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apiratewhopines · 3 years

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This one is a gift for @teamhook because she is one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.

Thanks to @jrob64 for giving me advice on artwork and to ultraluckycatnd for reading over this chapter

Midnight

Chapter 1 — The Prince

Summary: In which our heroine meets cute

Chapter 1 of 7 on AO3

“But don’t forget folks,

That’s what you get folks

For makin’ whoopee”

-Makin’ Whoopee, Eddie Cantor

Emma Swan had been in some tight spots, but she’d never been in a run out of gas on a deserted highway with a dying cell phone battery and a stomach as empty as her bank account kind of situation before. In truth, she blamed this unfortunate situation on the same person she blamed all the misfortunes of her adulthood. Neal Cassidy.

There was a time a few short months ago she would have done anything for the man responsible for her current circumstances. Neal had been too good to be true. A real Prince Charming, down to the supposed trust fund and a smile that made her believe in happy endings.

She’d been a sucker. She heard one was born every minute, she just never thought her time would come. After all, one of the few things she learned in the foster system was how to spot bullshit from a mile away. But he looked at her with his soulful eyes and whispered promises in his smoky voice and she fell for it. More than once, actually, and all she had to show for the wasted years was a voicemail box full of collection calls and a wolf at the door.

Because Neal Cassidy didn’t just leave her. He stole her identity, maxed out her credit cards, and took out half a dozen loans in her name. Then he proceeded to use the money to wine and dine a wide assortment of women, the sheer number of which would make Casanova blush. All the while professing his undying love and spending his days eating all her food and watching television from his favorite seat on the couch.

Seriously, you could still see the faint outline of his backside on the cushion.

As countless victims of his schemes started showing up at her door looking for the man who made them feel alive while killing them one dollar at a time, she listened to tears and rants and misery with ill-disguised impatience. How had she become the counselor to the trail of broken girls he left in his wake? When was it going to be her turn to moan and groan and swear she’d never love again?

Well, she did get around to the swearing to never love again part. Some mistakes don’t bear repeating.

The final straw happened two months ago. Neal had disappeared after their final fight. His righteous indignation at being called on his crap and inability to find a plausible excuse for the stack of overdue bills and statements she found stuffed in the back of his gym bag made it difficult to share the same space. She wanted him gone even as her hands itched to touch him one more time.

Unfortunately, leaving her drowning in debt with the knowledge he cheated on her for the majority of their relationship wasn’t enough for him. He decided to do some collateral damage on his way out of town.

He did the unforgivable. He went after Granny.

His target was meant to wound her. While he lied and schemed the entire time they were together, she had been an open book for the first time in her life so he knew Granny was the sole connection she formed as a foster. Her brief stay with the woman before she aged out of the system was a time of peace and healing. Granny was responsible for helping her get on her feet and the two maintained a friendship years later.

Emma received the frantic call from Ruby explaining her grandmother had been tricked into giving Neal a blank check so he could do her grocery run. Hours later, she received a notification from her bank saying her checking account had been wiped out. At that point, the tenuous control Emma had on her emotions disappeared. She sat on the kitchen floor of the apartment she was about to lose, staring at empty walls that still echoed with his laughter in her weaker moments, and she broke into a million pieces.

So it was no wonder she vowed to have her vengeance. To do anything and everything to make him pay. Luckily, since he skipped out on a court date, catching him would also get her paid.

Tracking him had taken more time than she liked to admit. She was good; even penniless and running out of options, she recognized her worth and knew she possessed hard to find skill sets. But she had a sinking sensation that he might be better.

Now she was stranded on the side of the road with nothing except her most uncomfortable shoes to keep her company. But damn did they make her legs look good and with everything else in her life collapsing around her, somehow that seemed important.

Squaring her shoulders, she climbed out of the car and pondered her next course of action. She was unfamiliar with the state road connecting the two small towns on the Maine coast, so she had no idea what the odds were that a good samaritan would happen along. She had just enough juice in her battery and lettuce in her account to call for an Uber to take her to the seedy nightclub where Neal was last seen. Or she could walk the rest of the way in her mile-high heels knowing she never looked better, even though she would probably not be able to move the next day without a significant amount of pain.

What she would do if she found him or where she would stay if she didn’t weren’t questions she was ready to entertain.

Sighing, she pulled out her phone and with a huff of frustration opened her app. Pleading with whatever powers that be to let her last long enough to see herself through to the other side of this, she leaned against her beaten down yellow Bug and waited for the black sedan to show.

Of course, her phone died immediately after she booked her ride, finally giving up the ghost even though she didn’t get a chance to see the name or license plate of her hired car. Getting more anxious by the minute, she paced along the shoulder, careful to keep on the pavement since the ground was soft from recent rain. After what seemed like forever, but had probably not been more than half an hour, the headlights of a lone car crested a nearby hill.

“About time,” she muttered. To make sure the driver knew she was not pleased with the delay or the prodding pace he maintained despite the fact the sky seemed ready to open at any moment, she moved out into the middle of the lane and placed her hand on her hips. Pride kept her from squinting even though the bright high beams made her eyes water as the car approached.

Slowing from a crawl to a stop, the driver put the car in park and jumped out. It was dark and the man was dressed all in black, but as he moved around to the front of the car, she got the impression of blue eyes and a stubble-covered jaw that could probably cut glass. Great, just what she needed. A sexy Uber driver.

“Alright there, love?”

With a British accent. He probably smelled like bacon, too.

“What took you so long? I’ve been waiting all night.”

Moving closer, he smiled with a hint of confusion. “Had I known you were waiting for me, I would have been along sooner. Tell me, do you always accost strange men in the dead of night on empty roads?”

“Only when I’m paying them to take me where I need to go,” she grumbled, walking toward the back door on the passenger side. She pulled it open as he protested, and glared at him over the top of the car.

“Love, I think there may be a bit of a mix-up—“

“It’s fine. I won’t give you a bad rating for being late as long as you don’t talk to me. I’ve been driving for hours to get here and I need to think.”

She heard him sigh and saw the flash of his teeth as he smiled at her again. “Very well. Would you like me to get your bags?”

“You’d have to go to a pawn shop in Boston to accomplish that,” she joked, dropping into the leather seat and noticing for the first time the expensive luxury of her rented carriage. She supposed if she was going to spend her last dime on a ride, she could have done far worse.

She resisted the urge to use the low ambient lighting of the dashboard to get a better look at her temporary chauffeur. The glimpse she got outside was more than enough to know she needed to keep her distance. It didn’t stop her from feeling the weight of his stare as he peeked over his shoulder while clicking on his seatbelt. Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw his tongue flicker slowly over his bottom lip before he turned his attention back to the road.

“Nice dress. Where are we heading this fine night, Miss…?”

“You’re really terrible at this. Is it your first time being a driver for hire?”

“What gave it away, love? It’s quite an unexpected development that came about just this evening. But you know what they say, you never forget your first.”

It was everything she could do not to laugh. She had a feeling it would only encourage him and if she was heading into battle, she needed her wits about her. “The Snakehole Lounge.”

“At the risk of sounding cliche, why would a nice girl like you want to go to a place like that?”

“I’m not a nice girl,” Emma informed him without a hint of irony or bravado. “And your rating is going down with each syllable out of your mouth.”

“Tough lass,” he murmured. “But do yourself a favor. Stay away from the Snake Juice.”

Little did he know that even if she wanted to have a drink, and boy did she ever, she used the last of her meager funds to get to this backwater place and she wasn’t sure where her next meal would come from. “I’ll do my best.”

The rest of the ride passed in silence. She spent the time looking out the window at the trees flying by and trying to ignore how every time she looked away, her eyes caught his in the rearview mirror.

Honestly, it was probably a good thing they were the only people for miles around or he would have gotten them both killed.

Less than fifteen minutes later, he pulled to the curb in front of a shabby nightclub. Even the multitude of neon lights flashing “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and “Half-Price Beer Buckets” did little to enliven the dingy exterior. They didn’t bother with a bouncer, probably because no one actually wanted to get in.

Before she could say anything, her driver was out of the car and rounding his way to her door. She didn’t have a chance to object as he opened it and looked at her with avid curiosity. She had to admit she was impressed he didn’t give into it and ask any questions.

“Since we’re out of the car, am I allowed to speak again?”

Perhaps she had been too hasty in her internal praise. “Thanks for the ride. I hope your next passengers are more chatty since that’s what you’re into...overall, a solid three stars.”

“Three stars? I’d be surprised, but I had a feeling you were warming up to me between the baleful stares and eye-rolling.”

Gifting him with another of the said eye rolls, she adjusted the hem of her skirt to show a little more leg and walked away. She knew if she stayed a second longer she would give in to the almost magnetic pull of him and say something foolish like, ‘What’s your name?’

—

The inside of the establishment was every bit as horrible as the outside. The low lighting obscured the grime and wear that would be glaringly obvious otherwise. She wasn’t surprised. It seemed like the kind of place Neal would gravitate to since he was a dirty little rat.

Music heavy with bass pumped out a rhythm entirely too fast for the energy of the place. The few patrons who persevered this far into the night looked anemic as tired dancers did their best to act like they wanted to be there. Pulling her ID from the scrap of a bra she wore under her dress, she flashed it at the lone employee who manned the entrance and the bar. He gave it a cursory glance and turned back to his phone.

Snapping her fingers under his nose to get his attention, she pulled out a grainy photo of her quarry from the same location and asked, “Have you seen this man recently?”

“I’ve never seen anyone. Ever.” The man grumbled, not interested in the slightest. She wondered if he would stop her if she walked behind the counter and helped herself to a drink. She was leaning toward no and tempted to try.

“Tell you what buddy, take a good look at this picture. Then look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t seen him and we’ll end the night without any trouble.”

Something in her tone must have penetrated his disillusionment and he gazed at her with more interest than he’d probably shown anything in years. She waited as he glanced at the photo for a few seconds. “No, sorry. If he’s been here, it wasn’t during any of my shifts. Is he your husband or something?”

“He’s something alright,” she muttered. Defeated, she turned around without another word. She used the last of her resources to fund a wild goose chase, but at least it got her into town. Only thing left to do was find a park or quiet bench somewhere safe to sleep for a few hours and then she would tackle whatever came next. It wouldn’t be the first time she roughed it, although she had never attempted it in formal wear before.

Pushing the door open with unnecessary force, she immediately froze. Her three star driver was waiting at the curb as if it wasn’t the middle of the night and she hadn’t given him the brush off.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yes, especially since I’m pretty sure our business is done,” she replied, walking past him and wishing the man could be a tiny bit less handsome. Now that the streetlights of the small town were there to illuminate their interactions, she couldn’t deny he was ridiculously attractive and exactly her type, complete with a black leather jacket and messy hair begging to be pulled. And, heaven help her, he was determined to extend their acquaintance apparently.

“It’s just good sense, love. I figured you’d be in need of transportation again, so why waste the gas to leave when I’d have to turn around after you called for your next ride.” He matched his stride to hers as she did her best to increase her pace.

Sighing, she stopped at the corner and looked at him. “Listen, I could tell you my phone is dead and I need to make a few more stops, that I’d pay you when you drop me off at my place at the end of the night, but it would be a lie. I’m chasing down a bounty. I need the money to pay for a ride and I need a ride to make the money. A smart man like you can see the problem. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

She turned away again but felt him leap into action behind her. He moved to cut off her escape and said, “Double or nothing.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Double or nothing, sweetheart. I take you to wherever you need to go tonight and when you collect your fee, you pay me double whatever the normal fare is for jaunts like these.”

“What if I don’t find him?”

“That’s where the nothing comes in, lass. A smart woman like you can see the benefit of such an arrangement.”

She studied him, hoping to find some ulterior motive in his seemingly selfless offer, but all she saw in his expression was an earnestness bordering on being painful and a thirst for adventure barely contained. Perhaps this was how he got his kicks in an isolated town. He propositioned strangers and gambled on fate. “No strings? No funny business?”

“This whole business is funny, but I’ll behave myself if you will. We’ll have much less satisfaction that way, but I’ll do my best to rally my spirits and overcome my disappointment.”

With a rueful shake of her head, she stuck out her hand and introduced herself. “I guess we’re doing this. I’m Emma Swan.”

“Killian Jones, driver extraordinaire and captain of this fine vessel, at your service. Where’s our next stop?”

“I need to go to every seedy bar and filthy dive in the area so you tell me, Captain.”

—

She wasn’t sure what it said about her newfound companion that he was able to rattle off several places in a matter of seconds, but as the night stretched on and the miles racked up, she found she rather liked her tour guide. Which was probably a good thing since at this rate, she would be splitting the bounty fifty-fifty with him. Who knew the twin cities of Storybrooke and Misthaven had so many sleazy places to hang out?

“I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of the line, Swan. Are you sure he’s in the area, because every traveler worth his salt makes a point to stop by Moe’s Tavern while visiting our fair city.”

“I can see why. The thrift-store ambience is delightful and the watered down drinks are to die for,” she murmured as she rested against the side of his car. She was tired and weak from hunger and as much as she wanted to curl up in the back seat and sleep, she was scared she’d get used to the comfort he was offering and do something she might regret later.

She was trying to figure out how to cut and run without seeming ungrateful when her stomach growled loudly.

In a playful tone belaying the concern in his eyes, he asked, “Was that your stomach? Bloody hell, am I in danger? Are you going to try to eat me to satisfy the beast within?”

Feeling a blush color her face, she avoided his gaze as she said, “Sorry, I...um, I skipped dinner.” And breakfast and lunch for that matter.

Taking up a position next to her, he nudged her with his shoulder. “Tell the truth, when was the last time you ate something, lass?”

“Hmm, what day is it again?”

“As I suspected. Come on, I know just the spot.” Pushing off from the car, he gently moved her and opened the door to the backseat.

She wanted to fight, to tell him she could take care of herself. She would have too, if she had any energy at all. Meeting his eyes for the first time, she joked, “You lost a gamble, Captain. That doesn’t mean you have to feed it.”

“I consider it an act of self-preservation. I figured you for a man-eater the first moment I laid eyes on you, but I’m afraid you might prove me right in unexpected ways if we don’t get some food in you soon.”

“As long as eyes are all you plan on laying on me, I accept your gracious offer,” she replied with a narrowed stare. Before Neal, she trusted her instincts. She would have insisted they were infallible, but he had shaken her confidence. She couldn’t risk being wrong about Killian Jones of the electric eyes and perpetual helpfulness.

“No strings. No funny business, Swan. Those are the rules. Get in, your chariot and dinner awaits.”

He stood a few feet from her, urging her into the car and she wasn’t sure what drove her to say it, but before she could change her mind, the words were out. “I’d rather ride in the front this time if that’s okay with you.”

His smile could have melted metal, tempted angels to fall, and inspired devils to repent. It was probably lack of rest and food causing her stomach to do flip flops. Or at least that was what she was going to tell herself.

“Your heart’s desire, Swan. I promise that’s all I want you to have…” He closed the back door with a firm finality that echoed through the night and somehow felt momentous in the thick air of summer. When he opened the passenger door, the light seemed warmer and it bathed him in softness and shadows. He waited patiently as if he knew something had shifted between them and he didn’t want any sudden movements to break the odd spell.

Then her stomach growled again, angry at the promise of food being delayed while she gawked at the man who was determined to rescue her in every imaginable way.

“And dinner, of course.”

“Of course,” she whispered, taking care not to make contact with his body as she slid into the seat. She was glad the door was already closed when she left out a huff of air. Good thing she had sworn off love or she may be in some danger.

@teamhook @kmomof4 @jrob64 @stahlop @motherkatereloyshipper @xarandomdreamx @xsajx @klynn-stormz

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incarnateirony · 3 years

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I'm gonna need fandom to stop projecting some weird romanticized and/or bitter idea of suicidal ideation on 15x20 Dean which is directly contrary to the text.

If anything, 15x20 was Dean's least suicidal period. He had opted to start trying to enjoy life. He still clearly struggled with depression and grief from his sloppy room, but that doesn't necessarily translate to suicidal thoughts.

Dean highlighted his desire to make sure sacrifices weren't in vain. He tried to eat after a whole season of refusing to because he was too angry and scared.

People misunderstand "being realistic" as "suicidal". While yes, you can even check the script and there's a moment of panic thinking about if Cas was there, and yes, it even clarifies the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away and yes, clarifies Dean was 100% run through, just because that didn't make it to screen doesn't mean it's suddenly Dean surrendering.

Maybe this is something not understood because of how international SPN fandom is, or how urban its digital demographic tends to be--but I've got news for you. It's basically common knowledge that places like that are at least half an hour from anywhere in the US.

I've lived in those places.

One such place, for example, was Timpson Texas. When I moved there for a few months, I was warned. Don't get hurt. The nearest hospital is 45 minutes away. But if it's really bad--they do have a volunteer EMS department. Which, they joked, was "express delivery" because it was located right next to the funeral home, and frankly nobody was sure what their actual credentials were in a town of 200~.

It's very, very rare to find a farmhouse setup like that near a city. Or at least anything less than 20 minutes from anywhere. There's a few exceptions to that rule for anything in life, like the Independence, MO area that has really weird fucking zoning and you can go from farmland to ghetto to farmland to downtown in a straight shot, but by and large, this is how it is in the US. I know 45 minutes sounds insane to someone living in like, the UK. Or even people who've lived their whole lives in and around big US metro cities like New York and Chicago.

But I can promise you, just because those thoughts didn't come out of Dean's mouth, they ran through his head, like many silent things you can see him assess at any given moment in the show that are common sense life, battle, or other issues. "Well, shit, it'll take an ambulance at least 30 minutes to get here if I'm lucky and my vision's already tunneling, Cas isn't here, gotta take my chance to say what's important, like I learned from Cas."

That's it. That's what that was. Was the death comically long? Yes, still not enough for him to get help. Were there ways they could have illustrated it better? Sure, they could have used that one overhead driving in a field shot for the 1000th time. Would the text have helped in dialogue--maybe, you know this fandom loves missing the point anyway.

Everyone goes "but why tell Sam not to bring him back then!!" bro-- bro--he literally says why, and it's true. That always ends bad. It's stopping this jerk off cycle and realizing it's ok to be freaking mortal. That they can't keep fucking up the cosmic balance for all eternity. Letting hundreds/thousands/millions/billions of people have their entire universe fucked up because the two brothers insist on being in the same spot at the same time. He insisted Sam live on.

Maybe it's a misunderstanding of biology too? Hell, there's some ways that could have gone in that would have had him dead even faster. It really just depends what exactly it punctured how. Is it technically survivable? Yeah, if you're not basically an hour and a half out from a hospital with the weewoo cab trip both ways. If he already felt himself fading though, reality strikes.

That's Dean Winchester becoming spontaneously aware of his mortality, not giving up. Like I hate to tell people, but you'll never make it out of life alive. That's not suicidal, that's reality. The point is, to live the best life you can while you have it, and to not give up, sure. But also to be aware that you might get diagnosed with terminal cancer or you might get hit by a bus or maybe you'll fucking ridiculously get run through on a dickbar. Some things in life you can't control.

Are there ways this could have been pulled together far better? 100% absolutely. The finale was a disaster in delivery. At literally every corner. In every way. But that shouldn't make us just scream past it and somehow convert it into the worst possible take guys. I should hope that a young adult to middle aged demographic understands things like basic biology, emergency response time, the fact that we're all mortal beings, and the general moral of learning what to say when it's important and maybe your last chance, c'mon.

Or worse, trying to turn it into "Dean didn't want to live anymore because he missed Cas." Like shit. I'm blazing "Destiel is canon and has been for a while" trash but -- that's literally? Contradictory? Dean wanted to live because he respected Cas' sacrifice. That's canon. Even when he still felt down and his room was still messy and some days he might have almost felt dead, he kept trucking, kept dreaming, put in job applications, tried to be the young self he used to be and go to a pie-fest, whatever. He kept moving. THAT'S where he kept fighting.

Giving up isn't Dean accepting that a pike through all his major organs an hour out from medical help is gonna be the end. Giving up would be him having stayed passed out on the whiskey bottles on the floor forever moping and just WAITING for that instead of being like, damn, I didn't think today would be the day.

Is it a perfect ending, no, not saying that, nor in any way defending the fucking trashfire finale but I'm so sick of seeing this "suicidal dean" talk. When that isn't even remotely what it was.

#supernatural #spn #dean winchester #tw suicide

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plus-size-reader · 3 years

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One Day pt.2

Klaus Mikaelson x Plus size!reader & Elijah Mikaelson x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 1563 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader thinking about that conversation in 1001 AD, when he made you a million and one promises.

If only anything could be simple.

Part 1

——————————————————————————————————

You did your very best to ignore the past.

Each day, when you woke up in the morning, you made a choice to pretend that the lifetimes you had lived were nothing more than bad dreams. It may have been delusional, but you didn't care.

All you cared about was any amount of self-preservation, and keeping yourself sane. When you had lived as many lives as you had, there was only so much you could do to keep the memories from driving you mad.

However, every once and a while, you found yourself getting pulled into what you had been through all those years ago. You didn't like it, of course, but it was unavoidable. Whether it was thinking about people you'd known or the places you'd been, those thoughts could be intrusive.

For someone who had been alive as long as you had been, it was kind of hard to avoid the past creeping up on you like a bad dream.

You couldn't run away from it forever.

Even now, you found yourself sitting in the parlor, mindlessly thumbing through the large assortment of books on the bookshelves. In all your years of travels, you had collected quite a few novels and scrolls, tales from every corner of the planet.

When there was nothing else for you to do, sometimes you liked to sit here and just stare at the pages. There were a million and one things hidden there, and there was nothing you didn't have at least some knowledge of.

Not that you had any care for any of that right now.

In this moment, you were searching for a single book among the collection. It was hidden behind a big brown book with a broken spine, put there intentionally by your own hand to ensure that no one else could find it.

You had done that purposefully, of course.

Even though there was no real danger of anyone finding it, after all this time, you still had to keep it hidden away. Maybe you were paranoid, or maybe you were foolish but you knew one thing for sure.

Once you were finished with it, this old book would return right where you'd gotten it from and where it would remain forever after that. You sighed, sitting down in the armchair. Every time you did this, it was a bit of an emotional journey but no matter how badly you wanted to just leave it all in the past, you couldn't.

When you finally flipped it open however, you found a few words written there on the front cover. That was all they were, a few words, but they immediately reminded you of why you'd kept it in the first place.

...One day, I will take you far from here, and will never go a day without showing the world how much I love you, utterly and completely...

Gingerly, you let your fingers dance along each delicately written word. You remembered the day Niklaus had written them there, using his blood as ink for the page, determined to start a memoir of the love you two shared.

It was meant to stay a secret, another among the growing list of things that not another soul could find out about.

A novel idea

At the time, you feel deeply in love with the concept, but now, it broke your heart to even hold in your hands. How the time had changed everything, taking hold of the dreams and desires of two young people and twisting them all up.

At this point, those people were some you wouldn't even recognize.

As it would turn out, the desire of a few children was no match for the rage and hatred Michael held within his heart. It was a hatred that forced the breath from your lungs and a ring onto your finger.

A ring that Niklaus hadn't given to you.

No matter what you tried to do, or how much you protested, you worst fears came to pass. You lost Niklaus to his hatred and rejection, and were forced to call his eldest brother your partner in life.

It was true that Mikael was fond enough of you to encourage his most respectable son to marry you, but he had no care at all for what you wanted in life. Maybe he thought that a life with Elijah would be a better one, or maybe he just wanted to see Klaus miserable more than he wanted you to be happy.

You remembered how adamant he'd been, that this was the only path for you. Elijah was going to be a fine husband and though you told him that you no real desire to marry the eldest male, it didn't matter.

At that time, you had chosen to leave out the fact that you'd fallen for his wife's bastard. Something told you it wasn't exactly going to be a selling point, and you knew that deep down, nothing you said would change Mikael's mind.

He made his decision, and the wedding was going to happen.

He didn't need your permission, or anyone elses for that matter.

You and Elijah would be married, and you were. He was kind to you, and understanding of your hesitance and the position you'd been put in. However, Niklaus was far less understanding in that regard.

If he was distant before, he became entirely reclusive after you married his brother. He still loved you, he always would but being near you was far too painful for either of you to endure. This many years later, you tried not to dwell on the decisions made for you in the past.

There was no use in chasing those ghosts.

You had made peace with that a long time ago. Still, as you sat here, flipping through those old, stained pages, you couldn't help but wonder what your life would be like if you'd made a different call.

It wasn't a luxury you'd had hundreds of years ago, but if you had, was it possible that you and Klaus could still be together this many years later? Was the love you thought you felt real, or just the longings of two unhappy kids, trying to make the best of a bad situation?

You weren't sure.

You held onto the idea that you would have, out of pure necessity, but there was really no way to know for sure. You weren't even sure if Niklaus felt that way for you anymore.

Perhaps he had been driven to his feelings for you out of desperation and the desire to not feel as alone as he often did. Perhaps it had never been real, though that idea hurt more than anything else.

You would rather die than imagine that to be true.

Though, before you could entertain such a painful ideal for any longer, you were shocked out of your thoughts by the voice a different man. This man was the same one you'd been attached to for several hundred years now.

Elijah.

He was standing in the doorway with a soft smile on his face, trying to bring you out of whatever it was you were thinking about. "What are you doing, darling?" he asked, entering the room gingerly, after he'd decided it would be okay to do so.

In general, he liked to give you as much space as you required but there was just something about this time, and he knew better than to leave.

He knew, of course he did.

This wasn't the first time Elijah had caught you here, holding that same old book in your hands. He'd never opened it, or even sought it out when you weren't around, but he knew what must have been in it.

He wasn't blind.

All those years ago, when you and Niklaus had started sneaking around behind his father's back, he was the first person to offer any help when you needed it. If Mikael asked too many questions about where you went, or got too hard on Nik when he didn't need to, Elijah was the first to come up with some clever excuse or story.

Even then, he understood what the two of you shared and he had never once questioned you about it.

Your marriage had been forced on the both of you, but you had enough love and respect for one another to just never cross certain boundaries. He didn't ask about Niklaus, and you didn't tell. It had worked this long, and you weren't really itching to break that streak.

However, it was clear to Elijah that whatever you were thinking about was causing you some kind of distress and he couldn't just leave you either. After all, you were his wife, for better or worse, even now.

"He's here y'know? In Mystic Falls" he started, your breath practically leaving your lungs without warning. You had heard some rumors about Niklaus coming back here to build some kind of Hybrid army, but you didn't want to entertain them.

If they were lies, you would be distressing yourself for nothing, and if they were the truth-. If they were the truth, it was simply too much for you to comprehend. You weren't about to entertain any foolish, childish ideas about what it would be like.

Seeing Klaus again after so long, you had no idea how you would react.

...And you didn't want to find out.

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politalysis · 3 years

Text

# What has happened to JK Rowling?

Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.

JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.

We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.

I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.

When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.

As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.

JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.

#jk rowling #harry potter #hogwarts #gryffindor #hufflepuff #ravenclaw #slytherin #gay dumbledore #trans rights #edinburgh #professor umbridge #fuck rowling #cursed child is not canon #ron and hermione #lgbtq #lgbt representation #writing

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vintagedolan · 3 years

Text

mixtape | track ten

| masterlist | faceclaims | playlist |

Indiana’s mental health class was in her first semester in the pre-med program. Abnormal Psychology, PSY 249, in a stuffy room in a building on the far side of campus. She’d hated it. College was supposed to be challenging, her program was supposed to be the most rigorous, and yet the class was a breeze. They went through condition after condition - depression, PTSD, anxiety, schizophrenia. The inner workings of the brain, the chemical imbalances, the medications that would help people come back to themselves. She passed the class with a 101%, stowed the knowledge in a seperate folder in her brain for safe keeping, and moved on at the end of the course. But she kept one piece of paper out, one piece of knowledge that didn’t make sense.

Voluntary Emotional Detachment. It was a relatively new idea in the world of psychology, seeing that many of its characteristics could fall under depression. That wasn’t what confused Indy. No, that came when her professor lectured on the voluntary portion.

“Emotional Detachment is a useful tool sometimes, when it’s used purposefully. For example, if you have a toxic family member in your life, you may voluntarily emotionally detach yourself from them. It’s a defense mechanism, especially during times of trauma. You’ll find yourself numb, unable to feel even if you wanted to. It happens with loss sometimes as well, where you can’t feel the gravity of what you’re losing. Your mind knows what it can withstand, and sometimes, it pulls back. It shields you from the cruel world we live in. It protects.”

Indy had scoffed in her seat, so loud that her professor looked at her and frowned, which was enough to have her blushing red and keeping her head down as she scribbled notes for the rest of the class.

It was the one time she’d ever been reprimanded by an academic authority. Professor Upton pulled her aside before she could escape out of the lecture hall doors.

“Ms. Cross. You seem like a bright girl, but I don’t appreciate the disrespect.”

“I’m very sorry professor, it won’t happen again.” Indiana had practically stumbled over the words to get them out, her palms sweaty on her backpack strap as she held it on her shoulder.

Indy had a million explanations, but she knew that her professor didn’t care to hear them. And they were lies anyway. The true reason she’d scoffed was something she didn’t want to share.

It was because her professor had made it seem so easy, to just turn it off. Emotionally pull the plug, to sever your ties to someone.

She’d scoffed because if her brain had the capability, and it hadn’t moved to protect her when her mother died, shielded her from the aftermath of unimaginable pain that she’d endured, she wasn’t so sure that she was at all intelligent after all.

But she understood why now.

It was because her mother dying had made sense.

Not in the grand scheme of things. Not in a karma driven universe - there was no justifying losing a light as bright as Nicole Cross in a world that had checks and balances, a world that cared.

But physically, it had made sense.

Nicole’s cancer started in her pancreas. Stage III when they found it. 13.3% survival rate. And it spread like wildfire. Indiana threw herself into her books, looked for anything, some medical breakthrough that someone had missed. She looked into drug trials, she looked into synthetic pancreas research. All the while, her mother’s cancer took over cell by cell, multiplied and multiplied the way cells are built to. And when it reached her brain, it took over her brainstem.

When it got to that point, Indiana heard the four words that she would never forget.

“She’s done. We’re done.”

They had echoed out, bouncing off the bleached linoleum, making a cold room even colder. Her father’s voice had never sounded so unfamiliar, and she was glad that her mother was sedated when she broke down. There was no detachment, only raw, searing pain unlike anything she had ever experienced. She sunk to the floor, ragged sobs finally breaking free when she realized what she’d known was coming was finally happening.

The fight was over. It was time to let go.

Charlie hadn’t cried. No, Charlie stood still as stone in the corner of the room, eyes unblinking as she stared at the shell of her mother in her hospital bed and willed it to be a dream, a nightmare that she would finally wake up from.

And then, she remembered where she was. She remembered who she was. And she picked her little sister up off the floor and held her in her arms, like she always had when Indiana was hurting.

Without the vital cues from that little piece of Nicole’s brain telling them to, her heart stopped beating and her lungs stopped asking for air, and she died.

And it made sense.

This didn’t make sense. His words made no sense.

There was no one to hold Indiana Cross now, and she had a new set of four words that would haunt her.

“I can’t do this.”

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

Six days. Grayson’s thoughts ate him alive for six whole days. He lived through the odd limbo that the world seemed to find itself in on the days between Christmas and New Years. A pause in the spin on the axis, a time to reflect on everything the year had brought, and what the next one had to offer.

Even in his daze, Grayson could only remember one other December he’d tried to hold onto so hard.

His father’s face was at the forefront of his mind, but not the images that he wanted to see. All he saw was a look of disappointment in his eyes with each hour that Grayson’s lips stayed pressed together while Indiana rested, oblivious in his arms. He towed the selfish line of wanting to enjoy the last days he had with her while his guilt threatened to drown him with every breath he dared to take. He hid it well, as he always did when he really needed to. They had their date nights, with movies and postmates since he still didn’t want her out in public with him. They stayed in the tiny house again to enjoy nature, snuck into Jet’s a few times. He smiled when he was supposed to, went through the motions that were expected of him. It had worked for him before, for videos, for time with friends when all he wanted to do was sit in his room and speak to no one. The only person he could never fool was Ethan, who kept his distance, but stayed close enough to keep his eyes on him. He thought he had everyone but his twin fooled.

But Indiana noticed. Indiana always noticed.

Nicole had called it the curse of intelligence when she was younger.

“Sometimes,” she’d said. “When you know too much about how the world works, how people work, you see things you aren’t supposed to. You understand things you aren’t supposed to.”

Indiana was 12 at the time, sitting on the other side of the kitchen table.

“What do you mean mom? How can you know too much?”

“You’ll know one day. You’ll see.”

The way she’d said it made Indy sit her fork down, her stomach suddenly tight.

And now she’d seen.

On New Years Eve, Indiana Cross leaned in to kiss her boyfriend as the clock struck midnight, on her couch in her apartment, with her picture frames on the shelf over their heads and the sound of fireworks outside her window.

Grayson didn’t lean in.

He leaned back, and he spoke.

“I can’t do this.”

Indiana took a breath. In. Out. Filled her lungs and emptied them again.

She’d noticed. But she hadn’t let herself believe it. She’d pushed every little nuance she’d seen, every time that Grayson’s eyes didn’t catch the smile he tried to put on his face the last few days- she’d pushed it to the back of her mind and justified it. He was just worried about leaving, he was just stressed about Bekah like she was, he was just tired. She’d seen every sign and she’d justified it.

She swallowed air, her throat painfully dry.

“What?”

“I can’t do this, I’m sorry.”

Indiana did what she always did, what she’d always done her entire life when anything didn’t make sense, when anything went slightly off track.

She tried to understand why.

She racked her brain for everything that she’d done, every syllable she’d spoken, and every movement she’d made since that first day at Frazier outside, with him in his green pants on the bench, and her with two Jet’s coffee’s in her hands.

Her fingers were cold as she pressed her hands together. There was a finality in his tone that had her chest tight, her ribs pressed together, muscles pushing on bones and squeezing everything until she felt like she was going to suffocate. She opened her mouth.

“Oh.”

Grayson had his head in his hands, leaned over his knees on the couch. He shook in an unfamiliar way, like he was choking, and it took Indy a moment to realize that he was crying.

She felt like she was in a dream, watching what was happening to her from the outside. It was like slow motion as she watched the girl on the couch curl in on herself, her walls reconstructing at ten times speed - he’d been so gentle with each brick that she didn’t even realize they’d been taken down. He spoke after a moment of heavy silence.

“I love you, but we can’t. I can’t do this to you.”

Her brain refused to process it, refused to even try to dissect it, and she spoke the only word she seemed to be able to find.

“Oh.”

“Indy I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I should have said something sooner, I wanted to, I’m an asshole for waiting this long.”

She swallowed and wrung her hands together.

“When is your flight?”

His tears streamed faster somehow as he blinked.

“Tomorrow afternoon. We have meetings on the 2nd.”

In. Out.

“What time?”

Grayson looked up. Indiana was sitting straight up, head up high. The only thing moving were her hands, which she kept squeezing together over and over. It scared him, to see his once bubbly girl so still while his tears continued to fall. He couldn’t read her.

“I’m not sure, I’d have to check. Dee, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

She smiled her hospital smile, the one she used when she got bad news, and it was somehow worse than if she’d yelled at him.

“Indy.”

“It’s okay. C’mere, it’s okay.”

She opened up her arms for him, and she didn’t even seem to notice that they were shaking ever so slightly.

Grayson’s eyes were too blurry to see the quiver. He was fighting himself again, wagering whether sinking into her arms would only cause more damage in the long run. But he knew how it felt to be there, and he wagered that it would be worth whatever hellish guilt it was sure to bring later. So he leaned in, and just a single touch from her had him sobbing again. He pressed his face into her shoulder with so much force that she fell backwards a bit, and suddenly they were intertwined with him above her on the couch.

His pain was physical. She could feel it, in the way his body shook and paused when he tried to suck in a breath that his lungs desperately needed, the wet hot air soaking through her shirt with every exhale he choked out. His tears were warm, the salt already stiffening the fabric that soaked them up. Her hands found his back, and she lifted a finger to his skin before she paused.

She didn’t know what to write anymore.

Instead, she moved her hand to his hair, scratching at his scalp, holding him steady. He was heavy against her and she closed her eyes, felt him there with her, took in the weight of him.

“Shhhh. It’s okay.” We’re okay. “You’re okay.”

Her words only made Grayson cry harder when he realized what she was doing. He came back to himself for a moment when he realized that all the shaking wasn’t him. He could feel the way she held onto him and shook, so subtle that he could tell she was fighting it. His stomach churned at the thought of how bad her pain must be if it was causing a reaction in her body, and he moved to push himself up.

“Indy.”

She clung to him, panic breaking through the protective numbness that had taken hold so quickly. If it was the last time she was going to get to hold him, she’d hoped it would have lasted just a bit longer.

But she took a deep breath and she let him go, forced her arms to release him.

It hurt worse to see his face again, see the pain in his puffy eyes. She reached back out for him, swiped her thumb across his cheek to catch a tear. Her fingers got distracted in the feeling of his scruff, and she scratched over it for a moment, indulging herself, willing herself to remember the way it felt on her fingertips.

“It’s okay.” It was a reflex to her, and she couldn’t stop herself from saying it.

“It’s not though. Indy, it’s not okay. I’m hurting you.”

She didn’t have a response to that. Her eyes fell to her lap, picking at her fingernails.

“I’ll be okay.” It was a lie, but she would have said anything to bring some of the light back to his eyes. Her pain she could manage, but his was her breaking point.

“Please don’t do that. Please don’t pretend on this.” He brought in a shaky breath, blowing it out quickly.

In. Out.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to scream. I want you to be pissed at me, I want you to be mad that I waited this long to tell you! You haven’t even asked why,” he cried. Indy wondered for a moment why it always hurt more to see boys cry. It seemed to be more painful for them somehow - heavier.

“I think I know why.”

He sat up a bit more at her words. Waiting.

“It was a chance thing, you being here. Us meeting. Your life is entirely different than mine, and you have your people in LA. There’s… I mean there’s plenty of girls there who don’t have the stuff I have. Class, work -” Her voice cracked at the end, Grayson’s outline blurring just a bit as she looked up.

“No. No no no, hey,” he stopped her, hands hovering over her for a moment before he gave in and rested them on her arms, holding her without fully pulling her in. “It’s not that. I promise you, it has nothing to do with anyone else. I want you, I don’t want anyone else. But I know you, and your dreams are here, and I’m not gonna take that away from you.”

Indiana’s confusion only grew. She’d only heard one thing he’d said.

“You want me?” Her voice sounded pitiful, even to own ears.

“Of course I do.” He spoke it like it was the only possible truth, and a flicker of hope rose in her gut, fighting it’s way up. “Indy of course I do.”

“Then… why?”

“Remember when we went to LA?”

His words brought back a flood of memories. The two of them kissing in the ocean, the secret beach, sleeping in his bed with his green wall, piggyback rides around the house, the late night Cudi drives.

“Yeah.”

“You remember how much you hated it there? How bad you wanted to come back home? And what did I promise you?”

Indy couldn’t find her voice. Her brain was otherwise occupied, watching her memories being drug through dark ink, staining them.

“I promised you I would never ask you to leave New York.” He finished it for her. “And I meant it. But I can’t stay here Indiana, no matter how bad I want to.”

“Your life is in LA.” She repeated her words from earlier, monotone and unattached. Her heart fought with her, begged her to tell him everything. Tell him that she was going to start working at Jets and start therapy so she could fly out to see him. Tell him that she was halfway through her UCLA application essay that she’d been working on on nights he fell asleep before her. Tell him that she’d drop everything and follow him anywhere.

“You’re the most giving person I’ve ever met. You give so much to everyone but yourself. But I’m not letting you give up your life for anyone, especially not me.”

She wanted to be mad that he assumed that she would. But there was an understanding, a sadness in his eyes that reminded her that he knew her better than she had ever realized.

“We could make it work.”

He looked like he wanted to believe her.

“You deserve someone who is here for you.”

“You’re here for me.” Her mouth was starting to outrun her mind, a dangerous game that she usually couldn’t stop once it had begun.

“You deserve someone who is here to celebrate your accomplishments every day, not someone in a different time zone on the other side of the country.”

“We could make it work.” It was more of a plea that time, and she saw it register across his face, the pain it caused him.

“Indy.”

“People do long distance all the time, we could do it.”

“We aren’t long distance people,” he said, but Indy’s mind was already running.

“We could set up a facetime schedule, and you wouldn’t have to visit that much, I’ll be busy with school anyways. And if we hate it, then we can stop. We just have to try, we’re never gonna know unless we try it.”

Grayson was silent for a minute, which was enough of an answer. He’d known this was coming. Ethan had warned him that it would happen, that Indiana would try to reason her way through it. He’d told his brother that he had to be confident in his choice or he’d get swayed off course.

Grayson wasn’t sure he’d even be confident in his choice to remove himself from the best person he’d ever known. But knowing that in the long run it would be better for her was the only thing that let him cling to the last bit of resolve he had.

“Indy.”

Her lip quivered, and he felt his heart crack.

“Please,” she said.

“C’mere. Just c’mere.”

It wasn’t a surrender, but an offering of comfort. Indy knew it would hurt her later, but she didn’t have the willpower to resist it. She crawled into his lap, and the last of the numbness that had started faded away. In his familiar arms, she lost her last semblance of control.

She crumpled into his shoulder, broken sobs shaking her frame as she clung to him, let him hold her as she wrapped herself around him, as if it would somehow make him stay.

He rocked her as she sobbed, accidentally pressing a kiss to her shoulder before he realized what he was doing. It was torture in the rawest form, worse than he could have expected to be the cause of her pain.

“I’m so sorry Indy, I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her over and over, hoping she believed him. She pressed her face against his neck to keep her eyes closed, pretending for a moment that everything was fine.

“I love you.”

The tears returned to his eyes, and in a moment of weakness he turned and pressed a kiss to her hair, her temple. His lips had missed her.

“I love you too Indiana Cross.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

Her finger traced against his back. F-O-R-E-V-E-R. She wished she could erase it somehow when his breath caught in his throat again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and he shook his head.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” His voice was muffled by her skin, seeing that he was unwilling to lean back from her.

“I know this is hurting you too,” she said, and was met with the feeling of more of his tears on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“The only thing you did was make me love you too much. Don’t be sorry for that.”

The way her heart squeezed wasn’t natural, and though she knew the phenomenon wasn’t as everyone said, she was sure it skipped a beat in her chest. She squeezed him tighter to her, like she had so many times. She synced her breathing to his, laid her head on his shoulder, committed the sound of his heartbeat to memory.

Their tears dried out over the next hour, the numbness of acceptance starting to blanket over them. Neither of them dared to move a muscle, Grayson especially. All he did was rub his hand over her back, up and down the same as he had been since she climbed into his lap. They both knew that moving would mean having to figure out what to do next.

It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Indy wasn’t sure, and she was scared to look at a clock, to see her fleeting time left with him wasting away.

“Did you pack your bag already?” Her voice was too loud even though it was barely above a whisper, pulling them back into the reality they wanted to avoid.

“Yeah. It’s at home.”

Indy could see it in her head, his Jersey room, quiet and waiting for him with his orange duffle on the bed. But her stomach filled with a wave of nausea as she realized what it meant.

“So you have to go home.”

Grayson’s hand paused on her back. She was holding her breath.

“I… I didn’t know if you would want me to stay.” It was the first time he could remember not knowing what to say to her.

Her arms tightened around him, her breathing getting a little bit more ragged. He ran his hands over her back quickly, desperate to soothe her.

“Shh, shh hey, I’m staying. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yet.” She whispered, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he flinched. “Sorry, that was harsh.”

“Not undeserved,” he said, turning and resting his cheek against her shoulder. “I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have. So whatever you need, I’ll give it to you.”

Indy sat up. Her eyes had settled a bit, her tears washing the jellyfish blue into a shade of navy that Grayson didn’t recognize. It made his breath catch in his chest.

“Whatever I need?”

“Whatever you need.”

She looked at him, and her head tilted to the side just slightly. A small smile tried to make its way to her face, but her lips quivered.

“Could you kiss me?”

He paused, watching her fight off her tears with a deep breath.

“Is that what you need?”

“Just… just one. I didn’t know, you know. That the last one was gonna be the last one. And we’re here, and I just thought, that maybe - ”

He kissed her. For the first time, he was hesitant. He kept his hands to his sides, not wanting to push anything too far, not wanting to make anything worse somehow. Indy barely reacted either, too nervous to do something wrong.

They pulled back from each other, breathing shallow, nerves taking over as they tried to figure out what to do.

“Thank you,” Indiana said.

Grayson swallowed hard, watched her eyes as they flickered between his own.

And then they were kissing. Really kissing, chasing the taste of each other like air at the end of a sprint. His hands went to her face, holding her to him as her hands went to his torso, bunched up his shirt and tried to pull him into her, closer somehow despite the fact that they were already touching everywhere that they could be. The desperation was palpable, in the way their hands roamed and fell back into their familiar patterns. Indy sucked in the first real breath she’d taken in since the clock had struck midnight, breathed him in as best she could, trying to lose herself in him like she always had. But her mind wouldn’t shut off, reminding her that it could really be the last time she had him like this.

He felt her tears, first on his thumb that was holding her cheek, and then against his own skin. It took all his willpower to pull back from her lips. She let him, her breathing shaky as she tucked her face back down into his neck.

He picked her up effortlessly, standing up from the couch and moving them to her room. The Cudi vinyls seemed to mock him, especially when he laid down and stared up at them on their small shelves. Indy didn’t move an inch, staying wrapped around him, laying on top of him when he rested back against the pillows.

Time moved quickly, and Indy still avoided the clocks, scared to see what had already passed.

Grayson wanted to hear her voice. Wanted her to talk to him, wanted to commit every single thing she said to memory, but he wouldn’t ask. She had given him enough.

He closed his eyes, focused on the feeling of her fingers over his shirt, tried to make out what shapes she was drawing like he always did. He felt her hands travel up higher, up his neck to his skin, scratching over his beard.

Her fingertips were gentle as they moved up, over his lips, around his cheek to his eyelids, down over his nose, then to the other side of his face. She traced the pattern a few times, and Grayson waited until she was on his nose to speak.

“What’re you drawing?”

“You,” she said. “Memorizing.”

He didn’t know how he still had more tears to make, but they started to fall anyways, down the side of his face over his temples.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

“I know. I wish you could stay just a little bit longer.”

“Me too.”

He traced a heart on the back of her arm.

“I love you too.”

The truth of it was, she didn’t know how to not love him, and that was the scary part of it all. She couldn’t imagine a world where she didn’t love him with everything she had in her.

She didn’t know who she was without it anymore.

“If you ever change your mind, I’ll be here you know,” she said. He took in a deep breath, pressing a kiss to her hair.

“I’m not gonna do that.”

Her heart sank.

“That’s not fair,” he said. “I can’t ask you to do that, to wait for me. I’m not going to string you along, that’s cruel. Once I’m back in LA, I want you to move on.”

Indy shook her head against him, burying her face in his chest.

“No.”

“Indy.”

“No.” Her brain refused to process it, to imagine a single scenario where she felt anything good without Grayson by her side. She knew it wasn’t healthy, and she vowed to never tell anyone but in that moment, she reserved herself to be miserable every minute that she wasn’t with him.

“I know it’s not gonna be easy, but you deserve to be happy. And I’m sorry that I’m gonna make that harder, but you’ll find somebody who can love you better than I do.”

“Does that mean you’re going to just move on when you get back to LA? Just forget about me?” There was a spite in her voice that she didn’t like hearing in her own voice. But Grayson didn’t flinch. It was almost reliving to him. He was getting what he deserved, what he’d earned for breaking her heart.

Her anger meant she cared.

“Indiana I’m never going to forget you. If you think I could, I was an even worse boyfriend than I thought.”

“No, don’t do that.” She pushed off his chest and sat up. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to make me think that the last three months were bad. That’s the last thing I have to hold onto. Those were the best months of my life, you don’t get to take that.”

Grayson didn’t have an answer.

“Okay.”

“You made this decision for the both of us, I don’t get a say in it. So I’ll hold onto it as long as I fucking want to. You don’t get to tell me I have to move on.”

“Okay.”

“Okay then,” Indy said, reaching up to wipe a tear away. She sucked in a breath and pushed it out through shaky lips, trying to hold herself together.

“Sorry.”

Grayson shook his head. “Indiana you can be mad at me. You should be mad at me.”

“I am mad at you.”

She knew it wasn’t in the way that he meant. Because she wasn’t mad that he’d broken up with her. Because deep down, under all the pain and all the love and all the worry, she knew he was doing it for her. He was doing what she would never have the guts to do, even if it was the right thing.

No, she was mad at him for infiltrating every single part of her. Every thought, every muscle, every cell of her body contained him. Every hope she had for her future was molded around him. He was there in everything. His curls were in the dreams she had about her future children. His smile in the back of her mind every time she closed her eyes. His eyes, bright and green, always there.

“Do you want me to leave?” There was no malice in his tone, only genuine concern.

She pondered it for a moment. Thought about what it would look like, for him to actually walk out the door and never come back through it.

“No.”

“Okay. Then I’ll stay.”

“I can drive you to the airport. So Ethan doesn’t have to come into the city.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“Okay.”

They stared at each other for a moment, staying very still, waiting for one of them to make a decision.

“We should probably sleep.” Grayson checked his watch. “It’s 4am.”

“Okay.”

Another pause. Another moment of uncertainty that they’d never had to navigate.

“Do you want me to take the couch?”

She shook her head, and with a sigh, she gave in. Grayson could finally breathe again when she settled against him, pushing her hand up under his shirt, running her fingers over his ribs. He wrapped her up in his arms tightly, focused on the feeling of the weight of her on him.

And he closed his eyes.

His alarm went off at 9:45. As soon as it sounded, Indy turned her face into his chest, a new wave of tears coming forward as the realization hit her

It was time to let go.

He just held her and kissed her head for as long as he could. She didn’t know if she’d slept. If she had, it was only for a few moments. She’d kept waking up, reminding herself that he was still there.

They barely spoke. No one ate breakfast. He hadn’t brought a change of clothes, and parts of his shirt were stiff from the saltwater of both their tears. It took all the strength he had to keep it together when he closed the apartment door behind him for the last time.

She took his hand in the elevator, and his tears fell, making his cheeks even colder when they walked outside. It felt odd, for him to climb into the passenger seat with her in the driver’s as they continued down the road. His mind was flooded with memories, with doubts. He couldn’t stop picturing the smile that would spread across her face if he told her that he’d changed his mind, that they could try.

He fought it, kept his mouth shut, reminded himself that this was his decision and he had to deal with the repercussion of it.

Indy was quiet too, evidence of her earlier decision to not hurt him anymore than she already had. She didn’t want to make it any harder on either of them. No matter what, she still loved him, and she didn’t like to see him hurting. She kept herself superficially distracted, focused on the colors of the cars that passed, and the number of the exits on the highway.

The airport had never come quicker.

Grayson’s chest tightened when they pulled off. He couldn’t ignore it anymore, couldn’t push it down and stay strong like his dad had always told him to. An image of him hugging her goodbye over her console came to his mind, and he panicked.

“Would you want to come in? Like park and come in? I know you hate airports, and you can say no. But… I’d like to give you one last good hug before I go.”

She merged into the lane that led to the parking as her tears began to fall. He ran his thumb over her hand until they got out. They found each other again behind the car, Indy linking her arm around his and holding on as tight as she could as they walked. She was ten times more anxious than the last time she had walked into an airport, her usual pertifying fear of Grayson being on a plane the least painful part.

It was hard to keep her sobs quiet but she bit them back as best she could. Grayson heard them, shifted so he had his arms wrapped around her as they walked. Her eyes were blurry with tears but she noticed the bright yellow and orange bags before she spotted Ethan. He gave her a sad smile that she did her best to return. From the look of pity in his eyes, it was even worse than she thought.

Her vision was obscured by Grayson, who moved in front of her. She clung to the front of his jacket with both hands, unable to look him in the eyes. She didn’t know if she could handle it.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, tears so full that they dripped off her chin and onto her shirt.

“I’m so sorry.” His own eyes burned as he watched her. But her next words caused the worst pain he’d felt in a long time.

“Can we have a redo?” As her voice shook, his last barrier fell, and he was sobbing - the kind you try to choke back and keep quiet as he crushed her against him, burying his face in her hair.

“Not this time baby. Not this time.”

They weren’t sure how they could cry harder, but they did. He swayed as he held her, tight and warm. Ethan wiped his own tears away with his jacket sleeve as he checked the boarding time on the tickets.

“I love you. So much,” she said.

“I love you too. I’m so sorry. If you ever need me... “ he trailed off, unsure if his offer would only hurt them both more down the road. She understood what he meant, and she took a deep breath. In. Out.

“Right now, I need you to turn around, and I need you to walk away, or I’m never going to be able to let you go.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t move. She finally looked up at him and held herself together, determined to look at his face in person for the last time without the distortion of tears.

“Take care of yourself, okay? Be safe. Be happy. I’m always gonna love you.” Her voice was as steady as she could make it, and that somehow hurt him worse.

“Forever,” he whispered, and then he was kissing her. He wrapped her up in his arms as tightly as he could, held her to him until he forced himself away, only keeping a hold of her hand.

Ethan, always in tune with his brother, seemed to recognize his cue.

Indy nodded and squeezed his hand one more time, and then she let him go, their fingers tracing over one anothers until they fell away, the distance too much.

A numbness spread over her body as soon as he let her go, and she watched from her spot as he disappeared down the hallway and into the security line.

She didn’t remember getting back to her car. But somehow, she managed to crawl inside and lock the doors before she crumpled forward onto her steering wheel.

#mixtape #this one is a doozy #love you guys #can't believe it's already track ten #wild wild wild #grayson dolan #grayson dolan fanfiction

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dionnaea · 3 years

Text

Revelations | Pieck x Reader

pairing: pieck finger x gn!reader

warnings: cursing, some yelling, ends in fluff

wc: 1.8k

a/n: sorry that this is a couple days late! midterms wore me out, and i didn’t feel like looking at a word document for a day or two. hope you enjoy it nonetheless! let me know what you think :)

request: Hi can I request a pieck x male reader (or gender neutral if your more comfortable with that) maybe the reader is a scout that was captured after the attack and she is in charge of watching them maybe they slowly warm up to each other after reader reveals the horrors they’ve gone through with the Titans during an argument with pieck and eventually they start a relationship?

attack on titan masterlist | general masterlist

Yes, you had met some annoying scouts during your training, but you had never met anyone as annoying as the Marleyan soldier that was sent to guard your cells. He spent most of his time either throwing schoolyard insults your way or trying to flirt with every captive. It was ridiculous, and you were getting more than tired of listening to his squeaky, borderline pre-pubescent voice flood the stone-lined hallway. His break times had turned into a safe haven of sorts for you and your comrades, but as the thirty minutes creeped by, you became more and more antsy.

Today, however, seemed to be different as a woman walked in a little while after the regular guard left. She had walked by all of the cells, taking subtle glances inside each one, before having a seat near your end of the row. In fact, she was a mere five feet away from the bars of your current habitat, and you took the chance to study her.

The first thing you noticed was the red band clasped securely around her left arm, denoting her Warrior status. It shone like a beacon or a warning, you couldn’t decide which. Still, why would a Warrior be sent to watch over some captured scouts? And where had the other man gone? Not that you minded his absence. The curiosity started to eat away at you, and you figured there was no harm in asking.

“Hey,” you started. You were taken aback when you realized that she was already looking at you, like she knew exactly what you were going to say.

“He was moved to another post,” she answered your unspoken question. “I’m here in the interim.”

“Ah,” you responded.

Her voice was a bit too soft for your liking; it was unbecoming of a killer, you thought with spite. You didn’t like her being here. A regular, annoying Marleyan soldier was one thing, but a Warrior? It was like a stab straight to every scout’s heart. Your chest started to feel a bit hotter as your anger towards her grew. You hadn’t been there when she delivered the boulders to the Beast Titan to decimate your comrades, but you had heard the tale, a horror story only told late at night. As if she had the right to exist in the same building, on the same continent even as the predecessors of those she had killed.

You scoffed out loud, and the Warrior turned to face you, furrowing her eyebrows as if she were actually concerned. You glared in response. It was stupid, you thought, that she was allowed to have a face like that, the face of an angel, and still act like a devil.

The day passed, her sitting idly by while you did your best to play a card game in your head. You tried to picture all of the cards and their suits and numbers, placing them on the imaginary table you had set up on the floor of your cell. It wasn’t going well, you kept losing, as you kept getting distracted by the feeling of the Warrior’s gaze burning into the back of your skull. It was almost as annoying as the squeaks of the original guard, and you felt a sense of pure relief as soon as she left for the night and another guard took her place.

To your discontent, she returned the next day, too, and the next. By the third day, your blood was boiling. Even though you were always turned away from her, you could feel her eyes on you most of the time. It was pissing you off, and you couldn’t hold back anymore.

“What the hell?!” You questioned as you whipped around, not surprised to find her dark eyes piercing into yours. Hers were wide in confusion, and that made you even more mad. “What’s so interesting about the back of my head, huh? You busy picturing what it would look like with a bullet in it or something?” It was a harsh statement, you knew, but you also believed she deserved it.

She shook her head quickly and with so much force that her crutch started to slide from where it was balanced against her chair. She swiftly reached out to catch it, holding onto it with both hands instead of propping it back up.

“N-no. I just…” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “I just was trying to figure out what you were doing.”

You scowled. “What I was doing?” You repeated incredulously. “I’m wasting away in a jail cell, that’s what I’m doing!” You stood up in a flash, pressing your body against the bars and grabbing onto them until your knuckles were white. “I’m stuck here because of you, you know!”

She shook her head again, denying your statement. “No, you’re here because you killed my people.”

“Well, you killed mine!” You shouted back. Your voice lowered as you spoke again, grief flowing through you. “Thousands, millions even. You slaughtered them all without a thought for their families, and children, and friends. You destroyed our home without regrets, without us doing a damn thing to you, so stop complaining that we destroyed yours.”

The woman was quiet now, her head bowed and hair covering her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and that pissed you off more. You started to go off again, but she stopped you with her next words. “Tell me. Tell me what we did to you. I want to know everything.”

When she looked up, there was an honesty and sadness in her eyes that you never would’ve expected to see. It shook you, and for a second, you saw a normal human being rather than a Warrior. Somehow that look calmed you, and you became willing to tell the stories of you and so many others, both dead and alive.

You learned her name was Pieck, and the two of you talked for hours. You described the horrors of life under the threat of Titans, you told of the atrocities that occurred on the battlefield, you explained to her the loss and grief and overwhelming depression that came with the life every scout and citizen of Paradis was being forced to live.

And to your stupefaction, she listened to every word quietly, nodding her head to signal that she was taking in the information. She didn’t try to sympathize or compare experiences, she just sat and let you talk, letting herself realize her own sins. Once you were silent, you could tell she understood, at least as much as an outsider could. She didn’t need to apologize for you could see in her face that she had plenty of regrets, and Pieck was well aware that an apology would mean practically nothing. It was atonement that she sought now, and Pieck figured a good place to start would be with you.

From that day on, you grew closer with the woman. You never shared mindless conversations, but instead always talked of the past and of your experiences. You heard stories of her Warrior training and realized the brainwashing that the Eldians living on Marley had been put under from birth. A part of you was proud to see that Pieck had overcome it in a sense, happy to realize that peace was truly possible if constructive conversations could be had. It was promising, and slowly but surely, talking to Pieck became the highlight of your day, something you looked forward to as she made you forget about your lonely little cell.

Weeks had passed, and then one night changed everything.

You were struggling to sleep, the thin sheet you were given was not enough to protect you from the cold and the hard bed was giving you a pounding headache. The only comfort you had was the knowledge that you could see Pieck again in a few hours once the sun came up. The hallway was silent other than the occasional moments when the night watchman got up to use the restroom. He sat on the other end of the hall from you, and you were thankful that he couldn’t see into your cell from where he was stationed.

The next time he got up, he didn’t come back for quite a while, and you started to wonder if something had happened to him. Were the scouts finally coming to rescue you? Your heart began to pound harder as you heard the door to the hall creak open and keys jingle. You cracked your eyes open to see who was here only to be met with the sight of Pieck standing outside your enclosure, fiddling with the keys before sliding one into your door’s lock.

You sat up quickly, tossing the sheet off of you and standing to meet her against the bars. Keeping your voice as low as possible, you whispered, “Pieck! What’re you doing?”

She whispered back, pushing your door open and holding out a pile of clothes to you. “Put these on. I want to take you somewhere.”

You obliged quickly, not questioning the possibility that you could escape somehow. Was she helping you to leave? But how would you get back to Paradis? Options were running through your head at lightspeed as you slipped on the long sleeve shirt and jacket. She guided you down the hallway after you were dressed, careful not to wake anyone or stir suspicion. You barely recognized the building as you walked through it as it had been months since you had last seen anything other than stone walls and metal bars. When Pieck pushed the backdoor open and let you wander back into nature, the breath was stolen from your lungs.

It was cold outside, but in a different way than your cell. The air was refreshing rather than stale and the wind was pleasant, not a musty draft. You could smell the light scent of flowers in the air, and you wondered exactly where it was coming from, suddenly craving the feeling of petals on your fingertips. Pieck seemed to understand your thoughts as she led you to a small garden on the other side of the pathway. Upon seeing the dainty plants, you rushed over to them, brushing your fingers over the colors and savoring the different textures.

As you straightened back up, Pieck took your hand gently. You felt a bit embarrassed with how dry yours were, hers as silky smooth as the petals you had just caressed, and you apologized quickly and quietly. Laughing softly, Pieck just tightened her grasp, assuring you there was nothing to worry about by how she pulled you closer. Her being this close was intoxicating, and you felt yourself melt into her, peace washing over you in waves. For some reason, all of this felt new to you, like you were starting over in the world with Pieck, and you were perfectly content to stand here beside her.

It wasn’t until later, when you were back and locked securely into your cell, that you realized you didn’t mind staying a bit longer on Marley as long as Pieck was here, too.

#attack on titan #attack on titan x reader #attack on titan fanfiction #pieck finger #pieck x reader #pieck finger x reader #snk #aot #mere writes

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wouldpollyapprove · 4 years

Text

No Whore Part 2

Summary: The Garrison’s new barmaid is known as nothing but a whore due to her relationship with none other than Thomas Shelby. Knowing that she is more than that, Y/n will do anything to prove her worth and as her brother has just arrived in town, the opportunity seems to be upon her.

Thomas Shelby x Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: Language

A/N: This isn’t really edited because who wants to do that, so excuse any errors. I hope to have another fic out tomorrow but we’ll see if that happens. Requests are open and I’m open for suggestions on other fandoms I could write for. I do hope you guys like this one.

Part One / Part Two / Part Three

Masterlist

Y/n grunted as her body hit the cold dirt. She looked over her shoulder as she scrambled to her feet. There was no way in hell they were going to catch her. Not when she was light on her feet. She ran down the alleyway and slide between a few broken boards of a stable. Black horse eyes gazed down at her, watching as she walked between them and out the door.

It was the early morning hours, yet Small Heath was starting to come alive. Children were running around, playing marbles, and men were off to work.

A peak between the slats of the stables allowed Y/n to believe she was safe and slip onto the street. It had been a rough morning. Ever since her brother had shown up in town, she did nothing but run errands for him. She didn’t mind, for the most part. They kept her out of the house and gave her something to do. But… some of them got her into trouble that was hard to get out of.

Just a few days before she had to take a swim in the canal.

There was a new gang forming in the east end of Birmingham and Richard wanted to know if they would be a useful ally or a dangerous enemy. Y/n had a feeling that they were just boys pretending to be men. Either way, she set off for the east end and mingled among the street vendors. It was well known that this gang used a fish stand as a front for drugs, it caused more deaths than it did highs, but people still threw their money away for it.

A few women at the fish stand were whispering about a meeting that was taking place at a warehouse by the canal. They should have known to keep their mouths shut, but to them, if the Peaky Blinders weren’t interested in them than no one was. They believed they were safe.

It seemed they were wrong.

Y/n made her way down to the warehouse and was able to slip in and hide behind some crates. Knowledge filled her ears until a rat waltzed out from between a couple of the crates and charged at her like a Spanish bull. Now, Y/n wasn’t one to fear rats, they were as common as house fly, but it scared the daylights out of her and a small shriek escaped her lips. The men she was listening to turned in the direction of the sound and she knew her hiding spot was no longer safe.

Long story short, the canal somehow became her only means of escape.

That was likely because not a single one of those men would want to take a swim in such filthy water. They probably thought the same of their eavesdropper. But they didn’t know Y/n. She was willing to go to the ends of the Earth to get a job done.

A puddle broke, the water coming together once more to reflect her unlock the door of what many in the area considered a high-end house. Stripping off her light coat, Y/n called for her brother. A grunt came from the kitchen, she followed the sound to find him sitting at the kitchen table with his feet resting on it.

“How’d it go?” he asked, a biscuit stuffed in his mouth. If their mother were around, she would beat him for such a lack of manners.

His sister shrugged and grabbed a biscuit for herself off the counter.

“Since the Peaky Blinders have control of the races, I think I have found us our own profitable avenue.”

Y/n raised a brow, she hoped it didn’t involve fish. Her father believed fish would bring in boatloads of money. As they were from Plymouth, that made sense. It was a fishing port, but everyone there believed that fish would home riches. “And what would that be, Richard?”

Taking his feet off the table, he turned to her, a serious look about him. “Dairy.”

“Dairy?”

That was nothing close to what she expected. There were millions of different markets that Richard could tip his toes into, but dairy was not one Y/n expected. She still remembered the time a cow on their grandparents farmed chased after him and he screamed like a child. He was 17.

Richard nodded, standing up. “Dairy is the one thing that everyone needs. Think about it. Those biscuits-” He pointed at the biscuit in her hand and paced around the kitchen, something he did when thinking. “-need dairy. Restaurants need dairy. Every household in fucking Birmingham needs dairy! Who cares about horse races? The Shelbys’ may be making good money, but it pales in comparison to that of the dairy industry. This city doesn’t run on horse races and betting shops. Nor does this country. Every fucking household, every fucking restaurant, every fucking bakery in fucking England needs dairy!”

A satisfied shrug was Y/n’s only response. He wasn’t wrong. If one company or one person controlled the dairy market, bought out all the dairy farmers, they would be drowning in money. There would be no risk in it as there would always be a demand for dairy products. Horse races were a rich man’s paradise, but that was never where all the money could be found. In ten years’ time, horse races could be nonexistent, but dairy would always be important.

“How are you going to get your hands on any of this?” she asked while she pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. “It’s extremely ambitious and your gonna have to have money. A lot of money.”

He shrugged and gestured for her to give him a cigarette. Once one was in his hands, he explained his plan. “It’s ambitious, yes, but don’t you go thinking that it’s impossible. We just gotta buy a dairy company. I’m sure if we show ‘em enough, they’ll hand the keys right over. Once that’s acquired and money starts rolling in, we buy out other dairy companies and then the dairy farms.”

“What about the workers, are you gonna keep them?” Her brother nodded as she lite her cigarette. “And the dairy farms? Are these people gonna be able to still work on their farms?”

Richard rolled his eyes and nodded. “Jesus Christ, Y/n, do you think I’m a monster or something? I don’t plan on ruining anyone’s livelihood here. I’m not like the Shelby’s or the New York mafia, I shed a tear when blood is drawn.”

She raised her hands in defense, “Just making sure.”

“We’re talking about dairy here. The only dangerous think about it is when the cows go on a rampage.”

*~~*~~*

The Garrison was starting to fill up as the sunset. The dark it got, the more men slipped in through the door. Y/n was constantly fetching drinks and cleaning up empty glasses. It was meant to be fast work, the men weren’t supposed to wait for their drinks or complain about empty glasses. Y/n had prided herself on being as fast as lightning. She was meant to be invisible, silent but deadly. Yet, that had all but disappeared.

She was slow, sluggish as she moved about. No one really noticed it, the other barmaids lacked her pace in general. But she wasn’t herself. She could feel it deep down whether she would admit it or not.

Richard’s plan was starting to take form and, though, it was moving at snail’s pace, it was still moving. Y/n found that more and more, she was out on the street befriending people for her brother. Those that wanted nothing to do with them often chased her through the alleys of the industrial city. Often times she ended her days with bruises and scratches along her body from her escapes. Boards and narrow passageways would cut and mutilate her skin while she did the work that needed to be done.

Her brother had told her she could take a break if it was too much. That she didn’t need to put herself in harm’s way for him. His business was growing and he could find someone else to take her job, give her one next to him.

But she refused.

She liked the thrill and excitement of running from her enemies. It reminded her of all the trouble she used to cause when she was just a little girl, running through the streets of Plymouth.

“Get that gentleman an old-fashion,” Y/n directed Beth, one of the new Barmaids. “Do be quick about.”

With that out of the way, Y/n went to the backroom to refill the tap. It wasn’t quite ready to be refilled, but she needed a break. Her day off was starting to look better and better the longer she was at work.

“Hiding, I see.”

Y/n turned to find Tommy standing in the doorway. She shook her head. “No, just doing my job.”

“I haven’t seen you in a few weeks.”

She shrugged at his statement. “I’ve been here during work, you know that.” Her answer came out dry, but it was hard to infuse them with any joy. She desperately needed a nap.

He rolled his eyes. “I mean after your shifts. You used to come in all the time. Now you only show up for your shifts. What changed?”

“Nothings changed. Just decided to drink at home, it’s cheaper,” she said while she changed the tap. That was true. It wasn’t hard to spend a whole paycheck at the pub if you ordered the right drink.

And Y/n always did.

The man hummed, clearly not satisfied with the answer. But nothing ever satisfied Thomas Shelby and Y/n was trying to remind herself that she didn’t need to. He often regarded her as nothing but a play toy. There was no need for her to satisfy a man that was unsatisfiable.

With her work done, Y/n slipped passed him and back to the pub, never meeting his eyes as she moved around him.

*~~*~~*

Tommy sat in the private room, his brothers at his side. Finn was rambling about some boxing match that he’d watched the other day. John and Arthur indulged in conversation with the boy about it as it was the only thing that he took interest in at the moment. Tommy was silent on the matter, he had other things on his mind.

The conversation he’d had with Y/n was playing over and over again in his mind. There was something about it that he found concerning. Her words were blunt and bare. They gave little away, but her outward appearance practically screamed at him.

She was weak, he could see. Y/n wasn’t skin and bones, but Tommy could see that she was getting there. He paid her plenty so he didn’t think that lack of funds prevented her from feeding herself. He worried that perhaps it was her mental state that was harming her physically. Maybe she had always been like this, always been weal and slow, and he’d never noticed because she was nothing but a whore to him.

But that couldn’t be it.

Tommy remembered the first moment the woman had caught his eye. She was running around the bar during rush hour, her lungs constantly full of air. Her cheeks were full and they were rosy red. Y/n was alive and full of laughter.

That wasn’t the same girl that was working now.

“Do you think somethings wrong with Y/n?” the man asked and took a drag of his cigarette.

John and Arthur cut their conversation with Finn short and turned to their brother.

“Why do you ask?” Arthur inquired, pouring more whiskey into his glass.

Tommy shrugged, “She doesn’t seem like herself.”

John scoffed at that. “Like you know what she’s like.” When his brother sent him daggers, he explained himself. “It’s just that, she more of a whore to you that you respect because she is a woman. You don’t respect her because you care about her or you love her. Perhaps you think she’s not well because you two had a falling out and she won’t fuck you anymore.”

He snorted. That was the answer he knew would come from Polly’s lips. “Married life has changed you.”

Though he wanted to wave the comments aside, Tommy knew them to be true. He didn’t know Y/n for anything. She was a stranger to him just as he was a stranger to her. But he wanted to know. He wanted her to be more than just his whore. There was something about her that told him he had to get to know her. That if he did, she would forever be in his life.

To do that, he first had to figure out what was wrong with her.

*~~*~~*

Let me know if you guys want to be added to either tag list.

No Whore Taglist: @wefracturedmotivation @a-dorky-book-keeper @magnificentzombiebasement @stressedandbandobessed7771

Regular Taglist: @captivatedbycillianmurphy

#the peaky blinders #peaky blinder imagine #peaky blinders imagines #peaky blinder fanfic #thomas shelby #thomas shelby imagine #thomas shelby imagines #thomas shelby x reader #tommy shelby imagine #tommy shleby imagines #tommy shelby #tommy shelby x reader #tom shelby #tom shelby imagine #tom shelby imagines #tom shelby x reader

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alicanta77 · 4 years

Text

Chapter 4: Maze of Memories

Pairing: y/n x Haechan

Themes: angst, fluff, suspense(?)

Warnings: swearing, zombies, blood, violence, death, virus, illness, anxiety, mentions of abusive family, needles (two injections)

Words: 10k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Finale

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Inspiration from my friend @2-cute-4-school and her story called ‘Evanescent’. This girl is such an incredible writer and honestly seems to be able to write anything beautifully and I can't praise or recommend any of her work enough! Thank you to the ends of the earth for letting me use it as a starting point xx

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Doctors and nurses bustled around you, taking your temperature, checking your breathing levels, heart rate, and pressing different buttons on the countless monitors that surrounded you. You just lay there, still in shock from the last thing you had heard Jeno say before he was removed from your room.

‘You’re finally out of the simulation.’

You hadn't had time for ask for any sort of explanation before the doctors rushed in and shooed him out. You tried to listen to what the nurses were telling you, discussing certain things about your health, but you couldn’t focus.

It was a simulation? Were you the only one in it? Were Hyuck and the others still there?

Hyuck...

Your throat closed up as the memories of his broken screams clouded your mind. You would do just about anything to see him, to hold him one last time, to kiss him and tell him that everything will be alright.

You weren't sure how much time had passed until the doctors and nurses eventually emptied out of your room, leaving you alone in the monochrome, sterile white walls.

There was a small knock at your door and it slowly began to open. You pulled yourself up so that you were sat in a more upright position and turned your head in order to see who was entering. Jeno’s head peaked out from behind it, causing a smile to spread across your face.

Even though you were scared and confused beyond belief, seeing your friend alive and smiling at you was an easy thing to feel happy about.

He made his way closer to you, pulling up a chair before speaking.

‘Hi... Sorry, I guess I should have started with that earlier, rather than dropping the whole simulation thing on you like a bomb.’

You opened your mouth to speak for the first time since you woke up, but his eyes went wide and he quickly continued to talk.

‘No! No, don’t try to speak until you've had some water. Your throat is gonna be really dry and it’s going to hurt.’

You shut your mouth and nodded, watching as Jeno stood up and walked into the adjoining bathroom. He came back with a full glass of water and gave it to you before sitting down next to you again.

‘I woke up in this room too. Doctors and nurses were crowding me, but they only stayed for a few minutes before they left me alone. Finally a female doctor came in and gave me a glass of water. Then she explained everything... it didn't make a lot of sense, and it’s really overwhelming... are you sure you want to know it all now?’

Jeno looked at you, concern clear on his face. It was obvious that whatever he needed to tell you wasn't easy, but you had to know. The uncertainty was driving you insane and your heart was screaming for you to find out if you could find Hyuck. You nodded, fast, making Jeno sigh before taking your hand.

‘I don’t really know where to begin, but I guess there’s one thing that you need to know more than anything. The apocalypse, everything we went through over the past few months, none of it was real. It was all a simulation.’

You brain was running at a million miles an hour, none of this making sense. You were glad that Jeno kept talking because you were sure that you couldn’t form a complete sentence to respond to him if you tried.

‘There was a virus that hit the world, it was called Harmless Deterioration, that much of the simulation was true. We were lucky that HD was only incredibly infective and not that fatal. Very few people died, but the world leaders came together after a medical report was released that showed HD mutating. This time into something much more fatal. Scientists realised that they had only two years maximum to prepare the population for the next wave, a much more dangerous wave. So the world leaders decided to create a simulation. They put people of all ages, sizes, backgrounds and ethnicities into the simulation to study how they reacted in a similar but different environment. Obviously the virus isn’t going to raise people from the dead, but studying brain activity in such a harsh environment can give them an idea as to what it is that makes people immune or less at risk.’

Jeno paused for a moment, giving this time to sink in.

‘Do you have any questions so far?’

You raised an eyebrow at him and croaked out a small reply.

‘Yes. Just shy of a million.’

You were glad Jeno had made you drink that water because even after having a large glass, your throat still felt like sandpaper. Jeno smiled sympathetically.

‘But I’m sure I’m going to have more so just keep talking.’ You replied, too confused and dazed to even think about where to begin. Jeno grabbed your now empty glass and moved to refill it for you. When he reappeared, he took the same position as before, sitting close to you and holding your hand.

‘Okay, here’s the next part. Tell you what, squeeze my hand really tight if it gets overwhelming and I’ll stop talking for a minute.’

You smiled at that, his small yet thoughtful action was something so typically Jeno that the realisation hit you again, this time with much more force. He was actually alive and sat in front of you. Before you could stop it, tears started to gather in your eyes, making sheer panic spread across Jeno’s face.

‘Oh no, no, no, no, no. Please don’t cry, I’ll stop talking. Are you okay?’ He moved closer, leaning over you slightly as you nodded.

‘You’re here...’ You whispered, not trusting yourself to say anymore than that for fear that you would completely break down. Jeno’s smile broke out across his face, the eye smile that you had missed so much and you moved up slightly on the bed, making room for him to lie next to you. As soon as he got comfortable, you threw your arms around him and held him as tightly as he did to you when you had woken up. You started to realise that you were finally safe, you would never have to wake up at 3am for a lookout shift, never have to risk your life for a supply run, never have to hurt anything or anyone ever again.

‘Where’s Donghyuck? And the others? Can I see them?’ You asked, turning your head to look at Jeno, the picture of him slightly blurry through the tears that you were furiously trying to blink away.

Jeno stayed silent, opening his mouth to speak but quickly shutting it again. He looked away from you and down at the covers, his grip around your shoulders tightening.

‘I’m really sorry y/n... But you’re not gonna be able to see any of them for a while.’

‘Why?’ You asked, the tears starting to gather again.

‘Because they’re still in the simulation.’

In that moment, the world stopped. It felt like the longest second of your life had passed by the time Jeno started speaking again.

‘In order to leave the simulation, you have to die. That’s why I got out after our final day at Mark’s and you left it after you were bitten. As long as the boys are still alive, they are still in that simulation.’

You said nothing, not knowing at all what to say. You just waited for Jeno to continue speaking.

‘In order for scientists to gain accurate results from us, we couldn’t know that it was an experiment and all fake. So they removed parts of our memories before we went into the simulation. You should be getting yours back any minute, or at least that’s what happened to me. After about half an hour they came back in, put some wires on my head and gave me a few injections and electric shocks and all was good.’

Jeno turned to look at you expectantly, as if asking you to agree and say everything was fine. You didn’t quite say what he was hoping.

‘Hold on, my brain is melting. How long are the others going to be in the simulation for?’

‘I don’t know...’ Jeno admitted. ‘It depends on how long it goes on for or how long they survive.’

‘Well they’re pretty secure at the army base so I’m sure they’ll be fine.’ You said, remembering the security measures that you had all taken.

Jeno smiled to himself.

‘Yeah, you guys did a good job with that. I saw... I saw the grave too, I was really touched.’ His arms tightened again around you, but you managed to turn yourself so that you were looking at him.

‘You saw that?’ You asked, in complete shock.

‘Yeah, there are monitors here that show a live feed of the simulation. I would spend all my time watching what you guys were doing. Other scientists are taking down data but, I would just watch over you and pray that you would be okay.’ He admitted, avoiding your eyes slightly.

You curled into his chest once more, relishing in the knowledge that he was alive and with you right now. Nothing else made sense, but you planned to figure it out later. And in this moment, all you cared about was that you had Jeno back.

However, the reunion was short lived as your door quickly opened and two doctors walked in. Jeno moved himself off your bed, giving them room to see and attend to you.

One of them held a simple t-shirt and trousers, which he placed on your bed and the other a clipboard. She began to speak first.

‘Hello y/n. I understand that all of this may have come to a complete shock to you. There is no pressure on you to understand everything straight away and there are many of us who will gladly answer any questions that you may have. I trust that Jeno has filled you in on all the details?’

You nodded silently, sending a small smile her way. She smiled back at you, a much larger and warmer one than what you had managed to produce.

‘If you would like to get your memories back, just change into these clothes and there will be someone waiting outside to guide you to where you need to be. There is no pressure on timings, so please, only go when you’re comfortable to.’

With another smile, both of them left. Jeno walked up to your bed once more and moved the clothes so that he could sit down.

‘When do you think you’ll want your memories back?’ He asked, watching your response carefully.

‘As soon as possible.’ You replied honestly. ‘If my memories can help me make sense of this situation, then I’d like them back as soon as possible.’

Jeno nodded and gestured that he would wait for you outside, before leaving your room and shutting the door behind him.

You stood slowly, finishing off the last bit of your water as you did. You were careful when standing up, as the room began to spin slightly. You sat down again on your bed and reached out for the clothes that were there. You pulled off your hospital gown and slid on the white t-shirt. You pulled the dark blue tracksuit bottoms over you legs and prepared yourself to stand again.

You pulled open your door and saw Jeno sitting in a chair opposite it, he stood up when he saw you and offered an arm for you to steady yourself on. You gently held onto him and he guided you towards where the doctor was waiting.

‘There’s only one chair outside that room and I wanted to be the one waiting for you.’ He explained, making you smile.

The doctor saw you approaching and gave you a friendly smile and nod. He then gestured to his left, at a door marked ‘Lab 4F’. You looked up at Jeno for reassurance and he quietly informed you that this was where he got his memories back too.

So you entered.

---

Donghyuck rolled over in his bed, pulling the duvet further over his head as the persistent knocks on his door drilled into his brain. He attempted a weak ‘Go away’, but his throat was so sore from crying last night that it only came out as a feeble groan.

The door opened anyway and but Donghyuck didn’t roll over to face whoever it was. He didn’t care. He just wanted to be left alone. Whoever it was could screw themselves. That was until he heard Renjun’s broken voice.

‘Hyuck?’ Renjun’s voice cracked in the middle and Donghyuck realised that he was crying. He summoned all the energy he could and rolled over to face the boy in his doorway.

‘We’ve got time off our chores, they said that it’s okay for any of us to take whatever time we need. I- I know it’s only been two days, but, I- I-’ His voice cut off completely and Hyuck simply pulled open his duvet, a silent invitation and plea for his friend to join him. Renjun wasted no time in climbing in and Hyuck rolled over to hug him.

The boys had never had that much of a touchy friendship, preferring to make fun of each other and rile them up instead, but in this moment, all they wanted to do was hug the closest friend that they had left.

---

The final electric rod was placed onto your temple as the doctor prepared the injection. He placed a light hand on the top of your head and tilted in to the left slightly so that he could have access to the vein in your neck. You winced slightly as the needle pierced your skin and the liquid was injected.

You immediately felt yourself begin to be taken over by the darkness that was surrounding you, the doctor’s voice only just cutting through the haze.

‘Just relax, and let the memories change you.’

You didn’t have time to question what he meant before you fully blacked out.

~~~

You, Renjun, Donghyuck and Jeno were sat at your normal lunch table at school. Renjun and Donghyuck were arguing over something unimportant when you felt Jeno’s hand slip into yours under the table. You interlaced your fingers and sent him a smile, getting one back. Donghyuck noticed first.

‘Oh look at the lovebirds.’ He teased, suddenly cuddling up to Renjun in an attempt to imitate the two of you.

Renjun stared down at him in disgust and pushed the younger boy off of him.

‘I still can’t believe that you guys are actually dating. It’s weird, we’ve known each other for years.’ He stated, Donghyuck nodding in agreement.

Jeno shrugged.

‘I guess sometimes things change. You can wake up one morning and look at a person you’ve known your whole life in an entirely different light.’

Both Renjun and Donghyuck groaned loudly at that, the bell that signified the of lunch cutting through. They both jumped out of their seats, not wanting to be around the two of you for much longer.

You and Jeno both laughed, enjoying this newfound power over the rest of your group. You both began to head off to your afternoon classes as well, Jeno pulling you in for a quick kiss on your forehead when you had to go separate ways.

~~~

You were lying on your bed, scrolling through your phone when Jeno’s head popped around the door frame. You immediately sat up, a smile stretching across your features. But when the smile on your face wasn’t mirrored on his, you began to worry.

‘What’s wrong?’ You asked, watching as Jeno shut your previously open door and moved to stand next to the bed.

‘I volunteered to go into the simulation.’ Jeno said bluntly. He couldn’t meet your eyes, not being able to quite predict what your reaction would be. Both of you had decided over a month ago that you wouldn’t do this, you didn’t know the risks and the idea simply terrified you.

‘What do you mean?’ Your eyes never leaving Jeno, even though his were fixed on the duvet underneath him.

He said nothing.

‘You’re leaving me?’ Your voice trembled slightly at the thought of going without him for who knows how long.

Jeno’s eyes snapped up at the sound of your voice shaking, not hesitating at all to pull you into his chest for a hug.

‘I don’t want to. But I have to do this, I want to be able to help and say that I had a part in preventing the spread of a disease capable of wiping out humanity. I’m sorry, but, I’m not changing my mind.’ His words were quiet but calm, a determination behind them that you knew only came from Jeno.

You nodded, hugging him tighter as if he was going to slip away in that moment. Jeno gently repositioned you both so that you were lying on him. He leaned down and kissed the top of your head as you turned to place a kiss on the small bit of his collarbone that was exposed by his t-shirt.

‘You’re gonna lose your memories.’ You whispered.

‘I know.’ He whispered back, taking a deep breath as if to calm himself from the simple thought of it.

‘What if you forget me?’ You knew it may be selfish to ask but it was all you could think about.

Jeno chuckled at that.

‘We’ve known each other our whole lives, they’re only going to erase the memories of the virus and things to do with it.’

‘But we started dating at the beginning of the virus... remember we both stayed at mine for that month while my parents were stuck at my grandparents and that... that was when everything changed.’ You realised.

Jeno went silent at that. He swallowed, trying to collect his thoughts before replying.

‘I hadn’t thought of that...’ He pulled you even closer. ‘I’ll get them back, I won’t forget you forever.’

With that thought neither of you had the courage to ask or answer any more questions. You just enjoyed one of your last fews nights together and went to sleep.

~~~

You sat next to Jeno on what would be his final day before heading into the simulation. Not a single word had been spoken, the words left unsaid being much heavier than anything you could have anticipated. The tears that were welling up in your eyes began to fall down your cheeks, Jeno trying desperately to blink his away. Finally, he spoke.

‘I’m going to miss you so much y/n.’ He said, his voice breaking as he turned to look at you.

‘But you won’t.’ You replied, your voice as equally full of emotion. ‘That’s what so scary about this whole thing. I’m going to miss you, but you’re not going to have any idea that that isn’t me in there with you.’

Jeno shut his eyes and lowered his head to the ground, the tears falling freely. When he looked up again he raised one hand to you cheek.

‘Then come with me.’ He pleaded. You opened your mouth to disagree but he continued. ‘Please, we can get through it together, if I have you by my side then I am not going to be scared to go into it. I can do anything if you’re with me.’

You were silent. You had never wanted to go into the simulation and you watched as all your close friend chose that path, leaving you alone.

‘As much as I hate the thought of going into that simulation, the thought of being on the outside and watching you all without being able to help, is much worse.’ You said slowly.

Jeno’s eyes shot up, begging you to repeat what you had just said.

‘So, yes. I’ll go into the simulation too. I’m not going to leave you guys alone.’

Jeno burst into the biggest smile possible at your decision. And, as terrified as you were, you couldn’t help but smile back at the boy in front of you. He pulled you in for a happy kiss and grabbed your hand saying that you needed to sign up as soon as possible and that you had to tell the other boys.

~~~

You opened your eyes and the doctor’s face slowly came back into focus.

‘Take it easy. After five minutes you should be back to normal and you can head off, Your brain is just processing all the new information.’

The doctor’s voice cut through the blurry surroundings and you gradually felt yourself becoming more grounded. The room soon fully came into view and you registered the doctor pulling all the rods off of your head. He then placed a glass of water next to you, which you took some small sips from.

It didn’t take long before you were up and walking and being guided down a new corridor towards another door labelled ‘Examination room 3′.

‘Nothing to worry about, they’re only going to conduct a few tests to see how you’ve changed while in the simulation.’ The doctor turned to you, before opening the door and showing you in.

You were greeted with a large open room with monitors all around you. There was a treadmill to the left side and a large glass pane sectioned off the right half of the room. A group of half a dozen doctors came up to you, explaining certain procedures and what they were going to be testing.

It all went in one ear and out the other with you. You were still overwhelmed with the memories you’d received that you were quite looking forward to just being put on a treadmill so that you could think. Luckily for you, that was exactly what they started with. They attached wires to your chest and hands and measure your breathing and blood levels.

Then you began running.

While you were running all the beeping from the monitors and quiet chatter from the doctors faded into nothingness as you became lost in your memories again.

Were you and Jeno in love before the simulation?

All you knew was that you needed to speak to him about it. If he was the reason that you had gone into the simulation in the first place then you must have really loved him.

But why didn’t you have feelings for him in the simulation? Surely they can’t erase actual emotions? And you didn’t remember feeling any kind of romance for Jeno before the simulation, you’d only ever remember caring for Hyuck. But, they were still your memories... They were probably the only trustworthy thing you had.

---

Donghyuck sat by Y/n’s grave, his knees pulled up to his chest as he cried. He kept whispering the same two sentences over and over again, loud enough for only the wind to hear.

‘Why did you leave me? You promised.’

He reached out a shaky hand and placed another wild flower by her headstone.

‘You promised. Why did you leave me?’

He wiped away his tears with one hand and held his knees tight with the other. Then he began to sing.

‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.’ His quiet voice starting out clear, but shaking as he progressed onto the next line.

‘You make me happy, when skies are grey.’ Hyuck thought back to all the times he had relied on you when he had been struggling. But now, with you, his sister and Jeno all six feet under, his skies had never been greyer and there was no one left to show him how to get through it.

‘You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.’ His voice began to break as he thought back on all the wasted and unsaid words. He thought about the fact that you died without knowing how loved you were, and how he would do anything, literally anything to have you back.

‘Please don’t take my sunshine...’ Hyuck trailed off, the sobs taking over him as he struggled to finish the chorus of the song that you have sung to him countless times. He missed his sunshine, he needed it. He was dying without it, the grief slowly poisoning him from the inside out. He put his head fully into his knees a he whispered out the final word.

‘Away.’

Donghyuck let himself break down, a state he was used to being in at the moment. He mourned the girl he had always loved and appreciated but never told her just how much.

And he was blissfully unaware of that same girl, watching him mourn her, through a screen.

---

You stood awkwardly in your room. The layout was eerily similar to your room at the army base and it was only provoking memories of your time there. You couldn’t help but think of Hyuck and what you had just seen.

You had been walking towards the lobby to be shown to your room after your tests. You were glad that the directions were clearly marked as it gave you a chance to walk around without an escort. On the way there you had seem a door labelled ‘Camera room 2′. Curiosity took over you and when you headed in you were immediately greeted with the sight of Donghyuck crying over your grave.

The scene pulled at your heartstrings more than you thought was possible and all that was occupying your mind was the desire to hold him close, kiss his head and whisper that you’re never going to leave him again.

That song had always been important to the two of you. But when he sang ‘you’ll never know dear, how much I love you’, there was so much emotion in that single line, that it shook you to your core.

You remembered the moment before leaving to try and find his sister, when you had nearly kissed. Why was it, when you sure that you should be in love with Jeno, that kissing Hyuck was all you wanted to do?

At that moment, Jeno knocked on your open door.

‘Hi...’ He said, seeming more nervous than before. ‘Are you okay?’

You nodded. ‘I guess so. Things are really confusing right now and I don’t know what to make of anything.’

Jeno took a step forwards. ‘I know what you mean. When I got my memories back, for a short while I didn’t think they were real. I mean, I couldn’t recall ever having romantic feelings for you.’

You chuckled slightly at that.

‘No offence!’ He added quickly, scared of upsetting you.

‘No, it’s okay, I feel the same way.’ You reassured him.

‘But, at the end of the day, these are our memories. And surely they’re the only things we can trust right? Cause they’re ours.’ Jeno reasoned.

You nodded again. Jeno did make a lot of sense. It wouldn’t be strange for you to be confused when suddenly hit with a whole string of new memories.

You turned towards the bed, exhaustion from the day catching up with you quickly and, all you wanted to do was go to sleep and face everything else in the morning. You took a step but stumbled, your legs sore from the treadmill earlier.

Jeno moved forwards swiftly and caught you, supporting you as you climbed into bed. He tucked you in gently and whispered one last sentence before leaving you.

‘I mean I entered the simulation for you so it must have been real.’

You were too tired to ask what he meant as he placed a kiss on your forehead and left you to sleep.

---

Jeno led you through a maze of corridors, the silence between the two of you was comfortable but unusual. You never usually found yourself with nothing to say to him, but, since you got your memories back, it was like you had to look at him in a whole new light. And you weren’t sure you wanted to.

Jeno slowed to a stop outside an unmarked door, placing his hand on the door handle before turning to you.

‘I know that it’s difficult, coming out of the simulation. So I thought you might want to talk to some people who have gone through the same thing you have.’

With that, he opened the door in front of him and you were greeted with two boys around your age. You turned to Jeno with a confused look but he simply nodded at you to move forwards.

You were wary as you didn’t recognise either of them, but, soon enough, one of them stood forwards.

‘Hi.’ He said with a friendly smile.

‘Hi?’ You answered, really unsure of what to say.

The same boy suddenly took a step even closer and pulled you in for a tight hug. You had no idea how to respond so you just hugged him back and asked if he was okay.

‘Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Sorry that may have seemed weird.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I just wasn’t sure how to thank you.’

‘Thank me?’ You questioned. You couldn’t be any more confused than you were at this moment.

‘Yeah. For looking after my friend in the simulation. For looking after San.’

Suddenly it dawned on you who the boy in front of you was.

‘Wooyoung?’ You breathed and watched as he nodded in confirmation. You turned to the other boy. ‘So that must mean you’re-’

‘Jeong-in. But you can call me I.N.’ He interrupted you with a grin. ‘Welcome back.’

You turned back to Jeno, a look of absolute amazement on your face and saw that he was smiling. I.N. began to talk again, drawing your attention.

‘Jeno mentioned that you had been struggling with adapting to your memories and, we just wanted to say that we understand.’

‘Yeah and if you ever need anyone to talk to, we’re also here for you.’ Wooyoung said, placing a hand on your shoulder.

‘Oh my god, I just- I can’t believe it’s really you. The guys-’ Your tone turned slightly more serious. ‘The guys really miss you both.’

Both the boys looked slightly to the floor, sadness dancing across their feature.

‘We know. We’ve had to watch them grieve and mourn us. Just as Jeno watched you.’ I.N. said, gesturing to the boy behind you. ‘That’s why we were so glad that your group found the army base and they managed to move on slightly through the new friendships they made.’

Wooyoung nodded.

‘Yeah. I suppose it was easier for you and San though.’ He said, making I.N. nod and you frown in confusion. ‘You know, cause you guys are old friends.’

You looked between the boys in front of you, who both seemed to think that this was true.

‘What- what are you talking about? I only met San in the simulation.’ You said, staring as I.N. and Wooyoung’s faces both changed to confusion.

‘No y/n.’ Wooyoung said, never breaking eye contact with you. ‘You and San have known each other for a really long time.’

You opened your mouth to argue, to tell him that you had no memory of ever knowing San outside of the simulation, but a voice cut through. A voice that you never thought that you would hear again.

‘y/n?’

You stopped in your tracks and turned to your left, praying that she was really there and that this wasn’t your mind playing tricks on you.

It wasn’t. She was alive. Donghyuck’s sister was alive and standing in front of you.

‘Oh my god.’ You whispered before you ran towards her and pulled her in for a hug.

She wrapped her shorter arms around your neck and you felt her tears start to wet your shoulder. You whispered to her that it was okay and she shouldn’t cry, but you weren’t in a better state yourself. You were almost sobbing into the little girl’s shoulder, so filled with relief that she was alive.

‘Donghyuck is going to be so happy when he wakes up.’ You said to her, placing a kiss on her temple.

She looked up at you with the biggest smile on her face.

‘I can’t wait to see him. I didn’t get to see mum but it’s okay. I’ll see her another time.’

You smiled at her, fresh tears filling your eyes.

‘You’re so strong, never forget that.’ You told her, proud and amazed by the attitude this young child had.

‘I bet you can’t wait to see Donghyuck either. He misses you.’ She said to you, making you remember the scene you had saw the night before.

‘I know.’ You said, sadness filling you slightly. But she only frowned back at you.

‘No, you don’t. Hyuck never told you how much you meant to him. He always said he would and whenever he didn’t he would tell me how much he regretted it. I remember telling him he was being stupid cause you obviously feel the same way.’

You stuttered a bit as you tried to deny it and defend yourself but she was having none of it.

‘What are you talking about? You’ve always loved Hyuckie.’ Her words hit you like a ton of brick. Your mind was a complete mess and you felt as though you couldn’t sort out which memories were yours and which people thought were yours. It felt as though you had three different version of the past year of your life swirling around your head at the same time.

A bell sounded throughout the building, alerting people to head to their jobs. After giving you one last hug and asking you to see her again later or tomorrow, Hyuck’s sister climbed off you and headed off.

Both Wooyoung and I.N. gave you their room numbers before leaving as well, and then, finally, Jeno approached you.

For the first time in your lives, the silence between the two of you wasn’t comfortable. He had clearly heard what was said and you were both struggling to find any words to say.

‘What did you mean when you said you entered the simulation for me?’ You asked suddenly, remembering the words he had spoken to you the night before and praying that his answer would help solve some of your problems.

Jeno raised an eyebrow.

‘I meant, I entered the simulation for you. I’m not sure what else you want me to say.’ He answered, not understanding where you were going with this.

‘No...’ You trailed off, trying to find the right words. ‘I mean, how do you remember that day, choosing to go into the simulation?’

‘Oh...’ Jeno’s features relaxed as he shrugged. ‘I mean, you had told me that you were going to go into the simulation about a month earlier, and within that time both Donghyuck and Renjun decided to join you. I didn’t want to watch helplessly from the sidelines, so, even though it meant risking forgetting our relationship, I decided to join you guys the night before.’ He looked at you, expecting a reaction but you were frozen solid.

Something had felt wrong ever since you had gotten your memories back, and this was the final straw.

‘We need to go somewhere private to talk. Now.’ You said, trying to convey how urgent this was to him.

‘What do you mean? I don’t under-’

‘Now!’ You cut him off.

Jeno’s eyes went wide and he nodded once before grabbing your hand and pulling you into the corridor. He led you down the corridor before bringing you into the same room where you got your memories back.

‘Huh, how fitting.’ You commented, missing the confused look that Jeno shot you as he shut the door. ‘And you’re sure that no one will hear us?’ You asked, knowing that it was vital that this conversation was kept between the two of you.

‘One hundred percent.’ Jeno stated firmly. ‘They only use this room for returning memories and no one has woken since you, so there’s no reason to use it. Apart from out bedrooms, it’s also one of the few rooms with no cameras or microphones in.’

You nodded, feeling much more reassured with this fact.

‘Right.’ Jeno said, moving closer to you. ‘Now will you please tell me what is going on?’

‘Yeah, okay.’ You took a deep breath, unsure of how to start or say any of this without hurting him. ‘Something has felt off ever since I got my memories back. At first, I just thought it was me getting used to the feelings for you that I’d forgotten I had, but now, I’m sure that I never had them in the first place. No, wait, that’s not what I meant, that sounded really mean. I’m sorry. I- I’m- I think- wait I don’t know how to say this.’

‘Y/n! For the love of god, spit it out!’ Jeno raised his voice at you, the tension levels high in the room and his frustration clear.

‘Our memories aren’t real!’ You almost shouted at him. ‘None of them are real.’

You watched as Jeno physically deflated at your sentence. You could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t sure if he believed you so you continued, praying that you would be able to get through to him. And the more you talked, the more sure you were that you were right.

‘Think about it. Our memories claimed that we got together at the beginning of the disease right? Because my parents were away visiting my grandparents? But, that doesn’t make sense because my grandparents haven’t spoken to my parents in three years. And I only have one living set of grandparents so it was definitely them that we were referring to. And then don’t forget Wooyoung. He said that I’ve known San for a long time, but I have zero memories of meeting the boy before the simulation. I did not know him when I was growing up. And you can vouch for that can’t you? I never had a friend growing up who you didn’t know about and approve of. And then the final straw. The memory of how I entered the simulation is different to you. I remember you volunteering and me being the one who changed my mind the night before. The details are exactly the same, the roles are just reversed. You have to admit that something doesn’t feel right. Jeno... be honest. Do you have feelings for me?

Jeno seemed to be left without words after your speech, but you needed him to talk. He needed to talk, to understand, to realise that this isn’t what you thought it was.

‘Jeno! Do you have feelings for me?

He caught your eye, his mouth open and moving slightly but no words coming out of it. Then you snapped.

‘Jeno! Are you in love with me?!’

‘No!’ He shouted. ‘No, I’m not! I have no romantic feelings for you whatsoever and the thought of having those feelings is really weird because you’ve always been like my sister. I couldn’t love you like that if I tried.’

Both of you stood there in silence, you heavy breaths being the only thing to break the thick levels of tension in the air.

‘No offence.’ He mumbled.

‘Yeah no offence to you either, but I feel exactly the same way.’ You said honestly, both of your voices much quieter than before.

‘Our memories aren’t real...’ Jeno mumbled, the reality of the situation sinking in.

‘Our memories aren’t real.’ You repeated, confirming all that had been tormenting you since you woke up.

---

The silence that hung over the two of you was heavy. The recent revelation was not an easy thing to accept and figuring out what to say next was almost impossible.

But then a sudden thought hit you.

‘Jeno?’ You asked as he looked up at you. ‘Did you say that no one has woken up since me?’

‘Yeah, why?’ He replied.

‘I don’t know it just, I would have thought that someone else must have.’ You said, shrugging slightly.

‘You’ve only been awake for around 48 hours y/n.’ Jeno reminded you.

‘I know, god it feels like longer. How many people would you say have woken up entirely?’ You asked instead.

‘I don’t know y/n.’ Jeno replied, clearly tired with your questions and overwhelmed with what you had both previously figured out. ‘I haven’t met all of them but I’ve met most and I’d say that there’s around twenty of us here, maximum.’

‘Twenty? Is there another facility where people wake up?’ You were shocked with his answer.

‘No, I don’t think so... y/n what’s wrong now?’ Jeno turned to you, not wasting time and just wanting you to tell him the truth.

‘Just... how is it possible for so few people to have woken up? I know I was only in there for a month and a bit, but… it doesn’t make sense. There are so many zombies, surely all of them used to be people who should have woken up by now? How can they not? They’re dead.’

‘They can’t be dead then.’ Jeno said, already tired of this conversation.

‘But they are dead. Those people are zombies and zombies literally are the dead.’ You said back, your mind starting to run again.

‘Technically zombies are the living dead.’ Jeno said offhandedly. Suddenly, he straightened up and stared straight at you. ‘That’s it! They’re the living dead. Zombies are dead but, to an extent, they’re still living beings. They must be to be able to move, breath, make noise and understand that humans mean food and that they need food to survive. Those who are zombies, aren’t completely dead.’

‘But if they’re still living in some form, and you need to die in order to leave the simulation, then that means...’ You trailed off as the answer hit you, Jeno finishing your sentence.

‘That they’ll never wake up. What if that’s the plan?’ Jeno’s sentence caused a chill to run down your spine as you turned to him, fear in your eyes.

‘What the hell is really going on here?’

The rattling of the door handle stopped either of you from saying anything, sharing a quick panicked look before Jeno pulled you around the side of a long cabinet.

You quietly pulled open the door of the one to your right, relieved to find it empty. You crawled in the space at the bottom, Jeno following afterwards, gently swinging the door shut after him.

The door of the cupboard shut with a quiet but audible click and the footsteps stopped.

Both you and Jeno held your breath as they approached your hiding place.

‘What’s wrong?’ You heard a muffled voice ask.

‘I just thought I heard a noise, nothing else.’ Another replied, his voice much closer.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, nobody is going to be in here. Now, can we please finish our conversation?’

The voice closer to you sighed. ‘Fine, speak your mind.’

‘With all due respect doctor, as brilliant as your plan is, there is one fatal flaw. The subjects are waking up. Aren’t you concerned that once all of them become the undead, and wake up, you will have a lot of questions to answer when a deadly virus doesn’t sweep across the globe?’

Both you and Jeno shared a confused, fearful look. Whatever conversation these two men were having, you were not supposed to be hearing it.

‘No, not at all actually.’ The doctor sounded almost bored.

‘How can you be so sure?’ The first voice asked in confusion.

‘Because, my paranoid friend, those who are infected aren’t fully dead.’

You and Jeno stared at each other with wide eyes as the doctor went on to confirm everything that the two of you had just figured out.

‘These zombies have functioning lungs and hearts to breath and keep them alive to an extent. Their brains are formed enough to be able to move, and understand the concept of food. The are programmed to know that human flesh means food and that they must eat it in order to survive. We have created these zombies so that they are not just the dead, but rather the living dead. Therefore, as long as they are a zombie, they can never leave the simulation.’

A silence fell over the room as neither of the men moved and you and Jeno sat in terrified silence, learning the true nature of the simulation.

‘Well, what about those who have already woken up?’

The doctor hummed.

‘Yes, a shame about a few of the earlier deaths. The two boys from the army base come to mind. However, they were useful as it helped us to understand that we must programme the zombies to bite and not kill. We can learn from each death and alter the simulation to ensure that the same mistakes don’t get made twice.’

‘How about the most recent one. Who woke up two days ago?’

You heart stopped at the mention of you, Jeno grabbing you arm from where he was sitting next to you.

‘I agree that was annoying... Her friend’s death was as well. I guess sometimes there will be some who wake up due to sacrifices and loyalty. It’s the same as how some zombies will wake up once they’re killed by a human. But I wouldn’t worry about those two humans. The recent one may be asking questions now, but once their memories settle in they’ll become a pawn. We could probably even convince them to go back into the simulation.’

The doctors laughed at that, making you feel sick to your stomach.

‘A genius idea to use fake memories to tie them together.’ The first one said.

‘Yes, I was proud of that.’ The doctor replied. ‘And don’t worry about the other survivors, we can simply mutate the virus again to make it more infectious. They won’t last much longer.’

The doctors laughed again, before you heard their footsteps getting quieter, signalling that they were headed towards the door. You waited until the door had shut before you let out the breath that you were holding.

You weren’t, by any means comfortable in that cupboard, but you couldn’t move even if you wanted to. You were also sure that the corridor was going to have people walking down it, so escaping without being seen would be a challenge.

Jeno turned his head to you and opened his mouth to say something when you heard the door open again and two pairs of footsteps ran in. However, this time, the door was locked behind them.

You and Jeno, huddled together, positive that the doctor’s had come back to find you and you where going to have your memories wiped and probably be put back in the simulation.

That was until the people in the room started to speak.

‘I thought you said you knew what you were doing?’

‘No, I said I thought I knew a way I could do it? Wooyoung, this is stressful enough, please just go and get y/n and Jeno.’

‘Do you think that they’re going to believe us without proof. Unless we are sure that you can do this, I.N., I’m not getting them.’

You and Jeno shared a look of relief and, in sync, burst out of the cupboard you were hiding in, surprising both of the other boys. You had to hand it to them, as neither of them screamed. They did both freeze in fear and I.N. almost dropped the screwdriver he was holding but they didn’t give away their position to people who may be walking nearby.

‘Trust me.’ Jeno said. ‘After what we’ve learnt today, there is nothing you can say to us that we will not believe.’

---

Donghyuck stood from his spot by your grave, placed his final wildflower and headed inside. He visited you at least three times a day, just talking, singing and crying. Saying all the things he wished he had said before you were taken from him. On the way back inside he stopped to trace his fingers over the carving of your name into the wall. He didn’t regret asking San to do that, in fact he was glad.

He was in the middle of doing this when San turned the corner. The two boys held silent eye contact for a second, a heavy silence over the two of them. They hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even seen each other since your death. San choosing to keep himself busy and going out on longer runs every day, and Hyuck only moving from his bed to your grave, both of them only ever thinking about you.

Hyuck finished tracing the last letter of your name before turning around to face the other boy head on. He wasn’t going to speak first. If San wanted to find him, to see him, San could speak first.

And he did.

‘I’m sorry... I didn’t know you’d be here.’

Donghyuck only raised an eyebrow.

‘I come here, after every run. Just to tell her how it went and apologise.’

San voice was shaky, but it was nothing compared to the hoarse and broken sounds that left Donghyuck.

‘What for?’ He asked

‘For leaving her. For letting her get bitten. For letting her die. It’s my fault.’ San’s head dropped and Hyuck could see the tears that were falling from his eyes. Hyuck knew he probably should be crying, but he had cried so much that day he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to cry anymore. So instead he spoke.

‘Look up.’

San kept his eyes on the ground.

‘San, look up.’ He said more forcefully, and the other boy did as he was told.

‘You didn’t kill her.’

San went to shake and drop his head by Hyuck continued.

‘No, look at me. You didn’t kill her.’

‘But I did. I didn’t help her when I could have. I left her to die.’ San argued.

‘No you didn’t.’ Hyuck said with such conviction that it surprised both San and himself. ‘She sacrificed herself. She sacrificed herself to save us, her friends, her family. Don’t take that away from her.’

San nodded, and with that, Donghyuck left. He walked all the way back to his room before he proved himself wrong.

He did have the strength to cry.

---

You and Jeno stared at Wooyoung and I.N. in disbelief. The four of you, in your two pairs, somehow figured out the same thing, and decided to act on it. So far all you knew was that your memories weren’t real and you weren’t safe here.

‘But here’s the good part.’ Wooyoung said, grabbing both your and Jeno’s attention. God knows you could do with some good news, however small. ‘I.N. thinks that he might know a way to get our actual memories back.’

Your eyes shot to I.N. as he fiddled with the computer that was connected to the electronic rods.

‘How?’ You asked, praying that this was true.

‘I had a revelation. With risky operations such as fake memories, the best way to make them seem realistic is to keep them as close to the truth as possible. So they must have kept our real memories somewhere, so that they can consult them if they ever run into difficulties or irregularities. Now, if I can hack into here... Got it! Now all I need to do is find their folder and then we go through the same process as before, only I can give you your real memories back.’ I.N. explained.

‘And you’re sure you know how to do that?’ Jeno asked, looking warily at the syringe and electronic rods.

‘Yeah.’ I.N. said casually. ‘I don’t really know how to describe it but it’s like downloading something from your computer onto a memory stick. The actual process isn’t too difficult, it’s just finding the right memories that proves a slight challenge.’

‘Okay, be quick about it cause we haven’t got a lot of time.’ Wooyoung mentioned, looking quickly over his shoulder at the locked door. ‘Someone will eventually come looking for us and we need to be out of here when they do. So how can we help?’

I.N. rattled off a few instructions to you and you all ran around looking for certain solutions that you needed in order to calm your mind. Apparently you didn’t want to be fully blacked out but rather on the brink, so that your mind is still awake but there is nothing else occupying it but your memories. After a short while, you had everything gathered and I.N. seemed to have found everyone’s real memories. He asked you all to check that what you saw was the truth. You check on the screen and saw one of the last times that Hyuck had run over to your house because of his father. You were curled up together in your bed and you were singing ‘You are my sunshine’.

‘Yeah, that’s real.’ You said quietly, trying to avoid your voice cracking with emotion.

Jeno watched you from the side, having already confirmed his memory. While I.N. and Wooyoung were looking through theirs, he pulled you to the side for a second.

‘What are you doing?’ You asked, confused. ‘You know we don’t have time for a casual chat right now.’

Jeno just placed both his hands on your shoulders and quietly spoke.

‘When we get out of this, you and Hyuck need to tell each other the truth about how you feel. I think it’s stronger than you realise.’

‘Jeno, I-’

‘No.’ He cut you off. ‘No excuses. We have only got here because you couldn’t forget how much you loved him, even when your brain was reconditioned into thinking you loved somebody else. Tell him. You two deserve a happy ever after.’

You just looked up at Jeno before wrapping your arms around his waist for a quick hug.

‘I promise.’ You whispered into his chest.

I.N.’s voice came through, calling the first person up.

‘Y/n, we have your memories on the screen do you want to go first?’

Nerves filled you to the brim but you nodded. They were your memories, and you wanted them back.

You sat down on the chair you were in before, waited while Wooyoung and Jeno placed the electronic rods on your head, and then I.N. approached you with the syringe.

‘Are you sure?’ He asked, placing a comforting hand on your shoulder.

‘Do it.’ You replied, ready to feel like yourself again.

He put the needle by your neck and slowly pushed in. You winced slightly in pain, but it was quickly over and the darkness slowly began to envelop you.

---

To say that you woke up feeling like a new person would be an understatement. You mind felt clearer than it had in the past two days and all the other boys claimed to feel the same. However, you knew that this wasn’t the end.

After getting your real memories back, you and Jeno had brought Wooyoung and I.N. back to your room. You all sat on your bed, and you and Jeno replayed the conversation that you had overheard earlier that day.

Wooyoung and I.N. sat in shocked silence at the revelation.

‘We need to shut down the simulation.’ I.N. said immediately.

‘Well, it’s all good saying that but how are we actually going to do it? It’s not as if they’re just gonna have a kill switch that we can push.’ Jeno said, making you groan at how difficult this was going to be.

‘Wait...’ Wooyoung said, slowly, as if he was struggling to remember something. ‘I think they do.’

You all looked at him in disbelief as he continued.

‘It was my first few days here after waking up. I had snuck into the camera room to watch the boys, to see if they were okay. I heard people coming so I hid under the table. They were talking about this self destruct button, they said it could shut the whole simulation down. They didn’t say where it was, but they did say that it was the same thing. Whatever that means.’

After Wooyoung had finished you all just stared at him in shock. He had just given you the key to shutting down the whole simulation.

‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’ You asked, laughing slightly out of disbelief.

‘I don’t know.’ Wooyoung said, laughing himself. But his smile quickly disappeared and he frowned slightly. ‘No, I do. They found me. They found me under that desk and took me into the memory room. They must have wiped my memory, that’s why I can only remember it now. Because we’ve got them back.’

None of you knew what to say. Jeno placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, but Wooyoung just nodded to say that he was okay.

‘Lets shut this thing down.’ A new determination laced Wooyoung’s voice, making you all nod in confirmation. I.N. spoke next.

‘Here’s the problem though, it will take us ages to search this entire place for the button. And not to mention, there is no way we could do that without getting caught’

‘No, I don’t think it’s here. If they had a control switch to shut it down, they wouldn’t put it just anywhere one of us could randomly find it.’ Jeno reasoned. ‘Especially if you think about how much we’ve managed to get into and away with so far, finding a door or room that we weren’t allowed in at any cost would have rang some alarm bells.’

Wooyoung nodded in agreement.

‘Jeno’s right, its gotta be somewhere no one would ever think of looking, somewhere dangerous, somewhere deserted-’

‘Somewhere not real?’ You said looking up at the others. They all just stared back at you blankly.

‘What do you mean, not real?’ Wooyoung asked.

‘I mean, not real like, a simulation. What better place to hide a kill switch than in the thing it kills. That’s got to be the last place you’re gonna look for it.’ You explained.

‘It’s inside the simulation...’ I.N. whispered, before Jeno piped up to be the voice of reason.

‘Ok, wait, again, it’s all good to assume that but where? I don’t know about you guys, but, I’m not exactly excited to risk going back into that again to chase something that may not even be there’

You all sat in silence before another idea popped into your head, this one causing a cold shiver of fear to run down your spine.

‘I.N., not to bring back any bad memories, but when you were killed wasn’t it by a random zombie in the army base?’

I.N. blinked in confusion before answering. ‘Yeah, why?’

‘Didn’t you completely search the place from top to bottom and clear it out?’

‘Yeah, we were sure that we had got them all. I guess not. Well, obviously not.’

You looked him dead in the eye while asking him your next question.

‘What if you had?’

Another short silence spread over the group before Wooyoung spoke.

‘What are you saying?’

You took a deep breath.

‘I’m saying, what if there’s a spawn point? Like a pace where they can add more zombies if they need to? There’s no way that a zombie could have got into the base, let alone that far, without being detected. There must be a place where they can create new ones, to attack survivors who think they’re safe. Maybe that’s where the kill switch is.’

‘Oh my god.’ I.N. suddenly breathed, drawing all of your attention.

‘What?’ You all said in unison.

‘I know where it is. There’s an old training room, that we had plans to turn into a shooting range to train new recruits, but we didn’t have the ammo for it so we simply shut the door. y/n its by the showers do you remember?’

You shook your head apologetically, but suddenly Jeno spoke up.

‘I remember it. From my camp, I know exactly what your talking about. But I think there’s more to it than you realise.’

‘What do you mean?’ I.N. asked, not knowing the bombshell that Jeno was about to drop

‘Well, in case the army base is ever taken out from the inside, there is a secret route under an old training area. It leads to a chamber, kind of like the one at Mark’s house but with a self destruct button to blow up the whole building. I don’t think it was a spawn point, I think a zombie must have got in there and been stuck until you found the room. Just beyond that button is a tunnel that leads five miles out into the forest for the troops to use to escape. If they’ve got a self destruct, I’m sure they’ll have reprogrammed that button.’

‘It makes sense. Who’s going to hit a self destruct button on your only safe haven?’ You said to no one in particular.

‘The same thing.’ Wooyoung whispered.

‘What?’ I.N. asked, not quite hearing what he had said.

‘The same thing.’ Wooyoung repeated. ‘That’s what the guys in the camera room said before they caught me. The self destruct button is the same thing. I thought they were pointing to an object like a keyboard and talking about that, but now I realise, they meant the exact same thing. It’s still a self destruct button.’

‘And it’s in the army base. Where all our friends are.’ Jeno said, silencing the rest of the room until you spoke.

‘We’re going back into the simulation.’

120 notes · View notes

overheardatthecontinental · 3 years

Text

Talk Chapter 7

AO3

Helen learns about the hit that’s been ordered

John addresses the guilt that’s holding him down

John packs up quickly, filling the car pretty much to the brim, holding on to the knowledge that he really doesn’t know when he’ll come back.

By putting a contract out on Helen, it was no longer a matter of killing DeLuca and ending this. The contract was open. Whether he was dead or alive, people would come for her.

And while dead was the only way John wanted to see Mateo DeLuca, the fact remained that only he could remove the bounty on Helen. DeLuca, he thinks, or the High Table.

But the High Table wasn’t going to give a shit that Helen Kingston was a civilian. That she hadn’t done anything.

A hit was a hit.

He isn’t sure how he’s going to fix this.

John goes back down to the basement, to his workshop, and found a book hidden among the masses. It’s a newer book that stands out among his bookbinding collection. Larger than most.

He selects it and heads back to the main floor. John lays it open and takes out his phone to prepare to send the message.

As technology got better, so had hackers. Even phones issued by the Continental were subject to being hacked or tracked. He, Marcus, and Sofia had set up a failsafe years ago.

Even if the phone was hacked, it would take years to crack the code they came up with.

He opens the book and finds the first letter he needs, capitalized. He types in the page number, followed by the line that the word is located on, and finally counts out how many words into the line it is.

John hears Helen’s footsteps on the stairs and spares a glance upward. She has a tower of books piled into her little hands. He withholds a smirk and instead, shakes his head. “Just those?”

“This is as many as I can safely carry.” She replies, walking towards him and setting the books on the side of the table, “But rest assured, I’ll be back to steal more.”

He says nothing to that because he can say nothing. Every plan he’s had is screwed up now. His original thought, to separate himself from her, is in shambles now that every assassin in New York knows her name.

She peeks at his phone, “Is that an Ottendorf cipher?”

John feels himself inhale sharply. Why does she have to know that?

It’s such a small thing, really, but she says something like that and his heart starts to stutter in his chest, making him all the more aware of just how much he loves her. He loves her and he can’t have her.

But she says that and he’s lost.

“Yes, but modified. Do I want to know how you know about Ottendorf’s?” John asks, instead.

“I was a paranoid child.” She says, glancing over the book he has chosen, lifting the cover without closing the page to better assess. “All my childhood diaries were written in some kind of code.” She glances up at him, a small smile on her face, “I made up my own cipher when I was eleven to pass notes to my friends in school.”

It occurs to him that she’s never mentioned her own childhood before. Of course, he knows a bit. Between his actual stalking and the time spent on the Continental database, finding every piece of information on Helen Kingston, he was bound to find some things.

Like citations from Elementary school where she got her class to mutiny against a teacher or the handful of detentions she got for backtalk.

But they’ve never talked about her early life before.

Their lines had always been blurred but this was one they hadn’t crossed.

John glances back to his book, “Quite the little rebel.”

She shrugs, “We talked about it last week. What are rules in the face of meaninglessness?”

“And here I thought we were stepping away from nihilism.”

“You’re stepping away from nihilism.” She corrects, “I’m quite content with the idea that there’s no plan or grand design.”

His lips twitch, “There’s still some food left in the kitchen if you want to grab something before we go.”

She hoists her books back up, “Alright. I’m going to drop these in the car first.”

John nods, continuing to compose his message. The Ottendorf cipher was difficult to crack because not only did you need the right book, you needed the right edition, the right printing. It was also a bitch to decode because it required time and accuracy. He, Marcus, and Sofia even took it a step farther by using the first letter of every word rather than using the word itself and often wrote in shorthand.

That said, it was a bitch to put together.

He manages to type out the address of his safehouse and hits send.

John types up a quick message to Winston that he was going off the grid until further notice as he goes back up the stairs. He changes quickly, forgoing the suit for something more casual. Jeans and a t-shirt are oddly discomforting but a three-piece suit would stick out in the middle of nowhere.

Once changed, he checks his phone one last time before powering down.

By the time he finishes, Helen is outside, leaning against the car, eating an apple.

He makes a mental note that they’ll need to stop and pick her up some new clothes because the sight of her dressed in his makes it hard to breathe.

“Ready?” He asks.

She nods, pushing off the car and opening the passenger side door. “Do I want to know about the matching holes in the windows?” She asks as she climbs in.

“Probably not.” He admits.

Helen shoots him a smirk as she buckles in. He’s grateful when she dives into one of the books she had brought rather than asking him questions. He’s still not sure how to broach the subject.

She knows something is wrong, he’s certain, but she hasn’t asked.

Not that he’s offered information. He wants to keep it from her, to protect her for just a little bit longer but he can’t. It’s not fair to her.

Every so often, he catches her looking up from her book, checking road signs and overhead passes that give off locations, directions.

Her curiosity is palpable but, even now, she’s playing the therapist. Not pushing, just waiting for him to get there on his own.

It’s not right. She shouldn’t have to do all the work for them. He tries to bring it up, pushes himself to say something, anything, the next time she looks around curiously.

Half an hour passes.

Then an hour.

Then two.

He gives himself until the clock on the dashboard hits the hour mark. Then he watches as that arbitrary deadline passes, too.

At quarter past, she looks up at one of the signs and he forces himself to choke out the word, “Vermont.”

Helen looks over at him, an eyebrow raised. “Vermont?” She repeats.

He nods, “I have a safehouse there.”

She looks back at the road ahead of them, “Are you ready to talk about it?”

No, he thinks. But it doesn’t matter. They need to talk about it. She needs to know what’s going on.

What was the expression she used? Quick, like a band aid?

“DeLuca put a hit on you.”

He glances over, gauging for a reaction and is met with a simple nod. “How much?”

That, John thinks, should not be her primary concern but he answers anyway, “Four million.”

That makes her head shoot up, repeating the number while staring at him, “Four million dollars?”

He nods, once.

“Jesus.” She mutters, shaking her head, “For four million, I’m tempted to turn myself in.”

John’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white, “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing.” Helen rubs at her temple, “Fuck.”

That about covered it, John thinks.

He waits. She’s kept it together this long but news of a bounty on her head has to be enough to snap her out of the idle calm she’s been sitting in. He waits for her try cry or get angry or scream but, no. She shakes her head and looks back to the book on her lap.

He can’t help himself. “Seriously?” He asks, looking between Helen and the road, “You have a four-million-dollar bounty on your head.”

“Yes.” She agrees.

“There are hundreds of assassins looking for you right now.”

“I gathered.”

“Helen…” he cuts himself off, before he says something stupid.

She closes the book and leans back, facing him the best she can in the moving vehicle. “Do you think it would help?”

“What?”

“Do you think it would help if I broke down right now? If I started crying, do you think it would help either of us? Freaking out will not help me handle everything that’s going on. And it won’t affect the guilt that you’re clearly experiencing from something, and I can’t emphasize this enough, was beyond your control.”

He flounders for a moment, opening and closing his mouth as he searches for how to respond to her, “You’ve been kidnapped.”

“Mhmm.”

“Held hostage, sedated, been forced to play mind games with mobsters,”

“Seems like it was only yesterday.”

“And now you have a four-million-dollar hit out for you and you’ve barely reacted!”

She shrugs. She fucking shrugs and John wants to pull off to the side of the road and fucking shake her just to see if that sets her off.

“We all process things differently, John.”

“What have you processed?” He asks, unable to keep the frustration from his voice, “You’ve been eerily calm this entire time!”

She waves a hand, “I started processing it before it even happened. Maybe, if it had been completely out of the blue, I might have had a more visceral reaction. But let’s be real: this was going to happen at some point or another.”

“You were going to be kidnapped at some point or another?” He asks incredulously.

“Given the circumstances, it isn’t a large jump.” She points out. “You’re the Boogeyman. You might not understand all the fear people have when it comes to you but you recognize it. Fuck, I saw firsthand how terrified of you DeLuca’s men are. But you don’t present with a lot of exploitable weaknesses. And, regardless of how I entered the picture, it’s easy to see we have unhealthy boundaries.”

It takes him nearly a minute to process everything that she says and, when he does, he’s shaken.

“You’re saying you knew you were going to be kidnapped because we supposedly have unhealthy boundaries?”

Another shrug, “I wasn’t blind to the possibility that I could be targeted as a way to get to you. And there’s nothing supposedly about it. Our therapeutic relationship has been fucked since the beginning.”

John does a doubletake and looks over at her. “No, it hasn’t.”

Helen snorts, “One month in, I told you to forgo Tarasov V. Regents. A single phone call from you and I could have had my license revoked and my practice disbanded.”

“Isn’t trust the basis of a good therapeutic alliance?”

“There’s trust and then there’s putting my career in your hands. But if you don’t think that’s enough to indicate our God-awful boundaries, we could talk about your late-night stalking habits.”

John’s head flies to look at her.

“Traffic, John.”

He swerves and narrowly misses driving off the road.

His mind reels. She’d never mentioned it before and neither of them has ever brought it up. He operated somewhere between the assumptions that she didn’t know and that she would never mention it if she did.

He asks gruffly, “What did DeLuca tell you?”

She snorts at that, “Please. DeLuca doesn’t see nuances. He’s just convinced we’re sleeping together.”

“Then how--?”

Helen glances over, her voice softening, “Give me some credit here, John.”

He swallows, “How long have you known?”

“Five months.”

Since the beginning.

He watches the road, suddenly hyper-aware of the pounding of his heart, the hairs on his arms that are standing on end, and the tension filling his body.

He’s unable to look at her. He wonders if he’ll ever again be able to look at her, knowing that she knew. This whole time, she actually knew.

How many times had she asked him if he was planning for a late night, supplying him with coffee, all the while knowing that his late night was going to end sneaking into her home and watching her sleep?

And she had known? For five months?

And no, John Wick wasn’t the kind of man you took a restraining order out against, but she knows him better than anyone. One word from her and he would have disappeared.

Morbid curiosity and confusion get the better of him. “You never said anything.”

“You would have stopped.”

It really isn’t fair, John decides, that she can read him like a book despite his prevarications and evasions. But she answers him, and he can barely understand her.

“And that would have been a bad thing?” He can’t keep the incredulity out of his tone.

“I weighed the pros and cons.”

Now John can’t help but look at her. Calm as ever, her eyes remain kind and non-judgmental. “You weighed the pros and cons.” He repeats.

She nods, once, and John really isn’t sure what the hell kind of pros she came up with to sit back and just let that happen.

“Do you really want to have this conversation right now?” She doesn’t sound exasperated, only concerned. “I’m pretty sure you’re about to pull the steering wheel out if we keep going.”

He considers it, but John is pretty certain that the only thing worse than talking about it would be to stop. He wasn’t certain he’d be able to sit in his anxiety now that it was known.

“Yes.”

“To having the conversation or to yanking out the steering wheel?”

He shoots her a look but is a bit relieved that she’s still making jokes. She gives him a smile.

“I figured it out fairly quickly, I think.” She admits, “I woke up one night and just had a gut feeling that I wasn’t alone. Saw your reflection in the window but it was the middle of the night, and I was tired, and so I just went back to sleep.”

“Probably shouldn’t have been your first instinct.”

He doesn’t even have to look to know that she is rolling her eyes again, “You really want to start talking about instincts and poor decision making?”

She has him there.

“Anyway, you were gone when I woke up. At first, I thought it might just be a one-off. You’re a paranoid bastard. It made sense that you wanted to see where I live, gain a little bit of perspective. Trust that I wasn’t some sort of sleeper agent out to kill you or some shit. But then you came back.” She looks back to the road, almost thoughtfully. “And you kept coming back. So, I sat down and thought out a list of pros and cons.”

“And the pros outweighed the cons?” The disbelief is apparent in his tone.

“Yes.”

This, John thinks, has to be the most surreal conversation he’s ever had in his life. Casually talking about the pros and cons of stalking his therapist, with his therapist. Only for said therapist to decide that there were more pros than cons.

“What possible pros did you find?” He asks more out of interest than validation.

“What would you have done if I addressed it in session?”

He blinks at her answering his question with a question. Truth be told, he’s not sure what he would have done but walk out and never come back seems like the most likely.

“You would have run.” She says, matter-of-factly but somehow still manages to make it sound nonjudgmental. “Which, given your history of disorganized attachment, is perfectly understandable. But, it would have been a drastic step that would have pushed you farther away from the healing process.”

“After all this,” John bites, “You still think I can be healed?”

“We've talked about this before, John. There is no "perfect healing" when it comes to trauma. Things can and they will come back up. But I think that you can get to a point where you can let go of the things that have haunted you for so long.” She lets out a breath, “But nobody can get there on their own.”

John shakes his head, “And healing me is worth having your space violated?”

She huffs, “Believe it or not, it isn’t all about you, John.” He glances over and she shrugs. “I— I sleep better on nights you were there.” Helen pauses, then adds, “You keep the nightmares at bay.”

Her words cut him like any knife, but he feels it so much deeper than any cut.

Nightmares.

His thoughts seem to erupt in too many directions at once for him to even follow?

Nightmares?

She’s known for so long.

She sleeps better when I’m there.

What does she have nightmares about?

How the hell have I never noticed that she has nightmares?

Not like she would’ve fucking told you. She’s your therapist.

But she says I keep the nightmares away…

She know; she knows; she knows.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

He can’t handle it, can’t process it right now. Especially while driving. He needs a moment. Or a few thousand.

How can someone’s presence simultaneously sustain him and destroy him?

They pass a highway sign advertising food, gas, and lodging.

It wouldn’t hurt to fill up the tank. They still had hours to go. And she needs food. Real food, more than just an apple.

“Can you eat?”

She smirks knowingly at the abrupt change in conversation, “Yeah. Probably should.”

He nods to himself, pulling off on the exit ramp. Focusing on finding food, on providing, was much easier than letting himself sit in his own thoughts.

But even as he switches focuses, keeping an eye out for one of the places advertised, he can still hear her in his mind.

Your abrupt change in subject indicates that you’re afraid. Are you afraid, John?

They both knew the answer to that. He was fucking terrified.

He catches sight of a diner and pulls into the parking lot. They’re far enough from the city that he isn’t too concerned that anyone from his world will see them, but he hasn’t put it out of his head that he could have been followed. Even watching the rearview constantly hadn’t helped to ease the paranoia that came after having Helen taken.

John puts the car into park and Helen shoots him a grin, gesturing to her outfit. She’s still wearing his shirt and sweatpants, drawn tight. “Hope you don’t mind that I’m hard-core scrubbing it.”

He blinks, “I don’t know what that means.”

She rolls her eyes and gets out of the car, “Come on, John.”

He follows her into the diner, which boldly advertises breakfast all day. He keeps his eyes peeled and steps directly into the space behind her as he assesses the patrons.

A few bikers, a teenage group of friends, and two couples. It was late enough that the actual dinner rush had died down.

“Stay close to me.” He mutters and she shoots him a look over his shoulder, as if to say, seriously?

He nods.

Helen rolls her eyes but murmurs, “Fine.”

“Two?” A waitress asks.

“Yes.” Helen replies as John nods once, adding, “The back booth, please.”

She gives him a look, as well, but grabs two menus and gestures with her head for them to follow. Helen starts to sit on the near side of the table but John gives her a tap. She sighs quietly but goes to the far side, against the wall, and scoots into the booth. John sits next to her.

“You want anything to drink?”

“Just water, please.”

“Coffee.” John says.

The waitress walks away and Helen leans into the corner, “We’re hours away from your place; hours from the city. Do you really think we’re going to run into trouble here?”

“I’m not taking any chances.”

“I’d roll my eyes but if I keep doing that, I’m afraid they’ll get stuck.”

He shoots her a look and pushes the menu towards her. Helen only grins in response but takes the menu and looks it over.

He peruses it idly before turning his attention back to the people in the diner.

The teenagers looked normal but he had been trained to kill when he was their age. No one blended in quite like a teen.

The bikers had plates from South Dakota. He had checked all the license plates on their way inside. How many assassins lived a nomadic lifestyle?

Fuck, there had been a time where John, himself, had lived like that. Riding under the hot sun, funding his travels by killing at night.

The couples seemed inconspicuous but there was nothing to indicate that it was anything more than a cover. How often had he posed with Sofia as a couple on complicated cases?

The waitress comes back with his coffee and her water and he’s sick to his stomach, thinking of a thousand ways they could be poisoned.

“Know what you want?”

Helen orders first, offering a kind smile to the older woman.

She’s so trusting, he thinks, and that terrifies him.

“And you, hon?” She asks John.

“The southwestern hash.” He pushes his and Helen’s menus across the table and the waitress takes them, eyeing him.

Was the waitress a part of the Underworld? A spy for people leaving New York?

Had he made a mistake by choosing some place only a few hours out from the city?

But she turns and walks away.

Everything else has him on edge.

He acknowledges that he’s paranoid as he picks up his coffee and swallows it down. The burning almost helps to alleviate the frustration.

Over the course of the weekend, he’d lost her. He’d lost the woman he loved to an unknown enemy; had clung to the idea of finding her to keep him going. And Helen had managed to save herself. And things weren’t fixed by getting her to safety, but they were better.

And now, DeLuca was pulling this new shit.

While most of the older, more disciplined assassins were smart enough not to go up against him, he wasn’t naïve to think others wouldn’t come.

He had been a young, stupid assassin once, after all.

He’d made his share of stupid decisions trying to make a name for himself.

And what better way to make a name for one’s self than to go up against a renowned assassin?

He remembered his training well.

The Director had beaten it into their heads: it only takes one bullet.

One well-aimed bullet, one perfect blow with a knife and even the best would fall.

John would die for Helen, happily, a thousand times over. But things were fucked and dying for her wouldn’t be enough to keep her safe with a bounty on her head.

And he didn’t know where DeLuca was.

He didn’t know what it would take to remove the bounty and—

Her hand lands on his thigh and he nearly drops the coffee mug in his hand. Quickly, he sets it down, glancing over to her.

Her hand is on his thigh.

Fuck.

“Tell me five things you can see.” She says and he knows better than to ask questions when she’s using that sort of tone.

He blinks, swallowing as he looks around, “Uh, there are thirteen people in this room, aside from us. There’s the exit sign. A clock. An old license plate on the wall. And you.”

“Four things you can feel.”

“The seat we’re on. The scratch of denim. The air circulating. Your hand.” He tries to keep his voice from breaking at the last. Her hand is on his thigh.

“Three things you can hear.”

He listens, intently. “Murmur of conversation. The sounds from the kitchen. Coffee being poured.”

He can tell what she is doing. Simultaneously distracting him from his paranoia and grounding him in the moment.

“Two things you can smell.”

John breathes in and stutters on the exhale. There are many scents in the diner that he can distinguish, but none more powerful than her. Bathed in his shampoo, his body wash from her shower. She smells like he does and it makes his head go a little fuzzy when he thinks too much about it.

He swallows, deciding he is not going to say that. “Uh, I smell the grease from the kitchen. And my coffee.”

“And one thing you can taste.”

“The coffee.” He says, before he can start to think of what he wants to taste.

“Good,” Helen praises and she squeezes his thigh, “Are you with me?”

“I’m here.” He wonders if he’s flushed.

Helen had, once again, pulled him out of his head. Stopped him from going down a darker path and it wasn’t right, he thinks, that Helen is having to calm him down.

“Are you?” She asks, raising her hand from his lap up to his face. She cups his jaw and turns his head to face hers, “Because you look like you’re still lost in your head.”

“I’m sorr—”

“Don’t be. You have no reason to be sorry, John.”

He doesn’t deserve her. Not her love, not her friendship. Not even her help. She’s too good for him, but now, neither of them have a choice. He got her into this mess and now she won’t survive without him.

“This is my fault.”

“I’m not exactly blameless, John.” She removes her hand and he immediately mourns the loss of her touch, “I kept you on as a client even after knowing what you do. I knew you were sneaking into my house at night and I didn’t do anything to stop your or dissuade you. I’m positive that I don’t have the best security at my house.”

“It’s not the same th—"

“John.” She interrupts him again, “Look, we can go back and forth for eternity about where the blame goes. But it’s not going to do us any good because, ultimately, it lies with DeLuca.”

Helen pauses, giving him a moment to ingest what she has just said, before she adds, “I know you’re not used to being scared. And I know it feels like a lifetime since things have been out of your control. But everything is going to be okay.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can. Because no matter what happens, no matter what horrors and traumas we face, no matter what loss we experience, we still get up in the morning. We figure things out, we adjust our tactics, and we do what we have to.”

He almost believes her but his fear lingers.

He offers a small smile, “Is that how you managed to stay so calm when DeLuca had you?”

She smiles back, adding teasingly, “I figured you’d be stressed enough for the both of us.”

John relaxes his posture, still on guard but no longer feeling fight or flight instincts that had been drowning him since their arrival.

Their waitress walks over and Helen calmly smiles, thanking her as they’re passed their dinners.

John waits until the waitress has gone to respond, “I’ve had missions go south, but not being able to find you, not knowing who had you…” he shakes his head.

“You crave control.” Helen says understandingly, “With your life, in general, of course. But primarily, over your emotions. So you ignore them until something sends you into overdrive.”

“What’s the solution there?”

She reaches over with her fork and snatches a bit of hash from his plate, “No easy fixes, unfortunately. We’ve already talked about rational verse irrational thoughts. The next step would be directly talking about your reactive attachment but I don’t think you’re fully ready to address that.” Helen tells him as she pops it into her mouth.

“What the fuck is reactive attachment?”

She swallows, “One day, I’ll let you read your file.” She takes a sip of her water, “Okay, attachment crash course: attachment is, basically, the bond that develops from person to person. It starts when you’re a baby and the relationships that you have in your early years tend to be large indicators for the rest of your life.

“Babies have needs that have to be met: being clothed, being fed, changed, and cuddled. When these needs are met by a consistent caregiver, babies start to develop trust. They can recognize their caregiver, they feel secure in knowing that, even if their person leaves them, they’ll come back.

“But, these needs aren’t always met. And, when kids don’t form secure attachments, it effects their relationships growing up. If not addressed and treated early, it transitions into adulthood.”

John couldn’t remember that far back but he still remembered the tribe. The orphans were taken care of. They weren’t abandoned but they sure as hell hadn’t been loved, either. He remembered, not too long before he was sent to live under the Director’s care, being in the orphanage and telling one of the little ones to stop crying.

Nobody cared.

It was best to learn that lesson early than to waste tears on someone who would never come.

“And what does that look like?” John asks.

“Being withdrawn from social interaction; not asking for help when you need it because you don’t trust anyone to come through for you; feeling like you don’t understand the world around you, like everyone else is in on something that must have skipped you; not seeking comfort; avoidant behaviors; a tendency to shy away from intimate relationships.”

John exhales a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Jesus.”

“When kids with RAD—reactive attachment disorder—start to form connections, they typically go one of two ways. There’s the disinhibited, where the kid with RAD ends up becoming overly emotional. They search for affection in anybody who pays them the slightest bit of attention.”

That didn’t exactly describe John so she continued, “There’s also inhibited. Those kids avoid any emotional bond, they reject kindness and relationships because they don’t trust it. Even if a kid likes someone, they eventually reject them before they can be rejected.”

John swallows. Just that morning, he had been thinking about how to disentangle himself from Helen. He had justified it by telling himself it was to protect her. From him, from his enemies.

But Helen was still there; still sitting by his side. Still trusting him with her life despite everything.

“When kids with RAD grow up, relationships—even friendships are strained. There’s a fundamental lack of trust that’s based in fear. You avoid close relationships; avoid personal relationships, period.”

“I didn’t avoid you.”

She inclines her head, “Yeah, well…” She takes another bite of her dinner.

“Well, what?” He’s almost afraid of the answer with the look she’s giving him.

“It isn’t unusual for someone with RAD to over-attach themselves to one or two people in particular. Those relationships tend to be a bit obsessive.”

And now, he needs a drink. He preferred to savor bourbon, but he was ready to down a bottle to avoid this particular conversation again.

He can’t help but wonder if she knows just how far his obsession for her goes. If he told her he loved her, would she say that she already knows? After all, she knows everything else about him. Or would she smile sadly, empathetically, and tell him that she cared for him, but not like that?

He wasn’t sure which would be worse.

John had accepted a long time ago that he would love her forever. That he would never feel for another what he felt for her.

A part of him is… almost angry. He loves her but it isn’t because of his trauma.

She’s kind and good and so damn empathetic. But she’s more than that. She’s clever and unyielding. Smart and funny and so damn beautiful, inside and out.

And he isn’t sure he can give a reason why he loves her but he doesn’t want his feelings for her, his obsession, his love for her to be tainted by the abuse he had suffered.

“I don’t want to be defined by that trauma.” It slips out before he can think better of it but Helen takes his words in her gentle way. Her head tilts to the side.

“Do you feel like you are?”

“Sometimes. At least, that I’m a product of it.”

Helen nods, thoughtfully, “You are… distinguished by your trauma. It has shaped you, just like every other experience you have been through, you are changed by it. But you are far more than the sum of your past, John.”

John shakes his head, “The things I feel… they’re not normal.”

Again, her little hand finds his, resting atop the back of his hand. She squeezes in comfort.

“That doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

Ultimately, John thinks, he’s still fucked in the head.

But it’s a little easier to live with that fact with Helen at his side.

#john wick talk #john wick #helen wick #john x helen wick #helen x john wick #otp: daisy #overheard at the continental #john wicktion #john wiction #john wick fanfic #john wick fanfiction

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marshmallowprotection · 4 years

Text

Calluna

Pairing: Saeran Choi/Reader

Fairytale AU.

Description:

The Prince has been bound to the castle walls, and he’s never been able to leave from it. The only place that he has to escape to are the books that he reads and the garden that he’s allowed to venture into every evening. But, what happens when he encounters someone that has eyes that know a world unlike his own?

Inspired by a drawing by @sensetenou

Chapter Index

Chapter Thirteen

Saeran stared at the scene below as the guards took away people one by one. The castle grounds had become more of scenery that looked like it was on the brink of war rather than a kingdom that’d been in peace for such a long time. Trampled were the roses and flowers that had once called the castle their home and in their place was devastation and destruction.

It was a small price to pay for revenge and righting what had been wronged, or rather, who had been wronged.

He knew nothing but anger and frustration. The second that this crown had been placed on his head, he knew that he had to get back at Red Hood and anyone that had worked with them. It was the sole thought in his mind. He couldn’t think of anything else and when he did, he was dragged back to his anger and plans.

He watched until Rika’s hand rested against his shoulder and pulled him back inside of the castle walls so they could discuss plans. She had been hard at work with her master detective that had found out the identity of Red Hood. He was a man with brown hair that had somewhat faded with time and golden eyes.

Something about him felt familiar to Saeran but he didn’t know why that was. It was like a memory that he couldn’t touch. But, the queen trusted him and she was the only person in his life that had not ever lied to him for a moment. So, he trusted that she knew who was working with and this was for the best. They were working together to round up who remained of the villains and thieves.

“My king,” she said, once he took his spot at the table. “It’s hard to say who hasn’t been deceived by that villain, Red Hood. The limits of their powers seem to know no bounds, even within our castle walls. It seems like they’ve received more than we can count. It seems that the only ones that we may trust are in this very room.”

He rested his hand against his open palm.

It made sense to him.

Deception was one of the more advanced forms of magic. It was one thing to be a liar and it was another thing to be a skilled liar. One could hold all the cards in their hands if they know just how to enchant people to get them to do as they wanted.

It would make sense for someone to place a curse on people to assume that their lies were true. It was no wonder why people assumed that Red Hood was still a wicked man in his growing years.

You were the worst kind of liar and he never saw it coming. It was bad enough he was already cursed to be trapped in this castle forever but to pour salt in his wounds and laugh?

Now, that was what a villain would do just to hurt him for added measure. It wasn’t right and just thinking about it burned him to his core. The idea of you was the only target that he could focus on. His hands curled into fists in his lap as he glowered at the map on the table in front of you.

He just needed to find all the pieces of the puzzle so that he could punish you in front of all of them for good.

That’s what he needed to do, he knew that for sure. He needed to see it through to the end but his veins were itching for a better kind of punishment that he was still considering since he had spoken with you a few hours prior, it hadn’t come to him yet.

Saeran couldn’t make up his mind on what he wanted. There were so many useful punishments in his mind but he kept thinking of better ones before he settled on a single thought. Annoying, but such is the life of someone in power of a kingdom.

“That being said,” Rika drew him from his thoughts. “While we know that we can only trust each other, we need to destroy whatever hope the criminals have in Red Hood. That is why you must get rid of them as soon as possible. Within the next day or so, my king. We need to set an example so they will have nowhere to run and full knowledge of what awaits anyone that dares to break the law set by the crown.”

“No,” Saeran pressed his hands against the table in a firm slam. He didn’t understand why she was trying to rush him to punish you. He was the king now, and she was supposed to listen to him and his word was meant to be law. She was only meant to advise and do whatever he asked of her hand. He knew that she had a point.

But it was his choice to do whatever he pleased with you.

“No?” Rika repeated, her eyes on him as she watched him stare at her with a clouded look in his mint eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Are you saying that you’ve decided that they shouldn’t receive the highest punishment for their crimes? What would you do instead? Keep them around because you hold a fondness for a liar that tricked you?”

He clenched his jaw. Saeran could feel his teeth grinding against each other but he didn’t care.

He didn’t care about you. He didn’t. This wasn’t about him holding some fondness for you, because he didn’t hold anything for you but hatred and anger. He wanted you to know what it felt like to have salt in your wounds. It was only fair but he knew one thing, death wouldn’t be enough to show you what it felt like.

What it felt like to be humiliated in front of the world.

Everyone had seen how pitiful and easy it was to trick Ray, and someone had to pay for breaking his heart into a million pieces. The person that had looked into his eyes and made him think that he knew what it felt like to be free only to shatter that freedom away like a bit of glass. He should have known better but there was no changing it.

Freedom was dead and gone, wasn’t it?

Saeran paused, his eyes resting on the window just beyond his reach. The magic that sparkled and caught his eyes. He could see the walls of the castle in the distance. The ones that were enchanted to keep him inside of the walls. His price of life was to know what it felt like to see the world pass him by while everyone else got to live their dreams to the fullest on the outside.

He was punished by jealousy.

His curse was to know what he could never have as he watched it.

Isn’t that true?

He knew what he wanted to do with you now.

“I’ve decided that death is too light of a punishment for Red Hood,” he said, flatly. “Death means that the darkness takes them away and that’s frankly too kind of a hardened punishment. Why should they get eternal rest instead of wallowing, knowing what they’ve done and that they will never taste what it feels like to rest?”

Rika doesn’t say anything, nor does her companion.

Nobody could argue with the king, not even people that once bore the crown. It was about the respect and transition of power in the line of succession. His word was law. Everyone understood that and it didn’t matter what anyone thought about it.

Saeran would get what he wanted, and that was that. Saeran has made his point known. He rises from the table and spares a look between the two of them, “Now, I’ve made my point clear on what I wish to do. I ask that the two of you keep working to find every member that you can find and bring them here. I promise that I’m going to make an example of their precious leader, but they need to be alive for me to humiliate them and destroy the hopes of every fucking criminal in this country.”

The former queen didn’t voice her approval or disapproval, but Saeran knew that she wasn’t very happy about his choice. If she had faith in her son, then she would trust him to see this through as he wanted to. “Of course,” she said, simply. “If that is what you wish, my king. We will continue to see this thought to the end.”

Saeran left the room without another word. The door to the room closed with a hard slam as he returned to his chambers to tend to other matters that he had one his hands. Rika blew out a sigh, shaking her head at his tantrum. She wasn’t happy with this.

The crown was supposed to make him listen to whatever she wanted of him.

The anger charm that she had placed on him was seemingly stronger on him than she intended, but no matter, she thought. She knew what she had to do to make the magic control him in the right way, it was just the fickle nature of magic to bite back in the wrong way if you didn’t have the right amount of power for a specific spell.

It wouldn’t be much longer until she had what she wanted in her hands. She turned her attention back to the true Red Hood, who seemed amused by all of this more than anything. She wasn’t surprised by that either, this man was known for thriving on chaos and control. He liked being able to do whatever he wanted.

Power corrupts, but only those that don’t know how to handle what they were handed.

“I suppose you find his tantrums adorable,” Rika said, turning her eyes onto the table as she looked over the marks that they had knocked down. “Magic can be a powerful force when imbued with the right charm but when the wrong amount of power is placed into the object, it can warp someone in an unintended way.”

“I find it amusing, yes,” Red Hood responded. His arms were crossed over his chest. “I knew that the legends were interesting but to see its power in person is much more intriguing than I thought it would be. When that fool Zen brought me the stones, he had no idea just how much power these items held within them.”

“Yes, but they’re useless without the right item to embed in them,” Rika said. “The crown was forged with the same elements as the stones. That’s why it only works for the wearer. Traditionally, the power is only sprinkled in small doses to the ruler over their life but we’ve given him such a large dosage of my magic. That explains those dark fits of childish desire.”

Red Hood merely chuckled. They both knew what that was about. “Forgive me for my curiosity, but may I ask why you aren’t donning the crown yourself?”

That brought a smile to Rika’s face. She merely cocked her head with a curious look in her eyes, “Why, aren’t you an insightful one? You know better than anyone how important it is to have a puppet take your place at the last second to ensure that you’re holding all the cards in your hands. We both know well to mind our reputations. I must commend you, though, the Sparrow made the perfect person to tip him over the edge.”

“They’ve always been too naive for their own good,” he chuckled. “It’s what they earned after trying to fight against monsters bigger than them. I frankly don’t care what happens to them. I’m interested to see what your king does to them if he’s not going to kill them so quickly. The power that you hold in your hands is deviously delicious, my queen.”

Rika’s hand traced a location on the map from the castle as she looked through the layout of the land to see if she could locate the spot she was searching for. She closed her eyes and let magic rush through her fingers to reveal hidden spaces on the map. Underneath an unlabeled mountain range was a small building hidden away.

She began to laugh as if delighted by what she had seen. “I only aim to gain more magic to ensure that the stones never run out, dear Red Hood,” her finger tapped against the paper. “Look here, deep in the mountains is the home of the coven that is training my next well of power that we need to cement our win before the battle starts. I need you to bring this letter to my crow the second he returns from the Han kingdom.”

He took the note from the queen’s hands and nodded. “Absolutely,” he said, simply. “I get the full picture. Consider it taken care of. I can’t wait for you to show me what your darkness looks like.”

Rika couldn’t wait for herself. Her goals were finally coming together. “Hahaha… don’t worry, they’ll all know soon enough what it feels like to know true suffering and misery. I have a point to prove and I won’t stop until I’ve brought him to his knees.”

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tseneipgam · 3 years

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“interminable months, years perhaps, of what Dr. Lichtman called “our work” but which was really just an excruciating excavation of myself with an array of blunt instruments while she sat by in a worn leather chair, feet on the ottoman, occasionally noting something on the legal pad she kept balanced on her knees for moments when I clawed up out of the hole, face blackened and hands scratched, clutching a little nugget of self-knowledge”

“like two people who have loved each other however imperfectly, who have tried to make a life together, however imperfectly, who have lived side by side and watched the wrinkles slowly form at the corner of the other’s eyes, and watched a little drop of tray, as if poured from a jug, drop into the other’s skin and spread itself evenly, listening to the other's coughs and sneezes and little collected mumblings, like two people who'd had one idea together and slowly allowed that idea to be replaced with two separate, less hopeful, less ambitious ideas, we spoke deep into the night, and the next day, and the next night. For forty days and forty nights, I want to say, but the fact of the matter is it only took three. One of us had loved the other more perfectly, had watched the other more closely, and one of us listened and the other hadn't, and one of us held on to the ambition of the one idea far longer than was reasonable, whereas the other, passing a garbage can one night, had casually thrown it away”

“It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I imagined my life could happen in another way. It's true that early on I became used to the long hours I spent alone. I discovered that I did not need people as others did. After writing all day it took an effort to make conversation, like wading through cement, and often I simply chose not to make it, eating at a restaurant with a book or going for long walks alone instead, unwinding the solitude of the day through the city. But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love... Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others.”

“I had the elated, otherworldly feeling I sometimes get entering the sphere of another's life, when for a moment changing my banal habits and living like that seems entirely possible, a feeling that always dissolves by the next morning, when I wake up to the familiar, unmovable shapes of my own life.”

“Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it.”

“because of what I knew he could ignite in me, a vitality that was excruciating because like a flare it lit up the emptiness inside me and exposed what I always secretly knew about myself: how much time I’d spent being only partly alive, and how easily I’d accepted a lesser life”

“one of those looks that sometimes happen between strangers, when both wordlessly agree that reality contains sinkholes whose depths neither can ever hope to fathom”

“I continued to sit there hour after hour watching the unrelenting rain slosh against the glass, thinking of our life together, Lotte's and mine, how everything in it was designed to give a sense of permanence, the chair against the wall that was there when we went to sleep and there again when we awoke, the little habits that quoted from the day before and predicted the day to come, though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another?”

“It’s something amazing to feel that for the first time someone is seeing you as you really are, not as they wish you, or you wish yourself, to be. I’d had boyfriends before, and I was familiar with the little mating rituals of getting to know each other, of dragging out the stories from childhood, summer camp, and high school, the famous humiliations, and the adorable things you said as a child, the familial dramas- of drawing a portrait of yourself, all the while making yourself out to be a little brighter, a little more deep than deep down you knew you actually were. And though I hadn’t had more than three or four relationships, I already knew that each time the thrill of telling another the story of yourself wore off a little more, each time you threw yourself into it a little less, and grew more distrustful of an intimacy that always, in the end, failed to pass into true understanding”

“Because it hardly ends with falling in love. Just the opposite. I don't need to tell you, Your Honor, I sense that you understand true loneliness. How you fall in love and it's there that the work begins: day after day, year after year, you must dig yourself up, exhume the contents of your mind and sould for the other to sift through so that you might be known to him, and you, too, must spend days and years wading through all that he excavates for you alone, the archaeology of his being, how exhausting it became, the digging up and the wading through, while my own work, my true work, lay waiting for me. Yes, I always thought there would be more time left for me, more time left for us, and for the child we might one day have, but I never felt that my work could be put aside as they could, my husband and the idea of our child, a little boy or girl that I sometimes even tried to imagine, but always only vaguely enough that he or she remained a ghostly emissary of our future, just her back while she sat playing with her blocks on the floor, or just his feet sticking out of the blanket on our bed, a tiny pair of feet. What of it, there would be time for them, for the life they stood for, the one I was not yet prepared to live because I had not yet done what I had meant to do in this one.”

“we take comfort in the symmetries we find in life because they suggest a design where there is none.”

“I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.”

“I scanned the trees for a figure in the landscape. Hatless. Coatless, perhaps. Quickly drawn, as the masters sometimes drew a portrait of themselves hidden in a dark corner of the canvas or concealed in a crowd”

“it occurred to me that there was no need to tell such people the truth about myself, I would say I was a country doctor from outside Hull, or an airman who’d flown a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, and as I said it I could actually see the pattern of the fields below, opening out in all directions like a code. There was nothing sinister in it, nothing I wished to hide, only a certain pleasure in leaving myself and becoming someone else momentarily, and then a different sort of pleasure, watching the stranger’s back recede into the distance, of slipping back into myself again. I felt something similar on nights when I would wake up in some bed-and-breakfast and forget for an instant where I was. Until my eyes adjusted enough ti make out the lines of the furniture, or some detail of the previous day came back to me, I hung suspended in the unknown, the unknown which, still loosely tethered to consciousness, slips so easily into the unknowable, A fraction of a second only, a fraction of pure, monstrous existence free of all landmarks, of the most exhilarating terror, stamped out almost immediately by a grasp of reality which I came to think of at such times as blinding, a hat pulled over one’s eyes, since though I knew that without it life would be almost uninhabitable, I resented it nevertheless for all it spared me”

“Like a tiny bubble of air rising from the depths of an ocean when leagues below something is breathing”

#book

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age-of-shadows · 4 years

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yet another Avantasia theory by yours truly on how all the albums are connected

*ahem* OKAY, fellow avantasian brothers, sisters, siblings... We’re all reunited here in this post because I had a big brain moment about a couple of hours ago and somehow managed to connect all of the Avantasia albums as well as uncover what the actual Avantasia world is apart from Tobi’s definition of it.

This post is probably going to be really long and I already would like to apologise if there’s anything you don’t understand because I didn’t phrase it right (english ain’t my first language so... there might be a lot of mistakes), plus, I’m not Tobias so I can be completely wrong about this but HEY, THEORIES. I don’t even know if anyone’s even thought about this but I’ve literlaly never read about it and trust me, I’ve done a lot of Avantasia research in this year. And I’m aware it’s very, VERY hard to get the album plots right (man... I’ve spent months trying to figure out The Wicked Trilogy and Mystery of Time/Ghostlights, and even if I now think I have a clearer idea of what they’re about, whenever I listen to them I discover new things about them); but I do know reading other theories help people understand the lore and I hope this helps in some way.

Here we go: what is Avantasia? Apart from it obviously being the name of the project, Tobias describes it as a “world beyond human imagination”. At first, this definition is actually very clear and direct, isn’t it? Specially in The Metal Opera since all the story is well written down, and besides, the lyrics are clearer. Anyway, I have just finished reading the story from the booklets (I have to look up the one from part one because I only own part two for now... whoops) and I can do a summary of it:

"Many ways lead to Rome. Seven times one way for all that leads to a world beyond our inagination."

This is said in one of the seven books that is part of the seven books and seven seals. What are these seals and books even? Well, if you’re only able to listen to the music and don’t have access to the booklets like I did just now, you for sure have noticed the seals do have a big part in the plot. These seven seals were made to be able to enter the spiritual world in flesh and blood. And yes, you guessed it: the spiritual world is Avantasia. They were made by three magicians of the universe thousands of years ago because they knew mankind would be born and they would need this spiritual world for themselves to find peace, and they should also take care of it.

Now: the famous Avantasia Tower, what even is it? Well, some higher entity that can be concieved as a God, maybe not much of a good one, though, is sealed in this Tower. If the seven seals were brought to the Tower, Avantasia would be locked and this God would break free, bringing chaos to mankind. And what would happen if Avantasia is locked? Humans would lose this spiritual world, and when things get tough, they wouldn’t be able to turn anywhere to save themselves, and who knows if that would lead to their destruction.

So, Avantasia has to be kept alive and passed on to the newer generations.

Also, one is also able to reach Avantasia with their spirit only (this is what Gabriel does), but it’s dangerous since it’s as if their soul trascends and so their body is left in our flesh and blood world. Could this also mean that, if a soul dies in Avantasia, it will never return to its material body? Who knows? Definitely not me, but anyway! Let’s keep going!

Now that we know what Avantasia is, how is it connected to the other three stories if it’s never really mentioned at all? How could we know? Again, this is just a theory and I’m probably wrong.

Let’s go into The Wicked Trilogy then, which is probably the most abstract album and also the hardest to understand, maybe. I already talked about my headcanons about Scarecrow in a post, but I definitely think he’s got some sort of mental illness and that’s why he does the things he does. Anyway... the setting is kind of confusing, but to get a clear starting point: Roy Khan’s character is named Psychiatrist, and he’s the first one that appears in the album along with Scarecrow. There’s a theory going around that this story happens in a hospital, or maybe a psychiatric, so we can guess Scarecrow is hospitalised because of this illness. However... does the rest of the story happen in the hospital physically? This is when Avantasia comes in:

I don’t believe Scarecrow’s journey takes place in the hospital... but in Avantasia. Taking into account almost all of the characters are his own feelings or just parts of him (aka, Bob Catley being Conscience, Jorn Lande being Mephistopheles as a form of temptation...) except for Amanda Somerville’s character, who definitely exists in real life as Scarecrow’s real love interest; it makes a lot of sense. But, oh, how can that world be Avantasia if none of the elements described in The Metal Opera aren’t there? Well, I won’t write the conclusion just yet, but the Avantasia world in The Wicked Trilogy really looks like how we can perceive Scarecrow himself: empty, cold, fucked up... Can you see where this is going?

And now, getting into The Mystery of Time and Ghostlights, there is a very, VERY clear reference to the Avantasia world we see in The Metal Opera, in Savior in the Clockwork. Our protagonist Aaron Blackwell is working non stop in a mantlepiece clock whose hands don’t move for some reason, he overworks himself to the point he loses conscience... or as he says in the booklet notes, he loses the conscience “he had been used to”; in anyway, he passes out on the table. This is kind of similar to how Gabriel gets into Avantasia, isn’t it? Plus, the lyrics of this song are very, very interesting...

“Now am I half asleep or half unconscious, Half 'adream'? I can't move as I am stuck in bright lucidity I can feel and hear and see But I won't comprehend I see fire that I won't decipher I see giant evil tower to a blackened sky I feel blessed with evidence of what I can't define Swinging blade of the lowering perpendicular I see clarity I won't remember Do I dream Is it only fantasy and matter just a thought I see And time is all they need to seal away eternity”

“Giant evil tower”, “seal away eternity”... Yes, that is definitely Avantasia, a version that’s more close to the The Metal Opera’s Avantasia than the one in The Wicked Trilogy. Aaron accidentally gets into Avantasia... the real Avantasia... and this, my friends, is why the Scientists and Magician go to Aaron and ask him for help: they somehow know he has seen the real thing.

This mystery of time... it has something to do with Avantasia, this is why they’re keeping it as a secret, just like the three clerics in The Metal Opera.

Now... Ghostlights, which is more symbolic than this previous album... and I think you can now guess why: it mainly takes part in Avantasia, during Let The Storm Descend Upon you is when it happens, precisely. I have no idea if the Mystery of a Blood Red Rose video can serve as a clue, but Aaron falls unconscious in the end so... perhaps he entered the Avantasia world in the spiritual form, however... that’s not the same Avantasia world he had been to previously, this is more like Scarecrow’s Avantasia in a way.

In this Avantasia world, it’s where Aaron finds these Ghostlights, as well as some of his Scientists mates, did they get in all together? Perhaps it was the Magician who let them into this sort of spiritual world. This whole album really does seem to happen in another dimension, I already talked about the final tracks in my Aaron-Entity theory post, but they make it seem as if Aaron trascends to another plane completely. And the voices calling Aaron? Very much similar to Gabriel’s inner voices in The Metal Opera.

Last but not least, my favorite: Moonglow. We’ve got this Misplaced Entity, who’s thrown into a world they have no place in. They seek shelter in the night, the only place they’re comfortable in, until, when we reach the time the album is set in, they run to never come back to that one place, hiding from the dawn.

Now... How does Entity enter Avantasia? Easy: They enter in Ghost in the Moon, pretty quickly I must say. Let’s say... the glow of the moon is they gateway to Avantasia. Realized how they start talking about turning into a different being? That happens when you enter the spiritual world through your actual spirit, just like what happened to Gabriel (his appearance changes to fit the world). All the night, mysterious, eerie world in Moonglow is Avantasia.

I think all of this is enough to reach a conclusion:

There’s not only one Avantasia... there’s thousands, millions, even. Though, there is one real Avantasia, which is the core: that’s the Avantasia that appears in The Metal Opera, and the one Aaron sees when he passes out. Then, what are the other Avantasias? Easy: the connection each human has to the core, which means each human has a unique way of experiencing that connection; that is how the core of Avantasia is kept alive, even without letting every human into this core (let’s remember, it could be dangerous if the core of Avantasia was locked by humans).

This way, we can deduce how each of the protagonists experiences Avantasia: Gabriel goes to the core; Scarecrow and Entity experience Avantasia as a gateaway from their real, tormented lives and try to find happiness there instead of in the flesh and blood world; Aaron gets into the core by accident but, later on in Ghostlights, he explores his own connection, related to his thirst for knowledge... Remember?

"Many ways lead to Rome. Seven times one way for all that leads to a world beyond our inagination."

I think this is it for now... It is now 1am and trust me, I’ve tried my best to explain myself, so I hope you can understand this!

#avantasia #god this is LONG #anyway i'm off to sleep now #was fun to spend like... 3 hours writing this down

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gumnut-logic · 4 years

Text

Thunderbird X

Title: Thunderbird X

Author: Gumnut

16 Feb 2020

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS

Rating: Teen

Summary: He survived.

Word count: 2252

Spoilers & warnings: SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3 EPISODE 25, You may need a tissue.

Timeline: Season 3 Episode Tag

Author’s note: This one is for @scribbles97 @tracybirds and @thunderstorm-bay for being wonderfully supportive people. Many thanks to @onereyofstarlight for the read through and answering my scream for physics help.

Disclaimer: Mine? You’ve got to be kidding. Money? Don’t have any, don’t bother.

-o-o-o-

It became routine. Each ‘morning’ by the clock, he would patrol the perimeter, check the transmitter, check the seals and go over all the jury rigging that kept him alive.

He would explore from time to time, but ever aware of the fragility of his existence, he was restricted as to how far he was willing to go.

As time grew, so did his needs. He discovered ice and greedily harvested it for the three things it could give him – water, fuel and oxygen. He slapped together a tin can with a couple of thrusters scrounged from the doomed Zero-X and slapped a call sign on it. Thunderbird X wasn’t much, but it got him what he needed, darting between the nearby lumps of solar system garbage that ranged from frozen chunks of hydrogen, right up the elemental chain to the absurdity of the lump of gold that threatened to puncture X simply due to the velocity it was travelling at.

So, he managed. He found what he needed and he built. He logged. He explored to keep himself sane and he discovered.

But most of all, he longed.

He had left so much behind, so far away.

At times he would picture his sons in his mind’s eye, just to keep their images fresh.

Little Allie with that dash of golden hair and innocent blue eyes. He counted his schooling years wondering at the report cards he wasn’t seeing, but knowing he was bright, ever so bright, taking after his lovely Lucille.

Thoughts of his wife kept him company to the point that he often wondered if she was there with him, watching over him, keeping him safe.

The time Thunderbird X’s starboard thruster exploded on his return run, sending her into a deadly roll that almost ended in a final farewell to his existence…she was there while his leg mended. There through the pain of resetting and the ache that followed for weeks.

She was in his dreams.

She whispered in the long silences.

But his boys.

Young Gordon, so determined to go to the Olympics, more fish than teenager, he wondered if he had made it. If his brothers and his mother had been able to watch him stand on that podium and represent his country.

He daydreamed he did.

And even if he didn’t, god, he missed his smile. His second youngest son was a ball of mischievous sunshine, even when Jeff had found sand poured into his boots and the time the little brat filled his shower head with blue dye.

When he needed to smile, he thought of his little Gordy.

He harvested what he could from the Zero-X. The ship was never going to fly again, crippled by its unintended plummet into deep space. He had done his best to stabilise her flight as she appeared suddenly surrounded by debris and icy rock. As it was, he had barely managed to set down on the planetoid. The more correct word would have been ‘crashed’ but he had a Lee Taylor drawling in the back of his mind about any landing he could walk away from, yada, yada.

He missed his space buddy and his dry wit like he would miss a limb. It had always been the two of them against the unknown. They’d been there and back, but now, so far away, he wasn’t with him.

But despite that, he forged on.

He tore that pile of scrap metal apart and, from it, made a place to survive.

He could call it a home, but he refused.

Home was an island with his family so many thousands of AU away.

He built.

He crafted.

He survived.

Communications was a priority. He knew the distance. He knew the chances of reaching that tiny blue dot so, so far away.

The transmitter was easy. Most of that equipment had survived intact, but the technology was nowhere near the level of International Rescue. He wrangled what he could out of it and sent a repeating signal.

A vain hope, but hope nonetheless. His boys had the best technology on the planet.

And then he remembered the flight plan of the Calypso.

It didn’t take him long to put together another signal, a hack into Brains’ robot. It was a long shot, but if it worked, his boys could hear him sooner.

So, checking the transmitters became part of the routine. Every day.

Power levels.

He had harnessed the great engines of the ship. She couldn’t fly, but she could generate enough electricity and more for his needs. Thank god.

It was with hope he built the receiver.

This he crafted from scratch with his own knowledge. Between Shadow Alpha, his own training and introducing John to his first radio at age five, he had the skill set.

It was fond memories of his middle boy that accompanied the exercise.

Red hair and turquoise eyes that absorbed every smidgen of information Jeff had been willing to impart. He was the eldest of his boys aiming high enough to follow Jeff into space. Of course, John’s interests were different, drifting in more Lucille’s direction of applied physics and the creation of new systems. John took to digital technologies like Gordon took to water. His longing for space simply led to communications and astro-specialities. Where Jeff was closer to the traditional NASA test pilot type who jumped into a tin can and crossed his fingers that the labcoats knew what they were doing, John was a little of both. Made sense since his mother was one of those labcoats.

Lucille had sent Lee and Jeff to Mars only to welcome him back with a little red-haired boy to carry both of their legacies.

So, when he flicked the on switch on his receiver, it shouldn’t have surprised him that John’s voice was the first sound he heard.

“Calling Zero-X from Thunderbird Five, Colonel Jeff Tracy, do you copy? Please respond.”

It was a recording, repeating over and over, sweeping the universe looking for him. It faded in and out, some times riddled with static, always days out of date, but it was his son.

Some nights he cried.

It didn’t stop as the years passed. It became reassurance that at least part of his legacy still survived, that his sons were still running International Rescue. It got bad enough that at one point he built a second receiver just so he didn’t have to turn that one off to change frequencies.

John’s voice sung in tune to Lucille’s in his head.

The day he discovered the coded entries in the repeating signal, he nearly lost it completely.

His middle son was truly brilliant. Laced into the repetition was a code, an IR code with John’s unique identifier that only his family knew and with the computing power Jeff had salvaged from the wreck, he had just enough to uncover what his boy was sending him.

Words.

Photos.

Stories.

His family in tiny snippets looped into that repeating signal.

“Dad, we know you’re out there somewhere. We miss you. Please know we won’t stop looking and we will find you.”

So stranded millions of miles away from home, every now and again, he would receive a care package from home. Sometimes the signal shattered beyond repair, sometimes interference was so bad John’s voice barely made it. Sometimes the signal went completely dead and Jeff would fret as the solar system realigned itself enough to let that signal through again.

But his blessed John sent such a lifeline that he knew he may not have survived without it.

He even sent his brother’s piano music.

Only a fragment survived the distance, but Jeff clung to the sound of Virgil’s fingers on his mother’s piano.

Thoughts of his second eldest, his gentle artistic soul who bore so much of his beloved Lucille that he hadn’t been able to look at the boy for some time after losing her.

He had so much regret, so much he wanted to make up to his boys. His priorities had seemed so obvious, so clear and so right at the time. But now, stranded with so much time to think, he could only think of what else he could have done.

Perhaps he could have been there for Virgil more. Been there for all of them. He lost his youngest’s teen years, he was becoming a man without his father or his mother.

Virgil had been older. Such a strong boy despite his sensitivities. He had his art and his music, yet he was so determined, the young man had presented his father with his pilot’s license, his engineering degree and stepped into his role in International Rescue without a blink.

He’d seen that expression on Lucy’s face the day she told him she was pregnant with their first. He had immediately flared protectively, claiming she needed to step back on the Mars project.

She had such fire in her eyes when she told him clearly and at length where he could stick it.

Virgil had that same stubborn streak along side his music. He was as tough as the ‘bird he flew.

And when it came to Jeff’s food sources, stubborn had been the key.

The Zero-X had been a prototype. She wasn’t stocked for a long-term mission; her supplies had been minimal and hunger had become a constant companion. There were limits out here as to what could be found, what could be considered edible.

He had done things he never wanted to think about again.

He had daydreamed about his mother’s cooking.

There were times that this one lack of supply nearly did him in.

He had tricks they had used on Mars and on the Moon, but ultimately the human body was tied to Earth’s ecosystem and there were so many limits as to what he could do to emulate it.

The ship’s empty hydroponic racks mocked him, but the daylight lamps were enough to save him.

So, he managed an existence. Meagre and sometimes painful, but stubborn kept him going and the voices from so far away kept him in hope.

And hope was named Scott Tracy. He knew his eldest. Where Virgil was stubborn, Scott was driven. The man would not stop.

Those vivid blue eyes that had at first looked up at him with admiration, and later faced him down with determination and sometimes anger, ever the staunch field commander of International Rescue. Scott was his second. He knew he had depended on him far too much, even from early on after Lucille passed, but the boy had shouldered it all.

He had no doubt Scott was still shouldering it. The boy had such a capacity to love and to bear what he needed to, to get the job done. Scott was the one who had stepped in when Jeff had been unable to be there for whatever reason.

His mother had made a point of making sure Jeff knew exactly what he was putting his children through. Loudly and in detail.

Jeff knew his failures.

And ultimately, he had failed his boys completely and ended up stranded out here.

With his regrets for company.

He existed.

He survived.

He clung to hope.

And then after an eternity the messages changed. John’s voice stopped its loop and switched to direct communication. Everything Thunderbird Five had threw his son’s voice across the void. Where Jeff only had the little transmission power he had, his son’s ‘bird knew how to yell.

His boys had received his SOS.

He cried tears when all five spoke to him from so far away. He couldn’t answer, but god, could he listen. After all those years of Scott yelling at him to listen, his mother yelling the same, he finally was so grateful to hear their voices.

Alan’s had deepened and sounded so confident and sure. Gordon’s smile floated across space and warmed his heart, John, his lifeline, had tears in his voice and Virgil’s deep baritone was sweeter than his music.

And Scott.

The fire in his voice lit up the small confined space Jeff lived in. That determination was there, strong and ever so driven.

His sons were coming to get him.

Hope became reality.

And all he could do was weep.

The care packages increased in frequency and often had a variety of brothers telling him of their progress. The stories varied, but the mission updates all came from Scott, delivered in sharp military terms.

Scott didn’t send stories.

Launch Day was scheduled, but due to the time delay, he found out about the plan at almost the same time his proximity network started screaming at him.

And of course, fate chose that day for his planetoid to fall apart. He had tempted luck too far and it was finally calling due.

His boys moved faster than he expected and he was in Thunderbird X when they arrived. He could not believe he almost missed them…after waiting so, so long.

When he saw Scott fall, his mind stopped and he just moved.

The hand he caught was the first he had touched in over eight years.

Those blue eyes, the same eyes that accused him in the darkness when sleep failed him, now looked up at him in astonishment, widening ever so much.

So full of love that his heart shattered.

His boy.

“Dad?”

“I’ve got you, son.” Hold it together. “Now, what do you say we get out of here?”

-o-o-o-

FIN.

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #tag spoilers #tagspoilers #jeff tracy #scott tracy #virgil tracy #john tracy #gordon tracy #alan tracy

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