little, like a flame hit by a gust of wind. “In that case, I’ll do whatever I have to so that you don’t come to regret that decision.”

“Hey, get up. It’s go time.”

You wake with a start, not fully come out of the memory that paints the insides of your eyelids until you look around at your surroundings. Yeosang seems to be the one who woke you seeing as his hand is still outstretched to your arm. The sight of him brings you back to reality and reminds you of where you are and what exactly is going on. Jongho sits on your other side, dressed in nicer clothes than you’ve ever seen him wear before — a pleated and pristine navy suit complete with a bright yellow tie and hair gelled back on his head. Yeosang too wears a somewhat expensive garb although he appears more natural in the silk tunic covering his torso. His naturally dark roots are starting to peek through the blond near his scalp, accentuating the harsh part down the middle of his head.

Despite the fact that both look relatively harmless in this state, you know they each have weapons hidden somewhere on their person underneath that formal wear, just as you do with the knives strapped over your thighs under the skirt attached to your waist. Such an outfit like yours is something you hardly agreed to — it was moreso an insistence on Seonghwa’s part to at least dress the part (although he had to listen to some of your incessant nagging about how you could never fight in a dress so he had to settle on finding a substitute in the form of a jumpsuit with a skirt wrapped around the back. Yet the more you pick at the seams and touch the fabric, the more you recall the none too pleasant conversation you and Seonghwa shared as you were preparing to leave for the mission.

“Perhaps I do have an eye for beauty after all, or is it that you simply look breathtaking in anything?” Seonghwa stands in the doorway to your bedroom, not a mind for privacy as he watches you struggle to tug the zipper of your suit up.

“Can’t even breathe on my own, huh?” You huff out as you drop the zipper in defeat.

“I’ve already seen every inch of you, have I not? There’s nothing to hide that I haven’t seen before,” Seonghwa says through a laugh. He watches your cheeks flush with color before dropping his arms to his side and coming closer to you. He remains wordless as he pulls your zipper up for you, smoothing the fabric under his fingers down once it’s pulled up to your neck. “It suits you. Things like this, I mean. The silk makes you look… softer, yet the color combination of black and white makes you look lethal. Perfect definition of beauty, no? That something so delicate could also kill you? A wonderful dichotomy in my eyes.”

“Someone is in a poetic mood today.” You don’t hide the way your eyes roll to the back of your head, but Seonghwa doesn’t seem all too bothered by your show of faux-annoyance. Instead, his hands find your hips and turn you to face him directly, staring so intently into your eyes with his own dark ones that you lose the rest of your retort.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to go on this mission so desperately but that didn’t quite work out.” You’re quick to shake your head, already in the midst of denying his words before he even finishes his sentence.

“It’s alright. I’ll have Yeosang and Jongho there with me.”

“I would go if only Hongjoong would let me bu—” The thought cuts short as you place a hand over his forearm.

“Seonghwa, it’s okay. Hongjoong is right to have you stay here while you’re not 100% better. And you can both keep an eye on Jisung this way. We’ll bring Wooyoung back as quickly as possible, I swear.” Instead of consoling the man, your words seem to have an opposite effect as he drops his gaze to the floor.

“If I were stronger, this wouldn’t even be an issue. You should not have had to waste so much time having to look after my fragile and weak mental state when you could have caught up to the ship sooner and had all three of them back in one go.”

“This is what we’re working with, Hwa. It has nothing to do with your welfare. We still would have been too late regardless of whether that night had happened or not. So please — it will all work out and be okay. It has to.”

Seonghwa’s smile is quaint, a small twitch of his lips, then he’s leaning in to close the distance between your lips. You lift your hand to push hard against his chest, furthering that distance before he gets the chance to meet your lips with his.

“I just put on this black lipstick and you already want to mess it up? How rude,” you scoff. That isn’t a real reason, and you both know it, and you only solidify that further when you speak next before biting your tongue. “You shouldn’t push it right now. I still haven’t forgiven you for not fighting my decision to go with Jisung. Besides wasn’t the decision to… stop whatever this is mutual?”

“It was, of course,” he murmurs back, not quite meeting your eyes. “I am merely a creature of habit, so it will take some time for me to adjust to this change. But… Y/N, might I be so bold as to ask you something?”

“Hm, isn’t that a question right there?”

“I’ll take that as a yes then?” You regard him with a small nod but pull away so that his hands drop to his sides again. “Were any of the feelings you had for me something real and tangible? Not just because of what we are and that comfort of both being Sirens, I mean.”

You should have known he would bring this up eventually, especially with how the two of you are constantly dancing around each other and the topic. Still, you aren’t ready for it.

“I… don’t think I know the answer to that question, but even if I did, I-I might not be able to answer with complete honesty.” The smile that comes to paint Seonghwa’s lips is nothing short of sad and painful, not quite reaching his bright eyes with its usual mirth.

“It’s a conversation I wish for us to have one day, but I too fear that I might not be able to be completely honest either. Perhaps — perhaps we got a little too caught up in the heat of things without truly thinking about why we were doing the things we were doing.”

“Why did you do it then? I was the one who gave the initial push, I started things, I claim responsibility for that, but you pulled right back. So why?”

“I have found time to think about such things quite a bit lately since I was left in the medbay alone for so long; however, now is not the time to talk about that as it would take too long. Has Wooyoung brought you back yet?”

“No, not since the night in the medbay. But San very clearly said three days until they would land on Dorado, and it’s been six since then. They should be there by now, and the deals should have gone through. Wooyoung’s was to be immediate after all.” Seonghwa’s smile drops into a half-hearted scowl.

“Without Wooyoung on the inside, we will have no way of knowing where San and Mingi are.”

“Unless Jisung decides to be kind with his information.” You run a hand through your hair, mussing the already down tresses enough to be somewhat noticeable. “We’ll have to make do.” Seonghwa stretches across the empty space between you

“I won’t keep you any longer then. Tell the others good luck from me, and please… be careful? No unnecessary risks if you can avoid them. I’d like to see you all back in one piece.”

Reality swoops in on you as Jongho places a firm hand over your thigh.

“You alright? I can practically feel you thinking so hard.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Just… wondering about the mission.”

“It’ll be okay,” Jongho murmurs, squeezing at your leg a little tighter. “It’s a straightforward mission — easy in and out.”

“Hopefully.” Yeosang is the one to hum the word but he doesn’t look at either of you as he speaks. “Once we’re in, I’ll talk to the main desk and ask for someone with Wooyoung’s general appearance. It’ll be a bit difficult because they will have given a new name — something a prostitute would have. I’m not sure how many people in there will have similar appearances to Wooyoung but we’ll have to do our best. You two remember what you’re supposed to do?”

“Yes,” you nod. “Follow suit, wait fifteen minutes for you to pass through the reception area, then ask the same thing. A male short in stature with black hair and tanned skin. All prostitutes have collar so it won’t be Wooyoung’s defining feature any longer.” The recitation rolls off your tongue with ease after having heard Yeosang repeat it so many times by now. He nods in approval nonetheless.

“Remember there are cameras in each of the rooms. Don’t know how they use them but it’s something to be aware of. Hopefully, one of us will be able to come across Wooyoung, and in the case that you do?”

“We are to stay in the room with him for the allotted time, ping back to the ship and let Hongjoong know we have him, then wait for his signal,” Jongho responds. “His contact here on Dorado will be hacking their surveillance systems once we are certain that we have Wooyoung in a safe position.”

“Hongjoong sure seems to have a lot of contacts for someone who doesn’t trust people,” you murmur more to yourself than to anyone else, but Yeosang picks up on it nonetheless.

“His contacts are few and far between. This is one he has known since before he became a captain, so he holds a bit more trust with him. Back to the plan though, after his contact confirms our safety, you’ll crack a window and hop out hopefully unscathed. Remember that the Upper Echelon of Dorado is tight on security. Whoever gets Wooyoung out will have to be mindful of guards and try not to look suspicious. If any guards stop you, do not engage with violence. Simply do as they ask you to and tell them that Wooyoung is your slave. And one last thing: don’t forget we’ll be going in silent so keep a close eye on your wristbands. Understood?”

“Clear as day,” Jongho says while you offer only a hasty nod.

“Good, stay sharp then. We’ll be landing soon, and it’ll be go time immediately after that.” With that, Yeosang sits back and shuts his eyes, leaving you and Jongho to stew over the plan again in silence. At least until you decide you can’t take it anymore and turn to talk to the Berserker again.

“Are you nervous at all about the mission?”

A shrug.

“No more than usual. Recovering Wooyoung won’t be easy by any means, of course. It’s a step in the right direction, right? How are you feeling?” As though sensing your nerves, he pats your thigh a few times, and you simply stare down at the dirty floor beneath your feet.

“I feel a bit guilty in a way because I’m not too worried about the mission,” you admit, albeit quietly because you aren’t sure how please Yeosang would be to hear the words. “The only thing that is on my mind right now is how San is doing and if he’s okay.” Although you told Seonghwa otherwise, the sudden radio silence that Wooyoung has given you has made you anxious to an unspeakable degree. And not having the security of being able to see San through Wooyoung’s eyes is plaguing you more than you’d like to admit.

“I understand that,” Jongho says through a deep exhale. “I feel the same way about Mingi right now honestly. No matter how much faith and trust I have in Mingi, that fear always lingers and resides in me.”

“That’s how I feel about San. I shouldn’t be worried about him but part of me is just fearful that we won’t make it in time. That he’ll accept the serum before we can get him out.”

Jongho brings his hand up to take hold of one of yours, squeezing around your palm as tight as he can without hurting you.

“I know San better than I know anyone on the crew, besides Mingi perhaps. I’ve spent years at San’s side. He was the only person who trusted me at first and trusted me enough to let me in. That trauma he bears, the scars on his past, the red in his ledger, those lingering pains that resurfaced when the mutiny happened — I have felt them all. I spent months at the foot of his bed, taking what pain I could away for as long as I could, just existing to comfort him and help him get through even one more night. And in that myriad of emotions I felt from San, not once did I ever feel him desire to take it all away. Those scars he bears are part of him, and he treats them as such. Something like… small accessories on a bigger picture that he won’t let go of. So no matter what happens, I have confidence that San won’t let them win. He’s far too stubborn for that, his heart is too big, he has too much love in his body for such a thing. He would rather die before he forgets the crew, and that fact alone makes me confident that San will hold out.”

You are left in the wake of Jongho’s words for too long, letting them crawl under your skin and find a home there. You count the seconds that pass before your voice finds you again.

“I understand that.” Forty-one seconds. “It’s just the fear of him being hurt when I’m not around to stop it that is hard to get past.” Jongho’s smile is nothing if not soft and gentle, the epitome of understanding.

“In our line of work, that fear is always present. It’s always a possibility too, but at some point, you reach a point where you accept that sometimes, you won’t always be able to save someone from all pain. Just because you can’t prevent every ounce of pain doesn’t mean that you are doing something wrong or that you’re not doing enough.” Jongho pauses. Some emotion fills his red eyes and leaves them swimming with something unspoken. “There are some pains that we must allow to happen, no matter how much we wish to do the opposite. Even something as horrid as pain can be necessary and needed to move forward in life. Try not to dwell on it too much and focus on Wooyoung for now, yeah?”

“I’m trying my best,” you sigh and drop your head back against the seat. The second your thoughts begin to drift, you are brought back to another memory, this time one of Hongjoong’s dark office with Seonghwa at your side.

“You punched Jisung in the face?”

“Please, I let him off easy,” you huff back, ignoring the lieutenant’s slight shock in favor of finding interest in the wall.

“That’s not the important part,” Hongjoong cuts in from where he sits behind his desk. You shift to glance over the captain. “Does Jisung know anything about you being a Siren?”

“No, not that I recall,” you mutter after little thought. “I never slept with him or anything like that, and I can’t remember him ever seeing my back so it’s safe to assume he doesn’t know. Besides who would just see tattoos and immediately assume ‘Siren’?”

“Then his interest in you has nothing to do with you being a Siren?”

“Exactly, but why is that important? I can tell you why he wants me if that’s what you’re curious about.”

“We’re just eliminating suspicions right now.” Hongjoong shifts his focus to where Seonghwa stands. He wears a bit of a cocky grin as they stare at each other, both feet slung up on the edge of his desk and one brow raised. “See? Jin has nothing to do with this.”

“That doesn’t eliminate the possibility altogether!” Seonghwa retorts. A frown mars his otherwise pretty features, twisting his lips into a scowl so deep that you feel your own muscles ache at the sight of it.

“You live your life in fear of Seokjin. For what? Do you not trust me to keep you safe?”

“That isn’t it and you know it, Joong. I will not sabotage your plans simply because of what I am. That is why we keep my identity to be a closely-guarded secret yet our number one enemy knows of that identity. That is a weakness, and it’s one that you need to take seriously.”

“Why is that? Sheltering you would be more suspicious to the crew than anything else. Unless you would like to inform them of your identity? Allow me to call them all right this instant.”

“No! No, Hongjoong, I — fine. Have it your way. Keep believing that you’ll be able to fix where Jin went wrong by ignoring the issue altogether because th—”

“That’s enough.” You bristle at the tone of the captain’s voice even though he is not speaking directly to you. “I’m still on edge as well, Hwa, and I know you are as well. I know why you are too, but please have at least a little faith in me. Now, Y/N—” Hongjoong turns back to you now “—I’d like to ask about the nightmares you had that night.”

Your initial response is to inhale sharply and glance over at Seonghwa with panic boiling in your gut.

“Why do you want to know?”

All Hongjoong does is roll his eyes and drop his feet off the side of his desk. You purse your lips at the action, watching him with wary eyes as he shifts his position to prop his elbows up on the same wood.

“Seonghwa, you’re dismissed.”

“I — Captain?”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant. I need to speak with her in private.”

“Why is it something I cannot be present for?”

“That was an order, not a suggestion. Now go.” If possible, the temperature of the room would drop ten degrees. Seonghwa seems to want to retort further but he bites his lip instead. Then, he gives a quick bow at the waist and mutters a goodbye before slipping out of the office without any further issue. “What did your nightmares consist of?” Hongjoong repeats, arching a brow as he speaks this time as though it will get you to talk faster.

“You didn’t have to get me alone to ask me that, did you? What is this really about?” The questions flow without hesitation, and your second refusal to talk about the dreams draws a sigh from Hongjoong’s lips.

“Do you know anything of Seonghwa’s relationship with his mother, Y/N?” A beat of silence. You shift your weight from foot to foot, glancing away from the captain to find interest in something on the floor.

“I… did witness a few of his memories when the two of us were still with each other in the dreams, but — if you mean to ask me about his nightmares, I have nothing to offer. I didn’t see those at all.”

“No, he already told me all about those nightmares. I don’t need to know more of them,” Hongjoong exhales with a shake of his head. He draws his arms up over his chest as he talks, falling back to slump in his chair and letting his exhaustion shine through. “Initially, I was going to have Seonghwa go with Yeosang and Jongho on this mission. But now, that plan has changed and I will be sending you instead.”

“Why?”

“I can’t send Seonghwa down to Lynder unless I myself can be at his side the entire time. There is far too much of a risk if I am unable to do that.”

“Risk? Of what? He would be with Yeosang and Jongho, would he not?”

“Yet if even the barest whim overcomes him, they would have to listen to whatever he says because of his position as lieutenant. I am the only one with more power than him, and as such, he has to listen to me. If he goes to Lynder, the risk is of him abandoning the mission to seek out his mother.”

“That doesn’t sound like something he would do at all,” you counter. Both you and Hongjoong drop your chins at the same time, although yours is more of an accusatory and pointed action compared to the slumping defeat that comes over Hongjoong’s body when he lowers his head.

“I don’t know how much or what exactly you saw in Seonghwa’s memories. I do not need to know either. But something you need to know is that we have been back to Lynder exactly once since I met Seonghwa there. And that one single time, two years ago, we had to lock Seonghwa in the brig for six days straight to keep him from breaking out to kill his mother. Seonghwa tore cuts into his arms and shoulders so deep that Yunho had to come stitch him every night until we finally chained him to a wall to get him to stop. When he finally gave up on trying to break out, I went in and took the cuffs off, only for Seonghwa to choke me hard enough to fracture my neck and leave bruises that lasted for several weeks.”

“A-Ah…” The sound of your dry swallow echoes in your ears. It’s hard to imagine Seonghwa — cool, rigid, stoic, gentle and calm Seonghwa — ever being so depraved and rabid as to harm himself as well as Hongjoong. Seonghwa, whose greatest fear is losing his captain. Yet the grave expression coating Hongjoong’s delicate features remains serious and deadpan, and you know every word is one that holds a memory that is painful to recall. He’s telling the truth.

“Have you ever had that voice in your head telling you to be cruel, Y/N?”

“Of course I have,” you admit through a whisper, like the words are going to break the threads of tension hanging in the air.

“Seonghwa has lost his will and his mind to that voice time and time again, and it gave him his reputation as the Lieutenant of Death. Mingi may be a slave to a childhood which bred him to be a monster, but Seonghwa? He’s a slave to his own consciousness, the part of him that spent years trying to be perceived as an Elitist so that he could hide what he really is, someone cold and calculated without an ounce of remorse or emotion. He put his own monsters under the bed, but now he can’t get them out.”

Hongjoong sits up a bit straighter all of a sudden. His gaze is still unfocused and hazy though, refusing to look you straight in the eye. Either subconsciously or through the fog of that revisited memory, Hongjoong lifts a hand to his neck and rubs idly at the skin there.

“My Seon—Lieutenant is strong, but strength isn’t worth a damn thing when the person you’re fighting is yourself. He admitted to me once that the thought of letting that voice win is more terrifying than the act of killing his own mother. So for that reason, I can never allow such a thing to happen. Seonghwa’s demons are nothing if not rabid dogs begging for a pound of flesh, and if he can’t fight them on his own, I’ll do it for him.”

“Y/N, are you sure you’re alright?” Jongho yet again brings you back to reality, most likely a bit disturbed by the way you are squeezing his hand tight enough to hurt, but he takes it without complaint. “You keep drifting out of focus.”

“Yes,” you say, filling your chest with air when you remember to breathe properly again. “Everything is fine.” Rather than responding with words, Jongho just places his other hand over your joined ones and brings them to rest on his thigh. If you listen closely enough, you’re able to hear him humming a soft melody under his breath but the rumble of the transport car covers most of the sound up. Still, it’s a relaxing sound that brings you some much-needed peace of mind for the remainder of the ride.

And as it turns out, Yeosang wasn’t bluffing when he said the three of you would be there soon because you had barely started listening to Jongho’s soft song when the car comes to a screeching halt that leaves you lurching forward.

“Alright then.” Yeosang stands first, hands smoothing down the fabric of his tunic even though it’s still perfectly in place. It’s not against his nature to get nervous or anxious, but it is still odd to witness like this. He is usually stoic in an unsettling way yet the grim expression he now wears is only accentuated by the crude shadows cast over his face. “It’s go time. Let’s get Wooyoung back in one piece, yeah?”

With that, the three of you climb out of the vehicle to be greeted by a dark and pristine city with thick clouds of smoke billowing through the air below you. Looking over the lip of the road is like looking down a cliff with the dramatic fall to the lower portion of the city. You weren’t exactly prepared to see such a drastic difference between the upper and lower echelons, yet looking over that cliff is like looking into a different city altogether with wooden buildings and decrepit warehouses that can barely hold themselves together. Where you stand with Yeosang and Jongho feels like a different world altogether with roads lined with lights and technology, tall buildings made from wood with exquisite carvings detailing the sides. From what you saw of the city in Seonghwa’s memories, Lynder has not changed one bit since he was here last.

You can’t clearly see many of the buildings below your feet, but it doesn’t stop you from wondering which one could possibly be that bar where Seonghwa met Hongjoong, if it even still exists. Jongho pulls you away from the road by the arm, tugging you along behind him as you approach a new building. The swaying wooden panel outside the door is a dead giveaway, but it’s the absurd amount of lilies trailing over the railings that tells you what this place is.

“They weren’t bluffing with the House of Lilies name,” you mutter, wrinkling your nose a bit at the overwhelming stench. Yeosang has grown alarmingly still; he lingers outside the tall double doors with a hand hovering over the brass handles without budging even an inch for far too long. You could pretend to not know why he’s hesitating, you could act like he is merely holding you back and push past him in annoyance, yet instead, you find yourself laying a hand atop his shoulder and squeezing the fabric there lightly. “No matter what happens in there or what we find in there, we will bring Wooyoung out alive.”

Yeosang releases a shaky exhale that makes his shoulder quake under your fingers.

“I know we will.” He looks past your face to make eye contact with Jongho then gives a curt nod. “Here goes the first fifteen minutes of hell.” The Elitist pushes hard against the brass handles, and the door gives way to his effort.

If you thought the smell outside the House was horrid, you don’t even know how to describe the reeking stench of flowers that hits you with the force of a tsunami. It’s thick enough for you to feel as though you are wading through a sea of flowers when in reality it’s just a strange yellow haze hanging about the interior. Yeosang doesn’t let the smell affect him in the slightest; he walks inside without missing a beat, shoulders pushed back so far it nearly hurts to see. Despite that, he walks like a prince, like someone who knows how to act in high society with ease, and for the first time, you don’t see Kang Yeosang before you. Instead, it’s Kang Minhee, the forgotten prince of Aera, who walks before you and heads for the front desk where a middle-aged woman with dramatic hair and hefty makeup stands.

“We should mingle a bit and look natural,” Jongho whispers when the two of you stop just inside the doors. “May I?” He motions to your arm with a small smile, not saying anything else and leaving you confused.

“May you…?”

“Quit being dense and give me your arm,” he huffs back and extends his elbow for you to loop your arm through, and this time, you get the hint, hooking your hand around the inside of his arm. Yeosang shifts to look back at both of you as you pass, and you offer each other discreet nods before he returns to speaking to the receptionist.

You let Jongho lead the way for the most part since you aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be doing outside of “looking normal”, although even doing that is somewhat difficult. Jongho doesn’t stray far from the entrance area until Yeosang dips into a hallway and out of sight without looking back at the two of you. Moments later your wristbands buzz, signaling that it’s time for the first fifteen-minute countdown to begin. Jongho shifts to fiddle with his wristband while you keep your hand folded over his elbow still. It gives you a chance to glance around the whorehouse without the distraction of having to act normal, but frankly, there isn’t much to see beyond the bodies filling the foyer and mingling about the lounge before you. There are flowers everywhere — probably an overabundance of them, and they aren’t just lilies as they were outside. You can’t pinpoint whether those flowers are the source of the clawingly sweet scent stuck to the insides of your nostrils or not, but that yellow fog seems partially responsible to some degree.

“You seem to know how to look like you belong in high society,” you mutter once Jongho pulls his attention back to your surroundings. A huff of laughter leaves his lips.

“It’s not because I grew up that way. I was merely an observant child who wanted to grow up and have more than what I had.” A smile cracks his stony expression. “Isn’t that what all children want?”

“I—”

Well, you wouldn’t really know, would you?

Jongho’s expression softens as he realizes what he’s said and who he has said it to, and his gaze turns apologetic seconds later. He turns to flag down one of the workers milling about with drinks, taking two glasses of what looks like wine in one hand. Jongho angles one of the half-full flutes in your direction. You take the hint with relative ease despite the clawing scent of flowers still muddling your thoughts.

“I didn’t mean to hit a nerve,” Jongho says through what seems to be a sympathetic smile. “What do you think your childhood was like? If you don’t mind talking about such things. We have time to kill after all.”

You draw your lips into a tight purse, curling them around the edge of the wine glass and pressing an imprint of your dark lipstick there. Subconsciously, your hand tightens around the inside of Jongho’s arm as well, although the Berserker doesn’t comment on the added pressure as he simply continues to regard you with the same steely and careful gaze.

“I think it must have been rather sad,” you admit after some thought. It must not be the answer Jongho was expecting at all because his brows draw together in confusion. “What kind of childhood must one have for them to willingly sell away their memories by fourteen? The more I think… about that time — when they gave me the serum — I recall fighting the doctors but I don’t think it was because I didn’t know what they were doing. I’m certain that I knew my memories would be taken from me. It was the act of them strapping me to a chair like a prisoner that frightened me.”

This time when Jongho smiles, all you can see is pain in his deep red eyes.

“I would have given anything in the universe to have my memories taken away at that age too, if it’s of any comfort to you.” He pauses to swirl the liquid in his glass, watching the red liquor dance before his eyes under the yellow haze around your bodies. “Don’t think you’re weak for wanting to forget that past. No child should ever deal with pains that strong, even if you can’t remember what they are.”

“People like you… San, Mingi… the whole crew honestly — how can I not view myself as weak in comparison? People who were given the choice but denied it and rejected it unlike me, who apparently didn’t want to be left with some shred of dignity. What did I become with that fresh slate they gave me? All I could do then was be weak, but it seems like that hasn’t changed one bit.”

Jongho won’t let up with that devastating smile, and you are about to turn away so that you don’t have to see it any longer when he finally lets it fall.

“For what it’s worth, you are rather strong in my eyes. During your fight with Jisung, I’ll admit that I tried to ease some of your pain then. It’s not something you know about — the others know of it by now so I should have told you sooner and I’m sorry for that but I have a special mutation in my genes that gives me the ability to take away and absorb emotional auras. I inherited it from one of my grandparents so it’s something I grew up learning how to use and I carried that over when I joined the crew. I attempted to do that with you because you were in so much distress and I was worried but — b-but your pain was too much for even me to bear. So before you go around calling yourself weak, you ought to give yourself more credit. Just because the pains you bear are different doesn’t mean that they are any less than the pains the rest of us bear.”

Jongho doesn’t say anything more than that; he slings his wine back in one shot like it’s nothing then places the now empty glass on a waiter’s tray as he’s passing by. You don’t touch your own, mulling over the glass as you fall deep in thought. If Jongho could feel that much from you, then it begs the question of what else he might be able to feel from you.

Can he sense that I’m a Siren too? Would he be able to tell that Seonghwa and Wooyoung are Sirens as well?

Your mind shifts to latch onto something else he said. Your pain was too much for even me to bear.

“It’s okay, Y/N. Stand down,” he murmurs. “You need to pick your battles, and this is not one for you to fight right now.” Again you feel that pull of warmth coming from him, like someone is trying to pull something from your chest, but it retracts almost instantaneously. Jongho falters. His eyes squeeze shut harshly, face contorting with something that almost looks like pain in your eyes, but that lasts less than a second before he’s recovered again. It’s not enough to stop the onslaught of emotions coursing through your veins.

You had been too preoccupied at the time to think about that moment until now.

“That time — did I hurt you? When you tried to take it away, did I hurt you even a little bit?”

“Nothing you did hurt me, Y/N. It wasn’t your fault, I promise you didn’t do anything. It’s something I have done time and time again for others on the crew and something I would do again as well. It’s what I’m good at, and something I was born with for a reason. If it helps even a little bit, then why would I not take the temporary pain?”

Every fiber of your being is telling you to fight those words, to tell him that it’s not worth it, your pain should not be a burden he has to bear as well, yet no words fall from your lips. Your mouth stutters uselessly without saying anything, and Jongho just keeps smiling like nothing is wrong. The clenching in your chest is not fine, however, and you force yourself to turn away from him in the hopes it will alleviate that pain. Instead, your eyes travel to a head of bright red hair that is so starkly different than anything else in the room that you have to stare right at it. It would be nothing odd or out of the ordinary to you since the crew you are now part of has such a wide array of hair colors. It would be something you look right past without much thought.

And yet you find yourself staring right at it. Right at the girl who turns to look around the lounge with red hair sweeping through the air.

You jolt.

Something hits your shoulder hard enough to tip your drink over and spill some of the red wine onto the floor. Your hand retracts from Jongho’s arm to touch the knife hidden behind the fabric of your skirt. You’re forced to pull your gaze away from the girl, finding the man who bumped into you to just be a stumbling drunk man with little sense for spatial awareness and direction. Jongho wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you a bit closer to his body. The man continues on without any regard for you or the wine he just spilled. Jongho takes your glass with his free hand, discarding it at the nearest flat surface before redirecting his focus back to you.

“It’s okay, Y/N, everything is okay.”

“I’m fine,” you murmur back, but your gaze goes straight back to where that redhead just stood.

“You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Instinct tells you to stay put and continue on with the mission, putting that familiar face to the back of your mind. But again your heart is clenching painfully in your chest, racing so fast that you feel the pounds echoing in your ears, and you know you can’t let go of her that easily. Not when she’s this close to you.

“I think I did.” You pull away from Jongho to go chasing through the crowd after that red hair, but the Berserker moves with you in a rush.

“Y/N, we can’t get off track. There’s only six minutes until it’s your turn to go to the counter.”

You wave him off with a dismissive hand rather than responding with words. Moments later, you find your target again, just as she is turning to head for the hallway that Yeosang went down not too long ago.

“Soojin?” You throw the name out as a last resort, mostly a desperate attempt to see if you are right and your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you in this heady yellow haze.

She freezes in place. It gives you just enough time to shove past the crowd and get closer to where she stands. You close your fingers around her shoulder, tugging with as little force as possible so that she turns to face you. There’s not a doubt in your mind when you see her face. She seems to recognize you as well based on the way her eyes are blown wide as saucers. The girl — well, you suppose she would be a woman by now — glances past your shoulder to look at Jongho. Her throat rolls as she swallows around nothing.

“You must have me mistaken for someone else,” Soojin whispers, bringing her gaze back down to you. She dips her head a bit then pulls away from you to head down the hall. You think back to Jisung — the threats and odd comments he made combined with the newly resurfaced memories of Hyunwoo lingering at the forefront of your mind, and you know without a shadow of a doubt that you can’t let her go this easily.

“P-Please, Soojin — I need to talk with you. It’s important, please, I have so many questions and no one else to ask.”

“I’m sure you do, little scapegoat,” she huffs back. “I actually have work to do though and a client waiting for me, so I’m not all too inclined to speak with you. I’m not sure why you came here, but I don’t think I have the answers you’re looking for either.” You don’t have a chance to keep her from leaving after that because she turns and leaves so quickly that it leaves you reeling. Jongho tugs you back by the arm, pulling you from the hallway and out into the lounge again before you can chase after her.

“What the hell was that?” He hisses under his breath.

“She — I-I knew her. She w-was my teammate, one of the p-people assigned to my unit in the military. I… I had no idea she ended up here of all places. Jongho, I have to talk to her, please, I have to. This c-could be what I need! If Jisung won’t tell me the truth, then maybe she knows something. She has to know something o-or else I—”

Your voice dies in your throat, but your unspoken desperation seems to reach Jongho nonetheless. The key to whatever memories you lost could lie in Soojin. Things happened so quickly at the end, perhaps she learned of something before leaving Eros with the others.

“She called you a scapegoat,” Jongho says. He swallows hard, Adam’s Apple bobbing with the motion. “What was that about?”

Truthfully, you hadn’t gotten that far. You didn’t even think to question that part but it is odd and not something you recall her calling you in the past.

“I’m not sure why she would say that. All the more reason to speak to her and ask. Jongho, please!” You attempt to pull away from his grip as you speak. The Berserker doesn’t budge, too strong for you to fight like this, and he doesn’t let up even when you try to slap his hand away.

“I’m sorry, Y/N.” He yanks you back to him and brings his free hand up to rest on your forehead. This time, you can physically feel the panic in your bones ebbing away and being pulled to your forehead where Jongho touches you. It’s a frightening sensation but the influence he has over you takes that fear away as well, leaving you in a daze of confusion because you know you should feel bothered right now but you cannot bring yourself to feel that way even as Jongho pulls away from you. His jaw twitches just a hair, not moving much beyond that, then he grits his teeth to hiss out his next words. “Wooyoung is our mission. You have to focus. You have two minutes to get up to that counter and do your job. We can try to track down your teammate later, but not on a mission like this.”

You have it in you to at least be angry enough to tug your arm out of his grasp.

“Don’t touch my emotions like that again. I understand you trying to take my pain, and as much as I hate that and despite the thought of you taking my pains for me, this is different. Emotionally sedating me for the sake of completing a mission better is different.”

You don’t give him a chance to reply before you’re heading off for the counter where Yeosang stood not too long ago. The woman who previously occupied the space behind it has disappeared, now replaced by a young man who must be younger than you from the looks of it.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” He asks as you sidle up to the desk.

“I’d like a room, an hour’s worth.” You fumble a bit with your pockets as you try to fish a credit chip out without exposing the knife strapped to your thigh, but the boy doesn’t look up until you slide the chip across the counter.

“Of course, of course,” he hums. “Do you have any preferences for pleasure tonight?”

“A male short in stature with black hair and tanned skin,” you recite back, forcing a smile onto your lips when the boy glances up at you. He tilts his head to the side. You swallow the saliva gathering in your mouth as the stare grows unsettling then he shakes his head and speaks again.

“Would you like someone more submissive or dominant?”

“Hm? Oh, um…” That wasn’t part of the plan. Surely Yeosang would have mentioned it if he had known they would ask. But what would he have said if they asked him the same? “Um, submissive is fine, I suppose?” The boy hums again then motions towards the hallway where Yeosang and Soojin both headed down.

“Your room will be on the second floor, Room 213. Please take the stairs at the end of the hall.” He passes a keycard your way along with your credit chip, leaving you with a grin and a soft-spoken, “Your courtesan will join you shortly. Enjoy.” You bristle at his words but manage to smile a little bit as you take both the card and your chip back. You leave the counter to head for the hallway, not pausing to look back at where Jongho might be, but you ping your wristband as you go. Nothing has come in from Yeosang’s side again so it’s safe to assume he doesn’t have Wooyoung with him by now. It leaves you and Jongho with more pressure and either more or less of a chance to recover him, so you can only hope for the best as you climb the stairs to the second floor.

Room 213 is empty as expected when you slip inside, and it’s free from that odd yellow fog outside as well, so you bask in the freedom and breathe fresh air deeply while you can. It’s a basic and standard room — much more like a small hotel room than anything else from the cabinet near the door and the double bed pushed up against the wall. There’s a metal sink as well close to the window but nothing else adorns the room leaving it rather dismal and simple. Not that you expected these people to treat the courtesans with even an ounce of respect; it’s still disheartening to think of Wooyoung being stuck in such a small and cramped space without a choice.

Whatever peace you thought you could have is cruelly interrupted less than five minutes later as a series of shy knocks reach your door. You blink up from where you sit perched on the edge of the neatly made bed. Is this how Yeosang felt waiting for his door to open? You inhale sharply, heart pounding mercilessly in your throat and choking you with the strength of an actual hand. And shamefully, you can’t even bring yourself to look at the door when it slides open, too afraid of not seeing Wooyoung standing behind it.

“Y-Y/N?”

You snap your head towards the door so quickly that your neck pops with the effort, eyes blinking open faster than ever, and even when your gaze settles on him, you still can’t quite believe he’s really before you. In that moment, the two of you merely regard each other with stunned stares like neither of you can believe this is possible, and in that time, the door slides shut again to leave you together in the all too small room.

“Wooyoung.” You bring yourself to your feet, standing on shaky legs as you face him. “W-Woo—”

He cuts you short by barreling into you with such force that it knocks the air out of your lungs. The metal around his neck scrapes against your skin hard enough to cut but you pay it no mind as he squeezes his arms around your waist and releases a heart-wrenching sob into your shoulder. Reason returns to you then, bringing you to ping your wristband again; although this time you tap it three times to alert the others that you have Wooyoung with you now. There is nothing more to do after that other than to hug him back as his tears soak your neck and shoulder.

“I-I didn’t — I di-didn’t want to lose hope b-but… fuck it was s-so hard not to and I was st-starting to think I wouldn’t ever s-see you again,” Wooyoung sobs. You almost want to cry with him if not for the small blinking light in the upper corner of the room that catches your eye and sends a surge of panic through you.

“The cameras, Wooyoung. They’re still on, we need to—”

“Y-Yeah, they’re — they only c-check if you hit the button by the bed.” Wooyoung pulls back from your shoulder, at last, rubbing at his tear-stricken cheeks so hard it makes his skin blossom with red. He pauses to catch his breath, or at least steady himself enough to speak without choking on his words. “That si-signals that you’re unsatisfied so they’ll c-check and see what’s — what’s wrong before sending a new courtesan.” Wooyoung puts his hand in yours and laces your fingers without hesitation. The touch seems to offer him some more comfort that helps calm his small hiccups and cries. “Is Y-Yeosang okay?”

“He’s alright, yeah,” you whisper back through a smile. “Misses you something awful, but he’s here too. He tried to get to you first, but they must have sent someone else to him. Jongho came as well. To get you. We came to get you, Wooyoung.”

Those words make Wooyoung’s eyes well up with sickening haste. He sinks to the bed before another sob forces its way out, and you sit down beside him like the mattress might collapse if you move too quickly.

“I’m so glad. So fucking g-glad. Being in a pl-place like this without Yeosang — it’s fucking hell.” Wooyoung sinks his teeth into his lower lip just to keep it from trembling.

“Have you…” Surely it’s not a question you have any right to ask, and part of you feels like Wooyoung did need your help but merely did not want to bring you to this place, even if just to watch through his eyes. Still, you swallow the nerves and force the question out. “Have they made you work yet?”

“It’s not important whether they did or not,” Wooyoung says through a weak smile, but that tells you all you need to know. It sounds too rehearsed and monotonous, like he’s been told to say this even if only by himself. “B-But what’s the plan? How are we getting out? Is someone coming to get us?”

“Um, we’re to wait the allotted time here until we get news from one of Hongjoong’s contacts here. He’s a hacker, and he’ll take care of the surveillance system so that we can open the window and get out that way. We’ll meet Yeosang and Jongho in an alleyway not too far from here after that. Then head back to the ship on a transport car.”

“Thought of everything, huh?”

“I sure hope so.”

“It should work just fine. We’re on the second floor though, so it’ll be quite the fall. Just remember to not go face-first.” Wooyoung’s smile is infectious, and you laugh along with his jest, hand squeezing around his. “How is Seonghwa doing?”

“A-Ah, I nearly forgot you knew about that. Um, he’s alright but Hongjoong didn’t think he was well enough to come on the mission with us.”

“Captain is up then? Yeosang mentioned he’d been out for quite some time because of his injuries. That’s great news that he’s up! I — he’ll be happy to hear that I have some info about where Mingi and San are being held too. I can tell him when we’re back on the ship. B-But Seonghwa is okay otherwise?”

“Yunho said there’s no lingering signs of health issues so he’ll be okay physically. I… I have so many questions that I don’t even know where to begin.” Wooyoung’s smile stretches a bit wider.

“I assumed you would. That’s okay though; we have a full hour to use anyways, so you can ask me anything while we have the time to be alone together. I would say we could do it later when we’re back on the ship but Yeosang probably won’t let me out of his sight for even two seconds from now on. It’d be best for us to get it all out now so we don’t have to hear him scribbling in that damn notebook of his.” Wooyoung can’t hide his elation despite the teasing words, and you know that getting to see Yeosang again soon means more to him than you could ever understand. Yeosang must be feeling the same way himself, waiting out this hour with painstaking patience.

“What happened in the days you didn’t let me in? You went quiet for so long I was getting worried.”

“Ah, we shouldn’t start there,” Wooyoung murmurs, glancing down at the floor. He pauses. The breath of hesitation leaves your stomach in knots. “Nothing you want to hear, I promise. That’s why I didn’t try to bring you in. It wasn’t anything pretty, but I assure you there was nothing they could do to hurt me physically. I’m too far gone for that sort of torture. It’s… over and done with now. More scars to add to my collection, and more for Yeosang to cry over probably. We’ll both be fine. You’re probably wondering about the whole connection thing and us both being Sirens and such, right?”

“I — admittedly yes, but looking back now it seems almost obvious? I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner, I guess. But yeah, specifically that connection or whatever it is. Yeosang said he didn’t know much at all about it.”

“Right, yeah, I don’t know much myself either, to be honest.” Wooyoung presses his lips into a pout. “It’s hard to say what exactly it is. Seonghwa’s books don’t really have anything about this sort of occurrence, but what I’ve gathered from it so far is probably all that Yeosang told you. ‘There’s no place in the universe that you can hide from each other’. Daichi told me that once.”

“He told me the same actually.”

“Mhm, I think he knows a bit more about it than he claims to. For me, I can almost hear you in my head when you’re in distress, even when you’re far away. Except it doesn’t sound like you’re scared or anything like that. It almost sounds as though you’re softly singing to me? Like… I’m on a boat with gentle waves and you’re singing to me through the water. When I’m asleep and dreaming and you reach out to me for help, I can close my eyes and find myself on a boat like that. A white boat on a black lake. And I hear you singing to me in the water, look down, and see a tiny flickering light through the darkness. For years I’ve had that dream.”

“Yeosang… he talked about you having such a dream. Swimming in a black lake and trying to reach someone but not being able to?”

“Yeah! Um, I’ve woken him up so much because of that very dream. I would have that dream time and time again before you joined the crew, desperately swimming to reach you but it was like something was blocking me from getting to you. Like I could never reach you no matter how fast I was. I would never be able to get in. Then suddenly — one night I did, and I woke up in a box of fabrics in the cargo bay.” Wooyoung shifts to look you in the eye, a weak laugh slipping through his lips. “That feels so long ago now.”

“I’ve been wondering how to thank you for that,” you murmur. “If not for that moment, I would have died.” The skin around your nails suddenly seems a lot more interesting, and you busy yourself with picking at it mindlessly rather than looking back in Wooyoung’s direction. He doesn’t let your hand drift far from his though before he’s tugging it right back into his grasp. His other hand finds its way atop yours as well, holding your joined ones together tightly.

“I didn’t do it to get a thank you. It was just… the right thing to do. It’s sad that we live in such a bad and awful society where you feel the need to thank me for doing something as simple as that.”

“Did you not thank Yeosang for saving his life once upon a time?” You dare to ask. Wooyoung is a bit startled at first, caught off-guard by both your sudden question and the content behind it, but he laughs loud and clear without restraint.

“For someone who claims to hate talking about his life, he sure does talk a lot, doesn’t he?” Wooyoung brushes his bang out of his eyes, pushing the strands that have quickly grown unruly and long to the side. “Yeosang never lets me thank him. Any time I’ve tried, he shut me down before I could finish. Honestly, he saved my life twice. Once when he chose me from that lineup of slaves and spared me a crueler fate, and once when he broke those chains and set me free.”

Chose… me…? Then it wasn’t Yeosang’s mother who picked Wooyoung out for him?

You don’t get to dwell on that thought for long because Wooyoung simply continues to ramble, more and more peace coming to his shoulders as he calms down further.

“Yeosang only ever thanks me. As odd as that is.”

“Did you — have you ever saved his life then?” You already know the answer to that question, but it’s already hanging in the air between you by the time you catch yourself.

“Yes.” Wooyoung is beaming by now, lips stretched wide as he grins. “I got him out of prison when they charged him with treason.”

“And that’s what he thanks you for?”

Wooyoung’s smile doesn’t falter even as he shakes his head in denial.

“He never claims to have saved me, not even once. Instead, Yeosang says that I saved him.”

“B-But why? Objectively he did save you, so why does he not acknowledge that?”

“Because, Y/N, there’s a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. Yeosang and I loved each other for many years before. But just loving each other wasn’t enough for Crown Prince Kang Minhee to break my chains and commit treason. When ”I love you“ turns into ”I am in love with you“ and ”I am in love with the mere idea of you“, then Yeosang set me free. Even though I would never have asked him to do it, he chose to on his own accord. So he thanks me and says that I saved him because of that. Because I trusted him enough to put my life in his hands time and time again and let him fall in love with me. He claims it to be a difficult thing — allowing an Elitist to fall in love with you. But with Yeosang… he has only ever made it easy. There are times where it is difficult and frustrating, where I wish that he could be anything other than an Elitist, for fuck’s sake, times when I would rather break his neck in an absolutely non-sexy kind of way, but that’s part of love and loving someone. That’s why he’s grateful to me. It sounds selfish and egotistical to say, but after having him repeat himself for so many years, I’ve grown to accept that even if I don’t believe I deserve it.” Wooyoung speaks with a raw conviction that you’ve heard before. It’s the same tone Hongjoong used when speaking to Seonghwa in the medbay, the same tone Yeosang used when talking about Wooyoung and their past together.

Even if you wanted to formulate a response, you don’t think you would be able to because of how overwhelming the emotion in Wooyoung’s voice is. He’s had every opportunity to blame Yeosang for the misfortune in his life, claim that if only Yeosang hadn’t picked him from the start he would be better off, claim that Yeosang got him out of being a slave only to put him in a more dangerous position. Wooyoung could even blame Yeosang for not protecting him well enough to keep him from being kidnapped and tortured.

Yet not once has Wooyoung blamed him.

Perhaps you were being unfair in pushing the blame onto Seonghwa’s shoulders when he didn’t fight your decision to go with Jisung. Is it so wrong to want someone to fight for you? Yet Yeosang has fought every day for Wooyoung and continues to do so. Wooyoung, who has been through hell and tortures he does not wish to speak about, asked about Yeosang’s well-being before anything else. Yet if they were in your position — if Wooyoung were the one agreeing to go with Jisung to save the others, would Yeosang not drop everything to fight for him?

Your mind screams back at you, telling you that it’s different, the situations aren’t the same, the relationships aren’t the same, and you cannot compare yourself to people like Wooyoung and Yeosang who have had years to figure this out. And so, you don’t compare yourself to them.

Rather you compare Seonghwa and Hongjoong to them. How Seonghwa’s worst nightmare is not being able to save Hongjoong from himself. The sheer will and determination in Hongjoong’s eyes when he said he would never let Seonghwa’s demons overtake him. You can’t help but wonder if perhaps that is similar to what Wooyoung and Yeosang have. Neither are anything remotely close to what you have — had, your mind suggests ever so helpfully — with Seonghwa yourself.

“It may be selfish, but I don’t want you to push me away. I would rather be hurt and still have you in my life rather than to be perfectly fine without you.”

That memory slips through unannounced and unasked for, and the mere prospect of why it’s coming back to you while you’re having such thoughts scares you so much that you slam the door in that memory’s face and throw away the key before it breaks loose.

“But anyway that’s — I rambled a bit too much, that’s not the point, um, have you ever had similar dreams like those? The ones I had, I mean? Before waking up in my body or before you came to the crew, any time you can remember. I know you haven’t had much opportunity yet, but you’ve had a few experiences by now.”

“I can’t recall ever having those sorts of dreams. That dream you mentioned about the lake — I had a dream that I was drowning in a black lake the night you came to save Seonghwa, but when I wake up in your body, it’s simply that. All I know is falling asleep and waking up like a passenger in your consciousness. I don’t have any control like you’ve had over my body.” Wooyoung’s eyes are oh so expectant and pleading, and it twists something painful in your gut. You want so badly to have information for him, to be able to give him answers or even a hint as to what could be going on, but frankly, you have nothing to offer. “I’m sorry, Wooyoung. I-I feel utterly useless in this whole situation. I d-don’t know what’s wrong with me or my head, I just can’t remember at all and I don’t… You and Seonghwa seem to have this whole Siren thing figured out, how it works, what sort of abilities you have, how to use them. I, on the other hand, have so many gaps and missing pieces in my memories. I’ve had one or two moments where I consciously used some sort of ability, then Seonghwa tried to help me learn, but other than that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It’s okay!” Wooyoung rushes to reassure you, squeezing his hand tight around yours as he smiles again. “Y/N, please don’t worry about that. I don’t expect you to have an answer right now, it’s really okay. We’re gonna figure this out together now that you finally know what I am and we’ll be back on the ship soon. And I can help you understand more about being a Siren in general too! If we can get to the Dreamscape together, maybe Daichi will be willing to talk.”

“Last time I was there, he tried to kill me and told me that if I kept asking questions he would end my life,” you snort. Wooyoung’s smile drops into a grave expression that doesn’t fit his features.

“In the beginning — when I first started seeing Daichi, that is — he wasn’t like that. He wanted me to find other Sirens. That’s what ultimately made Yeosang choose Captain’s crew because Daichi had told me there was a Siren there. Then as more time went on, Daichi seemed to get more and more frightened by the idea of Sirens finding each other. He started telling me that someone dangerous would find me, someone I should guard myself from.”

“He warned me of the same when I first came aboard. But Seonghwa mentioned how Daichi’s job is to guide Sirens to each other?”

“That’s true, yes, but Daichi seems to have changed his mind along the way. I can’t understand why, but I’m sure it will make it a lot more difficult to find two more for Captain.” Your conversation dies a bit there, leaving both you and Wooyoung to stew over the predicament. According to Daichi, you spent years denying your identity and refusing to listen to him, so you never made an effort to find any Sirens like both Wooyoung and Seonghwa have been apparently. Still, it leaves you more curious than before, especially given what all happened in your latest escapade in the Dreamscape.

“Tsukio can find you anywhere, even while far away! This mental connection you share, this link — the two of you are a dyad, a yin and a yang, a pair that cannot be severed. No matter how far apart you are, the two of you will always be able to come back to each other.”

“Did he ever tell you that we will always be able to come back to each other?”

“Come… back to each other? No, I’ve never heard him say such a thing before.”

“I remember seeing you in a dream before, not the Dreamscape but an actual dream. But that dream felt more like a memory, and I asked you about it once in the medbay. I know you told me no then, but does it have anything to do with what Daichi said possibly?”

“Hm, I suppose it could?” Wooyoung leans back and looks up at the ceiling. You can’t figure out what’s on his mind just through his expression, and what he says next doesn’t help much either. “But I don’t have any sort of memory like that.”

“You — you were wiped with a serum too, weren’t you?”

“Did Yeosang tell you that as well?” Wooyoung asks through a frown. “Did he mention how guilty he feels about that too? Probably, that would be very much like him to do so. Guilty for things that aren’t even his fault… but yes. Yes, my memories were wiped too.”

“I have another question. I’m sorry for asking so much all at once. Yeosang never gave me a clear answer though, so I’m still curious, but why haven’t you told Hongjoong about this?” Wooyoung doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he sinks his teeth into his lower lip and refuses to look your way for a bit. The silence drags but it’s nothing uncomfortable or unsettling. It isn’t like you’re on a time crunch right now either, so you’re more than willing to wait until he is ready to speak.

“It’s something stupid and selfish honestly,” he whispers after a bit. His other hand finds purchase on the bed, picking at a loose thread hanging off the sheets. “I didn’t expect Yeosang to take it so seriously, but now he’s adamant even when I try to tell him otherwise. Really it’s just that when I was still a slave, I didn’t always have to wear the collar. It dampened and muted my abilities so I couldn’t use them freely. Shocked me a lot too whenever I foolishly tried to use them without permission, leaving some really ugly and awful scars. Yeosang always treated the wounds when that would happen.”

His hand travels up to touch the band of metal hanging about his neck. You follow the movement with your eyes. You can’t miss the spreading scars underneath the metal as he shifts it, like little lightning bolts of pale skin hiding beneath it, and you wonder if that’s what you felt the first time you woke up in his body.

“I have a lot of scars from lots of different things. It shouldn’t be any different, and it shouldn’t even matter because it’s stupid and childish and I need to get over it. Even though the collar is dead and doesn’t work, like it doesn’t mute my abilities anymore or anything like that, just the idea of having it on keeps me sane. Being a Siren is both a blessing and a curse. Some abilities you’re born with are crueler than imaginable and can be used to do horrific things. The things I was forced to do with mine are not something I ever want to revisit again. So… I keep the collar on because the trauma I suffered while wearing it for so many years keeps me sane. Merely the idea of wearing it prevents me from using my abilities because I was conditioned into a state where if I tried doing anything while the collar was on, I would be hurt. When it comes to visiting you, it’s different because I’m asleep when that happens. And whenever people other than Yeosang or myself try to touch it, I get thrown back into the memories of his father taking it off me to use me as a weapon and I-I can’t — it’s too much to bear.

“I trust Hongjoong. I really trust him and admire him and respect him so much. As much as I do Yeosang even if it’s in a different way. But I have an innate fear of authority that tells me no matter who it is, the people who have power over me will abuse it. That if anyone above me knows I’m a Siren, I’ll be used again, and I’m afraid of that. So it’s not that I don’t want to tell Hongjoong. Just that as long as I have this collar on and as long as these demons linger at the edge of my mind, I don’t think I can ever tell him what I am.”

You want to express an apology for bringing those memories back or at least offer an ounce of consolation because you can almost feel the pain radiating off his body in waves. But the moment you reach out to pull him into a hug, the door to your room slides open out of nowhere. You jerk, and Wooyoung lifts an arm to protect the both of you, but you take the initiative in pushing him down to the bed. In one swift movement, you climb in front of him, one knee down on the mattress and the other stretched out in front of Wooyoung’s body. The blade against your thigh is cool on your fingertips, but you don’t pull it out quite yet. The flash of red hair before you stops you at the last second.

Soojin?

The girl is already halfway in the room, door sliding shut behind her, and the second it’s fully closed, she turns to twist the lock into place.

“W-Wait, we’re n-not supposed to lock the doors!” Wooyoung protests, leaning up over your shoulder to see better. Soojin levels him with a sharp glare. You reach behind you to push Wooyoung back enough so that he’s hidden behind your shoulder, matching Soojin’s stare with equal intensity. The girl steps closer to you, draws a single finger up, and stabs you hard in the chest with her dull nail.

“You and me need to have a chat after all it seems.”

“What do you mean?” You clench your fingers around the handle of your knife, still not completely at ease with the woman standing in front of you.

“What do I mean? I mean that my fucking client downstairs just tried to fucking murder me and gave me a message from Han Jisung of all people! Seeing you and hearing from that bastard on the same day after being free from that past for several years? That’s no fucking coincidence, Y/N.”

“Murder!? How did you — how did you get away?”

A laugh of disbelief escapes Soojin’s lips as she pulls back a few feet.

“I killed him, of course! What else was I supposed to do? I dumped the fucker’s body out the window for staff to clean up later. This sort of thing happens frequently enough for them not to question it, and besides, I told them it was a jealous worker so they won’t really care all too much about him. But what the fuck is going on? Why are you here and why did Han Jisung just tell me my time is up and try to have me killed?”

“I… I-I don’t — I’m not with Jisung, I know nothing about that at all. He—” You cut yourself short with a sharp inhale, eyes darting across the floor like it has all the answers in it. “Wait, he knew I would be coming here though. Did he know that you worked here?”

“Unfortunately, not by choice though. We ran across each other around a year ago in the city, and I mentioned working at the House in passing.”

You shift to motion back at Wooyoung and pull your hand off the knife on your leg at last.

“He was brought here against his will by Jisung. Well, whoever Jisung is working with at least. I only came to get him out. We’re — he’s part of the crew I’m working with now. Jisung knew where he would be and that I would come to get him.”

“And he’s still a psychopath when it comes to you then?” Soojin scoffs, brows knitting together to accentuate her disbelief. “He tried to have me killed just so that I would stay out of your business?”

“I don’t know, Soojin,” you exhale. “It doesn’t make any sense why he would do that. I already made a deal with him and he’ll get to take me regardless of what happens here.”

“T-Take you?” Wooyoung interjects. “Take you where?” His hand latches around your elbow and squeezes hard. You ignore the man in favor of maintaining your focus on Soojin, however, much to his dismay.

“Unless you know something Jisung wouldn’t want me to know and he couldn’t even risk the thought of us running into each other and speaking.” At that, Soojin tilts her head to the side in confusion.

“What could I possibly know that you don’t?”

“What happened before you left the crew?” Her confusion intensifies to a dramatic degree.

“Have you gone mad? Do you not remember or something? You were always a bit bad with memory, yeah, but has it gotten this bad?”

“Please, Soojin, I’m begging you please just tell me what happened before the crew fell apart. I know you called me a scapegoat for a reason, please.” You reach out across the empty space between your bodies, having to stand to reach her, but when you do, you close a hand around her wrist. Soojin blinks between where you hold her and your face without speaking for so long that you think she’s going to refuse you again.

“I called you a scapegoat because I thought you were in on Jisung’s plan at the time,” she says finally, pulling her other hand up to run through her hair. “You would’ve done anything for him so I thought that was just another part of it.”

“What did I do?”

“I should be asking what you remember happening instead.”

“What I remember is stealing documents and plotting to dismantle the military from the inside out with you guys but I fucked up. I know I fucked up and got caught and Hyunwoo took the blame for me and it got him fucking executed.” Soojin leans back, hand tugging out of your light grip.

“I know nothing of what happened after Ash, Juyeon, and I left Eros. But before we left…” It’s her turn to hold you by the wrist. She turns your arm over and exposes the inside of your left arm, right where that damned brand sits against your raised skin. “You didn’t deserve this. It wasn’t your burden to bear. You were the scapegoat, and that’s why the team fell apart, that’s why we all broke up and ran away. You didn’t plan to steal anything, nor did you plot a thing. Neither did Hyunwoo. It was all Jisung; Jisung wanted to dismantle the military and kill the king. When Juyeon, Ash, and I found out what he was planning to do, we brought it to Hyunwoo. All Hyunwoo said was that stopping Jisung wasn’t something he could do. So he told us to leave while we still had the chance and that he would take care of things. He would take the blame so that no one else would have to get hurt. But you didn’t want him to do that, so you ran off and carried out Jisung’s plan for him.”

“Which part? Did I k-kill the king… before Hyunwoo died?”

Soojin heaves a deep sigh.

“The last night we were all together as a team, you snuck out of the barracks and infiltrated the palace. You stole the documents Jisung wanted — whatever the fuck they were because I don’t even know why he wanted them in the first place if he was going to kill the king anyways — and you killed the king that night too. Everything went to shit. It all happened too fast for the rest of us to know what was really going on. You just came back to the barracks and turned the lights on and…”

You don’t realize how hard your head is pounding until the woman trails off, voice dying in her throat, and then it hits you will so much force that you feel your body beginning to lurch. You would fall over, most likely smack your head on the sink as well, if not for Wooyoung jumping up and catching you by the waist before you can fully go down. And thanks to him, all you do is hunch over and hold your head in your hands as a stab of pain sears through your skull.

“Breathe, Y/N, breathe for me,” he urges as you slump your weight back against him. “You need to breathe, okay? You’re hyperventilating. One breath every five seconds, slow it down, you’re okay.”

“Th-There was blood. There was blood, wasn’t there?” Looking at Soojin fills your vision with pure crimson, but it’s not because of her hair this time.

“Yes,” she whispers back, not daring to speak any louder than that. “You were… drenched in blood that wasn’t yours. And we were so scared you had been hurt somehow. I carried you to the bath and cleaned you but you didn’t have a single scratch on you.”

“O-Oh god,” you choke out. The red in your vision turns coppery as a different image takes over and a new memory swarms your head.

“What the fuck did you do!?”

Hands squeezing hard around your throat, shoving you under bloody waters.

“Let her go!”

“You ruined everything! How could you do this? Why are you so fucking useless? I told you to sit still and not do anything!”

The water spread to your nostrils and forced its way in as you struggled to find air.

“Jisung, release her right this instant!”

The hands around your throat just grew tighter.

Wooyoung eases you down to the floor when the rest of your strength leaves you. He keeps a hand at your waist, using the other to hold your head to his chest in a desperate attempt to control the wild tremors shooting through your body. You keep a hand pressed to your throbbing temple but it does nothing to alleviate the pain you’re in, one that feels as though something is trying to rip your head in half with their bare hands.

“C-Can’t remember more. I can’t, I do-don’t want to remember anymore, I — it hurts. It hurts too much, it hurts so much.”

“Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay. You don’t have to remember anymore, okay? You’re good, you’re done, no more. No more.” Even through the pain, you can’t miss the desperation in Wooyoung’s tone. His hand moves for your arm where your wristband sits, buzzing uselessly against your skin. “Y/N, what does this mean? Is something happening?”

You want to answer, You even open your mouth to do so. Yet the moment you do, the taste of that metallic soapy water fills your mouth and you choke on air.

“Y/N, please, what does it mean? Are we in trouble?” You think you shake your head but the panic in Wooyoung’s eyes isn’t reassuring and you aren’t sure you have any hold over the muscles in your body right now. “Please, do you know where our friend is?” He asks, directing his focus to where Soojin kneels in front of you.

“The brunette?”

“Brunette? No, no, I’m talking a blond?”

“J-Jongho,” you force out, gritting your teeth until your jaw hurts from the force. “Jongho… here too.”

“I saw that name on the register,” Soojin cuts in. “I checked it to find what room you were in and saw his name further down on the list.”

“Please get him and bring him. Please, I know you — we just need your help right now, please,” Wooyoung begs. His grip on your waist tightens a little as Soojin hesitates, and it doesn’t let up until the girl nods and leaves the room in haste. Wooyoung brings you back to his chest once she’s gone, matching your shaky breaths as he gently rocks you back and forth. “I can’t… know your memories or the pain you’re feeling right now, but I know what it’s like to suddenly be hit with memories you forgot you had. Ones that were suppressed behind an iron wall. I know what it’s like to have it slip out and hit you.”

“It fucking hurts.” You clench your jaw again, feeling a burn of pain up the side of your face with the movement. “Like someone is stabbing my b-brain with a da-damn icepick.”

“Are the memories painful?”

“I d-don’t know. I can hardly think straight. My head hurts. That’s all I can think about.”

“The serum… I’m assuming it’s the same one I was given back then. It can’t take away memories. Yeah, they tell you that it’s a wipe, but that’s only because they don’t want you trying to find those old memories. It can’t remove parts of the brain like that. They just use it to lock away memories but there’s no guarantee of it being permanent, so when you do remember something they tried to lock away, it hurts.”

“D-Does it hurt you like this too?”

“Yes, but I’m — pain isn’t something that bothers me all too much, and I’m lucky enough to have Yeosang nearby when it happens. I’ve got a prescription for the pain from Yunho too. We can… we can get you something long-term back on the ship.”

Another stab of pain hits as the door slides open, metal grating hard on your ears, but this time Jongho stands with Soojin. He rushes over to join you and Wooyoung on the floor in a panic, obviously torn between being excited to see Wooyoung again and your current crumpled state.

“Yeosang’s hour is up and he’s waiting at the meeting point. Captain hasn’t buzzed in on the contact yet.” Jongho reaches down to lay a hand against your forehead. You’re quick enough to turn your face further into Wooyoung’s shirt, inhaling the sickening floral scent that clings to his skin.

“Don’t even think about trying to take it away,” you hiss.

“I can’t take physical pain, don’t worry. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Here, something for the pain.” Soojin interrupts the moment to lean over you with a cup of unknown contents. “Fast-acting pain reliever. Every room has some in it just in case patrons get too out of hand. We keep it in the cabinets, I promise it’s nothing bad. It’ll numb you and make you a bit sluggish for a while, but it’ll also take the pain away.”

“Thank you,” Wooyoung murmurs as he takes the cup from her hands. He helps bring the cup to your lips, pushing some of the murky grey liquid inside into your mouth, and you struggle not to gag around the taste of it. He doesn’t stop until the entirety of its contents are drained into your mouth then tilts your head back to keep it down when some threatens to drip out the corners of your lips. An unknown hand comes down on your knee.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry.” Soojin. “I didn’t mean to hurt you with this information.” You swallow hard only to choke a second later on the putrid aftertaste clinging to your tongue. Wooyoung lets you cough into his shoulder without complaint, passing the now empty cup back to Soojin.

“You couldn’t have known,” you murmur after escaping the coughing fit. “It’s not your fault.”

“I didn’t know what they would do to you after we left the planet,” she sighs through the quiet of the room. “I should have expected it honestly, knowing Jisung, but maybe I hoped he would be better than that. He always manipulated you so it only makes sense that he would try to manipulate your memories too. Do you at least know what happened a little bit better now?”

“Y-Yeah, yeah.” You try to pull away from Wooyoung and get up but his grip on you doesn’t let up. “My memories were taken away for a second time and replaced with something else. So instead of only losing fourteen years of my life, I lost eighteen and spent the last three years believing those manipulated memories to be real. I’m peachy.”

Another buzz from your wristband pulls your attention away, and Jongho glances down at his own too.

“Cameras are down.”

“Let’s go then,” you mutter.

“Are you okay to move? Don’t push it if you’re not strong enough.”

“We need to go now while we still can,” you protect, letting Wooyoung help you to your feet even if it’s on shaky legs. Jongho gives a curt nod then heads for the window, no doubt to pry it open. Soojin catches you by the arm before you can fully turn away.

“I’m sorry, Y/N. Even if you can’t remember all of it, there are still things I regret saying and doing to you. I should have known back then how much Jisung was manipulating you and not pushed so much blame onto your shoulders.”

“You can get out now with us, Soojin. While you have the chance.”

“And do what with that freedom?” She huffs out a dry and lifeless laugh. “Wander aimlessly? Ash and Juyeon are both missing in action. I have no clues or leads on where they might be or if they’re even alive. I don’t have anything left out there beyond the House.”

“I… if I hear anything out there about them, I promise I’ll send you a message. I’ll find a way to get news to you, maybe through my captain’s contact or something. I swear if I can help you get out of this hellhole I will.”

Soojin reaches up to ruffle her hand through your hair, mussing the loose locks more.

“You always were a good kid, Y/N. Too good for the life you were forced to live.” It hurts to watch her smile. It hurts even more to let Wooyoung guide you to where Jongho waits by the now open window. “Go while you can, you three. The medicine will wear off in a few hours, but hopefully, you’ll have access to something better by then. I’ll make sure you get out safely.”

Jongho dips through the open space first, hopping down to the pristine streets below with little issue.

“Send Y/N down next!”

You can’t tear your gaze off Soojin. You don’t know when you might see her again or if you even will, and it hurts to leave her behind like this but she just keeps smiling at you with bright eyes and blinding hair.

“T-Thank you, Soojin. Please stay safe, if you can.”

“Always.”

With that, Wooyoung hoists you over the ledge of the window and dangles you far enough down so that your fall is softened a bit. Jongho catches you by the legs, taking the brunt of your weight before you hit the ground. Wooyoung drops down beside you without warning a second later. As Jongho eases you down, you dare to glance up at the window you just left from, and it shuts slowly without a sign from Soojin inside.

Wooyoung rushes back to your side and loops an arm back around your waist when you start to slump forward again.

“That’s — that’ll look too suspicious,” you mutter, pulling his arm back to his own side.

“We just dropped out a fucking window. I’m sure that would look more suspicious.”

“I’ll be okay.”

Yet two steps later, you’re stumbling over your heels and Jongho comes to your rescue this time. He tugs your arm through his own as he walks forward without saying a word. You can only lean your weight on him and slump your chin against his shoulder.

“Thank you…”

Silence drapes over the three of you as you make your way to the meeting point with Yeosang. You aren’t in as much pain as you were earlier (Soojin wasn’t bluffing when she said fast-acting) but the medicine is already making you a bit groggy. It feels a bit like you’re wading through sludge just trying to walk a few steps, and frankly, Jongho is the only thing keeping you going at this point. Wooyoung lingers at your other side. Every once in a while, you feel his worried gaze find its way to your form. He might even be speaking to you at some point because you hear something that sounds vaguely like his voice through the radio static in your ears, but there is far too much on your mind and too much to think about right now for you to pay any attention to that.

If… if I killed the king before Hyunwoo’s execution, then who did I kill that night? Did I kill anyone at all? Was that memory fabricated? What have I been working towards all these years if that’s a lie?

Funny how your search for answers only left you with more questions instead. There are too many questions to keep track of and not remotely enough answers to them. You know you won’t be able to have those answers yet either, not while San and Mingi are still missing and Jisung is bothering you. Where would you even look for answers now? Jisung would never tell you a thing, Hyunwoo is dead and gone, and now you’re leaving Soojin behind.

The one thing that reaches your brain through the static in your ears is a dry and choked sob. You pull yourself out of your thoughts as Wooyoung disappears from your side. It doesn’t take much to guess why. You’ve reached the meeting point, the all too small alleyway where Yeosang waits for you three, and Wooyoung is running straight to him with reckless abandon.

“Y-Yeosang, angel, Yeosang, my god I’m—” Wooyoung’s voice dies in a cracked sob when he reaches the Elitist. His hands barely brush the man’s shoulders because Yeosang drops to his knees in front of Wooyoung, face hidden but no doubt bearing tears, and he balls his fists around the flimsy material of Wooyoung’s pants. He presses his forehead to Wooyoung’s hip, hands traveling further up to press against the small of his back. Wooyoung can only card a hand through Yeosang’s hair in response, but it’s enough for now. It’s enough for both of them like this, with Yeosang’s knuckles white from the pressure of clinging to Wooyoung, and you and Jongho maintain your distance as best you can to give them this moment.

“Are they happy?” You whisper to Jongho even though the answer is blindingly obvious before you. The Berserker’s lips twist into a small grin.

“I don’t think there’s a word strong enough to describe how they’re feeling right now.”

Yeosang pulls his head off Wooyoung’s hip and stares up at the man with tears on his cheeks and stars in his eyes. Wooyoung dips down to the Elitist’s height, pulling his face up to his own and slotting their lips together like nothing else in the universe exists around them. Again, it’s raw, as all emotions between these two seem to be, but it belongs to them and it’s something you can’t take away from them. When they part lips to gulp in desperate breaths of fresh air, Wooyoung places his forehead over Yeosang’s and takes the breath from his lungs like that. They don’t exchange words but there doesn’t seem to be a need for words either, not until Yeosang seems to catch hold of himself and come back to his senses.

“The car is waiting for us at the other end of the alley. Driver’s already pulled up.” Jongho nods when the Elitist drags his gaze over to where the two of you stand. Yeosang lets Wooyoung pull him back into space after that, unable to contain a smile as the Siren continues to press more kisses to his cheeks. You and Jongho trail behind them to the other end of the alleyway. Seeing them together like this makes it worth it. You knew it would and you were striving to bring them this moment, but seeing it unfold before you like this increases that feeling tenfold.

Once in the car, Yeosang sits Wooyoung down in one of the cushioned seats then drops to the floor between his legs even when Wooyoung protests and tells him to get up.

“Stop, that’s weird! It looks weird, Yeo, please! It looks like you’re trying to su—”

“Shut up,” Yeosang mumbles back as he drops his head to rest against Wooyoung’s thigh. “You’re the one who makes everything dirty. Get your head out of the gutter.”

Wooyoung obviously doesn’t mind all too much because he returns to toying with the Elitist’s blond locks moments later as you and Jongho settle into the seats beside the pair. And from where you’re sitting, they really do look like young boys again, more than just a former slave and ex-prince but also less than that. Just… boys who fell in love despite the odds set against them.

“I’m sorry, Woo, I’m so sorry.”

“Shh, angel, I know. It’s okay. We’re okay.”

You tune out of the conversation there. It’s far too intimate and personal for you to encroach on, and the medicine has you falling asleep in your seat anyways. Jongho seems to pick up on that, reaching over to pat your leg.

“Rest while you can.”

A hum comes as your reply as you slump to the side, head hitting the side of the car with a loud thud. Jongho exhales a quiet laugh and pulls you over to rest against his shoulder instead.

“’m sorry for snapping at you,” you murmur. You’re forcing your eyes to stay open long enough to get the apology out but it’s growing more difficult by the second. “I didn’t mean to, I was afraid… of her slipping out of my grasp but… that’s no excuse.”

Your fluttering eyes snap wide open when something presses down hard on your nose. You blink uselessly at Jongho and the finger he hovers over your face.

“Stop talking nonsense, yeah? Rest. I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not?”

“Hm, no, I’m not.”

“Promise.”

“I promise I’m staying right here.”

“And we’ll get San back?” You mumble just before the drowsiness wins.

“We’ll get your San back too, I promise.”

✧✧✧ a/n: yall imma be honest this chapter feels like a whole fever dream and a half but i love it nonetheless she’s my Baby i hope you guys love her just as much and enjoy her <3 lots happened but also not a lot happened? i feel like the wc is so dramatic for Not A Lot but yaknow that’s life ! next chapter we’re getting juicy and bringing a part 16 move back bc teehee that’s what i do best u know me anywho let me know what u think as always i love u all im so happy to bring u guys this chapter and so excited for the coming ones!

taglist: @faeriewoobin​​ @sugarrimajins​​ @atinyinwonderland​​ ​@sparklychangbin​ @jeong-uwu​​ @jeonartemis​​ @anothershorthuman​​ @xxbluestrifexx​​​ @haotheheckk​​ @noonawriter​​ @lostscenarios​​ @nlost21​​ @mirror-juliet​​ @okokokok123-45​ @purple-aeon​ @theoinkypiglet​ @toothlessshiber​ @atinyarmyx1​ @simpforhyunjin​ @hwangwoosan​ @vampire-jimin​ @softyubi​ @drumboydowoon​ @chatsgotmytongue​ @just-a-starfruit​ @babydolljo​ @scintillating-souls​ @khjssss​​ @rawrrainn​ @hewwo-from-the-other-side​ @icekdy​ @eggteez​​ @bangtanxberm​​ @uglychildd​ @lucymultistan​​​​

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[mimik-u]

Togetherness

Summary: The aftermath of Steven transforming into a huge reptilian monster brings back old memories for Pearl, who remembers another time Steven was scared so many years ago.

A/N: This piece was written for the Pearl-focused I am a Pearl! mini-zine a couple of months ago! It was a great opportunity to get to explore Pearl's mind space after the events of "I am My Monster" and how her friendship with Greg has evolved over the years. ;w; Thanks to the mods for a great zine experience! <3

AO3 Link / Zine Tumblr Link / @iamapearlzine

—

Steven is sixteen years old when he erupts into a scaly, pink monster—fifty-foot tall and inconsolable.

Everyone tells him that they love him, but because words are rarely ever enough, they show him that they do; they embrace him; they hold him; they press their fingertips into his reptilian skin. His scales are cold and sharp against Pearl’s palms, keratin hard and impenetrable. She tells him that he shouldn’t have to keep anything from her, all the while burning with shame that he’s kept so much from her.

He’s felt responsible for her fragility and loved her enough to tiptoe around the Diamond in the room.

His mother.

His mother and the complicated history between them.

The love.

The torture.

The grief.

The love.

(Because what is grief after all but a manifestation of love? A reminder, its echo, and its painful, lingering, lovely ghost.)

Connie kisses Steven, very lightly, very softly, and he falls from the sky, a boy again. 

Pearl wraps him in a blanket.

Garnet carries him into the wreckage of their home.

And approximately one hour later, they’re all standing on the deck, waiting for Priyanka Maheswaran to finish her professional assessment of him as the sun sinks into a honey-colored sea.

Pearl cradles her face in her hands, elbows sinking into the railing, trying to retrace every missed sign in the blackness of her own head. She sees his skin glowing pink in the darkness—at the Reef, in Little Homeworld, just moments ago in the living room…

So many flares in the night.

And Pearl had watched them all fizzle.

—

Steven is six years old when he moves into the newly minted beach house, and he tells Greg that he’s afraid of the silence. Nearly all of his life, he’s been surrounded by noise—the gentle rumble of the van’s motor, the susurrant murmur of the sea, wind, rain, buskers playing guitars on the Boardwalk, the whoosh of the rollercoasters at Funland. 

His dad’s snores echoing off the tin ceiling.

His dad’s laughter.

His softly-sung lullabies, too.

The beach house is really quiet at night, Steven tells Greg who tells the Gems, and he doesn’t like that…

He’s trying really hard to like it, though.

Maybe things’ll get better next week.

Pearl never looks at Greg as he delivers this news, tapping her fingers against the side of her leg as she sits at the kitchen table, ankles primly crossed. He stands in the doorway—right beneath Rose’s painted image—wringing his hands and looking too awkward to be allowed. She resents him for this—for his awkwardness, for his intrusion into their lives, and for everything else, too. 

(Namely for Rose.)

She inwardly knows that she’s being unfair. 

That loathing a person on the basis of his existence is morally suspect.

Wrong.

But what are rightness and wrongness to emotions? To the sheer primality of grief?

Grief is irrational, she rationalizes to herself—she self-justifies; it knows nothing of ethicality.

“Why didn’t Steman tell us this?” Amethyst asks, absently scratching her nose. “If it’s noise he wants, I got an old drum set he can knock himself out on.”

Pearl frowns, well-remembering the ten straight years Amethyst played the drums through the nineties. Rose loved it; Pearl spent many hours alone in her room to decompress. 

“He’s still intimidated by you three,” Greg shrugs kindly. “And shy. You just have to give him reason enough to trust ya with stuff like this. Tucking him in at bed at night, y’know. Checking under the bed for monsters.”

“There aren’t monsters under his bed,” Garnet says, practical as ever. “They wouldn’t fit.”

Greg chuckles, running a flat hand across the back of his neck as he peers between the three gems. When he and Pearl lock eyes, she meets his stare coldly, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“But Steven doesn’t know that,” he mumbles, glancing away, his cheeks flushing. “You gotta shine a flashlight down there and show him there’s nothing there.”

“Doesn’t that seem patronizing to you?” Pearl asks, taking little care to disguise the condescension in her voice. Across the room, Garnet’s visored stare finds her—blank, inscrutable, and arcane—but Pearl knows her fellow gem well enough to understand that this is chastisement, silent and brutal.

Arching a thin brow, she ignores Garnet.

She demands an answer from Greg.

“Maybe,” the man concedes, but when he acknowledges her gaze again, there’s a little defiance in his eyes, an edge in his scratchy voice. “But maybe not. That’s what being a parent is sometimes. Patronizing the kid! Playing along. Showing him that you’re listening to what he needs. Letting him know that you’re there… haven’t you ever been afraid before, Pearl?”

“No,” she protests immediately, bristling.

“Pssh,” Amethyst snorts. “Last week, you jumped ten feet in the air ‘cuz you saw a snake.”

“You did,” Garnet smiles wryly. “I was there.”

Pearl scoffs, trying and failing to ignore that her cheeks are suffused with blue blush…

… and that Greg is staring at her with an almost distinguishable emotion in his eyes.

If she didn’t know better, she would say it was pity.

—

Dr. Maheswaran tells them that Steven is okay; he’s tired and sore—transforming expended a lot of his energy—but he’s ready to see everyone now. She tells them to be quiet and to maybe go in one by one, so he doesn’t get too overwhelmed.

Firmly, she warns them that it’ll take more than a good night’s sleep for him to heal .

And she doesn’t mean physically.

“Here’s a number of a good therapist I know,” she says, placing a card in Pearl’s hand. “Her office opens at nine.”

Pearl folds her fingertips over the edges of the glossy card stock but doesn’t quite glance down to look at the name—too fixated on watching Greg stand in front of the doorway, palming the screen door as he seemingly steels himself to go in. 

He’s aged so much in the twenty-something years that Pearl has known him—from his nearly bald head to the branching lines creasing the corners of his eyes—but for some reason, it is only now, in this ephemeral moment, that she realizes how old he is.

She doesn’t mean physically either.

As the others gather around Dr. Maheswaran, asking her questions, voicing their concerns, Pearl takes one deliberate step and then another.

—

Garnet tells Steven that it’s okay—there are no monsters under the bed—and when she shines a flashlight beneath the mattress, Amethyst is there, shapeshifted into a tiny kitten, purring at the child sweetly.

“See, dude?” She laughs, bounding out from beneath the bed. In an instant of blurred matter and color, she becomes herself again, her bangs sweeping inelegantly over her eye. “No monsters under the bed, only cute kittens.”

“Only kittens?” He repeats, grinning that famous gap-toothed smile that everyone adores. His legs are nearly swallowed by his oversized shirt.

“Kittens and dust bunnies,” Amethyst confirms, knuckling his curls playfully and smiling broadly when he laughs. “G’night, Steman.”

“Night, Amethyst!”

“Goodnight, Steven,” Garnet murmurs, lifting the six-year old into her arms and gently placing him onto the bed. She tucks him beneath the covers. She tenderly kisses him on the head.

“Nighty night, Garnet.”

And then it’s Pearl’s turn. Garnet and Amethyst head towards their temple rooms, and Pearl settles down on the edge of the comforter, balancing her left ankle on top of her right knee.

“Don’t forget about M.C. Bear Bear!” She teases softly, reaching over and placing the stuffed animal next to Steven’s arm. “He needs a snuggle buddy.”

Steven nods in agreement, his brow furrowed seriously over his eyes.

“Yep,” he says importantly. “I’ll be sure to hug him tight.”

“Excellent,” she says primly.

“Excellent,” he echoes playfully.

She lightly skims her knuckles across his soft cheek, smiling when he giggles a little, always ticklish…

… but then, when she withdraws her hand, letting it fall away from his face, the moment that immediately follows is quiet.

Too much so.

So quiet that Pearl can hear the softness of Steven’s breath, quiet enough that Greg’s words from earlier haunt her in the absence of noise.

Haven’t you ever been afraid before, Pearl?

Contrary to what Garnet and Amethyst may believe, she isn’t afraid of snakes —pestilent creatures though they are.

She’s surprised by snakes.

And afraid of much bigger things—five-thousand-year old secrets and equally ancient insecurities, for instance.

Six thousand years ago, after all, she was coded to believe that her highest order in life was to be a slave.

And sometimes—if only sometimes—she fears that her weaknesses were ingrained then, in the very moment she emerged from a shell and was called a pearl

One of so many.

Disposable.

Programmable.

Objectified.

Sometimes, she barely knows what it means to be herself, much less what it means to be a parent .

Indeed, Greg Universe of all people seems to have the idea down better than she ever could.

So, yes, Greg, she is afraid.

(Afraid of failing Steven.)

(Terrified that she’s already failed her. )

Patronize him, Greg suggested.

Play with him.

Show him that you’re listening.

Let him know that you’re there.

—

“Greg?”

Pearl places a light hand on Greg’s arm, startling him from his trance as he turns around to face her.

“Pearl!” He exhales, his breath coming in short bursts. “Y’scared me!”

“I’m sorry,” she says sincerely, not quite moving her hand away yet. His skin is warm beneath her fingertips, soft like wave-washed sand. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Yes,” he returns immediately, and then—taking one look at her imperiously raised brow—just as quickly rectifies himself. “No. I don’t know. I’m freakin’ terrified, Pearl. I feel like a failure of a parent. I don’t know what to tell him. But I gotta go in there anyway.”

He says it all very rapidly, as though he’s talking to himself.

Encouraging himself.

And putting himself down to do it.

“I’m his dad,” he concludes, his voice breaking, tears standing in his dark eyes. “I’m his dad, and I didn’t… I wasn’t there for him, and I should have—“

“ Shh, ” Pearl cuts across him gently, patting his arm as tears threaten to slide down her own face. “Shh. There are so many hypothetical should haves that we’ll all have to face soon when it comes to Steven. But not today, Greg .”

With her free hand, she conjures a tissue from her gem and hands it to him, unflinching and kind, even when he needs to wipe his nose.

“Today,” she murmurs, her voice inhibited, a hundred emotions thick, “we just let him know that we’re here.”

—

“Pearl?” Steven asks.

Pearl blinks rapidly, coming back to herself; she’d been lost in her own thoughts, nearly consumed.

“Hey,” she smiles, placing her hand on top of Steven’s own. His skin is so warm and soft; she absently wonders if her alienness feels sharp to him… hard… cold… “Here’s an idea—how about I sing you a lullaby before you go to sleep?”

“You know how to sing?” Steven’s eyes widen incredulously, his mouth shaping itself into a delighted smile.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she laughs playfully. “When we were younger, your mother and I used to sing all the time—hymns from our home planet and the like…”

A pause, infinitesimal, hesitant. 

“...I could sing one for you if you’d like?”

“You could?” The child dares to be hopeful; the very emotion shapes the pitch of his question, the light in his eyes.

He has his mother’s eyes.

Dark and full of stars.

“I could,” Pearl repeats. “I’d sing as long as you wanted me to.”

“How about fooooorever?” 

“Let’s just start with until you fall asleep,” Pearl laughs. “That’s a part of forever, yes? This moment?”

“If you say so, Pearl,” he wrinkles his nose skeptically.

“I know so, Steven.”

As she sings him to sleep in her mother tongue, Pearl admits that this must be something that Greg knows, too.

The importance of hereness to a child.

Togetherness on scary nights.