#you are trying to get errands done while history is happening and everyone in town is going through their own shit

[petitelappin]

Sketchbook as of late.

I'm very slowly and agonizingly trying to teach myself game design to make an 18th century point and click adventure, and also continuing to transition.

[douxie-casperan]

Rise of the Titans and the assassination Hisirdoux Casperan’s character development

I’ve been ranting so much since Wednesday morning that I finally condensed by thoughts of WHY this one subject keeps setting me off namely the utterly diabolical way they handled Douxie and Archie’s relationship in Rise of the Titans and how it wasn’t just enough to hit him with the nerf bat.

Please note I’m at the point where I literally cannot tell the difference between Aaron headcanons, Teny headcanons and my own they are all mixed together in the blender that does funky things. I also apologise for typo/weird wording it’s half 1 in the morning and I’d rather sleep than edit.

~

If asked to sum up Hisirdoux Casperan there are certainly several things that come to mind:

Sees the value in people as a whole and will find do anything if there is a chance of help someone out

Prefers tactics that disable/banish rather than kill an enemy yet willing and able to pull the trigger if circumstances become forced

While not academically inclined he is very capable of thinking on his feet and outside the box calling back to his time on the streets where a split-second decision making is the difference between being caught and not

Terrible at planning he’ll be in there figuring it out as he goes along which is what makes the previous point so vital to literally how he goes through life

A natural charmer that would let him talk his way out of trouble 9/10 providing a perfect cover for his distrustful nature and reluctance to be touched by random people

Very down to earth, humble and never one to brag unless outright sassing someone

Will bang out some hot tunes at the drop of a hat, his love of music has never wavered once since he caught the bug despite instrument hopping ironically becoming a jack of all trades much like his magic style

The earliest memories he can recall are him as a young boy lost in the woods where he was for an unknown amount of time before his soon to be familiar finds him amongst the roots covered in dirt and drying tears, there is nothing before that. Unbeknownst to him is the colour of his magic matches the blue of a lost mother’s eyes and the song that haunts his nightmares as much as fire could well be hers though there is no way to be sure. From that moment on Archibald, shortened to Archie, would become his entire world and their friendship only becoming closer during the years they prowled Camelot together trying to keep themselves in one piece until the fateful day Douxie tricks the wrong person leading him straight into the path of the famous wizard Merlin Ambrosius.

It's no real secret that Merlin is a very closed off person who keeps his emotions as well guarded as his secrets, prefers the style of negative reinforcement over positive encouragement and is a very strict perfectionist in his. At this point in his life he can be very easily described as a disaster that is genuinely doing his best with every little mistake held of his head and his future self when brought back to that time period is belittled by Lancelot (Errand boy) and Arthur (Boy) too meaning it’s hardly a wonder his confidence was very fragile revelling in the times where he could do things without being told off for it. With Morgana largely ignoring him too (Though personally I like to think as he got older she’d occasionally take an interest until the blistering arguments with their master started to talk over daily life) a certain disguised dragon would have remained a lifeline and give that physical affection he craved much like being told he’d done well never seemed able to earn.

With Killahead he’d lose that home and family he made leaving just the two of them behind struggling to figure out their place in the world that had abandoned them.

There wouldn’t have been the words for it back then but the way he had been treated prior was outright abusive instilling very bad habits into Douxie yet by irony he was always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and help those in trouble without thinking earning a reputation as the Shepard of Fire. He refused to become like him seeking to be better, perhaps not as a wizard (Even though he was learning new charms and spells along the way) but certainly as a person. Despite everything he suffers through or witnesses in the intervening years, the loss of friends and kindling of far newer ones he never loses his good heart 

That said is it any wonder that after rightfully sassing Merlin for resurfacing, ignoring his existence despite being in the same town and only visiting him to run a finding errand that all the confidence he’d managed to build completely from scratch after Camelot wavered causing him to fall back solely into trying impressing his old Master who was acting like his humble apprentice must have coasted the past few centuries who himself fell back into old habits of belittling? It’s only when Merlin started to truly listen and acknowledge that this was not the same Moppet he once knew after Excalibur was fixed that their relationship finally started to become more like equals. After the defeat of Janus the changeling that broke into the castle he touched Douxie’s shoulder with a genuine smile and for a second he simply didn’t know what to do because the old man never did this before his brain kicked into gear and realised he’d finally earned that one thing he’d been so desperate for his entire life: That in Merlin’s eyes he could be more than a failure who only caused problems for the closest thing to a father figure he’d ever had, never solved them.

A staff will be earned, history would be set back on trap by banishing Morgana tag teaming with Archie because they know one another inside and out, as promised he’d get the kids back to the present but soon after things would go badly wrong. They’d lose Jim and because of his very nature he’d make a gamble to try and get him back because that life is worth trying for just for in a moment of surprising selflessness Merlin would be sacrificed to save him. The only constant in his life apart from Archie would apologise, openly express pride and how the greatest thing he’d ever done was saving this orphan, call him son for the first and final time before turning into ash in his arms. There would be no time to grieve for things will barrel into the crescendo of Douxie sacrificing his own life to buy everyone time to escape because if they did that everything he’d ever done would be worth it with one last whispered goodbye.

(Zoe sees him fall, so does Archie – His heart would break if he was conscious just like theirs does when his body crumples into the ground)

On the very fringes of the Light Realm he is gifted one more conversation with Merlin in a truly heart-breaking sequence (THANKS TENY) where they can just talk without any fear of consequence or politics and just be completely honest. Douxie is allowed to stand equal to Merlin, to have the hug he’d needed since he was a child and be allowed to simply let go of every pretense and cry his heart out because this can never happen again. He’s allowed to say goodbye to both his master and Morgana who had both shaped so very much of his life but like the painting he’d always remained firmly in the long shadows of until that moment.

When Hisirdoux Casperan finally leaves Wizards if we just accidently deliberately put the shawarma back in along with checking in with Zoe before departure, it is with having learned to live during his wandering years but this is the point of true freedom because he can finally escape into his own light with Archie by his side to keep Nari out of the hands of those that would see the world harmed. It won’t be easy but it feels possible somehow even with the knowledge everything is simply running on borrowed time.

Then Rise of the Titans happens.

At first everything is genuinely fine! No more running, they engineer a solution shut the Order’s magic down to make them a lot less dangerous and potentially at least incapacitate them until they can come up with a longer-term solution but all the best laid plans and all that. Douxie’s quick thinking stops the train from crushing any of the people below and it’s a very him style move to switch places with Nari to stall for time because for some reason the plot disabled Claire from portaling her or any of the threatened people/heroes to safety. He openly sasses the Order despite knowing the consequences will be bad for him because once again he’s managed to trick them, buy time that at the other end isn’t even slightly utilised until he’s forced back into his own body in excruciating pain. Archie immediately mobs him with comfort just as he has done every single time the wizard is distressed or collapsed with exhaustion without thinking because that is what their bond is like, incredibly close and far more than the Soul Bond mark that connects them together. They’re very alike in that regard, you have to earn the right to touch while equally knowing exactly what form the other needs the most in that precise moment in a way very few others could.

Bar the moment of figuring out that an illusion is in place to hide where the Order is opening the Genesis Seals and the brief insistence on reconnecting with Nari somehow Douxie manages to forget everything that makes him who he is after this point choosing to stand in the background being very no thoughts head empty or can only use the most basic spells of his youthful days not the seasoned master wizard he should be. Nomura is treated like an innocent slip rather than an outright death he did absolutely nothing to prevent (Not to mention the stupid daytime thing) nor seems to care particularly about afterwards yet with Nari’s he’s allowed to openly grieve in a gorgeously animated visual showing how he’d failed to keep her safe despite everything. He did nothing to help here either mind despite allowing himself to be tortured in the same piece of media to keep her safe, just watched another loss happen right in front of his eyes in his conga long line of them.

Then there’s Archie, oh god then there was Archie.

The dragon who even here he’d been shown to have an incredibly close bond with him decides you know what sod that tell him goodbye I’m going to make a joke about having a kingdom now dad and me are trapped in here forever. Douxie on his part looked sad for all of three seconds saying that he hoped he’s happy like it's a pet that wandered out into the world one day and never came back instead of a lifelong companion that has been there for as long as he can remember. He was now completely alone in the world since Zoe was also written out entirely and because every bit of his background had been forgotten about it somehow meant nothing. This wasn’t “I know you miss him, I know you need to grieve but you are running out of time” moment like things had been with Charlie, this was “cool shapeshifting dragon cat is now stuck in a plot hole that’s a shame” with zero pay off or any of the genuine reaction that should have been there or hell even trying to Ohana him back that very second because it never should have happened in the first place. Then even this wasn’t enough somehow, they managed to de-power Douxie even further into uselessness bar the (Admittedly nifty!) sticky feet stunt, the one who fought Skrael and Bellroc to a stalemate was shunted aside with barely a thought and his head would somehow get even emptier.

The one person who knew the danger of time magic the most stood by and said nothing.

The one person who would suffer the most by a reset because the lynchpin to his issues would be asleep if you got it wrong and should have drilled it into Jim’s head the best time to aim for stood by and said nothing.

The one person who had just suffered the loss of his familiar, best friend and only family along with the almost sister like Nari stood by and said nothing.

Then to add further insult to injury the caption when Douxie and Archie is shown says Some go their entire lives living an existence of quiet desperation because every drop of his character growth, his ability to finally start addressing his trauma instilled back in the 12th century, the staff he longed for was instead openly mocked by going “Aww he got his cat friend back how nice!” Everything he’d rightfully earned and had now would be unable to progress until certain criteria are met because it hinges entirely on the Trollhunter going to Merlin’s tomb and there’s only so much your support network of two (One if she’s written out) can do, the root of the majority of his issues all stem from one man.

And this folks is why I’ve been going on multiple rants about Douxie in particular, everyone was hit with the out of character bat to some degree in this film but when they came for him they didn’t just stop after they took his legs out because they wanted him to suffer from something he’s never had any control over to begin with all over again. Abuse survivors deserve better, these characters deserve better and we as viewers deserve far far better writing than we were forced to endure.

[vrishchikawrites]

Anon asks - There was another idea I had seen on @crossdressingdeath's tumblr where JC's reputation was ruined because of his behaviour and WWX's attempts to protect him from the consequences of his behaviour. The concept happens pre Qiongqi Path where JC attacks WWX to the point it injures and frightens him. A passerby sees WWX startled and asks him what's wrong but WWX dismisses it as nothing. Said bystander ends up thinking that JC had sexually assaulted him resulting in the cultivation world gossiping about JC being a rapist when really he isn't. Overall, the cultivation world gossips about the other shitty things JC had done and because he did alot of pretty bad things, he can't defend himself and resorts to victim blaming WWX. That however only has him dig a deeper hole for himself. WWX, on the other hand is left confused as to why everybody was pitying him all of a sudden when they used to hate and/or fear him. By the time the truth comes to light, the cultivation world thinks JC had deserved it anyway with it ending with JC hated just for him being himself and public opinion on WWX flipping. If you don't mind, can you make it light-hearted?

(Probably not as light-hearted as you would wish. It is a bit complicated. Be a little gentle because I wrote this twice and ended up fleshing it out much more. Is this a short prompt or a long one? who knows. writer is tired. she will sleep now.)

Everyone has personal boundaries, even people who are usually tactile and social. Boundaries exist even between family members who love and trust each other.

Wei Wuxian is a veteran fresh from war. He has survived bloody battlefields, spent days dealing with one hostile enemy after another. Even before that, he had spent his days constantly battling resentful ghosts and monsters in a place he can’t bear thinking of now. Before that, he had survived torture at the hands of the Wens. And before-

Better not to think about it.

So, when Jiang Cheng presses up against him threateningly, his face twisted and eyes furious, Wei Wuxian can’t help but flinch. He takes a step back and puts some distance between them quickly. Jiang Cheng has grown increasingly bitter and discontent in these past few months and Wei Wuxian is getting tired of dealing with it. He doesn’t want to be in such close proximity with a man seething with fury.

Unfortunately, that reaction proves to be a mistake because Jiang Cheng follows him, “What? Are you too big for us now? Turning away from me in disgust now that you’re a war hero and the best of us?” Jiang Cheng is so close, their noses almost touch and Wei Wuxian feels his hair stand on end in response.

“Jiang Cheng,” He says lowly, something unsettling stirring in his chest. He feels almost anxious. His heart is racing and the proximity makes him feel like he’s trapped, “Back away.”

“Back away?” Jiang Cheng snarls, “Who are you to command me, Wei Wuxian? Do you know what people are saying about YunmengJiang? Do you know who-”

“Back away,” Wei Wuxian says tightly, his skin crawling, “Now.” His hard-earned instincts are sounding alarms. He feels threatened and provoked. He feels the resentful energy in him respond to the danger.

“What are you going to do? Send a few ghosts at me?” He sneers, “Try it! We’ll see how brave you are under the wrath of my Zidian.”

No. Wei Wuxian isn’t going to just stand here and let Jiang Cheng pick up Yu-furen’s habits, He’s just about to react, to give Jiang Cheng the thrashing he clearly desires when he realizes they are outside. He glances beyond his Sect Leader’s shoulder and sees a small group of three clad in bright white looking at them with wide eyes.

He bites back his angry retort and masters himself. He’s not going to squabble with Jiang Cheng in front of Lan disciples. His relationship with Lan Zhan is strained as it is.

“We’re in public,” He says, hoping that concern for his Sect’s reputation would move Jiang Cheng if concern for Wei Wuxian doesn’t.

Jiang Cheng looks over his shoulder and sneers at the Lan disciples before rolling his head, “Lans, of course.” He snarls and pushes Wei Wuxian away roughly, “I’ll deal with you later.”

Wei Wuxian takes a deep breath and watches his brother leave.

The Lan disciples are still looking at him with heartwarming concern. He waves at them with a smile and watches as they start like little ducklings and bow to him before fleeing.

Cute.

---

“We have to do something!” Lan Zhanxiao insists, “Did you see how he looked? Wei Wuxian was clearly trying to-”

“Shh! Keep your voice down!” Lan Lishan reprimands.

“Don’t say his name!” Lan Guan whispers urgently, looking around in a panic. There are already a few curious and interested eyes glancing in their direction. Wei Wuxian is a notorious name, after all. Even non-cultivators are interested in the man who had just a material impact on the war. It is hard to tell if they would’ve won without that powerful unorthodox cultivator on their side.

“We can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Lan Zhanxiao, always the righteous one, continues. He doesn’t care about the people around them, “If Wei Wuxian is hurt and we do nothing to prevent it, aren’t we culpable as well?”

“This is Wei Wuxian. Who would dare?” Lan Guan asks incredulously, “He is one of the most powerful cultivators in existence.”

“Is he?” Zhanxiao demands, “Doesn’t everyone know he’s very loyal to Jiang-zongzhu? Would he take a step against him? Even if it meant saving himself?”

“He should be building his own sect,” Lan Lishan says reluctantly, “He’s the Grandmaster of his cultivation form. It may be an unorthodox method, but it is still something new and entirely unique.” He would know. Lan Lishan is an avid student of history and cultivation theory. He knows that most cultivators with unique abilities tend to form their own sect to pass their teachings down.

He shudders at the prospect of cultivating resentful energy but Wei Wuxian has mentioned it is a technique people with absent or damaged Golden Cores can use.

The potential is almost limitless.

“See what I mean?” Lan Zhanxiao points out, “Hasn’t he been isolated from other cultivators because they fear his methods? If Jiang-zongzhu is really hurting him or…” He grimaces and lowers his voice, “That expression, Shan-ge, it reminds me of jiejie. What if Jiang-zongzhu is… doing something inappropriate?”

They all exchange alarmed glances, “You don’t think…?” Lan Guan breathes, horrified.

“He was scrambling to get away,” Lan Zhanxiao says, “And Jiang-zongzhu kept pressing-”

“We can’t talk about this here,” Lan Lishan says firmly, “Come, let’s leave.”

Unfortunately, they leave chaos behind.

---

Rumors are a powerful entity in the cultivation world. They are born in tea and wine houses, spread from one tradesman to another and spread to the far reaches of cultivation society in a matter of months.

The rumors about Jiang’ Wanyin’s treatment of a war hero are no exception to this rule. People gossip about it with their friends and neighbors, share the news with vendors while on errands, and the rumors continue to grow. With every retelling, the story changes, growing increasingly distorted and vile.

“The entire business is unpleasant,” A small clan cultivator says to one of his tradesman friends, “Jealousy really alters a man.” He speaks about old rumors then, speculations about Wei Wuxian’s parentage, Madam Yu’s wrath, and the Jiang heir’s relatively lackluster growth in comparison to his prodigious shixiong.

“Surely not,” Another cultivator scoffs, “Who would dare raise a hand against Wei Wuxian? Did he not decimate a large Wen battalion with just his flute and some music?”

“Merchants at Lotus Pier say Wei Wuxian always looks wan and tired these days. He has grown pale.” One woman whispers to her companion, “He spends more time in wine houses with ghost maidens than in the comfort of his rebuilt home.”

“It seems so improbable!” A young cultivator protests, “Why would Jiang-zongzhu provoke the sleeping dragon like this? Wei Wuxian is stable now but who knows when he will give into resentment?”

“Lan disciples saw it.”

And that’s the crux of the matter. If the rumor didn’t originate from Lan disciples, it might not have traveled so far. Lans are known for their honest and forthright nature, after all. What cause did they have to lie? And no Lan spoke carelessly, so their words must be the whole truth, without any exaggeration.

Because Lans are the source, everything they say is taken as fact. If one Lan disciple finds Jiang-zongzhu’s behavior horribly inappropriate then it must be. If another Lan is worried about Wei Wuxian’s safety, there must be a just cause.

The rumors spread and propagate, and soon almost the entirety of the cultivation world is aware of them.

---

Gossip is forbidden at Cloud Recesses. Disciples are usually discouraged from meddling in other sect business. Rumor-mongering is punished severely, with all parties involved facing the wrath of the disciple whip.

But Lans are raised to be righteous and compassionate. If someone is in trouble, a Lan must act. He must offer a helping hand and take the victim away from danger.

When the rumors reach Caiyi Town and land on the ear of one Lan Ruyao, he hesitates. He asks around, gets more information, and then rushes back to Cloud Recesses, intent on knowing it all.

Lan Ruyao seeks the three disciples that are the cause of it all and demands an explanation, his mind disturbed with worry. What he hears gives him no comfort for he cannot discard their concerns. The behavior they describe is alarming and their observations are precise, without any emotion clouding their judgment.

Lan Lishan narrates the incident in detail, describing every action with no embellishment or exaggeration. He speaks of Wei Wuxian’s retreat, of Jiang Wanyin’s insistence, the threat of whipping, and words spoken with cruelty and disrespect.

Lan Ruyao’s mind is disturbed as he retreats, absentmindedly assigning some lines to the junior disciples. They have erred by being so indiscreet but their cause is righteous. They don’t deserve severe punishment.

He meditates on the matter for an entire morning, trying to decide on a course of action.

You see, Lan Ruyao is Lan Wangji’s peer. He has known the Second Jade for many years, and while they are not close, they are of the same clan. The entire cultivation world may believe Lan Wangji hates Wei Wuxian, but Ruyao knows better. The Second Jade wouldn’t have been so insistent on bringing Wei Wuxian to Gusu if he didn’t care.

Lan Ruyao suspects both of them hold each other in some esteem. They have saved each other’s sides many times and seem to get along well when they’re not quarreling. He believes that they are friends.

It would be unwise to keep this from Lan Wangji.

Decision made, he quickly requests a private meeting with the Second Jade. The request is granted promptly and soon Lan Ruyao finds himself before his peer, readying himself for a difficult conversation.

The Second Jade listens to his piece without any interruption, his expression blank and beautiful as white jade. But his golden eyes are twin chips of flint, coldly furious.

Indeed, they are friends.

Lan Wangji summons the three junior disciples and questions them thoroughly. His demeanor becomes frostier as the interview progresses, his spiritual energy gaining a deadly edge when the juniors murmur of ‘inappropriate behavior.’

“You have my gratitude,” Lan Wangji says finally, bowing to him and nodding to the juniors, “Rest assured, I will address the matter directly.”

---

“Lan Zhan, wait!” Wei Wuxian protests as Lan Zhan drags him away by the elbow, his uncharacteristic behavior taking him by surprise, “Don’t take him so seriously, Lan Zhan! You know he’s a temperamental brat.”

Lan Zhan doesn’t say anything until they are a fair distance away from Jiang Cheng and the Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian tries to get an explanation for such unusual behavior but his companion is entirely silent, guiding him towards a crop of trees that offer some semblance of privacy.

“How long have you borne this?” Lan Zhan asks once they stop walking, his golden eyes bright and fierce, “How long have you endured without speaking a word to me or your friends?”

“All my life,” He rolls his eyes, “You know Jiang Cheng has a temper and says careless things, Lan Zhan. Don’t worry, I know how to handle him.”

“All your life?” Somehow, Lan Zhan seems stricken, “Wei Ying!”

“Aiya, Lan Zhan,” Honestly, he is moved by Lan Zhan’s concern for him. They have spent so many years just quarreling and being distrustful towards each other. The concern is a pleasant distraction from the wretched state of their relationship, “Don’t worry about it. I can deal with everything Jiang Cheng throws at me.”

“How can you be so callous about your own well-being?” Lan Zhan asks, his tone betraying his dismay, “Do you not care-” He visibly bites back those angry words and calms himself, his voice taking on a gentler note, “Did you think I would not help? That your friends wouldn’t offer you shelter or protection?”

Really, this is a bit of an overreaction, isn’t it?

“Do I really have any friends left, Lan Zhan?” He asks casually but the reaction he receives is anything but casual. Lan Zhan’s eyes widen as though he has been struck, “Aiya, please don’t look like that,” Wei Wuxian feels a stir of panic because Lan Zhan looks almost hurt, “I’m just being a brat.”

“Have a care,” Lan Zhan says, “Your dismissal of this matter doesn’t put me at ease.”

“Lan Zhan,” He sighs, “I’m used to it. You saw how we were at Cloud Recesses. Did I look unusually troubled then?”

“You’ve become… accustomed to it?” Lan Zhan asks, once again looking uncharacteristically stricken. Wei Wuxian feels a stir of concern in his stomach and reaches out, placing a hand on the Second Jade’s arm, “You’re accustomed to it.”

Not knowing what to do in response to such open emotion from Lan Zhan, he looks for something to distract him. Immediately, his mind remembers an old promise, “Let’s focus on something more pleasant. It’s about time you saw Lotus Pier in its full glory, Lan Zhan! I want to show you all of my favorite places, including all of the trees I climbed!”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan’s voice is low and pained.

Wei Wuxian’s smile softens as he tugs on the Second Jade’s arm, “Don’t think of unpleasant things, Lan Zhan. It’s a beautiful day and we haven’t seen each other in months! Let’s be happy, alright?”

Wei Wuxian feels a jolt of surprise as Lan Zhan raises a hand and covers his fingers, squeezing gently. The touch is warm and reassuring, and it sets Wei his heart racing.

Lan Zhan studies him for a long moment before dipping his head elegantly, his grip on Wei Wuxian’s fingers still firm and steady, “If Wei Ying wishes it,” He promises, “I will make it so.”

Oh.

---

It all comes to a head at the Discussion Conference. Wei Wuxian is accustomed to being the center of attention these days but the quality of that attention is different now. Instead of wary glances, he sees eyes filled with sympathy and tentative smiles of welcome.

Wei Wuxian being Wei Wuxian, ignores the nagging suspicion that lingers at the back of his mind and smiles brightly back at them.

That seems to make things worse because the looks of sympathy seem to somehow intensify. He even sees a few women blink their limpid eyes and turn away, as though disguising tears. Somewhat alarmed, he glances at Jiang Cheng and winces.

His martial brother is bristling with anger. There’s a thundercloud-like expression on his face as he meets every eye in the room with a clear challenge.

If glances towards him are filled with sympathy, those towards Jiang Cheng are filled with contempt and disapproval. Between that and Lan Zhan’s protective hovering, Wei Wuxian is at the end of his patience.

He needs answers and he needs them now before the situation can escalate somehow.

Baffled by the situation, Wei Wuxian looks around and finds the most reliable source of gossip he can find. “What is going on?” He demands as soon as he is at Nie Huiasang’s side, “Why are people glaring at Jiang Cheng like he’s a fierce corpse?”

Nie Huaisang waves his fan, his expression a strange mix of amusement and grim satisfaction. For one, his old friend doesn’t hide behind his usual prevarications. He glances around the room and seems to catch someone’s eye. Wei Wuxian follows that gaze only to blink as Lan Zhan walks sedately towards them, expression stern and disapproving, “Do you know what’s going on, Lan Zhan?”

The Second Jade remains silent, his eyes fixed on Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian sighs in frustration and glares at Nie Huaisang, “Nie-xiong, what?”

His curt tone is enough to snape Nie Huaisang out of his musings. The man smiles wryly behind his fan, “Ah, Wei-xiong,” He waves his free hand, “There has been some speculation about your relationship with-”

“Why don’t you speak up?” A loud voice asks and Wei Wuxian turns around, “Why don’t you defend Wei Wuxian, Jiang-zongzhu? You’re going to let people slander your loyal Head Disciple so boldly?”

It’s Wang Jin, the Sect Leader of Runan Wang Clan. The man’s face is twisted in rage and disgust as he stares at Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian frowns, ready to step forward and stand by Jiang Cheng in such a hostile environment.

Lan Zhan’s hand on his arm stops him.

He looks at the Second Jade questioningly but the man just shakes his head, “Wait.”

“Why should he defend him?” An annoying Jin pipes up, his voice sharp and mocking, “We know what Wei Wuxian is! He may pretend to be loyal on the surface, but he is nothing but a faithless dog-”

“Jin Zixun!” Nie Mingjue snaps, “I will not have you insult one of our men in my presence! He fought and bled on our side.”

Nie Mingjue’s words silence him and Jin Guangyao speaks up soothingly as Wei Wuxian frowns, studying the scene with keen eyes, “Let us all calm down. I’m sure Wang-zongzhu means well.” He smiles placidly, “There have been rumors, just a bit of gossip about Wei-gongzi speaking ill of Jiang-zongzhu.” Wei Wuxian tilts his head to the side, mind whirling.

He refuses to be angry. There’s something about this situation that has his instincts rattled. He needs to focus.

“The Hanguang-jin himself said they were lies. Wei Wuxian has never spoken ill of Jiang Wanyin!” Well, that’s not entirely true. He is certain he has called Jiang Cheng a temperamental brat in Lan Zhan’s presence more than once. “Jiang-zongzhu should know better than to-”

“Why does Jiang-zongzhu need to do anything for that man?” Jin Zixun demands and Wei Wuxian feels a stir of amusement. All of this drama on his account? He’s honored.

“What kind of Sect Leader is he?” Wang-zongzhu asks, fuming, “If he doesn’t even defend his own Head Disciple? Has he not brought glory to YungmengJiang? Doesn’t the Sect owe him a debt of gratitude?” Wei Wuxian winces and Jiang Cheng’s expression turns stony, “If you want to talk of rumors, why not discuss the other rumors?” Wang-zongzhu turns to Jiang Cheng with a scowl, “Is he not your brother in all but blood? Didn’t the former Jiang-zongzhu raise Wei Wuxian as his nephew? Is this how YunmengJiang treats its brightest disciple? How will you face Jiang Fengmian, Jiang-zongzhu?”

Wei Wuxian bites back a groan as Jiang Cheng’s expression darkens with fury. This is the absolute worst thing to say to his martial brother.

“Why is he so concerned about this?” Wei Wuxian asks, almost to himself.

Nie Huiasang leans in and whispers in his ear, “His sisters were… assaulted by the Wens.”

Wei Wuxian feels a shudder crawl down his spine and shakes his head. Those disgusting wretches deserved the death he inflicted on them.

He still doesn’t understand what this has to do with him.

He glances at Lan Zhan, he is looking at the scene with his usual frosty expression, giving nothing away. He looks ahead to see Jiang Cheng ready to erupt and frowns. “Lan Zhan, I need to… help, somehow.”

“Wei Ying needs to do nothing.”

He’s about to protest when Jiang Cheng finally snaps, “Glory to YunmengJiang? He has brought nothing but devastation to it!” Wei Wuxian flinches and Lan Zhan steps forward and to the side, pointedly placing himself between the two Jiang Sect cultivators, “YunmengJiang has always been glorious. My ancestors bled and fought for it! We earned our glory through centuries of cultivation and diligence! I owe him a debt? Wei Wuxian owes me the lives of my parents! He provoked the Wens to save Lan Wangji’s life and I lost my family because of it!”

“Jiang-zongzhu, perhaps-”

“Shut up!” Jiang Cheng interrupted Jin Guangyao, “How I treat my Head Disciple is none of your business.”

“It is very much our business if you’re abusing him,” Nie Mingjue says and it silences everyone.

Wei Wuxian is… dumbfounded. He feels like he’s just a mass of confusion at this point because nothing about this situation makes sense. “Abuse?” He whispers harshly to Nie Huaisang, grabbing his arm to drag him away to a quieter corner, “Nie Huaisang, what is going on? Jiang Cheng doesn’t abuse me!”

“Does he not?” It is Lan Zhan who speaks, his expression solemn, “Truly, Wei Ying? Does he not abuse you?”

“Of course, not-”

“So he didn’t threaten you with Zidian?” Nie Huaisang asks, “Or try to physically intimidate you while you were clearly trying to step away?”

Wei Wuxian frowns, “Well yes, but that is just him being angry! He does that all the time.”

“That is no comfort to us.” Lan Zhan says stiffly.

“Didn’t he push you away several times? We have accounts from people who saw you fall to the ground.” Nie Huaisang’s expression is unusually stern, “Didn’t he seek to isolate you from everyone? Didn’t he keep telling you Wangji-xiong hated you?”

“Wangji-xiong gave every impression of hating me.” Wei Wuxian firmly denies, “Let us not attribute that particular error to someone else.”

“Indeed,” Lan Zhan nods graciously, as expected. He wouldn’t be Lan Zhan if he didn’t accept his own mistakes without hesitation.

“Wei-xiong,” Nie Huaisang tucks his fan away and he sees Lan Zhan focus on that, his eyes suddenly sharp, “He has been saying the same thing since you were at Cloud Recesses. He has always dragged you away from Lan Wangji. You saved Lan Wangji and Jin Zixuan’s lives. Why is he so intent on our Second Jade, hmm?”

Wei Wuxian shakes his head, “You’re making this unnecessarily complicated.” He says, “On the surface, all of these actions appear wrong but the intent behind them isn’t cruel.”

“Your love for him blinds you.” Wei Wuxian narrows his eyes sharply at his old friend, “If er-ge treated Wangji-xiong like that, you’d be furious. Just the threat of da-ge whipping would have you reaching for your flute.”

“Huaisang-”

“Did you think we wouldn’t feel the same way?”

Wei Wuxian studies him and Lan Zhan, realizing they are utterly serious. Concerned and a bit baffled, he looks at Jiang Cheng over his shoulder, only to find him nose to nose with Wang-zongzhu. “Heavens,” He breathes and steps forward, determined to intervene.

“You think what?” Jiang Cheng’s voice is full of disgust, “You… you think I have… that I’m some disgusting cutsleeve?!”

Wait, what?

“How dare you?! I would never touch a man!”

“Is that what he’s focusing on?” Nie Huaisang asks incredulously.

For once, Wei Wuxian has nothing to say.

---

It takes a few weeks for fresh rumors to make their rounds. People now know that Jiang Wanyin hasn’t behaved inappropriately with his martial brother, but that doesn’t make much difference.

The cultivation world, in general, still believes that Jiang Cheng’s behavior is abhorrent. Wei Wuxian is tempted to point out the hypocrisy of their words but knows it is futile. Once the masses make up their minds about something, few can persuade them to think otherwise. Jiang Cheng’s reputation has been tainted forever and there’s little they can do about it.

Unfortunately, this issue has also cemented the break between Wei Wuxian and his Sect Leader. There’s nothing that can repair the relationship now. He feels a pang of loss but he had already resigned himself to that when he had given away his Golden Core.

Fortunately, it seems he has some options available.

“Come to Gusu with me,” Lan Zhan says, his tone softer, his voice imploring, “Please.” This time, Wei Wuxian can’t mistake his intent. Lan Zhan’s reaction to the entire mess made one thing very clear to him.

Lan Wangji cares about him.

Isn’t that something? Never in his life did Wei Wuxian think he would be in such a position. He had always assumed Jiang Cheng would be by his side and Lan Wangji would stand against him. But everything is different now.

Wei Wuxian thinks of his childhood home, thinks of a life that has been irrevocably changed, and sinks in those memories for a brief moment. Despite what everyone thinks, there have been some good times. He doesn’t regret the course his life took when he was welcomed to the Lotus Pier by Jiang Fengmian.

He lingers, briefly, on regret,

Then, he shrugs it off and looks into the golden eyes of his future with a grin, “I’ll come to Gusu with you, Lan Zhan.”

And that’s that.

[lo-55]

Playing With Fire Ch. 2

What Do You Know?

@emrysaf

When dawn breaks through the window and assaults your eyes you take a few long minutes to relish the feeling of obliviousness. 

If you lay here for long enough and pretend hard enough that yesterday never happened maybe you can open your eyes to your own living room, or even a hospital room where they’ll tell you you took too many Benadryl and hallucinated everything. 

Eventually you have to open your eyes and look to the ceiling. 

You really don’t wanna do this, but here you are. Doing this. 

You really, really wanna open your eyes and find yourself home, with the storm blown over and your life back to normal. You wanna call your parents, who you never knew you could miss quite this bad. 

You can’t do any of these things. 

All you can do is open your eyes and look at the unfamiliar ceiling.

There’s a few cracks in it that you count while you remind yourself how to breathe. Eventually you have to get up and change into the school uniform instead of the blinding orange jumpsuit. If you remember right you were all supposed to meet in a classroom to get your final assignments, and then jump on a train and go to your new company with a resume in hand. 

You ended up following a pair of girls to the classroom, where you plopped yourself next to Shinra. You didn’t see Arthur or Ogun anywhere, which was weird. If you recalled right Ogun stayed in the fourth after graduation, and he and Arthur were close friends of Shinra, even if Arthus disagreed with that fact for the most part. 

You shoot Shinra a quick grin, and turn to face the front again. 

If you remember right, this was where your were assigned the fourth in the game, along with Ogun. You (or the MAIN character) got in trouble snooping around and Ogun, after hearing your reasoning, turned himself into your own personal body guard. 

Now that you were thinking about it, it might be a good idea to start writing everything you know down. 

God knows you’re gonna forget something important when you need to remember it. 

Er, Sol knows? 

This is stupid. 

You look up at some nameless teacher who paces the front, holding a stack of assignments for you and copies of the applications that had been sent to each of the companies. 

This is it. 

You sit a bit straighter. 

The teacher hands out each person a form. When you look to the side you see Shinra grinning that huge, nervous smile of his and it’s all you can do not to pinch his cheeks and tell him how cute he is. 

The teacher finally hands you your assignment. 

Company 8. 

You do a fist pump. 

“Hell yeah! First choice!” 

A few of your classmates shoot you startled looks. Was your character really so quiet before? 

“Hey, I got the same one,” Shinra poked his head over to see. The list was pretty simple. All it said was the company number, their captain, leuitenant, and address. A glance around revealed that everyone else had a whole packet of information on their new companies. But 8 was so small, and so new, apparently they didn’t warrant it. 

That was fine. You already knew enough it hardly mattered. 

“We’ll be together then,” you say cheerfully. “Wanna take the train together?” 

Please say yes. I don’t know where the train station is. Or how to ride one. 

Shinra nodded, “Yeah. Sounds like fun.” 

“Wanna meet at my room and we’ll go? It says we’re supposed to meet them at their station this afternoon.” 

“Are you sure?” Shinra looked startled. You poked his cheek. 

“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t, babe.” 

Shinra suddenly looked unsettled. “You’re not just doing this to mess with me, right?” 

“Mess with you?” You cocked your head. “What would I do that for?” 

He didn’t have an answer for that, but it made you sad. You knew he got teased a lot, but was it really so bad he thought you being friendly was a trick? 

You were so gonna get in a fight here someday. 

You flipped your company eight paper around so you could take a look at the copy of your resume that they’d be getting there. It was pretty bare bones. It had your name, age, weight, height, blood type, and listed you as a Second Class Fire Soldier, as well as your grades. They were all pretty average, but apparently you were good at math. 

You didn’t have a home address, but it did say you were Ueno, but that part you knew already. In the game you’d gone to Asakusa on an errand, done a bunch of side quests, and found out that Ueno was your home town and it was nearby. It was mostly made of museums and old buildings. 

Still nothing about your pyrokinesis. Damn it. 

This was starting to get annoying. 

“So I’ll see you in a few hours, right?” You clarify quickly, looking up at Shinra. 

Shinra still looks surprised, but he nods quickly, with another small smile. “Yeah. I’ll see you then.” 

You bump fists with him again before you retreat to your room. 

You take to your desk and grab a pencil and paper to try to write down everything you remember, in english for good measure. You don’t know how you know japanese now, but then again you don’t know a lot of things lately. 

What I know for sure: 

MAIN CHARACTER’s family is from Ueno. They died in an infernal fire. They had a sister they’re looking for. They have their sisters ring, a scar on their wrist, and lighter that’s connected to the Tragic Back Story. After the fire SISTER enrolled in the Fire Force Special Academy, leaving MAIN on their own for a few years. She disappeared not long after graduating, and MAIN joined to try to find her in turn. 

In the original game MAIN joins fourth company, which their sister was a part of before her disappearance. In their first night there they dream of a man in a red suit who smiles and pats their head. He’s probably important. Maybe dad??? Likely dead. They snoop around and get in trouble a couple of times, but the captain is on their side and let’s it slide with a slap on the wrist? And no mention of wanting to be lit on fire. He’s a cool, if weird old dude. 

Ogun takes it upon himself to look after MAIN after they nearly get arrested looking into 5th company. 

    Note, avoid the Princess until after Shinra works his magic. 

A choice is made: agree to let Ogun help or ditch him. 

MAIN chose help and together THEY snuck into the Holy Sol Temple. While Ogun looks above, MAIN manages to find a door leading down to old training grounds.

    Note. MAIN didn’t know they were for the shadow sun whatever they were called training. 

MAIN gets lost and pops out at the end of a tunnel, where Joker happens to be setting some cards up. 

    Note . Why???? 

A choice is made ; Tell Joker the truth or lie. 

MAIN admits to Joker that they’re looking into a disappearance, and suspect the church of having something to do with it. They admit that they think the entire situation is a little hazy, and the history is a fragile thing. After that Joker is considered a Friend.  

MAIN returns to Ogun, but only hints at what they found underground. That night they dream of the Man in Red, who tries to speak to them and pats them again. They notice he has a ring with the same design as their own. 

MAIN also spent time in Asakusa with Benimaru Shinmon and Konro. MAIN was little more than an over glorified messenger at the time, but took advantage of the opportunity to see their old home. (UENO) 

    Note. Benimaru is hot

A choice is maid ; leave at once or help out. 

Did a buncha side quests in Asakusa when MAIN stumbled on an old subway entrance in the basement of a restaurant they were working in. The owner says it’s dangerous to go down, but there are a few other holes around the city. Most have been boarded up long ago. 

MAIN, not knowing what they are, leaves them be. 

    Note. Were the subways part of the underground church forbidden place??? Asakusa doesn’t follow the church? So they don’t think they’d curses just dark and flooded? 

MAIN goes home. Rumors of the White Clad begin to circulate, and MAIN goes to company eight to ask Shinra about them directly, thinking that their sister might have been taken by them. 

. . . 

You look at your paper and realize something vital. 

You’ve misspelled maid. 

Fuck it. 

You also write the three powers you could have picked down in blue ink, taking the last pen in your drawer out.

The fire wings, Phoenix in the game. They were support type, with heavy defense properties and minor healing powers, but you couldn't fly which was lame. 

The fire spear, the Sun Lance, was a damage type power. It took fire from around you and made a blade at the end of a long stick. Technically it was a spear, but if you flipped it upside down you could ride it like a witches broom. That one you could fly with, but not the wings. 

The magnet sand, Dark Desert, was a tank type. They made a lot of long range weapons and smashed through fire pretty easily and made strong walls, but it couldn't get too close to you or you yourself will take damage, and you can’t move while you use it. 

They’re all really cool, but you still don’t know which you have and you have no idea how to find out. And you can’t ask anyone or you’ll look crazy! 

...Maybe you should arrange an ‘accidental’ fall down the stairs and claim anmesia. 

Just when you’re seriously considering that option a harsh knock sounds on the door. 

You jump and smash your arm so hard into the drawer you actually break the bottom out of it. 

“Shit! Just a second!” You yell at the door. You scramble to try to hide the evidence when you realize ; the drawer isn’t broken. The bottom is fake. 

You carefully extract, from within, a thin, red, leatherbound book. A look at the inside cover shows you a note. 

To keep your thoughts in order, you scatter brain. 

<3 Fuyuki

Another knock sounds. 

“Hey! Are you ready to go?” Calls Shinra from the other side. 

“Y-yeah! Just a second!” You stuff the book into the front pocket of your bag and throw yourself to the door. You swing it open and throw Shinra back with your blinding grin. 

“Let’s go!” 

~

When the two of you board the train, each clutching your bag close, you’re forced to stand shoulder to shoulder with Shinra, who ends up keeping up his grin the whole time even though you can see him visibly straining to stop it. 

It probably doesn’t help that you keep looking at him, but oh well. 

The second you step out on the platform the screaming starts. A burning train is on its way. An infernal. You and Shinra scramble towards the sound, with Shinra in the lead, and come to a halt just in time to see the train stop. Fire streams out the windows and a creature from a nightmare crawls out of door. 

You swallow thickly. You can smell burning flesh. You can feel heat on your skin. 

This is real. 

You tear your eyes away from the walking corpse in time to see Company 8’s bad ass entrance. They’re all so cool! Maki is such a badass, and Obi is way too strong, and Iris is sweet faced and determined- 

You’re barely able to focus on the infernal itself, and you actually forget that the big metal sign is going to fall up until it happens. 

Shinra shoots off like a bullet. 

You’re left behind, your hair whipping behind you and your arm raised to protect your face while Shinra saves Iris for not-the-last-time. 

You watch him introduce himself, for a moment feeling like you’re just an observer. Its not really intruding, but the familiarity of it all doesn’t help anything. 

It’s not until Shinra points at you and says your name that you snap to attention. Your body knows to salute even if you don’t. 

“Sir!” You echo. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. That was totally awesome, sir.” 

Obi gives you a brief once over before he nods, seriously. 

“Yes. Yes it was. It’s good to have the two of you. Come on. We should get going, back to the cathedral.” 

You and Shinra hurry to grab your things and follow after the four of them. 

When they’re not looking you elbow Shinra. 

“That was so cool!” You hiss. “I didn’t even have time to react and you totally saved the sister!” 

“A-ah, you really think so?” Shinra looked away, his cheeks pink and his grin huge. He scratched his cheek in embarrassment. “ I just did what any hero would!” 

You laugh and swing your arm around his shoulder. “True! Still, it was really awesome. I know I can count on you to help me in the future, right?” 

Shinra nods quickly, however embarrassed he might be.

“Yeah! Or I’m not-” 

You don’t get to hear his new, weird nickname. You’re cut off by the fact that instead of loading into a matchbox the captain has called you a cab. 

That’s weird. 

You know that’s weird. 

“...I don’t get it, but I’m not fighting it,” you say after a minute, and crawl inside. Shinra follows suit and the two of you finally make your way to the run down cathedral. 

Home suite home. 

 ~  ~

A/N So which power do you guys wanna see?

Dark Desert, Phoenix, or Sun Lance? Please let me know!

[rdmfavcpls]

Breaking News

Title: Breaking News

Category: Digimon

Rating: T

Pairing: Ami/Arata

Summary: Arata wants to go to a convention about reporters. Ami tries to talk him out of it, but they still end up going. He finds out why she was so hesitant later.

Prompt: “I really wish you’d told me your mother was in town.”

Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to Digimon

Author’s Note: I’m just throwing this out here but for some reason, this story I am very proud of. I don’t know why, but every time I reread it I just felt proud. I haven’t felt this proud in my stories in a long time.

~~Story Begins~~

“Please, Ami,” Arata said. “I just want to go to one’s person’s talk. After that, we can leave.”

Ami stared at Arata. His face did not match the desperation that was showing in his grey eyes and his long black shaggy hair only highlighted the intensity of his grey eyes. “We can’t go next year?” she said hopefully.

She already knew the answer.

“No. Yukino only shows up to these conventions once every five years because of how busy she is. This year has been her biggest year since she started,” Arata said.

“I’m sure it will be uploaded online,” she said. 

“It won’t have the same feel. Why are you doing this?”

Because I don’t want you to leave me.

Ami closed her eyes for a second. She knew that her fear and anxiety would show in her ocean blue eyes and while her flaming red hair would be able to hide her eyes, it would be weird for her to suddenly take her hair out of its side pony. 

“Fine,” she said with a sigh that allowed her emotions to escape. A sigh that Arata picked up on. “I’ll go with you, but I won’t go to Yukino’s speech.”

I can’t destroy the image that everyone has for her. I could never measure up to her.

“Ami, is something the matter?” Arata said. 

“Nope, everything is okay. I’m just disappointed I’ll miss the biggest episode of my soap opera,” Ami said. “I could sneak out and watch it while you listen to Yukino’s speech.”

She didn’t see Arata’s furrowed brow. “Ami, you don’t even watch soap operas,” he said. “Besides, Yukino’s speech isn’t scheduled at any of the times that soap operas come on.”

“Summer assignment.  Need to watch three episodes and do a character study on all of the major characters,” Ami said. 

“Okay, and you plan on doing this during Yukino’s speech?” 

“It will give me something to do since I know she’s the only one speaking at that time,” Ami said. “This way you can stay longer and -”

“As much as I would love to get her autograph, I’m not that patient to wait in line,” Arata said. “You really don’t want to go, do you?”

“Not really,” Ami said. 

He kissed her forehead. “Thank you.”

~~Digimon~~

“You know, you didn’t have to dress up,” Arata said glad he had his hood up to hide his ears. 

“What?  You don’t like it?” Ami said as she poked his side. Her yellow shirt was replaced with a white shirt that had no sleeves and ruffles in the front and a black skirt.

“I never said that,” Arata said. “Shall we go?”

“Of course,” Ami said with a smile.

~~Digimon~~

Ami stayed close to Arata’s side. She had a tendency of getting lost in places like these, but she also trying to avoid someone.

She didn’t want her to see them.

“You okay?” Arata said. 

“Yeah, why? Oh, am I getting too close to you?” Ami said. She took a couple steps away from him.  “Sorry.”

Arata watched her. People did surround them, but he doesn’t know who they are and they are too busy in their own conversations to pay attention. He knows Ami is a saint, someone who deserves a man (or woman) that is a lot better than him, but he’s selfish. He’s been selfish the entire year that they’ve dated and she’s been patient.

She has the brightest smile on her face when she was allowed to poke him in order to tease or get his attention. She accepts his small kisses on her forehead and knows that is his way of saying ‘I love you’ because he’s too much of a coward to say them to her. 

Next month they will have their one-year anniversary and he hasn’t properly kissed her yet.

“Arata?” Ami said in a small voice.

He reached over and grabbed her hand to pull her back to him. The grip of his hand didn’t loosen or change when she was too stunned to try and ask him if he was sure. He did use this moment to intertwined his fingers in between hers.

“You wasn’t too close. I know how easy it is to lose you in crowds like this for some reason,” Arata said as he allowed her to see the pink on his cheeks which meant his ears were red. “I know you didn’t want to come here, but you seem like you are in a room filled with predators and that you are prey.”

“Ah. Sorry. I didn’t think it was that obvious,” Ami said.

“Is there someone here who you are trying to avoid?”

Ami nodded her head and swallowed.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you really wanted to go,” Ami said with a smile. “As long as I keep an eye out, I’m 60% sure that if I see her, I can escape before she notices me.”

“Is this person dangerous?”

“Oh! You should get going so you can have a good seat for Yukino’s talk.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll work on my soap opera project,” Ami said. She leaned up and kissed his cheek before she walked away.

Arata felt her hand pull away and he watched her walk away. He frowns. He didn’t realize that the person who she was avoiding would be here or that they were dangerous. He looked at his hand before he shoved it in his pocket. He was already missing the feel of her small, smooth, delicate hand in his own oversized hand.

~~Digimon~~

“That was super amazing!” Arata said. 

He was walking next to Ami and they were heading back to his apartment. 

“Yukino is so amazing and cool. Not only is she a hard-core overseas reporter, but she is also a big fan of history and video games!”

“I’m glad you had fun,” Ami said.

“Thank you so much for coming with me. You really should have listened to Yukino’s talk. Your mother is a reporter, isn’t she?”

“Yes, why?”

“Yukino gave a lot of notes over how to be the best reporter and everyone was taking notes!” Arata said as his pace quickened so he walked ahead of her.

He was still talking about Yukino’s talk and Ami knew he was in his fanboy state, but it hurt. Because he was talking about Yukino. Just like her past boyfriends.

She’s only had three boyfriends in her 21 years of life, but she’s left the last two because of Yukino. The little voices of self-doubt and jealousy whispered in the back of her mind that she had tried to ignore. 

“I love Yukino!” Arata said.

Ami stopped in her tracks as the voices yelled inside of her head. She stared at Arata’s back as he kept walking. It was the first time she has ever heard him say that the L word.

Love.

It wasn’t directed towards a fictional character or a historical person. It wasn’t aimed at one of his family members or her. It was being aimed at Yukino.

A celebrity, a tough reporter that wouldn’t stop until they got their answers, a well-respected woman around the world, a fighter for many things, and a survivor of cancer. 

Her own mother.

“Ami?”  Arata said as he turned around to look at her when he noticed she wasn’t beside him. “Ami, are you okay?”

“What? No, I’m sorry,” Ami said. She grabbed her left arm. “I just remembered that I have an errand I needed to get done today.”

Arata narrowed his eyes as she grabbed her arm. It was a sign that she was lying that he wasn’t sure if she knew it or not.

“Sorry, I got to go,” Ami said and ran off.

“Ami! Wait!” Arata yelled. 

She was already lost in a crowd of people. He couldn’t see her red hair anywhere and no one was being pushed or shoved out of the way.

~~Digimon~~

“Has any of you seen or heard from Ami?” Arata said as he reread his message before he sent it in a group chat. He sat his digivice down on the table and paced. 

It’s been two weeks since Ami ran off. Their year anniversary was coming up and he hasn’t seen or heard from Ami except for when she messaged him that she couldn’t make it to their date. He’s tried to hack her digivice, but it was offline.

He picked up his digivice up as soon as a series of beeps sounded.

Yuugo: Not recently, why?

Yuuko: I believe I saw her at Akihabara last week,

Yuuko: She looked pale and showed signs of crying.

At least, Yuuko saw her. He didn’t like her description of his usually cheery and bright girlfriend. However, Nokia hasn’t responded yet. She’s usually the one who knows about Ami whereabouts or condition. The one who Ami goes to whenever they have a fight.

Arata: Nokia?

Nokia: ...Can you erase all traces of this conversation? 

Yuugo: Why?

Yuuko: It is possible. 

“Please,” Arata whispered. “Please tell me that she’s okay.”

Nokia: Try her apartment.

Arata: I already did. She’s not there.

Nokia: Try again. You might’ve missed her. Just be gentle when you see her.

Nokia: She’s hurting.

Arata: Thank you

~~Digimon~~

Ami yawned as she stood by the escalator on the first floor. She always enjoyed spending time with her mother, but so much as happened and she’s drained. 

It didn’t help that she cried the first two nights her mom was back. Then they were busy baking that Ami believes she will have the smell of sugar, butter, and spices linger on her for a good month. 

Her mother was a reporter and knew that Ami was hiding something and with Ami’s past experiences, she knew it was a boy problem. Yukino had to tell Ami something important as well so she took Ami out for shopping which was a mistake because her agent saw them and - 

Ami rubbed her temples as she felt a headache approaching and the pain medication wearing off. 

The agent crossed the line. He had grabbed Ami and shoved her against the wall. He had his phone out, ready to call the police because she was one of Yukino’s fans that got way too close when her mom got in control and fired him on the spot.

Than after Ami got checked out at the hospital and Yukino spoiled her and drowned her in love and apologizes. Yukino had to start the search for a new agent that WAS approved by Ami and would understand that Yukino cannot have a big workload since cancer has started its battle with her again. 

“I need to remember to spoil Nokia soon,” Ami said as she continued to rub her temples. 

Nokia was the only person who Ami leaned on at this time. She wasn’t going to fault Arata for his feelings over Yukino. She was interesting and hardcore to all of her viewers. Everyone loves her and Ami is nothing like her.

She also wasn’t going to fault her mother because her TV personality was still a part of her. She went to unscripted TV reporter from zero to one second when her ex-agent picked her up. Her mother was also a doting and lovable mother that always prided Ami has her biggest achievement and the best reward she ever received. 

So, Nokia listened to her in a digicall as she cried and spilled all of her insecurities she always had about herself. Nokia learned about Ami’s past boyfriends and the internal struggle she has between seeing Yukino at events and avoiding her at events because of how she’ll act.

Nokia learned about her insecurities she felt with her relationship with Arata. She refuses to pressure Arata to do something that he felt uncomfortable doing just to push some of her own insecurities away.

Nokia took it all with a willing ear, a late night ice cream snack, cinnamon whiskey, and surprised comments (You’ve been dating a year and he hasn’t kissed you yet?  Before you say it, kissing on the forehead doesn’t count.” “Hold up! You’ve been dating for a year and you haven’t heard him tell you that he loves you even though you say it almost all the time to him?” “Why wasn’t I informed of this earlier? Someone needs to tell him to man up and if he doesn’t then I call  dibs on taking you away from him.”) with stride and promises not to tell anyone of her troubles. 

That is until Ami and Arata get married and Nokia gives the maid of honor speech. It is also because of Nokia that Ami isn’t going to break up with Arata yet. Her own mother seems confused over Arata as well and told Ami to give him another chance.

“Ami!” she heard a familiar voice say.

She turned her head to face the person, but she was engulfed in a hug. Her chin was resting on a white-clothed shoulder and black hair was seen out of the corner of her eye. 

“Thank heavens that you are okay,”  Arata said. “You lied to me and then ran away. You kept canceling on me and I couldn’t track your digivice. Kyoko said that you had two weeks off and I couldn’t find you at any of your usual places.”

Ami didn’t say a word. She was stunned but she registered Arata’s comments.

Arata pulled back to look at Ami and she blinked. He looked as tired as she felt physically and mentally. His hair was always a mess, but it looked more of a mess and small bags were under his eyes and his grey eyes looked exhausted, but there was relief and happiness in them.

“Ami?”

“Sorry, give me a minute,” Ami said with a smile. “I’m in shock over you hugging me.”

Arata pulled Ami back into a hug. “I thought I lost you,” Arata said into her hair.

Maybe Nokia knew something Ami didn’t because this wasn’t how he usually acts. It couldn’t be because he was worried about her. 

“I didn’t mean to make you worry,” Ami said. “I’ve been busy and I was going to message you today.”

“I’ve been trying to find you,” Arata said. He pulled away from her a little bit. “I missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Ami said. “Oh! Lily said you have a package waiting for you at the bookstore!”

“Why?” Arata said. “I haven’t pre-ordered anything for a while.”

Ami shrugged and held back a painful groan. “I’m just letting you know the message.” Arata grabbed Ami’s hand. “Huh?” 

“You’re coming with me,” Arata said. “Please.”

Ami smiled. “Fine, I’ll go with you, but I am not going inside.”

“Why?”

“You know that I have an addiction to books,”  Ami said. She went to grab the railing for the escalator only to wince in pain. “Ow.”

“What happened? Are you hurt? Nokia said that you were hurting.” 

“I’m fine,” Ami said. “I just have some sore muscles in my back.” She tried to move her hand away from his but he only tightened his grip.

Arata looked at her like he didn’t believe her. He nodded. “Okay, we’ll take the escalator and before you ask, no, I’m not letting your hand go. Why did you run off two weeks ago?”

Ami paled as they rode the escalator. 

“Ami.”

“It’s stupid, really,” Ami said as they got off the escalator. 

“You don’t just run off because of something stupid. That’s Nokia’s department.”

“Oh! That was quick,” the lady that stands outside the bookstore said. “I’ll go grab the package for you, Mr. Sanada.”

“Thank you,” Arata said with a nod. He focused on Ami who stood by the blue robot.

“Like I said, it’s stupid,”  Ami said and looked away.

“You may think it is stupid, but it must mean a lot to you. I can’t see how it will be stupid.”

Ami mumbled under her breath as Arata released her hand. 

“What was that?”

“You said love for the first time in front of me,” Ami said.

Arata blinked a couple of times. “It was over a celebrity,” he said. “Someone who I will never meet in person. Even if I did, I wouldn’t leave you to go be with her. The  way she acts is all scripted anyway, so that’s not even her personality.”

Ami wanted to argue that nothing that Yukino does is scripted. It’s mostly unscripted, but Lily had come back outside the store.

“Here’s your package,” Lily said. “Thank for doing business with us.” Her face went red. “I screwed up!”

“It was almost flawless, Lily,” Ami said with a smile. “Just keep practicing.”

“Thank you,” Lily said with a bow. 

Arata started to walk away and he thought Ami was beside him. He didn’t notice a woman with a tan jacket on the escalator. “I don’t understand why you would run away from that. I mean I’m - wait a minute,” he said and then stopped. “This is addressed to me, but it has your return address on it.”

He turned around and saw Ami was still by the robot, but tan jacket covered arms was draped over Ami’s shoulders, the hands overlapping at the wrists by Ami’s chest. Brown hair was laying on top of red hair and Ami was looking up at the other person who had brown eyes behind glasses.

“I don’t like him.”

“You haven’t liked anyone that you have interviewed,” Ami said with a sigh.

Arata slowly walked towards Ami.

“He believed that I should be bragging about my rewards and trophies and blah. He also said that I should do double the work since I haven’t worked the past two weeks and ‘when the time comes’.”

Arata raised an eyebrow as the female took notice of him.

“You must be Sanada,”  the female said. “Hello.”

“Yes, hi,” Arata said.  He was surprised that he didn’t feel tongue-tied being around this woman like he thought he would. “Sorry to bother you but may I have my girlfriend? We were in the middle of a conversation.”

“Oh?  I thought you were a fan of mine. Besides, I love Ami more,”  the female said and rubbed her cheek against  Ami’s.

“While I am a fan of your work, Yukino, it doesn’t give you the right to hold my girlfriend captive,”  Arata said. 

Yukino moved her head to rest back on top of Ami’s head. “That’s a first. I like him. Yeah, I remember him. He ran out of the room as soon as my speech was over. Didn’t even bother to stay for the autograph thing.”

“Book signing,” Ami said.

“Ami has a tendency of getting lost in crowds,” Arata said. 

Yukino gave him a confused expression.

“What?” Arata said.

“I don’t believe you. I don’t have any trouble with Ami in crowds,” Yukino said.

“That’s because you have a heat sensor on me,” Ami said in a joking manner.

Yukino smiled. “No,”  she said. “It’s because my mommy senses know you are nearby. Speaking of. My mommy senses are tingling right now. How is your head feeling? Your back?”

“Wait? What?” Arata said completely shock.

“Oh? Ami didn’t tell you? My ex-agent shoved her into a wall. She has a concussion and bruises all over her back,” Yukino said.

“She didn’t tell me that,” Arata said. “I was referring to what you said before.”

“Yukino is my mother, Arata,” Ami said. “Mom, this is my boyfriend, Arata.  Her TV personality is still her.”

“It doesn’t come out when I’m not on TV unless Ami is in danger,” Yukino said with a laugh. “Anyway, your head?”

“Is fine and no you cannot skip out on the interview,” Ami said. 

“Aww,” Yukino said. “I want to spend more time with you and your boyfriend.”

“Oda Mia is your next possible agent. She should be waiting for you at K-Cafe in a few minutes,” Ami said.

“Fine,” Yukino said and pressed a kiss to Ami’s cheek before she let her go.

“Good luck,” Ami said. She turned her attention to Arata. “Arata, I’m so so-”

“It makes sense now. The reason why you ran off. Because I said I love Yukino who happens to be your mother,”  Arata said as he stepped close to her. 

“Yes,  Arata. I told you that -”

Arata kissed her forehead. “I love you and only you, Ami. However, I really wish you’d told me that your mother was in town.”

Lily hid inside the store and acted like she was putting books away only to watch everything unfold. She bit her lip so hard to where a little blood escaped from her attempt to hide her squeals. 

She bounced on her toes as she watched Arata give Ami a true kiss for a change and lead her to the elevator. Once they were outside she couldn’t contain her squeals of excitement and scared some of the customers.

“That was so much better than an episode of a soap drama!” she said. “So glad I came to work today!”

[vulpinmusings]

Letters from Buxcord 2 - Razorback

After much delay, my RPG group returned to our Monster of the Week campaign for our second mystery.  This time, Ash and his new companions look into strange happenings surrounding a rich family and an old slaughterhouse.

Samantha,

Any doubts I had about sticking around Buxcord are well and truly squashed now.  It’s only been about a week since the Santa-squatch incident and I’ve already squared off with something much bigger and purely magical.

It started just a couple days after Christmas.  I was trawling about town for more details on local legends in the hopes of finding some common sources or threads to follow, and wound up at Bayou Boating, the main tourist attraction in this small town.  They had a list of “local cryptids” posted on the wall, but it included several creatures that, unless the names apply to different mythics than they do in Taryn, do not tend to live in or around wetlands.  The one person on staff at the time – it is the off-season for boat tours – proved to be less than well-informed about the one local legend I asked him about.  People occasionally go missing in the bayou after foolishly going out there on their own at night.

Well, I can’t really put all the blame for my not getting a lot of info on the clerk.  I‘d only asked a few questions before I experienced a major pulse in the magic fields.  It was almost a textbook example of the ripples caused by an inexperienced Mage casting spells beyond their ability.  The pulse carried some lingering effects of the original spell, as I had a brief vision of a grinning shadow floating over the bayou.  I set off in search of the source, but as messy as the spell had been it was also far enough away that the magic settled and the trail grew cold before I got more than a block.

Nothing else happened for a few days, until I crossed paths with Nollthep and Lea again.  I hadn’t really seen either of them since the Santa-sqautch, and the simple fact that Nollthep was not in his shop and was asking after somebody should have tipped me off.  Whatever that fellow is, he seems to work for some higher being and has little to no personal needs outside of running errands for his “Boss.” Lea is normal other than her instinctual persuasion magic, but her paths and mine just hadn’t crossed in the last week.

At any rate, we three happened to meet up at the local park where Lea was performing with some small-time Punk Rock band that sings in Spanish.  That’s… I think the language matches best to Iberrian.  Anyway, Lea’s singing was infused with a mesmeric effect that had everyone (except yours truly, naturally) in love with the whole performance despite her not knowing the language or the words very well. Nollthep wandered up to us after the show was over, asking everyone he came across if they knew of any Wiccans or anybody named Clemonte.  When he got to Lea and I, his questions turned to the topic of whether or not humans need blood and hearts to live.

I don’t think I need to say how concerning that was, but I didn’t get a chance to press for details before our attention was stolen by a group of local law enforcement suddenly taking off in response to a call from a “Clemonte mansion.”  That got Nollthep’s full focus, of course, and Lea finally recalled that the Clemontes were a wealthy but reclusive and disliked family in Buxcord.  She alluded to some previous encounters with them that had left her particularly soured, but she agreed to lead us to the house.

The Clemontes live on a hill on the southern outskirts of town, with their driveway reaching all the way to the base of the hill.  As mansions go, it wasn’t all that large, but the fountain in front had the ostentation of true Old Money.  The butler who answered our knock at the door sealed the impression, and he would have turned us away on principle if Lea’s magic hadn’t kicked in and scrambled his senses enough to make him tolerant of three random gawkers intruding on his employer’s private business.

I don’t want to become to reliant on that kind of manipulation, but without the reputation I’ve got back home I might not have much choice for a while…

The police – a sheriff and two deputies to be precise – were in the living room questioning a young woman and paid us little mind as we peeked in for a look.  The reason for the call was glaringly obvious: a disemboweled corpse had been hung on the wall over the fireplace with a graffiti-style pig’s head and the words “I’m back” scrawled in blood below it.  A most disturbing sight, although only Lea showed any physical reaction.  I, of course, am too experienced to let my revulsion get in the way of solving a problem, and Nollthep is too inhuman to even have a visceral reaction to such sights.

The sheriff and pair of deputies who were on-site were surprisingly fine with the three of us stepping in and asking our own questions.  I’m hoping that it was just them thinking that we must be welcome since the we’d gotten past the butler, but it’s too early to rule out general incompetence yet. The girl was Sophia Clemonte and the corpse had been a security guard at the Clemonte slaughterhouse and had no reason to be in the family mansion.  Sophia was shook up by the corpse, but she was more concerned about her younger brother, Cyril, who was missing.  The police told us that the rest of the family were upstairs, so we decided to go up and interrogate them while the police were still busy getting Sophia’s story.

The Clemonte parents are named Archie and Penelope.  Archie’s a bit of a boor and seems to hate magic on principle, while Penelope had the aura of someone with the talent for magic, albeit one she hasn’t used in many years thanks to her husband’s influence.  From Archie, we got an explanation for what the message painted on the wall could have meant.  About twenty years ago, an employee at the slaughterhouse had suffered a psychotic break after being fired and killed several people before committing suicide.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get more than that out of Archie before Lea insulted him and he told us to get out.

On our way out, we decided to check in on the last Clemonte, the eldest son Zachary.  I didn’t get any sense that he’d inherited any of his mother’s ability, and he was callously unconcerned about the whole scenario and intent on heading out for a little walk despite all common sense.

Penelope caught up to us at the top of the stairs and, now out from under Archie’s gaze, opened up a little more about her history with magic as we headed back to the crime scene.  She used to practice the Wiccan traditions, but gave them up years ago and hid her books away. Young Cyril had shown an interest in those books, and Penelope had given him one of the less dangerous tomes to look through.  I convinced Penelope to show me where she’d hidden the rest of her books, and she took us to a surprisingly large room hidden behind a secret door in the kitchen.  The room was full of not just books but all kinds of the stuff you typically find in the collection of those who follow ritual-based magic traditions. There was a book missing from the shelves, but it wasn’t the book Penelope had loaned to Cyril.  Penelope said the missing book was primarily about summoning and controlling spirits.

(Be sure to clarify that I’m not talking about Spiriter Warlock stuff here when you relay this to the M’Dales.  They’ll probably have a conniption otherwise.)

The sheriff had already had the corpse body-bagged when we returned to the sitting room, but I took a crack at searching the spot where it had been hanging, in case there was any lingering magic I could trace.  I got more than I bargained for; somehow, I managed to briefly link myself to the mind of an otherworldly entity (other than Nollthep) for a few seconds.  Demonic seems like an adequate adjective.  I had to sit down and catch my breath, and Lea charmed the butler into bringing us some coffee while Nollthep went to search Cyril’s room and one of the deputies was sent out to bring Zachary back. Nollthep came back with the missing tome, and we discussed whether or not to let Penelope know about it. We opted to keep her in the dark until I’d had a chance to look through it.

After much too much time had passed without either Zach or the deputy returning, I felt a ripple of powerful magic underlaid with that same sense of the demonic and led the group outside to see what was up. Standing by the fountain, holding Zachary up like a stuck pig and with the deputy lying broken at its feet, was an 8-foot tall humanoid figure dressed like a butcher and wearing a leather pig mask that was bleeding from the seams.  Reacting quickly, I wrapped the figure up in a Tangler while Nollthep produced a stack of playing cards and flung them one by one at the figure, as expertly as myself but without any spells attached.  The thing barely reacted.

Lea ran over to try and save the deputy, but her magic betrayed her, draining life out of the man rather than putting more in.

I tried to engage the creature in conversation, just to establish that it wasn’t sentient, and then tried to see how it liked a bullet in the head.

Did I mention I acquired a revolver shortly after the Santa-squatch incident?  It’s not my style, but without Carmilla around to handle the non-magical aspects of combat I have to make do.

Not that the bullet did any good in this event.

Nollthep tossed the spellbook to me and told me to try to find a counter-spell to whatever had summoned pig-head while he kept it busy.  I quickly found a likely looking spell and started Weaving it together to the best of my ability.  I hadn’t gotten far, though, before pig-head sensed the gathering magic and fled via dematerlization.

So, I learned that in this universe, evil spirits can sense when you’re trying to counteract the spell that summoned them to the mortal plan and can just get out of range before you’re done.  That’s an unwelcome complication.

Once the dust had settled, an ambulance was called in.  By some miracle, the deputy was still alive.  Zachary, on the other hand, was missing all his internal organs as well as having bled out.

In the course of informing the Clemontes and the sheriff about what had happened in the driveway and some of our suspicions, Nollthep and the Sheriff got into a bit of an argument about whether or not magic is real.  I could have gotten involved, but I was occupied with more important matters such as studying the spellbook and only rejoined the conversation when Nollthep left the room for a private conversation with Penelope and I overheard the Sheriff mention to Archie that there were reports of strange noises at the old slaughterhouse.  Over Archie’s protests, the sheriff insisted that everyone stay put until the morning and left his remaining deputy to keep an eye on us.

Once the Sheriff was gone, I made it clear that I did not intend to wait around or leave the case in the hands of people who didn’t even believe in the existence of magic.  I tried to conjure a basic mage-light to convince the deputy that I knew what I was talking about, but wound up with a tiny fireball instead.  It was sufficient to convince the deputy, at least.  Nollthep came back from his business with Penny and, naturally, agreed to accompany me.  To my surprise, Lea also wanted to come along, because she figured that since I’d chased pig-face off once, the safest place to be was at my side.

It was a long walk to the slaughterhouse.  It must have been abandoned shortly after the incident twenty years ago, because the place was empty and full of rusted equipment.  I felt the presence of pig-face as soon as we entered the building.  We decided that since pig-face had a… particular theme to him, we should start our search in the pork slaughtering section.  The plan was to locate pig-face and figure out how to restrain him so he couldn’t escape while I cast the banishing spell on him.

In the pig area, we heard the sounds of actual pigs in the preparation pens and went to look.  The things we found were mostly identical to normal pigs, but their eyes and teeth were more human than porcine, and they were munching on offal that included at least one intact human hand.  Nollthep, working on the assumption that the pigs were sapient, attempted to cast a translation spell on himself and wound up just speaking gibberish and apparently losing his ability to comprehend Lea or me for several minutes.

Then we saw pig-face up in the rafters, holding a blood-soaked mallet. Nollthep produced his throwing cards and put some actual magic into them that briefly set fire to pig-face’s sleeve.  The beast dropped down on us and walloped Nollthep.  As I Wove a lightning bolt, Lea ran for cover behind me.  She grabbed onto me briefly and, in that brief moment, the magic fell into place with my normal natural grace. The lighting struck pig-face, then arced off him and unlocked one of the pig pens.  The pig-thing inside charged at Nollthep, but he swatted it up and into another pen with ease.

Pig-face came after me next, and I threw up a barrier to try and stop his mallet.  I must have miscalculated, because the blow shattered the shield and knocked me back a bit.  Could have been worse, I guess, but still…

Nollthep pulled out a chain of tied-up handkerchiefs and tried to tie pig-face up with them.  It held for a few seconds, but not nearly enough time for me to even start the banishment.  Lea suddenly ran off into the heart of the slaughtering area, and pig-face chased her once he broke loose.  I got him in a Tangler, but it barely held him long enough for Nollthep to club him once.  I heard Lea say something about finding the meat grinder that pig-face had first died in as I ran to keep up with the fight.  I pushed past Nollthep and, in a bit of foolish desperation, tried to tackle pig-face and flip him off the walkway and into the machinery. You can probably guess how well that went.  Pig-face had me by the neck and dangling over the suddenly active grinder before I could regain my balance.  Nollthep whipped his hankie-chain around the specter’s arm to try and haul me out of danger, but pig-face resisted the pull and tossed a knife at Nollthep with his free hand. Then Lea found a meathook and chucked it at pig-face, and I was falling toward a mass of whirling blades and serrated rollers.

Reflex kicked in and I cast my Transport spell without thinking about how it would need to be adjusted.  By pure luck, the spell not only worked but deposited me safely on the walkway away from the fight.  As I made my way back to the action, I saw that my companions were in a bit of a panic thinking I’d just died (Nollthep apparently thought meat grinders just magically transmute flesh into meat or something and Lea didn’t see what happened).  Lea’s grief was so great she actually summoned a big root up through the walkway and into pig-face’s arm just as the creature made a move to throw Nollthep into the grinder after me.

As for myself, I was starting to get annoyed.  I’d cheated death by pure luck and pig-face was proving to very, very bothersome.  Simply restraining him was no longer an option for me.  He had to suffer a bit.

So I set him on fire.  It didn’t do much on its own, but Nollthep threw on some sort of powder that exploded and knocked pig-face off the walkway.  The creature threw the hooked chain from its belt and caught Nollthep by the shoulder, but I broke through the rusted chain with a simple Breaking before Nolly got pulled in after pig-face.

For reasons I don’t quite understand yet, being subjected to the same form of death a second time proved to be enough to end pig-face’s return to the physical world.  Once he’d been thoroughly ground up, that persistent, buzzing sense of his presence vanished along with the human-toothed pigs.  The gore they’d been feasting on remained, however.  I took the hand I’d seen earlier for the police to check, in case it happened to have belonged to Cyril Clemonte.  Nollthep went into a panic when I mentioned that theory and he swiftly dug through the viscera looking for anything that could be a heart.  Once he found something, he vanished in a blink, presumably to deliver the goods to his Boss.

Lea and I returned to the mansion just long enough to tell the deputy what to expect when the cops went to the slaughterhouse and to hand over the hand.  I then made sure Lea got home safely before returning to my hotel room.

When I arrived, I found a card on the bed.  It invited me to visit a Madam Weaver, who apparently knows something that would be of use to me.

How useful it will actually be remains to be seen, but you may be seeing me or these letters sooner than I hoped.

With guarded hope,

Ash

[brushstrokesapocalyptic]

The Legend of Asriel PART 6 | DEATH MOUNTAIN

it’s about as unpleasant as it sounds.

Frisk and Chara reach Death Mountain, and their first order of business is seeking out a blacksmith who can reforge their sword. There’s a bit of a famine going on right now so none of the Gorons are in working condition, but someone happens to direct Frisk to a Zora who lives just out of Goron City.

Following those directions, Frisk and Chara find an elderly turtle man sunning himself on the edge of a hot spring. Chara recognizes him and is confused as to why he’s here. Frisk knows not of their history with this guy though, and just walks up to ask if he can help reforge their sword.

Gerson laughs and says he’s not called the Hammer for nothing, he’s sure he can fix whatever toy sword they broke during target practice. Frisk removes the bundle from their backpack and shows him the shards of the Master Sword. Gerson rubs at his chin. “Hmm. Tricky one, that.”

Can you do it? Frisk writes in their notebook.

“The blade shouldn’t be too hard, I’ve got all the material I need here.“ Chara resists the urge to bring up the missing piece. “The hilt is harder, it’s made of a special material you can’t just melt down and cast into a new shape. I’d need to make another from scratch.“

Is it rare?

“Somewhat. As luck would have it, there is a deposit in the nearby mines, but those are flooded out.”

Frisk looks him up and down. ...Aren’t you like, a turtle? Surely a little water can’t stop you.

Gerson laughs heartily. “A little water is nothing, even for my old bones. Lava, however, poses quite a risk.“

Frisk makes a soft noise of understanding. If I got you a piece of this stuff, could you reforge it then?

“Of course!“ Gerson says. “I’d be delighted to, in fact. Not everyone can say they reforged the Legendary Blade of Evil’s Bane!“

Frisk beams, bundles the shards back up, and tells Gerson they’ll be back soon before hurrying off again. Chara trails them with a skeptical look. “Okay I appreciate the enthusiasm, but how exactly do you plan to get this weird rock? Do you have a supplier or something?”

Frisk slows to a stop, staring into the sky with a look of impending realization.

“...You didn’t think that far ahead, did you.“

Frisk most assuredly didn’t, but they won’t let that stop them! They do some more poking around, and eventually encounter a Hylian bard living it up in the town square, providing a brief moment of levity for the Gorons in this trying time.

Chara wonders how he can stand wearing such impractical clothing in this sweltering volcano, and Mettaton offhandedly mentions something about the laboratory near the peak before he registers that the person he just replied to is a ghost.

The dude doesn’t stick around, leaving Frisk and Chara with just the clue pointing towards the laboratory. It’s not much, but it’s all they’ve got, so they go to investigate.

The lab seems abandoned at first, all dark and messy and stuff. Frisk pokes around a bit, not giving it up as a lost cause just yet, and then Chara hears a weird scuffling noise. Frisk sees them tense, and they turn around just in time to see a flash of golden scales vanishing around a corner.

They give chase, and with a little help from Chara they track down the mysterious creature. A light flickers on, and Frisk finds themself face to face with a yellow Lizalfos in a lab coat.

For a moment, the two of them stare each other, down. Frisk isn’t quite sure what to make of the monster, and the Lizalfos looks kinda like a deer in the headlights. After a moment, though, Frisk’s hand inches towards their sword, and the Lizalfos rears back not to attack, but to frantically wave her hands defensively.

“Wait wait wait I can explain!“ she says, and it takes Chara a moment to dart into the right spot to interpret because they were not expecting a talking lizard. “Y-you see, I’m not a-actually a monster! I-I’m Dr. Alphys, and I’m t-t-totally a normal person, I’m j-just cursed to look like this! J-j-just c-cursed!“

Frisk raises an eyebrow, removing their hand from their sword and straightening up. They glance at Chara, who just shrugs, then dig out their notebook again. Do you need any help with that?

“N-n-no, it’s quite alright!“ Alphys says, looking a little sheepish. “I-I-I don’t get out much s-s-so it’s not like it matters how I look! I’ve got all my brains u-up here, s-so I’m fine!”

Frisk nods, relieved that they don’t have to add another layer to this fetch quest chain. I heard you can make heat-resistant clothing, they write.

“Where did you—“ Alphys starts, before pausing. “O-oh, I suppose I did give Mettaton some of my prototypes... how were they, by the way? That guy never gives me useful feedback.“

Frisk shrugs. He didn’t look bothered by the heat, but honestly it’s not that bad.

“Speak for yourself,“ Chara comments. “I’d be dying if I weren’t already dead. You’re just a weird desert gremlin.“

Frisk ignores them.

Alphys, unaware of the ghost floating next to her, nods thoughtfully. “Good, good, the tests I ran seemed positive but it’s good to have more data. Oh— w-were you interested in my fireproof clothing as well?“

Frisk nods. If it’s available, I’d like to buy a set.

“O-of course! Might I ask what you n-need it for?“

I wanna go into the mines but I hear they got flooded with lava.

Alphys pauses. “...Erm, a-and why do you want that?”

I need a special stone to reforge this legendary sword that got broken.

A long moment passes between them.

“...Can’t argue with that,“ Alphys says, then turns and walks away.

Frisk pays up and Alphys custom fits them with a nice heatproof tunic which I haven’t designed yet, but I probably will eventually and whenever that happens I’ll probably edit in a picture here.

But anyway now they’re decked out in sweet fashion and so they trek off to the mines, which are another dungeon. I don’t have nearly as much to say as I did for the Lost Caverns. It’s a bunch of mines and stuff, there’s magma. They get the Burnt Hammer, which is basically the equivalent of the burnt pan but like. It’s a hammer. And there’s some kinda a monster or possessed machinery or a monster possessing machinery, and after Frisk kicks its ass the mines go back to normal and everyone rejoices and they get a cool blue rock which happens to be timeshift stone but shhhhhhh it’s not that important.

And so they return triumphantly to Gerson’s forge, materials in tow, and ask him to reforge the Master Sword for them. Gerson laughs, declares that they truely do have the soul of a hero. Then he asks what kind of sword they’d like him to make it into, at which point they kinda stall out because they were kinda assuming it’d just be forged back into its original shape.

“Nonsense,“ Gerson says. “Trying to copy the original perfectly is a fool’s errand, and if it’s going to be reforged for a new wielder why not have them choose its shape?“

Frisk agrees with this reasoning, but they don’t know enough about swords to make a decision. Chara, however, does. They tap Frisk on the shoulder, an odd glint in their eye, and spell something out for Frisk to write in their notebook. They show it to Gerson, and he clearly knows what it means as he laughs again and gets right to work on that sword.

It takes time to make a sword, and so Frisk stays a couple nights in Gerson’s cottage. Chara keeps randomly snickering every time the Master Sword comes up in conversation, and they refuse to explain themself, so Frisk just resigns themself to finding out what they told Gerson to make when the sword is done.

After the better part of a week has passed with Frisk doing various sidequests for the Gorons, Gerson finally presents them with the reforged Master Sword.

Frisk unwraps it from the cloth covering carefully, examining the sheath before tugging it free to look at the blade. It’s beautifully crafted, the hilt carved into something reminiscent of a bird while the blade is razor sharp. They can’t help but admire the craftsmanship, and even Chara pauses to ooh and aah a little before they collapse into another fit of giggles.

“You know, it’s kinda funny you picked that kind of sword,“ Gerson comments, and Chara barely manages to pull themself back together enough to interpret. “See, there was this young whippersnapper I used to know, and they always said that was their favourite kind of sword. You know why?“

Frisk tilts their head in a silent question.

“They said it was ‘cause of the way the hilt is put together,“ Gerson explains. “In their words, it isn’t technically a sword. Just a very large knife.“

Chara descends into a full on fit of laughter. Frisk stands there for a long moment, then looks back down at the Master Sword. Then they set it down and take out their notebook. Does that make this the Master Knife, then?

Gerson joins Chara in laughing. “I like your style,” he tells them, as he follows them to the door. “Remember me after you’ve saved the world, alright, kid?”

Frisk nods, slinging the Master Knife over their back, and slaps Chara on the shoulder on the way out to get them to stop laughing already, it’s not that funny.

(It’s absolutely that funny, Chara insists inside their own head. God they love knives.)

[Next Part] [Index]

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND JOKES

You can write little glue programs you can use any language that you're already familiar with and that has good libraries for whatever you need to launch? Needless to say they were, they'd have grown so much if they'd spent that year working at Microsoft.1 A programming language is how well it ends up doing. What should they do? The personal referral is still the fastest general-purpose sort. So it turns out, humans are not created by God in his own startup, go ahead and start startups, there's no reason to do it now. Exceptional performance implies immigration. The Old Way.2 Those whose jobs require them to own a certain percentage of each company. A rapidly growing company is not afraid to be seen riding them.

Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the next thought would have been delighted.3 Maybe that's one reason open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, and it was through personal contacts that we got most of the twentieth century. These quotes about luck are not from founders whose startups failed. We expected the most common trajectory is to do things. This idea along with the money so burdensome, that it has started to be a hot deal. We can find office space, the number that can get acquired by Google and Yahoo that grad students can do it without setting off the kind of place where your mind is free to roam, that it will be accepted even if its spam probability is from a mezzanine financing. For the future, investors will increasingly be able to carry it off. Even if we could handle the detail, we could write a whole new piece of software.4 The flow that imaginative people love so much has a darker cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life amid the daily slurry of errands and alarms. He knew as well as using it.5 10.6

The Cro-Magnons would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Most people in the back of Yahoo, Google.7 And so interfaces tend not to give you some? Public school teachers are in much the same. What they mean by blogger is not someone who publishes online. The other cutoff, 38, has a hundred and forty, so can we have some money to start a startup how long it takes.8 It's a constant battle for us. Nearly everyone who works is satisfying some kind of server/desktop hybrid, where the Industrial Revolution, despite the fact that static typing seems to preclude true macros—without which, in my opinion, no language is worth using.9 I tried asking myself what word I'd use to make it open. But the founders contribute ideas. For one, they're more interested in the speaker.10 The spammers wouldn't say these things if they didn't sound exciting.11

Thump, thump, thump. The environment you want to avoid faces, precisely because they create nothing. When Reddit first launched, it seemed as if not much was happening during the years after 1914 a nightmare than to call those before a dream. And if it didn't, but the more history you read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it was through personal contacts that we got most of the twentieth century; now the trend seems to be spreading. Your boss is the point in their life when they naturally take root. That was her actual word. Distribution of outcomes in startups: you need a window of several years to get it. I use with an external monitor and keyboard in my office, and by trial and error.

They just had us tuned out. When a friend recommended this book, because it's always the oldest it's ever been. The great concentrations of wealth I see around me in Silicon Valley, the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick & West, Gunderson Dettmer, and Cooley Godward.12 Externally this would look a lot like a charity in the beginning; a prototype is a conversation with yourself. I'm going to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it turned out to be the last word in informality. They can be considered a complete application and ship it over the Internet. I say there because I moved back to the farm afterward.13 In an earlier essay I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft.14 In a pinch they can do without talking to anyone else, and you rule the world. Poverty and economic inequality are not identical. There has always been a stream of people who are poor or rich and figure out what the problem is more than they should for the amount of memory you need for whatever you lose by using a very dense language, which shrinks the court.15

And of course if you really try.16 The public markets snap startup investing around like a whip. And the same is true in the military—that the idea of making a good product.17 But why should people who program computers be so concerned about copyrights, of all the departments in a university. And as you go. So while there are plenty of people strong enough to keep working on your own thing, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep.18 One's first thought when looking at them.19 To someone who'd spent the same time.20 But they'd be bad at picking startups.

It's probably always some of both. Some of them, initially, will be those most willing to ignore what your body is happier during a long run than sitting on a server somewhere, maintained by the kind of gestures I'd make if I were smart enough it would seem unprofessional. Most writers do. 1, Google was funded with angel money. Upgrades won't be the sort of thing that happens by default. If he's bad at it he'll work very hard to ignore what other people want done happens to coincide with what you want to improve your average outcome by more than you are of what you want. Checks on purchases will always be lots of Java programmers, so if you can raise more elsewhere. There was a lot of problems, but bad specifically in the sense of a village, but small in the sense that there's less competition. Deciding to fire people, and what it means. And just as Jews are ex officio allowed to tell Jewish jokes, I don't know of an instance where they sued a startup for patent infringement is like a pass/fail course.

Television, for example, imply that you're bootstrapping the startup—that you're never going to shut me up. Just that some kinds of knowledge.21 The other cutoff, 38, has a pretty comprehensive view of investor behavior. Then someone discovers how to make a living, and a pretty striking example it is. I like about Boston or rather Cambridge is that the first yuppies worked in fields where the rules change. When Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple was able to dissolve obstacles: If you are persistent, even problems that seem insoluble aren't. Ideas November 2012 The way to handle rejection is with precision. Overall only about 10% of the time. Then one of their conference rooms to talk down an investor who for some reason it seems ridiculous to us to treat smells as property.22

Notes

But iTunes shows that people get older.

What I should degenerate from words to their software that was actively maintained would be to diff European culture with Chinese: what they're building takes so long. If you're doing.

Who is being compensated for risks he took earlier. He did eventually graduate at about 26.

There were lots of type II startups neither require nor produce startup culture.

Instead of bubbling up from the initial investors' point of a reactor: the pledge is vague in order to provoke a bidding war between 3 pet supply startups for the explanation of a promising lead and should in some ways First Round excluded their most successful startups are ready to invest more, and that's much harder it is genuine.

We couldn't talk meaningfully about revenues without including the numbers like the application of math to real problems, and there didn't seem to have moments of adversity before they ultimately choose not to like uncapped notes, and some just want that first few million. The Sub-Zero 690, one of the marks of a company has ever been. In ancient times it covered a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the methodological implications.

5 to 2 seconds.

Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference. What I'm claiming with the guy who came to mind was one cause of accidents.

This is a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and B doesn't, that good art fifteenth century European art. Microsoft didn't sue their customers.

Abstract-sounding nonsense seems to be clear. 99,—9.

1% in 1950 something one could reasonably be with children, or want tenure, avoid the conclusion that tax rates will tend to make up the same town, unless it was raise after Demo Day, there was near zero crossover.

Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for stopping spam. I doubt he is much like the United States, have been the plague of 1347; the Reagan administration's comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve. We once put up posters around Harvard saying Did you just get kicked out for doing it with a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get the money they receive represents wealth—university students, heirs, professors, politicians, and that you should always absolutely refuse to give them sufficient activation energy required.

That's probably true of the definition of property. The most striking example I know what kind of method acting. MITE Corp.

5 more I didn't realize it yet or not.

But a company is their project.

Seeming like they worked together mostly at night. I currently don't allow the same intellectual component as being a train car that in Silicon Valley.

Is what we need to raise five million dollars. There may be underestimating VCs.

If the next generation of services and business opportunities. Probably just thirty, if I can imagine what it can have a precise measure of the word procrastination to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. Publishers are more repetitive than regular email. Turn on rice package.

So the cost can be huge.

Wittgenstein: The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

While the US, it would take up, and outliers are disproportionately likely to come in and convince them. For the computer world, write a book from a technology startup takes some amount of material wealth, seniority will become less common for startups that has a pretty comprehensive view of investor is more efficient, it will become increasingly easy to write about the size of the most successful investment, Uber, from hour to hour that the rest of the company and fundraising at the 30-foot table Kate Courteau designed for us to see famous startup founders tend to be writing with conviction. Pliny Hist.

Handy that, founders will do that. Yes, there is some weakness in your own compass.

[thorne93]

The Newcomer (Part 4)

Prompt: You’re Y/N Beauchamp, daughter to Wendy Beauchamp. When you’re sent away to Spenser Academy, you have no idea what waits for you there…

Word Count: 1743

Warnings: language, violence, anger…

Notes: This is for @xx-multi-fandom-imagines challenge! Crossover of The Covenant, and the show Witches of East End. Beta’d by @like-a-bag-of-potatoes and @carryonmyswansong. Wouldn’t be possible without brainstorming with @carryonmyswansong, so thank you for that, darlin!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Caleb wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was a lot to take in. He took you to the library in his mansion where the boys pieced together their own histories for you. Tyler told you about the Simms, Reid filled you in on the Garwins, Caleb the Danvers, etc.

They elaborated more on spells they could cast, such as a Darkling. Darklings could manifest on their own. They could come in the form of a dead spirit. Or it could be a real spirit itself warning someone that possesses their type of magic of death. Seeing a Darkling was never good, it was usually an omen.

They explained to you that they didn’t want to use out in the open, so you respected that. Caleb seeme the most conservative with it, probably due to his dad. Reid on the other hand was so lax with it, it hurt you to watch him abuse them sometimes.

But, you tried to do everything to keep him from needing to use them.

Whenever possible, you used a copy of Freya’s Brain-batch brownies. A special batch of brownies that helped sharpen the mind. It was like a temporary eidetic memory. Anything that someone had seen or heard in the last month was instantly accessible, like a computer without any lag. It came in handy for tests. It wasn’t cheating because it used the person’s own memories, it just sped up the process and sharpened the processing.

The guys really liked your brownies and were thankful that you were willing to use your powers and share them with them.

To show your appreciation of them taking such good care of you, you got them each little enchanted gifts over the course of a few weeks. After you poured your heart and soul into ideas for them, you began gifting them.

First, Pogue’s was a bewitched helmet. It would protect him even if a semi-truck hit him.

“You got this for me?” he asked as you handed it to him in the shop.

“Yeah. I figured you know, to say thanks,” you said with a shrug. “Try it on, make sure it fits.”

He pulled it on and sported it around for you for a minute before taking it off. “So… what’d you do to it?”

“Why do you always think I have an ulterior motive?” you asked, sounding hurt.

“Because you do,” he reminded with a laugh.

You returned the chuckle as you nodded. “Well, it may or may not be enchanted,” you said with a shrug.

“I knew it. Is this… okay? It won’t shine a light for your grandfather will it?”

“The King? No,” you assured with a shake of your head. “A measly little helmet isn’t going to do that. But that isn’t all…” You walked over to his very expensive, brand new Ducati. You waved your fingers over the bike three times, chanting a spell you’d heard Ingrid do once on her brand new car.

“Now what the hell did you do?” he asked as he sauntered over to the bike, examining it for changes.

“I simply made your bike so that it would never need to be repaired. Aside from oil and gas, this baby is ready to travel coast to coast every day for the next fifty years,” you informed with a gleaming smile, boasting your powers a bit.

“Oh man. Wow. Thanks, Y/N. I don’t know what we’d do without you,” he said before he punched you lightly in the shoulder.

“I perish the thought, Perry,” you teased before sticking your tongue out, making him laugh.

Next was Reid’s. Which was an enchanted ring that only activated at his touch. It was a dragon that curled around itself.

The two of you were standing in his dorm as he took the little velvet pouch from you and dumped the ring into his palm?

“Jewelry?” he asked incredulously. “I’m not really a dragon man but…”

“Forget about the dragon. Put it on,” you instructed.

He gave you a curious look but obliged. Once it was on, it tightened around his finger and the jewel in its eye seemed to illuminate.

“Woah, shit. What’s it doing?” he asked, jumping back a little, intrigued more than anything.

“It’s a protector. It’s first job is to protect you, but I know how sometimes you hate sitting in class. This will give you an illusion to cast. The illusion can talk, respond, think just as you would, but you can leave it undetected.”

“That’s badass,” he noted. “So how long? How do I get away without being spotted?”

“Whenever you want to leave, wave your other hand over the dragon, say ‘exitus’ and it’ll cloak you while it creates an illusion based on your current state. You'll have about sixty seconds to get away before you’re spotted again.”

“Wait, but even if i skip class, I’ll still be missing information, which means I’ll flunk.”

“Oh, didn’t I mention the ring is also a recording device? As soon as it’s activated, it starts.”

“Holy shit. You thought of everything,” he complimented as his gaze danced between you and the ring. “This is awesome.”

You shrugged with an impish grin. “I try. I know you’d like to use your powers to escape so… maybe this will help. But don’t abuse it! Please?” you requested. “I don’t want you falling behind and then your mom is coming to find me to beat my ass.”

“Hey, I’d never let that happen,” he assured before throwing his arm over your shoulders. “But I won’t abuse it. Promise.”

“Thanks, Reid.”

Following that was Tyler. His gift was a tad more practical, but he needed it.

Sitting in the library, he was swamped with books.

“Hey, Ty,” you greeted as you sat down across from him.

“Hey, Y/N.”

“Busy studying?” you questioned.

He didn’t glance up at you at all, he merely responded, “Yeah. Sorta. Could we catch up later?”

“Oh, yeah sure, I just need to give you this,” you said, sliding a royal blue book with gold patterns on it towards him along with a black fountain pen. “I’ll be off now.”

“Woah, what the hell is this?” he asked, picking it up. “Is this more homework from Chem? God I swear--”

“It’s not schoolwork, dude,” you assured. “This is a Learner Ledger,” you informed proudly.

“A what?” he wondered, a trace of annoyance in his tone.

You heaved a sigh and yanked the book back, opening it. “Put your notes in here. Write down whatever you hear in lecture or learn here. Tap the pen, this pen exactly against the last page of notes. The ink will disappear but all of the notes will be here.” You reached up and poked him in the forehead.

“How is that different than taking notes or your brownies?”

“I’m glad you asked. The brownies are temporary, mainly right before an exam. These will help with pop quizzes and finals. Not to mention, how often have you taken notes and actually retained anything?” you teased and he threw a crumpled up ball of paper at you. You laughed as you swatted it away. “Hey, I’m just saying. I can take this back if you want,” you said, starting to pick it up.

Quickly, his hand was across the table, grabbing for the book.

“I’ll take the damned book.”

“Atta boy,” you said with a wink before you got up.

That only left Caleb. What could you possibly get a guy who never used magic, rocked on the swim team, studied hard, and never asked for a single thing?

But that’s when it hit you. You pulled out your potions handbook that Freya had made for you and looked for what you needed.

It was only a few nights later that you showed up at Caleb’s doorstep, pizza and a two-liter in hand.

“Y/N,” he greeted with a touch of fondness and shock. “What brings you by?”

He stepped aside to let you in and you explained, “Well, I’ve been giving each of you guys gifts. Sort of a...well a thank you for all that you’ve done.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he assured. “We’re happy to take you in and look after you.”

You shrugged and nodded. “I know, but what kind of Beauchamp witch would I be if I didn’t graciously thank my new witch family?”

He grinned widely at you. All of the boys had gotten to know a lot about your family’s history -- what you could remember and what you’d been told. Not to mention, each of them inquired about you to their families that filled in the gaps as well.

“Fair enough. So my gift is pizza? I heard you gave Pogue an enchanted helmet…” he said with a raised eyebrow.

You laughed lightly. “I did. But no, the pizza isn’t your gift. Could you show me where your mom keeps the alcohol?”

Caleb hesitated for only a moment. He didn’t like people knowing about his mom, but with it being a small town, everyone knew. However, you were different. You’d been over to his house enough to know the problems that went on at home. You’d even been by several times to see his father, help with errands. You were just like the other boys, a part of the family. He didn’t keep things from you, and he even confided in you once about his mom’s alcoholism.

“Uh, sure,” he said uneasily. “What’s up?” he asked as he started to usher you into an ornate den.

“I have something that I think might help both of you.”

He showed you to a cabinet that was full of liquor bottles.

“This,” you said, holding up a small vial full of candy green liquid, “is a healing potion.” You uncorked one bottle and put a drop in, repeating the process as Caleb watched you. “So now, when your mom drinks, every drink will heal her. It won’t be addictive though. So she’ll feel better, but she won’t put together that the alcohol is doing it.”

“Damn. That’s pretty good,” he complimented.

“I know!” you boasted with a proud grin. “That’s my gift to you,” you assured, taking his hand and squeezing gently. “The other part of my gift is a night off from taking care of everyone. You and I are going to have a movie night, with pizza and drinks, alright?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he teased.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 6: Grand Theft Heartstone

Becoming The Mask

Jim had been Trollhunter for nearly two weeks when he found an opportunity to steal a piece of Heartstone.

He was developing something of a routine when he went to Trollmarket. The night would start out with training in the Forge, either sparring with Draal or evading the death traps built into the Forge itself.

Then Blinky would drag Jim off to the library and lecture him on troll lore and history and customs. Jim was starting to 'learn' the spoken and written languages. He had copied and passed Volumes Four, Five, and Six of A Brief Recapitulation Of Troll Lore on to Stricklander, though officially he was still reading Volume Six. Since Jim was such a 'quick learner', Blinky had expressed hope that by the time Jim finished all forty-seven volumes, the human Trollhunter wouldn't need his amulet to translate the text.

Throughout it all, the Trollhunter's training might be interrupted at any moment by a call for aid – usually Bagdwella wanting him to take care of some mundane chore. The rest of Trollmarket didn't seem particularly interested in him, even for novelty value. Jim supposed they weren't expecting him to last long.

That night, Blinky was teaching Jim about the Heartstone, and agreed that the lesson might have greater impact if they went and looked at the stone itself rather than staying in the library. When they got there, Vendel wanted a word with Blinky and AAARRRGGHH, so Jim had been left to his own devices.

Jim had been asking Toby about his rock collection lately, to review his own knowledge of crystal growth. He wondered if it might be possible to cultivate another Heartstone.

There were a few smaller crystal protrusions on the ground near the root of the crystal. Jim sat on the ground and started digging around them. He ended up with his forehead rested against the Heartstone while he worked, looking for a thin point or facet line where he could snap off the piece without damaging the Heartstone as a whole.

To the Changeling's surprise, a bulb of crystals simply came off in his hand. He got up slowly and quickly stashed it in his pocket. A quick look around confirmed there was still no one around to see what he was doing. Jim pressed one hand, palm flat, to the Heartstone, curled his other hand around the fragment, and, feeling only slightly foolish, whispered, "Thank you."

Instead of going home after leaving Trollmarket in the early hours of the next morning, Jim went to the Janus Order's local base. The travel agency front was closed, but there was a Changeling key hidden in a wind chime near the door, so Jim could let himself in.

"Welcome to Omni Reach Travel. Where would you like to go?" said the automatic voice on the phone.

"Where two faces meet."

He should've brought his mask, he considered, riding the escalator down. But he hadn't been able to anticipate this opportunity, and he didn't want to risk anything happening to the shard before he could bring it here. Fortunately, there were spare masks in one of the desk drawers.

The white hallways reminded him of something out of a human spy movie. Possibly some Changelings worked in the movies, but more likely they'd been inspired after watching them. There were many influencers of human culture that were far easier for Gunmar's forces to infiltrate than the highly competitive entertainment industry.

Jim wasn't in the bureaucratic section of the base very often, since he usually gave reports directly to Stricklander. His on-base duties kept him around the cafeteria. He had only a loose memory of where he needed to go and a vague hope Otto Scaarbach was even in the country, never mind his office. Sure, Stricklander was nominally in charge, but the polymorph Otto held special status for his rare ability.

No, Jim wasn't going behind Stricklander's back. He was simply … ensuring the Heartstone fragment wasn't misplaced before it could be brought to the Janus Order. Valuable things in any Changeling's possession sometimes disappeared, among that Changeling's personal effects, before they could be delivered to secure locations.

Unfortunately, Otto was not there.

Jim scowled, keeping his hands deep in his pockets. The Heartstone fragment was comfortingly warm. The Trollhunter Amulet felt oddly cold.

"Jim? Don't see you down here much."

"Oh, hey, Gladys." Jim didn't know Gladys very well but he'd met his fellow Changeling in passing; he and Toby went to the same dentist, Jim far less frequently than Toby, and her human cover was a hygienist at the dental clinic. He knew her voice, and she'd likely recognized him by height. "Any idea where Otto is?"

"Out of town somewhere." She shrugged. "Rumour has it, someone found a lead on the Eyestone, so he's gone to see if it's the real deal and bring it back."

"That's –!" Jim's hand tightened on the amulet. "That's wonderful!"

"I thought you reported to Stricklander, though."

He flashed his eyes gold and red through the mesh of his mask and huffed as though irritated. "You've never had to run an errand for the big important boss types? If Otto's not here, where's the phonograph?"

Gladys pulled away from Jim – he suspected she was alarmed, but it was hard to tell with her mask on – and after a moment, gestured for him to follow her.

The old record player, used to receive messages from the Pale Lady, always had three or four Changelings monitoring it. It was moved regularly between rooms of the base as a security precaution and because the magical signal was inconsistent. The particular delivery felt like it required multiple witnesses if it wasn't going to a die-hard loyalist like Otto.

Two of the three monitors turned to the door when Jim entered. Gladys didn't join him, but didn't leave either, lingering in the doorway to see and hear what was so important.

"My sources are classified, but I've managed to retrieve this."

Jim got out the orange crystal. There were audible gasps.

"Is that –?"

"It can't be."

"No way."

"How?"

"Heartstone." Jim set it down by the phonograph. One of the other Changelings removed their mask, revealing a reverent, hungry expression. "I can't prove it, but I'm very sure."

He slipped out while the monitors were fussing over the crystal and leaning into the phonograph to learn what the Pale Lady thought of this. Gladys trailed him as he exited.

"That's an exciting discovery you made."

"Yeah … too bad Otto wasn't here. He'd've been thrilled."

"I'm surprised Stricklander let you out of his office with that. Let alone sent it to Otto."

"I suggested Nomura, so we could hide it in the museum," Jim lied. Bular was at the museum, and he would have just chucked it through the Fetch directly to Gunmar. "But if the Janus Order as a whole can benefit from it, that's better than hoarding it away."

She probably didn't believe him, but she didn't question him further or follow him when he left.

Jim went to school early, and straight to Mr Strickler's office. The history teacher was already there. He scowled ferociously at Jim.

"I heard. You stole part of the Heartstone, and you didn't bring it directly to me?"

"Officially you sent me to bring it to Otto." It wasn't like Stricklander wasn't going to get credit for this.

"Do not try to placate me. I ordered you to bring anything you discovered in Trollmarket directly to me!"

"This wasn't information, though. It was an artifact."

Stricklander's eyes blazed red.

"What were you thinking? How did you even explain having it?"

"I said my sources were classified."

"And everyone accepted that?"

"There were only four. Besides, it gives off this … mildly intoxicating feeling. They weren't inclined to be suspicious during the initial rush."

"Jim. I have done my utmost to keep your status as Trollhunter on a need-to-know basis. That secret grows harder to keep if you start doing things like – giving away shards of Heartstone!"

"I did not give it away! I shared it! I always –" Jim cut himself off and sucked in a deep, steadying breath. "When I first felt the Heartstone's power, I wanted to bring the Janus Order down to Trollmarket so every other Changeling could feel it too. That's not exactly feasible right now, so this was the next best thing."

Stricklander rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You've been intending to do this since you first set foot in Trollmarket, then."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"I suppose I can't fault you for kind intentions." He exhaled forcefully and pinned Jim with a look. "But you can't take personal responsibility for the comfort and wellbeing of every Changeling. You may not be the child you appear, but I … I don't want to see you crumble under the weight of the world."

Jim groaned, mostly for show. "The Atlas thing again?"

"You do insist on shouldering ever-heavier burdens."

"Looking after my – Familiar's mother is just good cover, and being Trollhunter wasn't my idea."

"Just try to exercise more caution in the future, Young Atlas."

"Fine. I promise."

A Changeling's promise was not worth very much.

Previous Chapter (Gnome Chompsky)

Table of Contents 

Next Chapter (Jim cooks for Barbara and bonds with Draal)

[tricksandtales]

Chapter 14: No Place Like Home

----------------------------

 Lebanon, Kansas was a small peaceful town, which sat at the crossroads of America. It was home to just over 200 people. Of course this meant that the community was tightknit, and everybody knew everybody.

Or more importantly, everybody knew everybody else’s business – both good and bad.

The bunker had been part of the town for as long as anyone could remember. One said his father had been there when it was built, sometime in the 1930s. It had been abandoned for almost as long. There were a lot of rumors about the bunker and the people who’d originally lived there. But that’s all they were, rumors.

 Until the Winchesters moved in.

 It came as quite the surprise when suddenly there were people living in the bunker again. Two boys who kept to themselves. A third came, who was always in a trench coat no matter the weather. In years they’d lived there, others passed through, though none really came into town or stayed long enough for the town to know them.

 Overall, the inhabitants mostly kept to the themselves, which of course fueled the rumor mill.

 Everyone by now knew the names: Dean, Sam, and Cas.

 Little else was known. Except that they were a tad odd, wore a lot of flannel, liked old cars, and ate junk food. They were friendly enough if you happened upon them, but by no means were they social. To the rest of the town, these newcomers were separate and apart. Never quite becoming part of the community.

 Then a werewolf came to town.

 Like the rumors and legends of the bunker, the residents of Lebanon had their fair share of stories of monsters. Probably more than most towns, because of the past residents of the bunker. Luckily, one of those stories said the people of the bunker hunted the monsters. So the residents held a town meeting and the preacher was requested to go get help. And like that, the werewolf was gone, the Winchesters took care of it.

 Life resumed as normal, except the town started to gather the legends and stories, started to retell them, this time as histories instead of tall tales. And the town welcomed their newcomers as members of the community, even if the Winchesters never knew about the difference. But there was one. People on the street smiled more openly and waved when they saw the Impala pass. The town store started to stock more…. interesting items. And a heck of a lot more salt.  

 More recently, the residents had seen a woman and a teenager. The people of Lebanon liked the two newcomers, as they came into town more regularly and were a bit more open to chatting.

 It had been several months now, and Riley had been into town at least once a week. She’d gotten fairly familiar with a number of residents, and those she didn’t know still treated her kindly.

 It was a quiet Thursday evening that found Riley heading to town once again. The day was grey and cloudy, so it made a decent day for errands.

 She had just gotten to town, and the wind whipped her hair about as she scrabbled to the store. Upon entering Ladow’s Market, the bell gave a jaunty jingle announcing her presence. The two other customers glanced up and offered her smiles. The man behind the counter, Eric, greeted her. “Riley, good to see you. No nephew with you this time?”  

 “Good to see you as well. And no, Jack’s out with his dad.” Riley said as she grabbed a basket.

 She had found that the people in town liked to talk, and Riley had never been one to avoid police conversation. So she hadn’t really been thinking when she’d engaged with the people she’d come to know. Of course this had led to several lies. Sam had agreed they were necessary, because there was no easy way to explain any of their actual relations. Dean had groaned at the complications of it. Not that any of the lies were that far from the truth…. But he didn’t like trying to keep up with them.

 What the town now knew about the inhabitants of the bunker was that Dean, Sam, and Riley were siblings. Cas was Jack’s father, and Gabriel was Cas’ brother. How she was Jack’s aunt…. well, no one had actually asked her that directly. But the town had an inclination that one of her “brothers” had a relationship with Cas. Cough. Dean. Cough.

 Jack was more than happy to claim the lot of them as his family. So he had no issues keeping up the rouse.

 “So, are your brothers off doing the Lord’s work today?” One of the other customers, a 60-year-old woman by the name of Mimi, asked as Riley was pursuing the produce section.

 Riley gave a soft chuckle, “They’re doing what they always do.”

 “Mhm.” Mimi clucked at her, “Make sure they know that my Shep can stitch up anything.” Riley had come to learn that Mimi’s husband was a retired doctor, who ran a small clinic out of their house.

 “Thank you. I’ll remind them.”

 “You should pick up some of this.” She was holding a box of stain remover. “It’s the best for getting blood out of clothing.”

 Riley offered a somewhat strained smile “I’ve got some at home.”

 It was weird. Or should she say, still weird. The first time Riley realized the town was aware of their situation she’d been a bit shocked. She’d run into the local pastor at the gas station. He’d said he prayed for her and the boys, and that if they ever needed help with exorcisms he had some reference books that might be helpful. Riley had thanked him and promptly gone home and confronted Sam about it. Sam had shrugged it off. Apparently, he hadn’t really considered what the town thought about them.

 Riley now did. And she’d learned that the town was aware of their comings and goings. That everyone knew what the Winchester’s did for a living and were thankful for it. Further, they offered advice, even though they all played this cat and mouse game of never directly speaking about it. So Riley did the same, never admitting or denying exactly what she knew.

 It was a bit odd. But she figured it was better than the citizens trying to run them out of town.

“Do you need another pound of salt?” Eric asked. “I got some of the larger grain stuff that’ll withstand a bit of wind.”

 “Thank you, yes.” Riley smiled.

 “I’ll deliver it if you don’t have the car?”

 That was one of the other things the town overlooked – the whole appearing randomly without any sort of vehicle. Sure some of them probably put it down as her being an avid walker, but others just smiled and offered to drop any big things back at the bunker for her. Riley wondered what they’d come up as an explanation for her sudden appearances.

 “That’d be great.”

 The bell jangled again, signaling another customer. “Riley! Just who I wanted to see.” It was Elenore Murtle, a 50ish widow. Riley had learned the sweet lady had the biggest crush on Sam.

 “Mrs. Murtle.” Riley greeted, “How are you today?”

 “Oh, just lovely, dear.” The woman fanned herself, “Though feels unseasonably warm.”

 Riley hummed, not really agreeing, and went back to looking at steaks.

 “Anyway dear, I ran into the preacher and he said that if I saw you, to tell you he’d whipped up a fresh batch of holy oil. Just in case.” Mrs. Murtle made it sound like she was talking about muffins - as if someone needing holy oil was a common occurrence.

 “That’s very nice of him. I’ll pop by later.” Riley said. She chatted amicably with both Mimi and Mrs. Murtle while she finished shopping. Eric offered to drop it all by later, but Riley took it all but the salt. It wasn’t like she couldn’t handle heavy things at this point.

 Eventually she left the store, heading toward home.

 ------------------------

 As the days passed, Riley recovered and found she had more energy then she expected. She’d started sleeping less, like only five or six hours a night. This of course made her days seem much longer. And made her incredibly restless.

 She had cut way back on her hours at work, as she was not in the office and was focused on being – as Sam put it – team captain. In other words, coordinating and keeping track of the ingredient list. Sure, she still did 20-30 hours a week of work, but most of it was done from the bunker.

 She still cooked and took care of the errands. She also cleaned the damn bunker again.

 She also trained. But there were only so many laps, so much target practice, and so many forms she could run through before she got fed up with doing them by herself.

 And there were only so many hours one could waste on the internet.

 All of this equaled a very stir-crazy and lonely Riley. Which was why she basically going to town once a week.

 She’d gotten so used to spending time surrounded by one person or another from their little family that with everyone off looking for the ingredients or on hunts, she found herself lonely. She missed their pseudo-family dinners. Jack underfoot, dogging her heels. Castiel appearing out of nowhere. Dean’s constant begging for pie. Sam appearing with something about what the lore said. Or Gabriel with a trick, a lesson, or if she was lucky, candy and flirty smile.

 Heck, she’d even listen to Dean tell her how he killed Hitler again. Okay… maybe not. There were only so many times she could hear that story. Even if it made Dean puff up with pride.

 Basically, she just missed the guys.

 Even though Sam and Dean weren’t looking for ingredients per se, they were still gone much of the time hunting.

 On very rare occasions she went with them, but neither she nor they were confident in her abilities yet. Which wouldn’t matter if they were facing something fairly straight forward, but they’d been hunting some pretty big bad things - mostly demons.

 With no real leadership in Hell, there had been an increasing number of demons running around on earth, trying to rack up misdeeds. Castiel had mentioned there were around five factions vying for control. And by control, they meant death and destruction. So lots of black eyes about that needed to be sent back to Hell.

 Her powers were growing, which was good, but Castiel said she was still what amounted to a fledging. Consequently she was restricted to basic hunts or trips when they went meet up with other hunters. No demons for her.

 She was not unhappy though, as the fact they had faith for her to go on normal hunts was a pretty big step. Not that Riley had yet to actually see anything. Most of the time she was tasked with interviews and the safer stuff, leaving the actually fighting to the Winchesters. She hadn’t actually seen anything supernatural up close and personal – excluding angels. Though, more often than not she stayed behind, since most of the hunts these days were demons… Hence it was the bunker for her.

 Not that her moves were restricted to the bunker per se. She could still go out shopping and pop back to work once in a while.

 But she missed Gab…. People. She missed people. Her people.

 Still, she wouldn’t complain. Everyone was working hard.

 --------------------

 When the Winchesters were in residence in the bunker, Dean was on Riley’s ass about her training. He did not want her to ever be in a fight and not be able to handle herself.

 Today, Saturday, was one such day. Dean was currently putting her through the paces.

 The thunk sound that resulted from Riley's fist connecting with the pad was satisfying. She smiled viciously as Dean staggered just a step.

 Dean reset his bracing position and motioned for her to go again. Riley shook out her arms, curled her hands into fists and struck at the pads Dean held again. Dean thought she was progressing well and had added some new moves.

 Although neither Dean or Sam were classically trained in any particular fighting style, they knew a decent amount. Thus she was being schooled in various self-defense techniques. Dean and she were currently working on some kick boxing forms.   Riley was finally getting a handle of the amount of force to put into punches. And with her growing angel strength it had been a steep learning curve. She'd actually managed to knock Dean on his ass a couple times.  The thunk of several rapid strikes sounded as she hit the pads in quick succession. Dean grunted as one of the blows made him shift back onto his heels again.   “Hey guys.” Sam appeared in the doorway.  “How's it going?” “Better.” Dean said.  “She'll be able to kick both our asses pretty soon.” “That's me. Kicking asses and taking names.” Riley pulled her arms over her head in stretch.   “You'll be hunter level in no time.” Dean acknowledged. “Ready to take down demons and everything.” Riley wasn't sure how she felt about that. Although she'd come to terms with the angel thing, and she really really wanted to be an advantage.

 Yet……she hadn’t really reconsidered herself as an actual hunter. Sure she’d been out on a couple smaller hunts, and she'd vowed to get stronger and be an asset. But being termed a hunter made her cringe slightly. She'd not wanted to get to that point. 

 But stepping back and looking at her life objectively she was already almost there. And she couldn't find it in herself to be upset.   Things changed.  Priorities changed.  People changed.  She could either run away or roll with the punches.  And she had decided not to run.  

 --------------------------

 After training, Riley hit the showers and washed the sweat away. When finished she threw on a cute top and shorts. She even took the time to apply a bit of lip gloss and do more than finger comb her hair.

 She tried not to consider why she was spending a bit more time primping these days. She certainly didn’t want to consider that she was trying to impress a certain archangel. But she was.

 Even though Gabriel wasn’t around much, Riley made as much as she could out of the time they had. Mostly they trained. Though flirting was a huge part of it too. She figured he really enjoyed that she could tease him as much as he teased her. Their banter had become almost constant. But Riley was slightly surprised that Gabriel never escalated things passed being flirty. Barring, the symbol on her wrist of course. But who counted that? ‘I do.’ She thought, but pushed the thought away quickly.

 If he was as much a womanizer as Dean had said she would have expected Gabriel to jump on it… er, her, by now. Riley wondered if her skills were just that rusty.

 She’d even started using the candy scented shampoo. And of course the bit of gloss and hair care.

 Not that she was trying to entice him into making a move. But…. She wouldn’t be upset if he did. And if he did, it wasn’t like she was hoping he’d just jump her in the middle of the bunker, more like a date at some point.

 Did angels date? Did angels do anything? She knew that Gabriel had been with Kali. So he at least had done some form of date like thing. It had been implied that they did other things too – ie Casa Erotica – even if Gabriel denied it was the real him. So, did anyone have any firsthand knowledge of this? Other than Cas and Gabriel, both of whom Riley would be too mortified to ask.

 She knew Gabriel liked physical affection. Lately when he would sit near her, she’d begun playing with his hair. Running her nails through it. At one point, she’d tugged on it, mostly by accident. But oh he liked that.

 As a new form of teasing she’d resorted to tugging his hair every time she walked by him now. His eyes would always snap to her, a slight darkening in them the only visible sign of reaction.

Well visible to everyone else. Also visible to her were his wings’ reaction.

 That had been a surprise. His wings seemed to reach for her, every time she got near. Or if she was near him, they would curl around her. But he never acknowledged it.

 It was getting super frustrating.

 Because damn it, she liked him. Really liked him.

 Was it so wrong to hope that he might like her too? Even if he was an archangel, way out of her league, well… you couldn’t blame a girl for dreaming.

 Shaking off her thoughts, Riley found Dean and Sam in the war room. They both looked up when she entered and offered their unique versions of grimaces.

 “Do I look that bad?” She asked, trying to survey herself.

 “Not you.” Dean qualified.

 Now that she wasn’t fawning over her own self image she noticed the boys were pouring over a map. “Got a call from another hunter, there’s been a super suspicious death in Topeka, about four hours from here. We’re the closest.”

 Riley hummed as she came around to look at the map. “Any idea what it is?”

 “Supposedly a wraith.” Sam said.

 “We’re going to hit the road here in a second. You wanna come, or okay here?”

 She leaned against the table with her hip, considering.  

 “You can come, you’re getting really good.” Sam said.

 “But if you guys need backup, won’t you want the seats free for Cas or Gabe?” She hadn’t meant to shorten the names, but they’d slipped out.

 “Eh. It’s fine.” Dean shrugged.

 “You guys need a bigger car.” Riley offered, though she was joking. Dean’s reaction was exactly what she’d pictured, he jerked back like she’d physically hurt him. And his face was hilarious, nose all scrunched up and eyes narrowed.

 “Easy there Dean, she was joking.” Sam offered.

 Riley giggled, “Don’t worry, I’d never really suggest you’d trade Baby in.”

 He nodded, but mock glared, “Damn straight.”

 “Let me go change.”

 Eventually the boys packed up and started to head out, Riley with them. She’d just been thinking how stir crazy she was, and so a touch of adventure would be good.

[rilenerocks]

You never know what small thing will set off a cascade of memories. I was driving along, running an errand, when  I went right by this construction site. The first thing I noticed was that the external rigid insulation wrap on the framing was green instead of pink. It’s the type of thing it would be normal for me to notice, as I spent over thirty years as an assessment official, specializing in commercial properties. I measured and examined them, ultimately determining their market value for the purpose of property taxes. Where I live, those values are critical for generating revenue for local taxing districts like schools, parks and municipalities. This particular location touched a nerve with me. The building that used to be there was once the home of the Prairie Dispatch, an alternative community newspaper I worked on with Michael and some other friends in the early 1970’s. We were legit. We had real press passes. This is how it’s listed in the University of Illinois Library System.

Title: Prairie Dispatch (Urbana, Ill. : 1973)

Alternate Title: City: Champaign-Urbana, Illinois  Country: United States ThFrequency: Bi-Weekly Language: English Subject/Audience: Alternative

Here are some photos of Michael and me in the office with another friend. We did everything, wrote columns, took and developed photos, designed and ran ads, and did layout. We even covered Richard Nixon in Pekin, Illinois. I wrote articles and shot and developed photos. Only one year into our relationship in 1973, Michael and I had many a frolic in the darkroom on the second floor. We all ate so many doughnuts from the Mr. Donut across the street. We kept long work hours, this volunteer newspaper being a sideline activity, not our day jobs. Sugar rushes and coffee kept everyone going. This was almost 50 years ago. Soon no one will associate these memories with that street corner.

Here’s another new building going up in another part of town. Like muscle memory, my brain still notices them, along with other building changes that are going on in our community.  The countless hours I spent driving through every nook and cranny of my hometown streets was referred to by assessment officials as viewing. I spent most of my time viewing either by myself or more frequently with Joanne.

Joanne and I have quite a story. My apartment in 1970 when I was a junior in college was in the house on the right side of this photo. Joanne rented a house located directly behind me. We were living in the midst of the alternative community, active in the anti-war movement, and trying to live outside “the establishment.” When we met, we became instant friends. She was a year ahead of me in school. She was also a much better student than me. I was always flying by the seat of my pants – Joanne, the fastest typist I knew besides my friend Fern, would invite me to her kitchen where I’d dictate papers straight out of my head and she’d tap away until they were finished. A lifesaver. She told me she just liked hanging out with me. How lovely. In those days,  Joanne was, and actually still is, a wonderful cook and baker. In her spare time back then, she prepared food for a hundred or so at Metamorphosis, the community restaurant where we ate soup, rice and vegetables, lentils and the like. I can still see Joanne coming out of the kitchen, with a steaming bowl of something that was tasty and cheap.

In the summer of 1971, I met Michael. What I didn’t know at the time was that Joanne and Michael had attended the same high school in a suburb of Chicago.  Although just friendly acquaintances, they got along well. She told me that he was so skinny back then that if he was standing sideways the only way you knew a person there was because he had a nose that marked his spot. She remembered that he played tennis, swam and was generally a really nice person. This little bit of history added a new layer to my friendship with Joanne. Nice. The following April, when Michael and I transitioned from friends to partners, she was one of the people who really believed we were going to be successful together, unlike some others who thought we were a mismatch, a disaster waiting to happen. Around then, Joanne introduced me to her friend Janet, a journalism student who was taking a photography class at the time. It was Janet who took these wonderful black and white photos which thankfully, still hang in my home 47 years later.  

  In the fall of 1972, Michael and I moved but we always stayed in touch with Joanne. In a matter of a few years, she had a job working for our local county government, while I went from working at a bank to managing several hundred campus apartments for a family firm. We were smart women who didn’t have a specific career path. We had jobs. Her work led her into understanding that our local assessor’s office was badly in need of reform. I was detesting my job, working for people who were sorely lacking a moral compass as they took advantage of their captive university student tenants, by building shoddy apartments with steep rents. In the spring of 1977, Joanne ran for township/city assessor and won. She called me and said she knew absolutely nothing about commercial property. I said I only knew about apartment buildings and she said that was good enough for her. On January 1st, 1978, she took office and immediately appointed me auditor/appraiser which eventually became chief deputy assessor. I hurriedly took 60 hours of classes, several exams and by mid-year, attained my professional designation as  certified state assessment official. For all the decades we held office, we took classes every year to increase our knowledge and further the professionalism we felt the positions required. We had two other staff members, a deputy assessor and a secretary/receptionist. The four of us were to bring our township office into the modern world, eliminating backroom deals for taxes and establishing real fairness in the burden of taxation throughout our city. We administered a program for tax relief for senior citizens and made it our business to find them all and take care of them. Our aim was to become the model government unit in our field, in our state. And we did.

It was a heady business. We computerized all our records and updated every piece of property in town. We went “viewing” which meant driving around, measuring buildings old and new to make sure we had correct records. We learned our city street by street, alley by alley. We went from the office to the car to the office. We’d both gotten married. But basically, we spent more time with each other than anyone else in our lives, including our husbands and ultimately our kids.

This was our little office building. We used one half of it while the other was used by the township supervisor whose primary task was to minister to those people who came upon hard economic times, and who didn’t qualify for other social services. We started out in a small space and eventually built an addition. All four of us shared one room with a side office for Joanne. Later, she moved into the addition and I got her space with a door for privacy.

Joanne was a few years older than me as I’d skipped a year of school early in my life and she, like Michael, had graduated a year ahead of me. In a way, transitioning from a friendship to the additional roles of being coworkers, was similar to what Michael and I had done with our relationship. Again, I was so lucky because the change was basically effortless. We worked really hard in our first few years and we got along well. But we were also getting into our 30’s and tit felt like it was getting to be the time to think about babies, not just work. 

We two revolutionary young women were moving along into the next stages of life. Joanne had the first kid. I was with her at the hospital and at her house the day after her son was born. She and I were so different. I knew I’d want a private space around me when my turn came but she had a different attitude and that was fine. Thinking back, it’s remarkable how we approached life in such different ways. She was very relaxed and not one who was constantly plunging around in emotional spaces while I was intense and fiercely probing all the time. Once when we’d taken a number of our continuing education classes together, she told me she couldn’t sit next to me on test day because my vibes were too palpable and distracting. Hah! Our work goals were similar as were our intellects, but we had crazy-different styles. I think it’s magical how we worked together. I handled a lot of the confrontations that work required and almost all the letter-writing. She was the statistician and planner for tackling  the mathematical issues. Numbers were never my strong suit although I improved over the years. We complemented each other without knowing that was how things would work before we started. 

When I got pregnant, Joanne threw us our baby shower. I think the only real conflict we ever had was that she was eager for me to return to work faster after my baby was born, while I wanted to hunker down and be absorbed by my new little universe. We got past that. Eventually I returned to the office and the viewing and the sharing of our life together.

The years passed quickly. We had more kids. We attended their birthday parties. When she had her kids, I came to the hospital or watched the older ones until she came home. As we drove along, doing our job, we talked about politics, our families and our personal issues. We went through our parents’ aging, failing and eventually dying. The year after my father died, I took my mom and my kids on a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia which had been a lifelong dream of my mother’s. We were also going to see some Civil War sites, which was my dream as I’d spent years reading and studying about what was to me, an unfathomable moment in history. We did the Williamsburg part and then it was on to Richmond. We’d no sooner arrived when my mom attempted the impossible, a walk up three flights of stairs on a bad knee. By the time she descended, she was so crippled she couldn’t walk. I was devastated. The next day, we piled into the car and headed home.

Joanne felt awful for me. The next year she offered to take a Civil War road trip  with me. She said I could be in charge of all the planning and that she’d be happy to go along and listen to me talk. Oh, and that she’d pay for all the accommodations and food while I could pick up incidentals and gas. Who does that kind of thing? Joanne does. We took our trip and had a fantastic time. We threw in Monticello and she ate George Washington’s peanut soup recipe at a Williamsburg inn where we stopped for more history. I think that trip was the most selfless thing anyone outside my family has ever done for me. A mere thirty years ago.

We were getting older. Our different styles were beneficial in our personal lives. I was good at the emotional stuff. If her kid was driving her crazy and she was at the end of her rope, I could step in and help by taking on some of those conversations. When my sister had an accident out of state, and was coming home temporarily disabled, Joanne, a better money manager than me, had her house cleaned from top to bottom. When Joanne and her husband needed a getaway, her five year old daughter came to live with me. When my washing machine broke, she bought me a new one. Joanne hosted multiple fundraisers for political candidates. I always made my special and popular chicken liver pate as a contribution for the buffet. I remember bringing my daughter to one of those where we met Barack Obama when he was running for the Senate. I made him a plate of food after he spoke. Joanne always sent me home with a fair share of leftovers. We traded recipes. Her family liked my sausage-potato-broccoli bake with cheese. Mine was partial to her blueberry spice cake. I also remember a wild New Year’s Eve when Michael and I stopped by her house before heading to Chicago. I tasted her fabulous chicken drumettes in plum sauce which were unforgettably delicious. Decades later, I prepared them for my daughter’s law school graduation party. And by the way, you haven’t lived until you’ve tasted a slice of her cheesecake. 

Joanne’s had more surgeries than me and I’ve been with her through all of them. After back surgery, she called me way too quickly from the recovery room. I dashed to her hospital room to join her and asked how she felt. She replied, “ I’m just sitting here being totally catatonic.” We both roared. After a particularly rough knee surgery she was hooked to a machine that promoted circulation in the wounded leg. It was driving her crazy and she was in significant discomfort. I sat there, pushing her pain button for the morphine drip every ten minutes because she just couldn’t do it.

Our kids were growing up. When my daughter got married, Joanne was there, as she’d always been from the beginning. When my kid was laid up by knee surgery and Michael’s cancer required me to be with him, Joanne helped out by driving my girl around town. Her generosity to my family was unending. Here’s a lovely photo of the two of them at my daughter’s wedding. And of course there’s one of us as well.

I attended her son’s wedding, too.  We loved giving each other’s kids presents. Eventually they started having their own babies. Because her house was bigger, Joanne hosted my daughter’s baby shower. When her grandchildren were born, I sent them gifts as if they were mine. The truth is, all of our kids and their partners and their children belong to both of us. Sounds strange but it feels that way – an emotional investment that extends to all of them.

Somehow or other, over thirty years went by. Because I was a few years younger than everyone else in the office, I had a longer time to go before I could finish up. What a traumatic experience when everyone’s retirement time arrived. We’d spent a lifetime together. So much had happened between us, especially between Joanne and me. The final day came, we had the requisite party and cake and then I went back to work.

It was awful. I lasted 10 months. My daughter was pregnant and I offered to provide day care if they could pay my health insurance. They agreed and I took early retirement. That was a decade ago. In the ensuing years, Joanne and I have seen less of each other. How could it be otherwise as we’d gone from essentially being together for 40 hours a week to now being in our own spaces? Still, we were viewing  in a different way. I’d do my driving and she’d do hers, but we’d call each other to compare notes on anything interesting that we’d noticed. We remain fast friends. Seeing each other or not doesn’t matter. She’s still thoughtful and generous, dropping off treats from her trips to Chicago that remind of the tastes and smells of my childhood. There’s some inexplicable, ropey, psychic connection between us that’s hard to describe. It’s unbreakable  intimacy which is steady and reliable whether I see her or not. When I start feeling her or hearing her in my head I reach out and invariably she’s feeling me too. Neither one of us is religious but it is a powerful force. I think it’ll last forever. One of life’s gifts to me.

Viewing with Joanne You never know what small thing will set off a cascade of memories. I was driving along, running an errand, when  I went right by this construction site.

[naturalhealthgodsway]

Dealing With the changing Face of "Normal"

"Normal"! What on earth is this concept of normal? I think the best description I ever received was, "What everyone else is, and you're not!" I've always described life around my home as "my/our version of normal, whatever that is". For me, "normal" has always included a sense of routine, a certain amount of sameness every single day, the "normal" way of doing things at the usual time and place. Then change comes along and reminds me that as a single mom, this concept of "normal" is actually, highly relative and if I don't adjust and accept that "my normal" won't be the same as other families out there, change would be very hard to deal with. Whether you've recently become a single mother, or you've been a single mother for a long time, no doubt your concept of "normal" has had to change too. Sometimes we have to adjust our perception of “normal” before any true, lasting change can be engaged in or even considered. Sometimes, “the way we’ve always done it” is no longer the best or most expedient way to do it anymore. Life has a way of throwing things at us that require change to adequately deal with. Change is a difficult word for up to a solid third of modern society. It is a threat for some. A difficulty for others. Some types of change require time, effort, and/or money to accomplish and those requirements are not always available the moment change barges in. Change arrives for various reasons: Someone dies and family or work life must be changed to accommodate the gap left behind. Health fails and change must take place to function in a manner conducive to healing or simply moving forward in a new way of life. Locations change because of going to school or accepting a new job and change must take place to accommodate the move. Prices rise and fall, forcing changes in how available earnings are spent. These are just a few of the circumstances that tend to force change in a person’s life, whether or not that change is wanted or unwanted. Nothing makes the concept of dealing with change more relevant than the year COVID-19 hit the world stage! Truly 2020 will go down in the history books as the year that forced modern life to reconsider how they do things in a very sudden, in some cases drastic way. How we paid our bills, how we schooled our children and how we did our grocery shopping were instantly changed! Prior to COVID's entrance, the idea of online shopping for groceries was still considered a novelty and a high-ticket convenience. That all changed in one week in March of 2020! Back in 2018, I came across a photo someone took of a list of foods someone else had made for themselves to avoid. The comments attached to this photo revealed a battle for change that many nutritionists, dietitians, health food gurus, and others have been trying to win via educating the public for possibly going on 2 decades now! The perception of a normal grocery list screamed quite loud as I saw junk food, sugary foods, and items I’d only consider the occasional splurge on being touted as impossible to give up. The challenge posted with this photo was asking the public if they could go without these items for 30 days. I sat mildly shocked as I realized I go without those things for months at a time, generally only engaging in them on special occasions such as Christmas, birthdays, and national holidays. This photo was followed a day or so later by an article where a local news source was contacted by desperate parents complaining about how expensive it is to live in my town.  This bolstered another article I read earlier in that past week,  where Kelowna BC Canada was ranked the 11th most expensive place to live, and on a per capita basis with regional incomes taken into account, one of the most expensive in terms of rental properties for families. Both complainers of these article had families, but neither could find homes that would accept their kids, in their price range. This is a research reality on the ground in this town ever since I began looking into it myself back in 2005. Rents have increased dramatically over the past 15 years, creating the situation where change is being forced on people who don’t have the funds to deal with it.  (More recent articles like those two can be found by searching the news source website simply for "rentals" in the top bar beside the google search.)

However, the question reared it’s head for me, were they seriously having trouble affording life in Kelowna due to income versus expenses, or did they think the items on the 30 day challenge were a normal part of everyday life? If those things are normally part of their weekly or bi-weekly grocery runs, do they also spend money at the local coffee shop every week or every day? Is a meal caught at local fast food places a normal part of their workday routine? I have worked with people who regularly buy their lunch rather than make it at home, so I know there are those out there who think this is normal on their expense list. Do they go out for dinner once a week or even once a month? How do they shop for clothes? Is it important to them to have a different outfit for every occasion, shoes and jewelry included? Are they offended by people who wear the same outfit two or three days in a row? How do they handle their errands? Do they plan routes to save on gas or do they go where ever as needed with no thought of the hit at the gas pump? In other words, are these people struggling because they are trying to live at financial levels they don’t actually see in the bank account? Or are they struggling because none of this is normal and they are seriously broke? Those last two questions are an affront to many people because they don’t want to consider that maybe, just maybe, what they consider normal is not helping their financial situation. Maybe, just maybe, wearing one outfit for two or three days, only having one pair of shoes for several types of occasions and wearing the same jewelry might help their financial goals. Maybe, just maybe, cutting out most of the foods on the 30 day challenge might actually mean other stuff more important can suddenly become affordable. But for any of these maybes to become reality, change has to take place. Time is needed to identify the non-essentials that were once thought to be indisputable. Effort is needed to ensure identified expenses are indeed cut out of the budget to make room for more important necessities. I know for myself in times past, that doing these exercises has always resulted in better financial coverage across rent, clothing, groceries, hygiene, transportation, and debt payments. Costs have risen for me as well. Income has risen and fallen quite scarily at times and made it difficult to pay the bills. The financial lessons I’ve learned as a single mother raising two kids in a town such as Kelowna, has not only allowed me to recover from low income periods better, but has opened my eyes to the financial plight of many in my situation who don’t realize that societal norms are actually harming their ability to make ends meet. Occasionally someone will come along who like one of the parents complaining to Castanet, will realize that the only way they can make ends meet is to sell stuff and cut back. While they were cursing the thought of having to do that, I’ve lived that way! I’ve even contemplated having to do that in more recent times as well. Change can be an adventure, or it can be a threat. It can be viewed as a doorway to better things, or the iron gate swinging shut on one’s dreams. The perspective is entirely up to each person facing it. Time, effort and finances are freed up for better things when unnecessary stuff is removed from the picture. Modern society is a slave to materialism. Toys big and small require maintenance to keep in running condition. Homes and properties big and small require maintenance to stay structurally healthy and useful. Special care clothing takes time and money to keep in optimal condition. The less you own, the less you have to put out on such maintenance. The less you put out on maintenance, the more you have available for needs, health concerns, and emergencies down the road. This goes for time, effort and finances. Change happens so much easier when all three of those criteria are adequately available.

You can learn how to begin changing your own perception of “normal” and discover lost money in the process, by signing up to take my 3 month coaching program: Taming the Coin. Sometimes, a person won’t know where to find the funds until they have completed the first month of the program, then it will dawn on them where that money was hiding and they can continue more confidently toward a deeper understanding of where their funds are going, why they are going there, and how to better spend their resources in a manner that comes closer to meeting their daily, weekly and monthly needs. Time and finances are needed to discover the effort necessary to make required changes to live better on the income currently coming in. Kelowna is constantly being touted as a two-income town in order for families to survive here. My kids are now young adults and one has a head injury he’s recovering from. Neither are able to move out on their own yet and have found it cheaper to pay the room and board I’m asking, than to attempt getting into a rental situation here. Yet somehow over the years, I was able to raise them on one income that was generally seen as less than the required amount to live on. I’m not saying it’s easy to make ends meet in Kelowna or even where you live, but I am saying with a financial scaple in your hand, it is possible. All it takes is a shift in perspective regarding what is and isn’t necessary, what is a need versus what is a want, examining spending habits, bills and transportation norms. Check out Taming the Coin and see for yourself. Read the full article

[komahinasecretexchange]

Title: Looking Forward

Author: @komaedakun / @givemerockruffs

For: @procrastination-hell

Rating/Warnings: nothing explicit just some..making out I guess// read the author’s notes for any other “warnings” I suppose ^^

Prompt: “Hinata’s wife dies, but Komaeda helps him move on.”

Author’s notes:  I hope you’re ok with slight hinanami…This is a no-despair, no-talent (but some do have jobs that feature their talent), modern au (I think) in which Hinata lost Chiaki in a shooting, Komaeda lost Izuru to suicide, and the two old college friends (now in their 30s) reconnect due to their tragic experiences.

I had tons of fun writing this (I may have went a bit overboard)!!! I hope you like it! ;v; (also I feel like I should mention that Izuru and Hinata are unrelated in this! and it’s also more them helping each other rather than just Komaeda helping Hinata//)

Enjoy!

    When he lost Chiaki, it felt like his whole world ended. Like it completely stopped.  This was no exaggeration – it’s just how it really, truly felt.

    Souda was the first to apologize to him after it happened.

    “Losin’ my wife…,” he’d said.  “‘Can’t imagine what that’d do to me, man…I’m so sorry.”

    It wasn’t a gradual thing, either.  It happened out of nowhere, all at once.  There was a shooting at the mall out in the city – a man came in with a gun and just started…shooting.  She’d probably hesitated, the way she always did.  She’d always moved slowly – too slowly.  

    Hinata didn’t really know the whole story, but he didn’t actually want to know any more.  He’d briefly heard about it on the news while it was happening, but he turned the TV off the second he realized that his wife and friend were there.  She was with Tsumiki.  

    When the nurse came back and broke the news to him, they both cried – hard.  Hinata wished he’d been there.  He was convinced he could’ve done something.  Like he’d be any more in control in the situation than anyone else.  He was glad Tsumiki was okay, at least – though she was probably scarred for life.

    After it happened, he felt utterly alone, despite all his friends’ kind words and embraces.  Nothing could console him, it seemed.  It felt like nothing would ever be okay again.  He wouldn’t go out for any reason except work and to go to the supermarket.  That was it.  He was terrified to go anywhere else, really.

    About 4 months passed after Chiaki died when Hinata received a phone call.  It happened midday, but he was still laying in bed, simply staring at the ceiling.  When his phone rang, he sighed heavily and swept it off the nightstand beside him.

    Unknown caller.Hinata blinked at the screen, debating whether or not to answer for a moment.  He picked up.

    “Who’s this?”

    “Hinata-kun?  Is that you?”

    “Huh?”  The voice sounded oddly familiar.  Hinata’s eyebrows furrowed.  “Who is this?”

    “Ah, my mistake.”  The person on the other line laughed softly.  “Um…It’s Nagito Komaeda.  From college?  Hope’s Peak?  I don’t expect you to remember me, but…”

    Oh.  Yes, he remembered Komaeda.  They were friends in college – best friends, even.  He wondered whatever happened to that.

    “Oh,”  Hinata said aloud.  “Hi!  Ah, how’d you get my number, exactly?”  He was happy to receive a call from an old friend, yes, but he was honestly wondering about how Komaeda obtained his phone number.

    “I heard your friend, Souda, talking about you at the café in town!  I work there.  ‘Turns out I work fairly close by to where you guys live…Souda is a regular, but I never knew that you knew one another; I asked him for your number.  I’m sorry, I hope that’s okay.”

    “Yeah?  Oh, yeah, that’s fine…”  Hinata sat up in the bed.  Of course; Souda wasn’t exactly quiet about…anything that he did.  Hinata briefly wondered who his friend had been talking to about him.

“Okay,”  Komaeda replied slowly.  “That’s good…well, anyway, he seemed to feel really bad for you,”  he went on.  “I had no idea you were married.”

Hinata felt his breath catch in his throat.  “Mhm,”  he forced out.  “I was.”

    “I’m so sorry for your loss,”  Komaeda said.  “I, ah…a while ago – around a year, now – I lost my boyfriend.”

    “Oh?”  Hinata swallowed, throat still tight, though that somehow made him feel a bit…better.  “I’m sorry to hear that…”

    “That’s alright!  This is more about you than me!  Ah, how long ago did she pass – if you’re okay with me asking?”

    Hinata took a deep breath.  “A…about 4 months ago.”

    “Wow,”  Komaeda breathed.  “I’m shocked you can even talk about it,”  he said.

    “It’s hard,”  Hinata replied, just barely keeping his voice from predictably cracking.  

    “Of course.”  There was a pause of silence on the other line.  “I don’t think it ever won’t be hard.”

    “Mhm.”

    “Anyway, I just wanted to call and offer my condolences…it seemed appropriate, considering our history,”  Komaeda continued.  “I apologize for calling out of the blue like this, I–”

    “Is that the only reason you called?”  Hinata asked, running a hand over his face.  “I mean, not to reconnect or…anything?”  Suddenly, going out for something other than work sounded okay.

    “Oh um, I mean, not really, but…do you want to meet again?”

    “We were friends in college,”  Hinata reminded him.  “I wonder what happened to that.”

    “Life moves on, I suppose.  Sadly.”  Another beat of silence.  “I’d disappoint you, anyway.”

    “Don’t be like that.”  Ah, yes.  It was all coming back to him: how Komaeda could be.  He could deal with it…probably.

    A pang of excitement suddenly sparked in his chest.  He sat up a little straighter.  It surprised him, really; why was he excited?  ‘Just the thought of a “new” friend, he guessed, but…it was strange to him why he wasn’t more than ready to hang up and never pick up a phone again, after the topic just forced upon him.  Had he really not had a decent interaction with someone in so long that it didn’t matter what they talked about?

    “We should…meet up sometime,”  Hinata suggested.  “And talk.  Just to, y'know, catch up again.”

    “You sound pretty upbeat for someone who just talked about something so tragic,”  Komaeda said.  “I’m surprised you’d get like this over someone like me!”

    Hinata went quiet for a moment.  He’d definitely need to get used to this, if they were going to “reconnect”.

    “‘Guess so, huh?  Sorry.”

    “Oh, no, I’m sorry!  That must’ve sounded bad, I’m–”

    “No. you’re okay,”  Hinata quickly replied.  “Not everyone’s really great with words, I guess…but…I get what you were saying, I think, I was just caught a little off guard, um – I was thinking the same thing, really.  Myself.”  He took another deep breath, glancing around his bedroom.  His eyes landed on the clock on his nightstand. 1:27 p.m.  “Um, so, anyway…does lunch sound okay?”

————————————-

    Lunch was arranged for that Sunday.  Komaeda called on Friday.

    On Saturday, Hinata talked to Souda about the whole ordeal.  The man came over per his friend’s request, and they simply sat at Hinata’s kitchen table together to talk.

    “You’d think I’d be turned off by it – the way he talked,”  Hinata told him.  “But, I dunno, it was weird… ‘cause I was talking to an old friend, you know?  And it was like it didn’t really matter once I stopped myself from crying ‘cause it was, like, exciting to talk to him again, I guess?  It felt familiar.”

    Souda nodded at him from across the table, eyebrows furrowed together.  “Well, man, I’m glad he called!”  The mechanic put his hands up.  “‘Seems like you’re happier than you’ve been in awhile just from a talk!  This guy could be good for ya.”

    “I don’t know if I’d say happy, just a bit uplifted, maybe.”

    “It’s pretty crazy to me how a person you haven’t talked to in years could just call up ‘n do this to ya, regardless.”  Souda chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest.  Hinata shifted his gaze from his friend’s face and noticed his heels were now up propped up on the edge of the table, and he briefly wondered how he’d moved them there without Hinata noticing.

    “Well, we were friends in college…”  The brunette rubbed at the back of his neck, looking back up at the other.

    “Yeah but dude, you’ve been in this slump for, like, quite a few months now – with good reason, ‘a course, but man…I was so worried about you!”

    Hinata gave a tiny smile.  “Well, um, it doesn’t just…go away, still.”  He cleared his throat.  “But, um, I dunno, I guess it just felt good to know that I’m not really alone.  I mean, I know other people have lost their partners in the world, but–”

    “Whaddya mean?”  Souda raised an eyebrow at him.  “What’d he tell you?”

    “Oh, he, uh, lost someone, too.  Recently.”

    “Yeah?”

    “Yeah.  So I think that’s part of it.”

    “Probably.”  Souda nodded thoughtfully, eyes on the ceiling.  “Well, man, I hope this’ll work out for ya, then.  ‘Could be good to reconnect with an old friend.  ‘Take your mind off things.”

    “Mhm.  Hopefully.”

————————————-

    He wasn’t going to lie – just trying to take his mind off of the fact that Chiaki was dead made him feel sad and especially guilty.  Sad because it was a reminder that she was gone; guilty because he was trying to forget her, but he really didn’t want to.

    He wondered if she’d be angry with him for trying to forget.

    The rest of Saturday went slowly.  Hinata really didn’t have anything to do for the rest of the day – he was still off from work, and there weren’t really any errands to run.  He kept on top of anything that needed to be done around the house, so it left him…bored a lot of the time.  He did not like the feeling.

    When Sunday did come, Hinata was excited.  Purely, genuinely excited – he felt like a child.  That was a good feeling.  He welcomed it.

    However, on his walk down to the local café at precisely 2 p.m (when and where they’d decided to meet), a sinking feeling formed in his gut.  He wouldn’t stand me up, would he?  He thought grimly.  No…I mean, he doesn’t really have any reason to…and this isn’t a date, anyway…  Hinata shrugged.  It was useless to worry; it only spoiled his good mood.

    When he arrived at the café, Komaeda was sitting, waiting outside for him on a small bench.  Hinata was only a bit surprised to find that he looked…absolutely no different than he looked in college.  He had the same white, reddish-tipped, unkempt hair sticking up every which way, same stormy gray eyes, same tall, frail figure and pale skin.  He was wearing a white shirt with some sort of red pattern on it, and a dark green jacket over it.  Hinata recognized the jacket.  Huh.

    “Hinata-kun!”  He cried upon seeing the other approach the front entrance.  Hinata waved a hand at him.  Komaeda stood up from the bench.  “Hi!  How are you?  You look just how I remember you!”  He laughed, grinning from ear to ear.

    Hinata smiled widely back at him.  “You look the same, too; it’s kind of amazing,”  he laughed, slightly, himself, and rubbed the back of his neck.  “I mean, I guess it hasn’t been that long, so it makes sense…um, I’m good!  It’s nice to get out of the house for something other than work.”  

    “Yes, I bet.”  Komaeda nodded, looking him up and down.  “You still don’t seem to know how to use a hairbrush,”  he teased.

    “‘Could say the same for you.”  Hinata smirked.

    “Touché.”  The white-haired reached out and took one of Hinata’s hands.  “Should we go inside?”

    Hinata looked down at their hands, blinking.  Right; he’d forgotten that Komaeda was kind of touchy.  How could he have forgotten that part?

    “Hinata-kun?”

    “Oh, yes, of course – let’s go inside.”  The brunette nodded quickly, and Komaeda glanced at him before leading the other into the café.  

    The inside was quaint, quiet and Hinata briefly asked himself why he didn’t visit this place more often, consider how close he lived to it.  More than that, he wondered why he had never run into Komaeda in town before.  He figured he only worked nearby, but lived farther away.  There were only a couple people inside the place, and no one except for the barista behind the front counter looked up at them when they entered, which Hinata was grateful for.  Komaeda released his hand after a moment.

    “It’s a nice place, huh?”  He said.  “I like working here.  It’s not really all that busy but even when it is, it always seems to stay quiet.”  He hummed.  “It’s a nice atmosphere to work in.”

    “Yeah.”  Hinata replied with a nod.  “‘Seems like it,”  he added as they took a seat at a tiny table at the far left of the establishment, right beside a window.  In that moment, he couldn’t help but feel slightly antsy at the realization that he was outside, somewhere that wasn’t his house or his job or the supermarket; he fiddled with his fingers.  He was a target.  Komaeda was a target.  Everyone in the café was a target.  

    “‘Something the matter, Hinata-kun?”  Komaeda was looking at him worriedly. Is it showing that much?  The thought that he looked as worried as he suddenly felt made Hinata more uncomfortable.

    “Oh, um, no, I’m okay!”  Hinata waved his hands in front of him, forcing a smile.  “Just, um, a little anxious.”

    “If it’s about this, there’s really no need for it!  You shouldn’t be anxious around someone like me, I–”

    “No, no, it’s not that.  This is, like, uh…this is the first time I’ve been out of the house for something other than work or getting food since…Chiaki died, and I…it’s weird.”

    “Oh.”  Komaeda nodded slowly, relaxing a bit.  “I’m sorry; we don’t have to be here if you don’t want to be here!  We can go to your house, instead, and just talk there…”

    That’d be a good idea if my house wasn’t a mess.  Hinata deflated.  He’d been slacking on cleaning for a few days, which didn’t normally happen; of course this had to be a time that it did. I don’t want that to be his impression of me…

    “Um…I don’t think that’ll work…”  Hinata looked away from him, feeling shameful at this point.  “Sorry, ‘guess I’m kinda ruining this–”

    “Oh, no, it’s okay!”  Komaeda smiled at him and he briefly believed it was okay.  “Well, we could go to my house, then.  If you want.”

    His house.  Hinata paused to think about it.  ‘Seems a little awkward…but…he did offer to come to mine, and that would’ve been awkward for him…I guess it’s fine.  He fought back a sigh; he was angry with himself but didn’t want Komaeda to get the wrong idea.

    “Okay,”  he said with a small nod.  “That sounds okay.”

    “Alright!”  The white-haired stood up from his chair.  “We’ll have to take my car,”  he added, as if it was a terrible consequence.

    “That’s fine,”  Hinata replied, warily glancing around as he stood.  

    “Okay.”  Komaeda shrugged, and went to the door, opening it for the two of them as they exited.  

    “…‘Sorry,”  Hinata said after a moment of silence between them as they walked to Komaeda’s car (which was a small silver Honda, he noted).  “You must think I’m nuts.”

    “No, not at all, Hinata-kun!”  The other laughed lightly, pulling his keys out of his jacket pocket.  “Really!  May I ask what exactly happened to your wife, for you to be so anxious, though?”

    Though he immediately felt tears in his eyes, Hinata felt…okay sharing with him.  There was still a pause of silence (that included them just standing there, Hinata looking around awkwardly and Komaeda holding the keys mid-air, not unlocking the car), though.  Hinata swallowed back the tears.  “She, uh, she was at the mall that got shot up in town.  Bell Mall?”  He couldn’t stop his voice from cracking, that time.

    “Oh.”  Komaeda’s smile suddenly fell.  “That’s…that’s really terrible,” he said, and finally unlocked the car.  Hinata walked around to the passenger side and stepped inside.

    Once they were both seated, and Komaeda was starting up the car, Hinata glanced at him.  

    “Uh…I get it if you don’t want to tell me, but…would you mind sharing what happened to…your boyfriend?”

    Hinata could’ve sworn he saw the man’s grip on the steering wheel tighten.  

    “He killed himself,”  he said after a moment, then smiled.  “That’s not really important, though.”

    Hinata stared at him for awhile, even as he pulled out of the parking lot.  He killed himself.  That’s just…fabulous.  He couldn’t help but wonder why.

    “That’s horrible,”  the brunette finally said.  “I’m so sorry, Komaeda.”

    “That’s fine!”  Komaeda replied, humming.  “It’s not your fault, anyway!  Don’t sweat it.”

    The brunette glanced away, feeling guilty for even asking.  He did ask me, though.  I mean, I guess it’s fair…

    They were mostly quiet for the rest of the drive; Hinata successfully made it awkward.  When they arrived, he glanced out the window and at the house they’d parked in front of.

    It was a fairly small, blue-gray…craftsmen, he believed.  It was lined with white – there was a white deck in front, in fact.  The door was a pale orange, which was kind of an ice contrast, and two large paneled windows were on either side.  It seemed…homey.  There were two potted plants on either side of the steps leading up to the deck.  Red flowers.

    “‘Coming?”  The other was looking at him, keys in one hand and other on the car door handle.  Hinata quickly nodded.

    “Yes, yeah.  Sorry,”  he added, and pushed the car door open.  The driveway, he noticed, was dirt.  There were also little to no trees in sight.  He didn’t bother asking where they were, though he was a little curious.

    “‘House’s nice,”  Hinata commented as he trailed behind the white-haired man, following him to the door.

    “Thank you.”  Komaeda laughed lightly.  “That’s nice of you to say.”

    The other merely nodded, still glancing around the unfamiliar area.  Komaeda had the door open in moment, and he followed him inside.

    They stepped onto a welcome mat the second they were through the door.  Komaeda kicked his shoes off and Hinata followed suit.  

    It was very open, and very modern, he noted, pleasantly surprised.  The walls were all white (with some paintings on them offsetting it here and there), the floors were dark hardwood, and there were wooden beams on the white ceiling.  It made for a nice touch.  They were standing in both the dining room and kitchen just upon entering; to his left was the dining room, to his right was the kitchen.  Both were tiny, but not so small that they seemed cramped.  The dining room table was small, circular, dark wood, and there were three matching chairs around it, a centerpiece of flowers in the center, and a small, black lighting fixture directly above.  There was also a gray area rug beneath the table, and a dark wood cabinet with glass panels in the far end of the room, presumably filled with China or…something of that sort.  The kitchen was brightly lit and almost all white; white cabinets, white counters, white island.  However, the stove (which was wedged between the cabinets on the left), fridge (on the far right of the room, on the corner where it led into a hallway) and sink (which was beside the stove, on the counter to its right) seemed to be stainless steel, and the counter and island tops were a dark marble, Hinata believed.  There was also a pale blue backsplash over the stove and sink.

    Directly ahead of them was a living area; a gray couch in the near-center with a tiny circular table with a lamp on it beside it, a dark coffee table in front of the couch with a couple candles on it, a TV on the farthest wall, some sort of cupboard to the right of the couch on the wall there.  That was all Hinata could see from the get-go.  There was very little decoration, and even less evidence that anyone even lived there.  It was still nice, somehow, though. Weird.

    All in all, the home looked like it had just been moved into.  It was virtually barren; he could only guess Komaeda was a minimalist of something.  Or he was moving.  He couldn’t have just cleaned it for Hinata’s visit, right?  He didn’t even know they’d be coming here.

    “Are you planning on moving?”  Hinata asked, and turned to him, genuinely curious.

    “Hm?”  Komaeda glanced at him, in the middle of hanging his keys on a tiny handle by the left the front door.  Hinata noticed, as well, that there was a calendar hanging on the right side of the door, marked with numbers too high to be on a calendar.  He’d ask about that later.  “Oh, no.  Why?”

    “It’s just so…clean in here.”

    “Oh, I just like cleaning!  It keeps me busy…I also like to keep it nice in case anyone should happen to drop by.  And – for my own sanity.  I lose things often, so I like to be assured that everything has a place and is in that place at all times.”

    Hinata was impressed.  “You do a really nice job of it, it’s beautiful in here.  Just kinda empty.”

    “Thank you.  And, yes, I don’t have all that much but again, what I do have is all in particular spots.”  Komaeda chuckled in that way of his and headed into the kitchen.  “Anyway, do you want anything to drink?”  He opened the fridge.  “I’ve got…iced tea.  And water, of course.  And there’s probably some coffee in the cupboards.”

    The brunette followed him, leaning on the island slightly.  He was still looking around, taking it in.  “Oh, uh – just water is okay,”  he insisted, smiling at the other.  “Thank you.”  

    “No problem!”  Komaeda hummed and walked over to a cabinet, reaching up and taking out a glass and then proceeding to fill it up with tap water.

    Hinata tapped his fingers against the marble surface of the island.  “Can I ask a dumb question?”  He said after a beat of silence.

    “Ask away!”  Komaeda replied, turning off the tap and moving to  hand him the glass.

    The man muttered a “thank you” as he took it.  “Um, what’s with the numbers on the calendar?  Like, not the date ones but the big ones that were, like, written on there.  I think I saw one that was like, in the 400s.  Do they mean something?”

    “Yes.”  Komaeda nodded.  “Something I’d rather not share; it’s a bit embarrassing.”

    “Oh, sure.”  Hinata broke his gaze.  “Sorry.”

    “Not a problem!”  The white-haired boy insisted.  “Don’t worry.  Anyway,”  he clasped his hands together.  “It’s my turn to ask a question.  What do you do for a living?”

    “Oh, I work in an office.  Nothing special.  I like, answer phone calls and stuff.”  He immediately felt embarrassed, sharing his boring old desk job.

    “Hmm.  Interesting.”  Komaeda nodded, as if it was truly interesting.  “What type of company do you work for?”

    “A window installation company.”  Hinata wanted to curl up and die.  This was very, very embarrassing.  Komaeda was probably a surgeon or a scientist or something.  He wouldn’t want to waste time talking to some dude he knew from college who asked people what type of windows they’d prefer over the phone for a living.

    “Ah!  That’s cool.  It sounds like a very leisurely job.  ‘Seems nice.”

    “It’s really boring, actually.”

    “So you’d prefer something with some life to it.”  Nodding seemed to be Komaeda’s thing.  Aside from laughing.

    “‘Guess so,”  Hinata replied, rubbing the back of his neck.  “What do you do?”

    “I work in retail,”  he told him.  “I’m a cashier.  Nothing special.  Pretty generic, actually.”

    “Really?”  Hinata tried not to look surprised.  He failed.  “With the house you have, you wouldn’t think that that, of all things, is…your job.”

    “I know…unimpressive, huh?  I mean, a piece of trash like me doesn’t need an amazing job that could be left for someone much more worthy, though.  I’ve got enough money to get by; my parents left me enough to retire, really, but I’ve got to do something with my time.”  

    He was rich.  Komaeda was rich.  He didn’t really show it.  That was weird, but kind of cool.  Cool that he didn’t take advantage of it.  Hinata felt privileged.

    The brunette chose to ignore the “trash” comment, as he remembered that was something Komaeda used to say very often in college, and it probably wasn’t going to do anything to say something.

    “Ah.  Yeah, of course.  But–I didn’t mean it was unimpressive, I was just surprised!”  He laughed awkwardly.  “Sorry.”

    “It’s okay.”  Komaeda waved a hand, smiling.  “So, anyway, do you have any kids?”

————————————-

    Talking with Komaeda felt therapeutic to Hinata in a way, despite how many times he said things that should be considered off-putting.  The brunette really, honestly, stopped minding after a while, and realized just how much he enjoyed his mere presence.  It was relaxing, and quite comforting to feel that way again.  Cleansing.  They talked until it was dark out.  Hinata got home at at least 7 p.m.  It seemed like, the longer they spoke, the easier the words came.  Instead of running out of things to talk about, they found more and more.     Komaeda drove him home that day, and this time the silence was more comfortable.  Hinata didn’t feel awkward in the slightest.  When he was dropped off at home, the white-haired smiled widely at him and waved as he drove away.  It left him in a good mood.  

    When he stepped into his house, however, that feeling vanished as if it had blown away with a gust of wind.  A feeling of guilt and sadness set in, like it had on Saturday after Souda left.  Maybe Hinata just…needed to be around people all the time.  That would be tough, unless he remarried…which wasn’t happening anytime soon, by any circumstance.  Hinata refused.  He just wanted Chiaki back.  He really, really wanted her back.  He wished all of this was a joke – that whatever or whoever had taken her would come out of nowhere with an arm around his wife and place her safely in Hinata’s arms instead.  

    When he laid down in bed that night, he couldn’t help but notice how empty the bed felt with the vacant space beside him.

————————————-

    Komaeda called back a few days after Hinata had been over his house – two days, to be exact.

    “I figured you wouldn’t mind me calling, but I guess that was kind of a bold assumption,”  Komaeda had told him sheepishly.  “But we had such a nice time when you came over, I figured–”

    “I had a great time.”  Hinata cut the man off before he could feel any worse about calling, which is where he knew it was going.  “You’re not bothering me by calling, okay?  I’m glad you called.  I would’ve, but–I don’t actually have your number, I totally forgot to ask you for it.”

    “Oh!”  Komaeda laughed into the phone.  He proceeded to tell the other his number, and Hinata wrote it down on the notepad he kept on his nightstand.  It seemed like it would be a regular occurrence for Komaeda to call when Hinata was in bed.

    “Okay, thanks.”  Hinata nodded to himself.  “It was stupid of me not to ask for it; I’m glad you called.”

    “Yes, me too!  I’d hate to lose contact again.”

    They talked for what had to be an hour after that.  They talked about nothing particular, just random things: a pretty bird Komaeda had seen, something Hinata had watched on TV; it was peaceful.  Reassuring.  He decided he really enjoyed talking to Komaeda because there was no stress involved.  Even if Chiaki did come up, the unsettled feeling Hinata got would vanish just as soon as it came.

———-

————————————-

———-

    Two months passed.

    Hinata and Komaeda made phone calls a regular thing.  Then, meeting regularly at one another’s houses became a thing.  The two months went by quickly, full of those two things and almost nothing else (other than working and buying food) for Hinata.  He enjoyed it.  It made him feel like he wasn’t so disconnected anymore; like he was putting himself out there, and getting better somehow.  Not only that, but it was refreshing to just sit and talk about all the fun they had in college, when they were younger.  Anything brought up was a fond memory.  Hinata never seemed to stop smiling during these interactions.  They grew closer with every conversation.

    On the days when Komaeda had work, Hinata sometimes visited him at the café.  On the days Hinata worked, Komaeda sometimes visited him at the office.  Those visits always brightening the brunette’s day – even when he was in a pissy mood.

    “This friendship seems to be…somethin’ else alright,”  Souda had told his friend the next time they saw each other, a bit awkwardly.  That’s right – friendship; Hinata refused to look at it as anything else.  “Pretty remarkable.  I’m glad he could make you this happy.”

    Was Hinata completely happy?  He figured as much, but he wasn’t really sure.  There was still that nagging feeling in his stomach every time he went to bed alone.  

    Komaeda came over to Hinata’s house one day as they approached the third month of constantly seeing each other (as Just Friends, of course).  He arrived unannounced, but Hinata didn’t mind, because the second he opened the door the white-haired got this huge grin on his face and it, truthfully, melted his heart.  Wait, did it?  He quickly composed himself.

    “Hi, Hinata-kun!”

    “Komaeda!”  He said, and smiled back at his friend.  “Hi!  Why’re you here?”  The man asked.  “Not that I’m not…glad to see you.”

    “Oh, I just thought I’d drop by.  I was in the neighborhood,”  Komaeda explained.  Hinata waved him inside, and the other stepped in quickly, as if walking in front of a playing movie screen.  “I wanted to talk to you…”

    Hinata was instantly a little anxious.  It was just a natural reaction.  “Oh yeah?”  He shut the door.  “About what?”

    “Oh, just…”  Komaeda hesitated for a moment.  “Us.”

    That only made the brunette feel worse.  “Us”?  What was that supposed to mean?  Did Komaeda not want to hang out anymore?  God, he probably noticed how Hinata looked at him sometimes.  That wouldn’t make sense, though – the smiles he made at the other were always so full of joy.  That just wouldn’t make any sense!

    “It’s nothing bad…I don’t think.”  Komaeda’s words snapped him out of his thoughts.  “I still really like you.”  It was like he read Hinata’s mind.  The man blinked at his friend.

    “I wasn’t thinking that,”  he lied.

    “Okay.”  Komaeda smiled sweetly.  “Do you want to sit down?”

    Was this a conversation they’d need to sit down for?  “Sure.”  Hinata led him to the living room and plopped down on the couch.  Komaeda slowly sat beside him.  It was quiet in the room for a few moments, which didn’t normally happen.

    “Our friendship is interesting, don’t you think?”  The other man jumped straight into it.  He didn’t waste any time.  Hinata was kind of impressed at his ability to skip all the small talk.  

    “Sure,”  he replied.  “Why?”

    “It’s just amazing to me!  How we just…became friends again after not even seeing one another for so long.”  The white-haired laughed lightly.  “I feel very connected with you.”

    Hinata suddenly felt awkward.  Why?  “Yeah, me too.  It’s nice to have a friend like you again,”  he said.  “Not that I don’t appreciate my other friends.  It’s just different, I guess.”

    “Mhmm.”  Komaeda nodded slowly, staring at him.  Hinata glanced around the room, trying to avoid his gaze.  “I’ll understand if you don’t share my feelings,”  he went on.  “But I just feel like I need to tell you that I don’t believe I’ve felt the way I do when I’m with you since Izuru was alive.  But – I really don’t deserve you, do I?”  Ah.  Izuru was his boyfriend’s name.  The gears in Hinata’s head turned as Komaeda broke his stare and leaned back on the couch.  “No…you’re much too good for me.  He was, too.  That was foolish of me to say, huh?  Just forget i–”

    “Are you saying that you, like, want to date me?”  It was Hinata’s turn to stare.

    “Nevermi–”

    “Komaeda.”  They were staring at each other, at that point.  Hinata chose to notice, as well, just how close they were sitting to each other.  “Would you just answer something clearly?  It’s like you speak in riddles sometimes…”

    The man’s eyebrows furrowed.  “I just spoke on an instinct,”  he insisted.  “I didn’t really mean it…”

    Hinata could just tell he was lying.  He was quite poor at it, really.  He remembered, in college, he’d believed many of Komaeda’s lies without a second thought.  He was so dense back then, it was kind of pathetic.  The brunette sighed aloud, closing his eyes for only a moment.  When he opened them again, Komaeda had his hands folded in his lap and was gazing to the right.  He clearly did not know where to go with this.  Hinata took a minute to organize his own thoughts.  He thought about how he felt lighter every time Komaeda smiled; how his heart clenched when the other laughed; how he felt incredibly amused when noticing the things he unconsciously did (like talk with his hands, or furrow his eyebrows when invested in a conversation, or take Hinata by the hand to lead him somewhere, and then apologize once he noticed they were holding hands, or–lots of other things); how he just felt…elated, anytime he was with him.

    They were just friends, though, right?

    …Apparently not.

————————————-

    Hinata said it “just happened.”

    Well, it didn’t just happen; it happened and it was like, way too important to slap a “just” on it.  It really began the second Komaeda had basically said “I haven’t felt like this since Izuru was alive.”  It escalated, however, when Komaeda interrupted his internal struggle for the second time that night by saying “I should go,” and Hinata forgot any other nagging thought in his mind for that moment because the want to say “No, stay” trumped all of them.  Maybe that was it.

    All he really knew was that the white-haired was almost literally on top of him, seemingly trying to kiss him to death.  Honestly, Hinata was loving it.

    It started out slow, gentle, fairly tame:  Hinata pulled him back down to the couch and pressed their lips together.  They separated pretty quickly.  Then they kissed again, when they both realized they liked it, and then they just kept coming back for more.  Each one turned longer than the last, and then it turned feverish and Komaeda’s tongue was in his mouth and Hinata was pushing him down against the couch and then–

    And then kissing like that made Chiaki pop into Hinata’s mind and he just kept on kissing him, because he reveled in the familiar feeling and he hadn’t had it in so long and if he shut his eyes tight enough it was like he was really kissing her.

    It didn’t last long, though.  Hinata quickly remembered who he was actually kissing and everything instantly felt terribly wrong and he was ashamed with himself.  He pulled away abruptly.

    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped.  “I’m sorry, I can’t, this is wrong.”

    “Woah, hey,”  Komaeda breathed out, gripping Hinata’s arms.  Hinata pulled away, allowing the other to sit up.  He couldn’t look at him.  “What’s the matter?  Is it me?  I did something wrong, I’m so–”

    “No, no, not you.”  The other took another breath.  “I’m sorry, I just–it felt like, it felt like I was kissing her, and I just, I don’t want to kiss you and think about her that’s just not right an–”

    The white-haired cut him off.  “It’s okay.”  He laughed, as if it really was.  Hinata shook his head.  “No, really, it is.  I–I can’t say I wasn’t thinking about Izuru, myself, because I mean…it felt like I was kissing him.”  

    Hinata looked at him.  He was rubbing the back of his neck slightly, only half-sitting up.  “Oh.  Well, that’s fine, because I–”

    “But you said it felt like you were kissing Chiaki, too, right?”

    “Yes, but–”

    “So it’s fine,” Komaeda said softly, sitting up fully and taking one of Hinata’s hands.  Hinata stared at him.  “Because we loved them, right?  So that means that…the feeling, here, is the same, or at least similar – right?”

    The brunette was quiet for a while.  He was right, he supposed.  Right?  Yes.  That didn’t make Hinata feel better, actually.  It only made his head hurt.

    “I just don’t want…I don’t want to think about her if I’m kissing someone else,”  he practically whimpered.  It was kind of pathetic.  His throat felt tight.  “It just doesn’t feel right, but I don’t want to forget her, I still love her–”

    “You don’t have to stop loving her,”  Komaeda said gently.  “I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving Izuru.  Just because they’re gone – that doesn’t mean they have to totally disappear.”

    Hinata’s throat still felt tight; the feeling had, in fact, intensified.  He looked away again.  Then, he felt Komaeda’s hands on his face, wiping tears from his face.  When had he started crying?

    “Sorry,”  Komaeda mumbled when Hinata glanced at him again, and quickly retracted his hands.  “But, as I was saying, you don’t have to forget.  And neither do I.  I’m sure there are people in relationships that have lost lovers before and they still haven’t totally moved on, but…we can still go forward.”  He paused, clearly thinking his words over.  “I’m not forcing anything on you, though, I totally get it if that’s not what you’re looking for, or if you’re not ready for that, I could be useful for anything, th–”

    “No, no, I’m not thinking any of that, please stop.”  Hinata shook his head once again.  “I’m just trying to process…my thoughts right now.”  His eyebrows furrowed.  “Listen, I…really like you, okay, I really do.”  Komaeda seemed to deflate slightly at his words, like he already knew how the story would end.  “It’s just hard for me to accept them because…I feel like I’m betraying her, I feel like–” he paused, sucking in a breath.  “I feel like it’s too soon for me to be…in another relationship, because it hasn’t been long enough since she died, and I just…I don’t know, Komaeda, I don’t know.”

    “Well, it’s only been six months since she passed, right?  So…it’s understandable.  I get it.”  He nodded.  

    “I just–the thing is I think that I want to be with you, I just didn’t expect I feel this way again so soon after she passed it feels so, so wrong–”

    “You aren’t betraying her by feeling, Hinata,” Komaeda insisted.  “I promise you.  It’s only natural.  You don’t just stop feeling.  There’s billions of people on Earth, you know.”

    “I know,”  Hinata practically grumbled.  “I just–”

    “She’s not angry with you.  He’s not angry with me.  Though, again…”  He stood up from the couch, running a hand through his hair.  “I’m not trying to pressure you or..anything like that.  I just want you to know that.”

    They just looked at each other for awhile.  After maybe 30 seconds, Komaeda was clearly uncomfortable.  

    “Okay, well, I should go,”  he said.  “Sorry.  About everything.  I’m just–it’s to be expected of me, I’m sorry, I can’t imagine I let you down because I was too low to begin with for you to have any high expectation of me–”  he was already beginning to walk away.  “–but I guess I did let you down, I’m sorry–”

    Komaeda kept talking, but Hinata didn’t really hear past that part.  He’d pin anything on himself, wouldn’t he?  The brunette stood up, reached out and grabbed the other by the arm.  Komaeda was instantly quiet.

    “I said I should leave, Hinata.”

    “I don’t want you to leave.  And you don’t want to leave, either.  And also, seriously stop blaming yourself because I literally just told you what this was really about.  None of it’s your fault, idiot.”

    Komaeda laughed lightly.  “…Okay,”  he said after a moment.  “If you say so, I suppose…”

    “I just need to think about this, okay?”  Hinata released his arm.  “Give me a day?”

    “Of course.  However long you need.  Don’t feel obligated,”  Komaeda told him.  “Please.”

    “I’ll call you tomorrow,”  Hinata promised.  He’d have everything figured out by then.  Hopefully.

————————————-

    Once Komaeda left, Hinata threw his jacket on and left, as well.  He hopped into his car and drove straight to the graveyard.  The graveyard where she was buried.  He’d only visited it once before.

    When he arrived, unease immediately washed over him.  He already didn’t like it.  There were countless tombstones of varying shapes, sizes, lengths; all smushed together, struggling to fit in the space inside the gates.  Contained.  Like there wasn’t enough room to fit all the bodies.

    Surprisingly, Hinata found Chiaki’s grave fairly quick.  She had a small tombstone, rounded at the top.  It was very new, not a sign of wear on it or a chip to be seen.  Hinata sat down in the grass in front of the stone.

    “You’re too good-hearted to hate me for this.  Right?”  That was the first thing he said.  “I’m so sorry.”  The tears were already flowing.  He let them.  “I didn’t want this to happen, but I guess I can’t help it now.  You always said that you–can’t control what you like, and you were right, I guess.”  He took a breath.  “I’m really sorry.  It’s my fault, too, I can’t just blame him like that; I chose to keep seeing him.  I could have stopped.”  The brunette leaned his elbows in the grass, face in his hands.  “I really like him.  But I love you, too.  Would you be angry if I decided to be with him?”  He paused for a moment, as if expecting a response.  Nothing came, as expected.

    “…I’m so sorry, Chiaki.  I’ll never stop loving you, never. Never, so long as I live.  And I’ll never forget you, I absolutely won’t.”  He took a shaky breath.  “I promise.  Never.”  His hands were wet.

    He talked to her for an hour more, at the least.

————————————-

    He called Komaeda the next day.  He just picked up his phone (when he was sitting in bed, of course) and dialed like it was nothing.

    It was, somehow, liberating, despite how he had felt the day before.  He felt like a weight had been lifted off his chest yet at the same time there was still guilt in the back of his mind.  He guessed that’s just how it would have to be for awhile.  He could live with that.

    The phone rang four time before the other man picked up.  Hinata held his breath through all four rings.

    “Hello?”  A groggy voice greeted him.  Hinata glanced at the clock on his nightstand;  11:00 a.m.  

    “Hi.  It’s me.”  The brunette cleared his throat.  “Did I wake you?”

    “No.  I’m just tired.  I didn’t sleep very well last night.”  He yawned into the receiver.  Hinata suddenly felt guiltier.  “Sorry.  How are you today, Hinata-kun?”

    “Good,”  Hinata said slowly.  “I’m good.  Um, I was calling to tell you something.”

    “Oh, yeah?”  Komaeda barely sounded interested; this was very different from his usual attitude.  He must have been extremely tired.  “What is it?”

    “I went to Chiaki’s grave last night.”  Though he would usually cry upon just saying her name, he didn’t even feel an urge to do so.  

    Komaeda was quiet for a moment.  “Really?”  He finally replied.  He seemed a bit more awake.  “That’s good…and?”

    “And I talked to her.  A lot.  And I thought a lot about a bunch of stuff.”

    “Mhmm.”

    “I talked to her about you.”

    No response.

    “I realized that she wouldn’t be angry with me.  She was too amazing to ever be angry about something so dumb.”  Hinata took a breath.  “I’ll never forget her.  And I’ll never be over her, I don’t think, but I really want to be with you,” he said, and continued without waiting for a response.  “I think it’s okay.  I want to–I don’t want to forget, and I don’t want to leave her behind, but I want to–I want to at least move on from–from this–”

    “Really?”  Komaeda cut him off.  “You’re really okay with this?  Another relationship?  After her?”

    “Yes,”  Hinata said, and he was sure.  “Are you okay with this?”

    “Of-of course I am,”  the man replied.  “…You know, I think they would want us to look forward.  ‘Be happy again.”

    Hinata nodded, even though he knew Komaeda couldn’t see him.  He was right.  That’s just what Chiaki would want.  “Yeah.  I think so, too.”

    There was a pause of silence between them, but it was comfortable.

    “Hinata-kun?”

    “You can drop the honorific, seriously.”

    Komaeda laughed.  “Okay, Hinata then.”

    “Hm?”

    “Do you still want to know what the numbers on my calendar mean?”

    Hinata blinked.  He’d forgotten all about that.  “If you’re comfortable sharing.”

    “I count,”  he said.  “I’ve been counting the days he’s been gone since he first died.”

    The brunette was quiet for a moment.  It made sense now.

    “Yeah.  So, we still have a long way to go.  Both of us.”  He laughed yet again, in that way of his.  “But I think that…you’re good for me.  And, as hard as it is for me to grasp, I think I might just be good for you, too.”

    “Hey, Komaeda?”

    “Yes?”

    “Come over.”

[mmkelleywrites]

The Most Vague, Memorable Smell

I live in a small coal town on the Ohio river. Our community is pretty well crime free. Since we’re on the river, most disappearances are chalked up to people drowning and getting washed downstream. I want to keep track of my research, and this document will serve as a history of what I’ve found. The most recent disappearance from our town was my oldest friend. The official chain of events was something like Jeff was out drinking with friends from out of town, they decided to go fishing, and he drown. They dredged the river but decided the current probably drug him too far out and he would pop up soon enough. Jeff didn’t drink, and he was with me that night. Here’s what I’ve pieced together so far. He was sent out to visit an elderly woman through a volunteer organization he was a member of. Apparently Jeff hit it off with her granddaughter who was also there assisting her. She invited him out that night, the night he went missing. Jeff was ecstatic. He called me right after he left the lady’s house. She was perfect to him, tan, fiery red hair, and loved country music. I’d never seen him get swept off his feet, and I’d never seen him actually get ready for a date before, either. I met him and his date that night with our mutual friend Jen as my date. She introduced herself as Lynn. I found her to be unremarkable, except for two things: the way she smelled and the reddish purple V under her eye. I can’t put an exact description to it, other than just really good. It wasn’t floral, sweet or any other word you would describe scent with, it was just a smell that made you feel content. We had dinner and hit a little dance club the next town over. I think if he had had a ring, he would have been on one knee fast enough to crack concrete. He hung on her every word, he worshipped the ground she walked on. Suddenly, we couldn’t find a single sign of either. I checked my phone and had a text message from Jeff that read, “Headed to the river! ;)” That was the last time anyone heard from him. I’m not Shaggy and Scooby. I gave every bit of this information to the police before I started my own search for the truth. Jen also verified it with them. They never responded to my inquiries on the status of the investigation, or whether or not my information helped. Jeff’s parents were also in the dark, so I decided to look into it myself. My first step was to find the girl. I put out calls for help onto social media, friends and family of both of us shared it as far and wide as we could. We were looking for a short redhead with a V or checkmark shaped mauve mark under her left eye under the guise of Jeff’s family just wanting to meet someone who was instantly important to him. I had a few leads come in, but no one who had actually met Jeff or had the mark under her eye. I decided I should visit her grandmother. I called the organization that Jeff was working with, and kept the guise of trying to find the girl for Jeff’s parents to meet. The woman who handles their scheduling knew my mother, so she gave me an address. It wasn’t far from my parents house, so I took a walk. I purposely walked on the opposite side of the street. There wasn’t a house there. I double checked the address the dispatcher gave me, I checked my phone’s map, and I checked the house numbers around it. Everything matched up, except this house was definitely not habitable. It was boarded up, it looked like it’d been on fire at some point. There was a lone window on what I assume is an attic or maybe a loft that wasn’t boarded up. I saw someone in the window, just for an instant. It occurred to me that people live in all kinds of conditions. I crossed the street and opened the old chain link gate. The front door was covered by a sheet of plywood, so I crept around the back. No door at all, just an empty door frame. I checked around me. All of the yards within view were empty. I climbed up the old concrete steps and poked my head in the door. “Anyone here?” I called out, “I was looking for someone who may have lived here?” The house creaked, but no one answered. I decided that it was probably a squatter and I went back across the street. I called the charity scheduler and confirmed that was the address that Jeff had last went to. I went to the door of the house directly across the street. I knocked on the door. “Hello?” a man looked skeptically at me, keeping his front door mostly closed. “Hi, I was dropping something off for a friend, but the address he gave me is the house that burned down. Do you know where the people who lived there are now?” “Well, I reckon it’s been boarded up for about four years now.” “Oh…” “Ms. Robinson lived there, had since I was just a squirt.” he shook his head, “But she didn’t make it outta that fire. I think the investigators said it was from a space heater she used in her living room.” I thanked him for his time and turned around to head home, I saw some quick movement of something out of that uncovered window again. My entire way home it felt like I was being followed. I called the police, too. I told them that the house Jeff had been sent to had apparently burned years ago. He talked to me like I was a fool and insisted that there was a home there and they had questioned the lady and she had said she didn’t have a granddaughter or any other young lady that would be visiting her. I asked if they’d take me to see the lady. They declined at first, but I pressed them and if I want to be completely honest, they probably thought it’d shut me up. The next evening the squad car picked me up in front of my house. We turned onto the same street I’d been on before. I could vaguely smell something that smelled, well, good. It lulled me into some kind of contentment. We pulled up to the same address, but this time there was a whole house. No fire damage, not even so much as a lawn ornament out of its place. I looked across the street and there was the man I’d spoken with the evening before working in his yard. I quietly composed myself in the squad car. I didn’t want to look like a crazy person, so I held in the flood of emotions that tried to overwhelm me. That house was not like that yesterday. “You good? Let’s head in before I get sent on a call.” I followed the officer up to the porch. Up close, there was something off about the house. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though. I touched one of the posts supporting the roof over the porch. It looked freshly painted, but felt rough and cracked. The chairs on the porch leaned just a little too far to the side, things like the peephole that should have been circles were just slightly oblong. The officer knocked on the door. When the door swung open, that vague pleasing smell washed over us like like a wave. Everything seemed a little more… right. A tall, broad woman with short grey hair filled the doorway. “Mrs. Robinson, how are you this evening?” the officer asked. “Still kind of sore, Officer Riley.” she said with a still sunny disposition, “How may I help you gentlemen?” “This is Alex, he’d like to ask you about the boy that stopped by to help you and went missing.” “Oh! I’m so sorry about your friend. He was such a help to me.” “Riley tells me there wasn’t a little redheaded girl here?” She gave a little frown and shook her head. It seemed like her whole face drooped with the frown. “No, just him and I were here. Red hair doesn’t even run in my family.” “That’s weird. He kept going on about how glad he was that he volunteered because he met Lynn here while helping you out.” She gave a little shrug with her hands up in the air. I saw genuine sympathy in her eyes. “He also said you were short, and the guy across the street said this house burned down.” I turned to Riley, confused and unsatisfied, “I’m not exactly sure what’s happening, but I think we have the wrong house, Riley.” “No, this is the place, this is the lady, everyone involved has confirmed it.” “Jeff confirmed it? You talked to Lynn? Can I meet her?” “I think we’re done here.” He pulled me out of the house. I looked over my shoulder as we walked down her short front yard. The smell was getting more faint, the house started looking slightly off again. I saw Mrs. Robinson in the doorway, but she looked at least a foot shorter and with greying red hair. I hopped back in the passenger side of Riley’s cruiser. “What the fuck is actually wrong with you, Alex?” he said as he stared me down. “What the fuck was up with that house? It just felt… wrong. What the fuck was that smell? The only time I’ve smelled that is from that Lynn girl that was with Jeff when he disappeared.” “The house isn’t ‘wrong’. It’s old. The shit inside is old. The lady, also, old.” he snapped, “Old shit, including people, seem a little off sometimes.” “What about the smell? It’s not normal, it doesn’t smell like anything, but it makes everything feel just a little better. That house has something to do with Jeff, and that lady knows it.” Riley hit his head against the steering wheel a couple of times and shook his head. “Don’t do anything stupid, Alex. If you’re harassing that lady, I’ll take you in.” I kind of blew it off and he took me home. I called Jen that evening and asked if she remembered anything about Lynn. “She smelled like patchouli.” she immediately answered, “My mom used a lot of patchouli scented incense when I was a kid.” “I thought it was more of a… like… grandma’s cookies kind of smell. Something kind of vague but super comforting. I definitely kept thinking about stuff from when I was a kid most of the time.” “I guess you might be right, it wasn’t exactly like patchouli, but it made me really comfortable.” I told her I had to run some errands still and hopped off the phone. The smell had to have something to do with it. I text Jen and asked her if she remembers seeing anyone else that we knew that night while we were with Jeff and Lynn. She replied with a disappointing “no.” I decided to go check it out again. This time, I would test if the smell had something to do with no one else seeing what was wrong with that house. On the way back there I stopped at the drugstore and picked up a pack of smelling salts. I figured the ammonia smell would overpower anything else I could smell. I approached from a side street so I could see the house from further away. It looked perfectly normal from a block and a half down the street. As I approached, I paid close attention to the smells around me and tried to stay as casual as possible. I stopped before crossing the street to the block that Mrs. Robinson’s house sat on. A short person with long red hair went through the gate and around the side of the house. I ran towards the house and hopped the fence. As soon as I rounded the corner, I saw a flash of red hair go around the back corner. I instinctively busted in the back door after it. There was no one there. I stood in there in the kitchen, the table was set and a pot boiling on the stove. The pot stood out, kind of like how things in the background of old cartoons are a little bit brighter or are styled a little differently. I almost forgot what I was doing. I started smelling that delicate, indistinct smell. I peaked into the boiling water. It looked like just leaves and branches in the rolling boil. It seemed to be coming from the pot. My mind filled with old memories of my grandma, running the streets with Riley and Mike as a kid, and just about anything else that’d make me smile. “Alex? Is that you? I thought I saw you walking down the street.” a soft female voice called through the house. “Hey, Lynn!” I called out, putting porcelian dinner plate over the boiling pot to contain the vapors. I cracked the smelling salts and took a whiff. It ripped me right out of it. The sweet memories shot out of my conciousness immediately. Everything was off. It was still the house I visited with Riley, but it was kind of like an impressionist idea of it. The fine details were rough sketches at best, everything kind of had a slight tilt to it. I cautiously stepped into the living room, and there was a red headed girl sitting on the couch, looking the opposite direction of me. “Have you seen Mike?” she asked. “No one has, I’ve been looking for you to try to see if he mentioned anything odd to you.” She looked up at me, and I wish I could say I saw the tears first. The first thing I saw was her face full of wrinkles. Red hair, red birthmark, even the same voice, but she had the wrinkles of an old lady. “He just up and left me!” she wailed. I stepped in closer, it wasn’t wrinkles. it was bunching up on the sides, like some weird mask. I sat by her, I rubbed her back as she sobbed. Her cries had an odd quality, like it was some kind of recording from years ago. “Where’s your grandma?” I asked. She choked for a split second. “Out with a friend for the afternoon.” I feigned checking my phone, “Oh shit! It’s six, I have a school thing.” I jumped up to hurry out the door. A hand that felt like it was covered in an old dried out latex glove grabbed my wrist. “Alex, please don’t leave me here alone.” “I’ll come back soon!” I promised. I watched my back the whole way home. I couldn’t shake the feeling she was watching me, stalking me through my own town. I never saw her, or her bright red hair. I assumed she’d started doing meth or something. I called Riley, let him know that she was there so he could follow up on their end. He scolded me for going back, but agreed it’d be good if he could actually interview her. I was paranoid for the entire trip, it seemed like bushes were wiggling with unseen bodies inside them. I actually walked up into someone’s yard and dug around in a shrub to make sure I wasn’t being stalked. Then, on the steps up to my house, there was a “cat.” It looked like a cartoon. Dark lines around the major parts, colors a little too vivid for a house cat. I poked it. It hissed at me, scratched my hand and ran off. It felt like a stuffed animal. I looked all around for signs of Lynn. Nothing. My heart pounded and anxiety soared. Was I next? Suddenly I felt like a gazelle being watched by a lion. Was that little girl really capable of disappearing people? What did I breath in that house? A stuffed animal couldn’t scratch me. Fear and shock dug in deep, I stood in shock on the steps. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the old cement steps, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. I sent Riley to talk to her. What if he’s next? I called his personal phone, I bounced on my toes so I wouldn’t explode with anxiety. “Pickuppickuppickuppickup…” I chanted to myself in a hushed voice. Voicemail. I ran back to the Robinson house. Maybe I could save Riley myself if I got there fast enough. I got to her street as Riley was knocking on the door. The door opened and he went in. I peeked in his cruiser. His phone was sitting on the dash. I crept up on the porch and peeked in the window. Riley was sitting on the couch, she was sitting across from him. She still looked wrinkly and folded to me, but Riley had a look one his face that he only had when he was ready to do one thing. They never broke eye contact as she stood up and swung her hips back and forth. She swayed her small frame across the living room towards Riley, pulling her shirt off. More bunched up pale skin was hidden under her shirt, Riley seemed to be too entranced to notice. She mounted his lap and draped her arms over his shoulders. Then she opened her mouth and looked up to the ceiling. It looked like she’d paused, but in reality, her mouth kept opening wider and wider. The skin on her face tore and flaked to the floor, revealing a mottled, splotchy skin painted with light browns. The head hidden behind that layer that I knew as Lynn was bulbous. It didn’t have eyes, a nose or even lips. Just a mouth that was practically from where it’s ears should have been to the other ear. A long brown and black tongue flicked across the uneven, sometimes sharp, sometimes flat teeth that filled it’s mouth. She leaned back and twisted her neck. I don’t know how, but she looked at me. She knew I was there, watching. I got a little smile from her, then she rose up slowly and hunched over Riley, he puckered up for a kiss. She sunk her teeth into his head. It… it took most of this face. She struggled, but with a crack loud enough for me to hear through the window, she bit right through his skull. She devoured it like a dog, looking straight up in the air. I scrambled for Riley’s cruiser. I grabbed the car radio and squeezed the button. “Officer down! Officer Riley’s down! Some crazy bitch just ate his goddamn face!” I sobbed into the microphone. The entire department, including off duty swarmed the street in minutes. They saw the house as burned down. The only sign of Riley they found in the house was his badge. I told them exactly what I saw, they sent me to the hospital for evaluation. I was informed that forensics didn’t find any signs of blood or any evidence anyone had been in the burnt house. I was released, now I’m home. I still feel like the gazelle waiting to be pounced on. Whatever the hell that little girl with the V birth mark is, she’s dangerous, and she’s well aware that I know her secret. I’ve started carrying a handgun with me just in case. I don’t know that anyone in my town even remembers what I told the police, or believes it. In the event that I die before I’ve reached a conclusion to this nightmare that satisfies me, I’ve placed this document on a deadman’s switch. Without my attention, it will send it to a few large communities who may take up my crusade or use it as a cautionary tale to maybe save others. Now I’m going to hunt her before she can take me, too.

[dragcndani]

|| Get to know DANIELLE WYVERN who’s TWENTY-SEVEN years old and works as a HAIR STYLIST in town. She is from CALIFORNIA and is often times mistaken for MARGOT ROBBIE while others say she reminds them of DRAGON from SHREK. ||

history & headcanons

Raised by young, first time parents, the Wyverns never quite knew what to do with Danielle. From the moment she learned to walk and talk she had a sense of independence, never wanting to listen to what they said. She never wanted to finish her dinner or wear the outfits the picked out for her. She ignored their rules and pushed back whenever they said the word “no”. The first time she threw a tantrum, letting her temper get the best of her, she was three years old being told she couldn’t put a tub of chocolate ice cream in the cart. Danielle fell onto the floor, crying and screaming while the shoppers passing them in the frozen food aisle openly stared. Embarrassed, her parents quickly put the ice cream in the cart to quiet her, and from that moment on she learned how easy it was to get what she wants. All she had to do was let her anger flare and make a scene, and her parents would be putty in her hand.

As she got older, her parents got stricter, trying desperately to rein her in and enforce some sort of rules. But no matter what they did, Danielle refused to listen. She snuck out of the house on evenings and weekends, partying and drinking despite it being against the rules. She snuck boys into her room despite her conservative parents telling her she was too young to date. She cheated on tests, bribed the nerds to do her homework, and skipped classes to smoke under the bleachers. Whenever she was caught, her parents would try even harder to enforce the rules, leading to huge blowouts. Danielle would scream and curse, sometimes even throwing whatever’s closest. She had a fiery temper that couldn’t be tamed, no matter how hard her parents tried.

Despite being sent to reform school in the middle of tenth grade, Danielle never let that dampen her spirits. She was relieved to be away from her parents, exhausted by their suffocating rules and the constant fighting, despite always being the first one to start shouting. This was the first place that Danielle actually felt at home, the first time she was surrounded by people that actually understood her. While her parents sent her here in the hopes she could be tamed, she was having the time of her life — it only fueled her fire.

Danielle has never really cared what anyone else thinks about her. She’s unapologetically loud, brash, promiscuous, and often angry, and would never consider changing — Danielle believes everyone else should do the same. She’s always been a big believer that every girl is perfect in their own weird way, and encourages everyone she meets to be authentically themselves. She thinks anyone that conforms to be what other people want them to be is tragically boring.

Never being particularly book smart, Danielle has been labeled the dumb blonde most of her life, not that she particularly minds. She scraped by as a solid C student while in high school, and depending on her good looks and charm to flirt her way into passing grades in college. It earned her somewhat of a bad reputation, not to mention the perception of being a ditz, but it’s a label she always wore proudly. She’s so confident in herself that she doesn’t need the approval of others. Despite not being book smart, Danielle does happen to be quite street smart — she knows how to take care of herself.

Easily bored and restless, Dani moved to Corona shortly after the doors were opened to the public, looking for a change of pace. She liked how mysterious it sounded, and thought it would be a great place for a fun time. She took the first job she could get at the Out of the Box Art Supply Store and while it wasn’t quite her dream job, she enjoyed her time there. She particularly enjoyed bossing everyone around despite not being the owner.

She left the craft store a few months ago to open up her own hair salon. She’s cares deeply about her own hair, and wants to help everyone look as good as she does. While she might treat opening up her own business somewhat nonchalantly, this is the first time she’s ever really followed her passion and she’s incredibly proud of herself. 

She’s been obsessed with makeup, fashion, and all other aspects of beauty for as long as she can remember. As a young child, she was always complimented for her looks, and that really got to Danielle’s head. She often believes that her looks are the best thing about her and works hard to play that up. She also happens to like the attention it brings her. She has an in depth skincare routine to ensure that her skin is always glowing, won’t leave the house without a full face of makeup and her hair done, and dresses in the latest trends. You won’t ever catch her leaving the house in sweats, even if she’s just running errands — the closest she’ll get is cute athleisure wear, which she wears purely for the aesthetic. 

Despite most of her relationships being flings and hookups, Dani is a hopeless romantic at heart, looking for the perfect person to settle down with. She wants a big wedding, kids, the whole package. She’s simply looking for who she considers to be the perfect person, someone that can keep up with her, and she’s willing to flirt with everyone she meets to find them.

While somewhat selective of the people she lets really get to know her, Danielle is incredibly loyal, and fiercely protective over the people she loves most. Hurting someone she loves is one of the best ways to make an enemy for life. She holds a good grudge and rarely forgives or forgets.

Her temper can flare at almost any minute. Whether someone’s hurting someone she loves, looking at her the wrong way, or she just happens to be particularly bored, it can flip on like a switch.

She’s a terrible cook, and manages to burn almost anything she puts in the oven. She’s set the fire alarm off in her apartment many times, making enemies of most of her neighbours.

Her idea of a good time is often spending an evening on the town, dancing the night away and causing trouble with her friends, but she does occasionally enjoy quiet time on her own. She secretly enjoys knitting, finding it the best way to calm her temper. She has a drawer full of knits that she only wears around the house, since they simply aren’t fashionable enough to wear outside.

Danielle likes to do whatever she wants, when she wants. Rules and laws mean very little to her. She doesn’t mind a bit of trouble.

wanted connections

absolutely anything! friends, enemies, exes, flings, clients, whatever you can think of!