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#I’m 17 with no job and I feel like a failure

irndad · 2 months

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won't you be my sunshine-a.h.

a/n: runner!hotch x sunshine!reader !! sooooo fluffy, first hotch fic of mine so be gentle with me! lots of pining and happy end <3 happy to continue with these two in an au!

Aaron Hotchner is not a particularly emotive man.

This is a skill he has honed, a cherished quality that was not born of luck or of natural ability, but a skill that he has honed down to a fine tip point. He needs to be, in this job. It’s cost him things, of course, but for the most part, Aaron is happy with his choices. He takes a firm line with people he works with, and does not always let up in his personal life.

The only time this sometimes causes a hitch, is in his romantic life.

Which isn’t to say that he has one.

There is a woman who reads in the park every morning. Aaron affectionately thinks of this bench as her bench, as it is marked by wisterias and hyacinths on either end of it. It’s something of a ritual, after his runs, that they talk.

It’s fun. He doesn’t have a lot of space for fun. He’d collapsed on the bench one day after siphoning his anger at a particular case into a difficult run. He’d crashed onto the bench, sweaty and exhausted and hadn’t even seen her there. Which is a bit impressive, as she’s hard to miss the sight of. It is also in equal measure embarrassing. It’s not every day you collapse in front of a gorgeous woman, disturbing her from what is likely a lovely afternoon in the park.

That’s how it started, anyway. She doesn’t run, so each break is punctuated by her company. He’s actually not sure if they’re flirting. He’s not very good at that- the last time he has to he was 17 and so full of unearned confidence, he lucked into a partnership.

Now, he’s a bit older and a lot more scarred. She’s younger than him, not by much. She laughs with her whole chest at his dry, glib humor- and this is something Aaron had forgotten. The joy of a beautiful, wonderful woman’s company beside you.

He feels a little out of place next to her. Romance is not something he does. Ever thought he’d do again, really. That’s not to say that this is romance. Their romance is almost entirely hypothetical. He thinks of her at work, which is a monumental development in and of itself.

“So, how was the paperwork? I know you’ve been taking a little more on since your colleague had a baby. It’s so kind of you to do it.” She asks him on a beautiful August morning.

He fights off a blush that she remembers what he’s done for JJ. He’s not big on mentioning his own good deeds. Aaron believes that this would cancel it out. Still, her praise is a warm balm to the exhaustion that plagues him. It’s hedonistic, the way he wants her to say more about him. He wonders absentmindedly if she knew everything about him that’s hard to love, she’d still paint him with such a light and warm glance. She’s bright enough, he’s tempted to tell her everything about him just because she asks.

“It was…alright. My team is excellent. I’m lucky to work with people like them, it makes the process better. I couldn’t ask for more.”

She giggles a little at this, and there’s that roar of affection.

He feels a sense of ease around her, one that is suspicious for him. He tries not to romanticize, but this connection is hard not to. She’s beautiful- this is obvious to anyone who meets her, a simple truth of her. But Aaron is trained to notice things little factors that show the truth of someone.

He likes to watch her- it’s a pleasant thing, getting to be in her presence. It’s a little addicting, the way she looks at him. It makes him feel like all of the things he knows to be true of himself- his relative failures, the closed-off nature of his demeanor- are things that not only can be overlooked, but don’t seem to be in her line of sight at all. It’s an honor, to have her doe eyes rake over the sight of him, to meet him with gentle conversation.

He tries not to notice that she is gorgeous. Aaron has been around beautiful women, of course- this is not something that should surprise him. But there’s something effervescent about her, something that his him wondering if it’s possible that she might feel the same way about him. He knows that he used to be a more attractive man, but now. Well, he’s a bit bruised, both metaphorically and physically.

It feels odd to even think of this happening. She’s just got a warm, sweet tone and he replays what it’s like when she greets him. She smiles her brilliant grin and sometimes hugs him. It’s embarrassing how much he likes the feeling of it- soft curves against hard muscle and scarred skin. She always smells wonderful, and he wonders how nice it would be to have more of this.

“I like your new shirt, by the way.” She smiles at him, and his heart jumps. It feels juvenile, but- she’s wearing a new lipstick, it seems. Her beautiful pout looks awfully tempting.

“I like the lip color,” he tries to compliment back amenably, but that doesn’t stick. Instead, it comes out too earnest. He’s hyper aware of the fact that she’s right by him. She flushes, and Aaron feels a surge of pride.

“Thank you,” she says, voice softer and flattered, and isn’t that a pretty sound? He’d love to do that for her, make her feel seen, make her feel like she’s as beautiful as she is, “I thought you might like it.”

It’s her directiveness that breaks the seal, he supposes looking back. Because she wore the lipstick for him. That’s just about the only thing it can mean, and he is struck with a particularly sensory fantasy of what it would be like to slot his mouth against hers- he gets the feeling it might be worth it even if he gets the color on his mouth.

He’s a gentleman, though, he decides after a decidedly ungentlemanly amount of time spend staring at the gorgeous curve of her lips.

“Would you want to get dinner with me?” He hears himself say it before he’s processed it, and then it’s out into the world. His heart is hammering and he’s blaming on the run, when god, it’s absolutely about how breathtaking she looks, the sunlight reflecting off her hair like a halo. When she beams back at him, she looks particularly angelic.

It’s then, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

(Months later, when she is sitting on his kitchen counter and he is standing between her legs, gazing down at her with unabated fondness because he is entitled to that, he reflects on this moment and thinks god, how lucky am I, that I ran past that bench?)

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outsideratheart · 3 months

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Fear of Failure (Alessia Russo x reader)

A/N: An Alessia Russo fic after I go see Arsenal is becoming a thing.

You had felt like a failure after losing the World Cup Final. It was you job as captain to lead and as a striker to score. When the 90 minutes were over you felt like you did neither.

The pain you felt was tough but it failed in comparison to what you felt when you saw Alessia crying. If possible, her eyes were a brighter shade of blue due to the tears she had shed.

“Come on. Let’s go in” Alessia tried to take your hand but you pulled away.

“I’m going to stay out here. I can’t face them” you walk away leaving Alessia stood alone until Ella comes.

Your relationship was Alessia was very new even though the feelings you had for each other were anything but. It was the first time she had seen you like this and she didn’t know what to do.

The lockeroom is quiet but goes silent as you walk in. You ignore the eyes on you as you head into the ice bath where Lucy is waiting for you.

“What should I do?” Alessia asks Lotte knowing that the defender has experience with you at a club level.

“Give her time. She’ll come to you when she’s ready” it was wise advice and Alessia listened to it.

You came to her when she was on the coach. She left the seat free next to her and you happily slid in. You didn’t say anything but you didn’t pull away when Alessia held you hand. She saw that as a good sign.

She thought that once you were back in England and at Arsenal that you might have cheered up but that wasn’t the case. You were focused on the champions league qualifiers. So much so that you were working yourself into the ground.

The whole team knew it was a cruel form of punishment for the summer so they told Jonas who promised to keep an eye on you.

The first game comes 17 days after the final. You had missed a penalty in the first half but you were relentless after that. Arsenal get the win yet you cannot bring yourself to celebrate. This is what you expected when you play a team like Linköping. You did however make the extra effort to celebrate your girlfriend’s debut.

“Girls” you stand up gaining the attention of the entire team “to Alessia who is now officially a member of the Arsenal”

“I think that’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since Australia” Lotte nudges the woman in question.

“It is and even now I don’t think it’s real” Alessia was really begin to worry about you. Everyone you normally talk to isn’t here. Leah, Beth and Viv will meet the team in Germany. Your girlfriend is hoping that once you’re around them then something will change.

When you line up against Paris FC you expect the same result but you find yourself two nil down until the final ten minutes. Alessia gets a goal and hopes you celebrate with her but by the time she finds you, you have the ball in your hand and are running back to the spot. Your determination is rewarded as you score in injury time. Paris then take a lead but you manage to get one back and the game is sent to penalties.

It ends with Arsenal losing and you are quick to blame yourself for the loss. It feels like yet another reason why you are a failure.

“Hey” Alessia tries to get your attention as you walk down the tunnel but she gets not response. She doesn’t give up though “Y/N” her voice is a slightly more serious tone.

“Less, please, I can’t” you cannot meet her eyes.

“Can’t what? Talk to me.” The blonde asks. You were never one to hide from her. Maybe other people but you were always open with her.

“No”

The whole locker room goes silent. A moment that seemed to be private was being held out in the open.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to!” She didn’t deserve you to snap at her “I cannot have you look at me like I’m broken”

“Y/N, you are—“

“Not good enough, I need to be better. Please leave me alone so I can be better”

The next couple of days you were worryingly quiet. You may have spoken to Alessia but you didn’t really say much.

When you landed in Germany you pulled Jonas aside. He told you that you would be rooming with Alessia for the duration of the trip and that it would be a trial for future away games.

“I need you to split me and Alessia up” you told your coach.

“Y/N, I have no issue with your relationship with Alessia. You told me as soon as you knew she was joining the club and I trust you to be professional”

“I don’t mean our relationship, god no. I mean I cannot share a room with her. Jonas I am struggling right now and I cannot put that on her”

“Ok. If that is what you think is best then I’ll put you with Lia”

“Thanks coach”

It was hard for Alessia to see you pull away from her but you did. She noticed that you spent more time with the injured players than you did her. The only person she felt comfortable talking to about this was Lotte as she knew her well and Lotte knew you.

“I don’t get what I did wrong. I know she is struggling and I want to be there for her but she won’t talk to me, not about that anyways”

“She loves you Alessia, anybody with a set of eyes can see that, and you know that she isn’t good about asking for help”

“She’s talking to Leah and Beth though. Why is she ok talking to them but not to me?”

“She isn’t talk to them, she is talking with Viv or at least that is what i’m guessing. Viv is the person Y/N goes to when she doesn’t know what she is feeling. Once she figures that out then she will come to you”

Lotte saw you do the exact same thing when you lost the Champions League semi final. It took you a few days to come to terms with what happened and even then you still blamed yourself.

“I hope so Lotte because I can’t stand to see her hurting and knowing that I can’t do anything to help her”

Meanwhile you were in your therapy session with Viv in one of the quiet areas, or at least that is what it felt like. The Dutch woman was patient with you and listened when you needed to talk. She didn’t ask questions unless you asked her one.

“I failed everyone Viv. First England and now Arsenal. That hurts enough but to know that I have failed the person I love most in the world, that is not something I can handle. I feel like I’m on the verge of breaking and she shouldn’t have to deal with that”

“Have you stopped to think maybe she wants to? I know you struggle with these kind of things but this is the first time you are going though it whilst having a girlfriend. You need to stop seeing her as a team mate because she is so much more than that now”

You hated how right Viv was. You have opened up to Alessia before and she didn’t love you any less when you showed your vulnerable side.

Your girlfriend had accepted that you would come to her when you were ready and now she just wanted to be with you. Only problem is that she couldn’t find you. She had asked every player and staff member yet none of them could give her the answer she was looking for. Then she saw Viv leave one of the physio rooms and between the crack of the door and the door frame she saw you.

For the first time in a long while you looked into her eyes and let her see the pain behind yours. You watch as she hesitated on the other side of the threshold.

“Come here”

Alessia all but ran you to you. Whilst you stayed seated on the physio table, she took a stand between your legs. With her arms wrapped around your neck, her fingers begin playing with the baby hairs at the nape of your neck.

“I’m struggling Lessi. I felt like a failure after Australia and I thought I would be able to redeem myself this season at Arsenal but I’ve failed again”

“Thank you for telling me”

When she leans down you don’t pull away. You feel your shoulder relax as her lips touch yours.

“You’re not a failure. You lead the lionesses to their first World Cup final and I think that is an amazing achievement”

How could you believe her? She was your girlfriend, never would she admit you let her down.

“I failed you. I wanted to win for so many reasons but you were one of my biggest motivations, you always are. I wanted to win so that I could see the smile on your face as you lift the trophy like you did at the euros. Instead I watched you cry”

“You know one of the things that annoys me the most about you?” Alessia asks and you feel your stomach drop “you are one of the biggest hypocrites I know”

“I am not” you defend yourself and rightly so.

“You are when it comes to football. It’s both a good thing and a bad thing. You always say how we are a team, win or lose we do it as a team. After we played Australia in Brentford, Leah blamed herself. You told her that a loss is not one persons fault”

“It’s not”

“Baby, do you hear yourself?”

You did hear yourself and you realise what your girlfriend was insinuating.

“I just wanted to do good”

“You did. You did so good. Right now though we have to process what happened and move on” Alessia knew that you would talk about your failures all night and maybe that’s what you needed. She also knew that you needed to find closure before it destroyed you.

“And how do we do that?”

“Together” you laugh at her cheesiness “I mean it. I knew I’d learn things at Arsenal but I didn’t think the first one would be that my girlfriend doesn’t come to me when she’s hurting”

“I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to open up to people. I don’t like people seeing me weak, definetley not you”

At first thought that hurt Alessia and she is about to tell you that much but you cut her off.

“I am going to try though. I don’t want to shut you out anymore. For the last couple of days I’ve missed being with you and I don’t want to feel that again. I can’t promise that I will tell you everything, not right now, but I will let you in Less”

This seemed to be enough for your girlfriend because she pulls you up so she can give you a proper hug.

“I’m here and you won’t push me away again. I won’t let you” Alessia’s voice was adamant and you never argue with the blonde when she used that tone.

“I love you Alessia. Do you think we could go away somewhere just the two of us? We have a couple of days off when we get home and I need some time away from football. I’m in desperate needs of some quality Alessia Russo time”

“You know what? Now that I think of it, I am long over due some one on one time with you. How about we go get some food then you can come my room, the room you will be moving into, and we can look at some places?”

You agree with the forward and take her hand as you leave the room. When the two of you walk through the campus restaurant everyone notices the closeness between you and how your hands are intertwined. They also saw a smile of both of your faces, a smile that they were yet to see in Germany.

#alessia russo x reader #alessia Russo one shot #alessia russo imagine #engwnt x reader #engwnt one shot #ingrid engen imagine #arsenal wfc x reader #arsenal wfc imagine #arsenal wfc one shot #woso x reader #woso imagine #woso one shot

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arctrooper69 · 2 months

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As Iron Sharpens Iron

"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Proverbs 27:17

Beta-read by @dragonrider9905

Chapter 11:

Previous // Next

Warnings: Angst. Canon violence

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Three days had passed since the argument with Hunter that sent you storming from the Marauder with anger blazing hot in your veins. Two days since you’d left the planet, intent on putting all your focus towards the job Cid had given you.

One day had turned your anger into a suffocating heaviness of guilt and grief. Now it was something else - it felt strange and unnatural - or maybe it was just nothingness. Whatever it was, you wished the anger would come back. Anger was tangible, it gave you something to hold onto. Anger had a conviction - a purpose. Whatever it was that you felt now, slipped numbly through your fingers, floating aimlessly and as silent as the vortex of hyperspace you currently traveled through.

They didn’t come for me.

---

You had waited around Cid’s for a full rotation - unsure what for.

Did you really think they’d come looking for you?

Did they even want to?

“Give it up, kid.” Cid advised as you’d found yourself glancing over at the door for the thousandth time, “Dark and Broody ain’t coming after ya.”

You looked at her sharply. How did she know?

Cid shrugged, “Don’t look at me like that, Hotshot. I’m not stupid, you know. I’ve seen the way you look at him.” She smirked, “It’s the same way he looks at you.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Then tell me why he hasn’t come.”

Cid threw down her washrag, looking annoyed. “You’re the idiot who ran away. He’s smart enough not to bother a woman who’s mad at him.” She scoffed, “Or he’s stupid enough not to go after the woman he obviously cares about.”

That’s when the anger came back, flashing brightly like the flame of a candle exposed to the air just before it fizzled out again. “You’re wrong. He’s not here because he doesn’t care. None of them do.” Disappointment settled like a boot on your chest.

Cid let out a bored sigh. “Then quit moping around and do something! I’ve got plenty of jobs around here and no one to do them. Might as well get paid if you’re just going to be miserable anyway.”

You looked at her quizzically then groaned. “Alright… where do you need me to go?”

---

The ship shuttered as it dropped out of hyperspace, pulling you back to the present as you came into orbit around the moon Cid’s coordinates had directed you to. You chuckled bitterly.

Well joke’s on them. I don’t need them either.

---

“Omega, come on! We need to make a supply run in town,” Hunter called down the ramp as he slung his pack over his shoulder. He frowned as she made no move to get up, though he was certain she’d heard him. He set his pack down and walked over to her. She sat on the ramp, resting her arms and chin on her knees, as she looked blankly out at the empty road.

“Omega..” he sat down beside her.

“It’s been three days, Hunter. Where is she?” Her muffled voice broke his heart. She’d been crying and he had no words to comfort her.

There had only been two times in his life that Hunter found himself with no idea what to do.

The empty numbness that dug its relentless claws through his skull screamed at him in an overwhelming self-hatred after their first real mission failure which left Wrecker clinging to life.

Failure. Coward. Pathetic.

It was the same feeling now that spread through his bones. I should’ve run after her. Now it’s too late. Mission failure once again.

The gut-wrenching flood of emotion that came with being a parent and falling in love was more unyielding than any enemy he’d faced before. It’s the one thing they didn’t train us for. At least when an enemy combatant refused to cooperate, there were many ways to get what you wanted out of them. Hunter didn’t know how to react when it was his own thoughts that refused to comply.

“I don’t know, Omega.”

“She’s coming back though, right?” She looked up at him but he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eyes.

He spun his vibroblade anxiously. “I hope so.”

“Wrecker went out looking for her, you know.”

Hunter straightened in surprise, turning to look at her. “He did what?”

Omega wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sat up. “Yeah. He left this morning. He said he was gonna find her and make everything better again.”

As if on cue, Wrecker came barreling down the road, skidding to a stop just shy of the ramp panting and out of breath. Hunter stood up as Omega dashed to his side.

“What is it, Wrecker? Did you find her!? Is she okay?!” Her eyes were wide and Hunter was glad to see some of the hopeful spark return. He just hoped that whatever news Wrecker brought wouldn’t snuff it out again.

Wrecker collapsed onto the ramp. “Phew… I’m never running like that again!”

“Well?” prompted Hunter, still nervously twiring the blade through his fingers.

“Huh? Oh yeah! I found out from some scumbag that Cid sent her on a mission. Said it was real dangerous.”

“What.” Hunter tensed. Suddenly that pitiful feeling of futility was gone, replaced by something he was all too familiar with. He slid the vibroblade back into its sheath with a deadly click, mouth set in a fierce line of determination.

“Did he say anything else?” Omega asked.

Wrecker laughed. “Yeah. When I hung him upside down from the roof, he cried.” He turned towards Hunter and his smile faded into a growl. “Hunter, he said it was a suicide mission. He said nobody gets outta there alive. That’s why I ran all the way here.”

Omega gasped, “Hunter we have to go after her! She might not know it’s a trap!”

Hunter had already strapped on his pack and secured his blaster.

“Tech, Echo! Start the ship.” He called out. “I’m gonna go have a little chat with Cid.”

Loosened by the adrenaline as he ran, a sudden moment of clarity fell upon him. He’d been thinking about this all wrong.

You were not a mission in which to succeed or fail. You were a part of him - the missing link in his short mess of a life - and he would do everything it took to get you back.

The door to Cid’s Parlour opened with a slam. Cid nearly dropped the glass she was cleaning as she looked up to see Hunter striding over to her, fire in his eyes. The only two patrons in the room fled, feeling the mood of the room sour almost immediately. Cid set the cup down in obvious annoyance. “Hey! You can’t just storm on in here, scaring away my customers like that! I’ve got bills to pay here.”

He didn’t seem to hear her as he pointed a sharp finger in her direction.

“Where is she?”

Cid smirked, deciding to play coy. This could get interesting, she thought as she dried her hands, making sure to look as unbothered as she possibly could.

“Where is who? You gotta be more specific.”

Hunter narrowed his eyes, “You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

She tapped a finger on her chin, pretending to think. “Hmm… I really don’t think I do.”

Hunter sighed, exasperated. “I don’t have time to play your games, Cid. Tell me where you sent her.”

Cid sighed, suddenly bored of whatever ruse she’d cooked up to mess with him. “Fine.”

Hunter clenched his teeth. “I need to know, Cid. Now.”

“Cool your jets, Dark and Broody.” Cid rolled her eyes. “Your girlfriend’s fine. She asked me for a job and I gave ‘er one.”

Hunter’s face darkened. “Where. Is. She.” His white knuckled fist slammed down on the counter. “I promise you I won’t be so nice if I have to ask you again.”

Cid raised her hands in a mocked surrender. “Look, I promised her that I wouldn’t tell any of you lot where she went. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Hunter's hands shot across the bar, vibroblade suddenly poised in a violent threat at her throat. His voice was dangerously low. “She could be in real danger. Tell me where you sent her. Now.”

Cid gulped, backing into the wall, knocking a bottle onto the ground where it shattered. She glared then raised her hands in surrender. “Alright, alright fine! Put the knife down and I’ll tell you!”

Hunter lowered the knife. Cid nervously rubbed her throat. “Geez… I can see why she likes you so much. I sent her to a small moon in the Sullest system. Doesn’t even have a name. Hardly anybody goes there at all.”

Hunter glared daggers.

“Relax, Dark and Broody. She’s not in any danger. It’s just a simple snatch and grab. The mines over there are full of stuff worth a ton to the right people.”

Hunter narrowed his eyes. “Just give me the coordinates.”

Cid sighed, “Already done. Get outta here, lover boy.”

Hunter rolled his eyes as he turned to leave.

“Hey!” Cid’s voice called after him. “You owe me for that bottle. Corellian Whiskey is hard to come by these days!”

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abrcmswrld · 5 months

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Treacherous | Mike Schmidt x Reader

Summary: Reader and Mike have been best friends since childhood. After a fight, Reader is given a surprise visit.

Warnings: General Angst, General Fluff, a suggestive make out scene in the nude but nothing too crazy, mentions of feminine clothing in one part but overall gender neutral

Author's Note: IM EDITING THIS RN SO PLEASE JUST IGNORE THE MISTAKES AND LIKE DUMB STUFF This is my first fic for Mike so bear with me! I tried so hard to adhere to the movie timeline but if it seems shaky please just ignore it lmao. I'm also bad at pacing sorry. I’d love to make this a series cause I’m in love with a good friends to lovers trope.

Mike had always been a bit of a mess. All of the time that you've known him, this has never changed. You can recall times on the playground of boys calling him names for his sensitivities. How were they to know the gravity of his situation? How were you to know? But you always felt called to stand up for him either way.

So you'd hound them off. You'd grab his hand and pull him off the dirt and to a quiet corner of the playground. The two of you would sit on the wooden border, picking at the grass and watching the other kids play.

His sensitivities would quickly turn to a certain hardness that you'd never fully come to understand, even in your late twenties. He'd open up the tiniest bit in high school, after his mother had passed away. He was only 17 years old. You were still children.

You have memories of standing uncomfortably in the dress your mother had insisted you wear to the funeral. You didn't know how to approach him then. He sat alone in a chair on the far side of the funeral home, a blank expression on his face. You couldn't say a word as you took tiny footsteps towards him. And he didn't say a word either, just looked up with bloodshot eyes. You'd hugged him then, feeling his shoulders shakes against you.

Soon it was time for the two of you to start thinking about college and your lives outside of the scope of small town high school. Talks of plans to find something new and excited were quickly stomped out by the failures of his father. You can recall a 23 year old Mike begging for your company on late nights when his father's drinking had reached a climax.

And you'd gladly show up for him. Abby was only six by that time, and Mike was all she had. Mike spoke about his father with disdain to you. Never crying the way he had as child, but you could see a sad anger within the conversations. And really, you couldn't blame him.

You can remember a night on the roof of your childhood home. It wasn’t your first time sneaking Mike through the window of your bedroom. It was a cold December night, and you were home for the holidays.

“I don’t think my dad’s coming back.”

Your knees were pulled up and under your chin as you rest your head and listened to his worries. “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “I mean, he hasn’t been back for three days and I think this might finally be it.”

You furrowed your brows and met his gaze.

“I’ll move back here.”

In that moment he had begged you not to. You were so close to finishing your degree and he insisted that he could not be the reason you didn’t finish. So you heeded to his wishes. You finished your final semester.

In the 6 months that you were gone after that night, his dad had not returned. Mike had stepped up to be a guardian for his sister. Family court would later assure this in legal documentation.

You had hugged him tightly the first night you were home and assured him that you would be there, for the both of them.

━━━

You would prove that to him when his original babysitter had ghosted him.

“Probably got tired of not being paid.” He had said when you asked why.

You don’t ask for pay. You had a day job that kept you stable enough to live. And as Mike’s hours were night shift, there was really no problem with the arrangement.

It would go on for a few weeks. You hadn’t seen pay, but you didn’t mind. Mike would cook you breakfast when he got home. That was payment enough for you.

But you could notice he wasn’t doing well. Dark circles had formed under his eyes. He had confided in you about the actions of his Aunt Jane. He showed you the papers with bold letters proclaiming a request for a change of custody. His stress and worry made sense to you now.

He would have to prove he was fit, a big ask in a court setting, especially for someone like Mike. You had encouraged him the best you could.

But everything had come to a head on a night when Mike had intended to actually pay you.

He woke you from your light sleep on his couch, alerting you that he was home. He sat his tired body on the recliner.

“There’s a 20 dollar bill in my jacket pocket.”

His eyes are closed as he speaks. It seems the night has been a rough one for him. “You don’t have to, but thank you.” You find the jacket lying on the kitchen table. You feel slightly bad as you reach your hand in to find the bill, but your guilt falls into confusion as your fingers brush the tiny bottle inside.

You let your eyes travel over the orange bottle in your hands. You furrow your brows. You turn to face the recliner he sits in.

"Mike."

He turns his head to face you, tired eyes falling on yours. He sees the bottle in your hands and you can see a sense of uncertainty and dread fall across his features.

"What are these? Sleeping pills?"

He immediately tenses, as if he had been avoiding this topic with everyone. But he responds quietly, “Yes.”

You fall silent for a moment, unsure of what to say. Realistically, there was nothing wrong with sleeping pills. People use them all of the time to sleep. But Mike seems hesitant to cover the topic of these pills and why he uses them.

An additional concern comes up in the way he had stuffed them in his jacket pocket. Why was he taking them to work? You hate the way your thoughts sound like the micromanagement of a mother, but all you can see is the bright yellow of the custody papers and Abby’s sweet face in your mind.

“Have you been taking these at work?”

He’s silent. It’s enough of an answer for you. You sigh as you sit the bottle down on the kitchen counter. You’ve known he wasn’t well. The incident that had gotten him fired from his last job, the dark circles under his eyes, the hardness about him, it all worried you. But you had always chose to let him live. Let him make his mistakes.

“Mike, talk to me. What’s going on with you?”

He lets out a spiteful scoff as if the conversation is beneath his worries at the moment. He lets out a shaky sigh. “I feel connected to him there. I don’t know why, but I do.”

There’s no doubt in your mind who he is referring to. His baby brother. The one he couldn’t save. You let him continue.

“If I can put myself into the right state of mind, I can see it. I can watch it over and over. And if I try hard enough maybe I might see who took him.”

He voice drifts off to a quiet and weak tone, “That’s all that matters to me.”

You can tell he’s hurt by the way that his voice comes out strained and weak, and it hurts you too. It’s not as if you couldn’t understand the pain of the situation. He’d cried to you all those years back when it first occurred. What you can’t understand is how he could let it ruin his relationship with Abby. Abby who is alive and well. Abby who, even if discreet, sees Mike as the moon and stars.

“And what about that little girl who sits around and draws you all day long?”

It makes you feel like a bitch to even say such a thing to him, but if it gives him a shake maybe it’d be worth it. “What about her?”

He stands still as a statue, emotions shifting across his face as he processes the words you’ve shot at him. You’re sure they strike like a bullet. His mouth opens and closes again, so you speak again.

“I know how badly you want to bring him back, Mike. To bring him back and be able to pretend none of that ever happened.”

He furrows his brows and you can the see the hurt flood his expression.

“But you’re going to lose them both if you don’t get your shit together.”

You sigh. You hate the way you sound like a mother scolding a child. You take a shaky breath. “Do you think that this job is really good for you? I mean-“ He cuts you off with a scoff and a laugh.

His tense attitude has you uncomfortable and defensive. You hate the way your voice becomes strained as you speak. “I just think it’s taking a toll on you.”

“I need this job, otherwise I’m never gonna see her again.”

And of course you know that. He needs a job to look good for a court that’s supposed to be able to decide if he’s right to take care of his sister. But what good does a job do on paper if the court can clearly see the way his mental stability is shaky? He hesitates and meets your eyes with a tense look as he speaks,

“You’re here to babysit Abby, not me.”

You stand silently in front of him for a moment before grabbing your coat. You turn toward him. You can see the quirk of regret on his expression, but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t take it back.

“It’s gonna take more than a shitty job that drives you crazy to keep her. I think you should find somebody else to babysit Abby.”

There’s malice in your tone and you hate it. But you can’t make excuses for him. You ignore his voice as he says your name quietly. You just let the door close behind you a you walk to your car. You wait for the door to open again behind your back. It doesn’t.

He doesn’t text you either. In fact, you don’t hear from him for another week and you wonder if he’s already replaced you and plans on holding the grudge.

You assume he must have. He must have found another babysitter for Abby. It seemed he was saving money to actually pay whoever took that role.

You can’t stop yourself from becoming more and more sad as the week goes on. You find yourself worrying more and more about Mike. And Abby. There’s no doubt in your mind that Jane was still adamant on proving in court that Mike was an unfit guardian.

You don’t know why you feel as though your presence could somehow remedy that. You don’t know why you feel an ache so deep in your heart. Friendship breakups are common. But Mike was different.

You still don’t let yourself text him. You would give him the power to choose that route. To choose you and the friendship you had given him since you were both children. And by the end of the week you have to force yourself to sleep.

And by the end of the week you get what you had secretly hoped for.

━━━

The knock on your door is urgent. You're half asleep as you rise out of the comfort of your bed. Your feet press against the cold floor as you rush to see who it could be. As you glance through the peephole you're met with those familiar black curls.

You open the door swiftly, shivering at the cool breeze that flows in. He looks like hell. Abby stands at his side. You're stunned, "Oh my God." You open the door wider and usher the two of them in.

Abby seems to be physically uninjured, while Mike's face is bloodied and bruised. You whisper to Mike,

"What the hell happened?"

He looks to Abby before he answers. "Abby should get some rest while we talk." You nod immediately. "Of course. She can sleep in my bed while I patch you up."

You lead the young girl to the bed and ensure she's tucked in. She thanks you quietly before you leave the room. You grab some first aid supplies from the bathroom cabinet on your way back.

"Sit."

You point Mike in the direction of the couch. He winces as you wipe the open cuts with alcohol wipes. You raise an eyebrow, “ You look like hell, Mike.” He scoffs in response.

“So you gonna tell me who did this to you, or am I just gonna have to keep wondering?”

Mike hesitates. You stop your movements to look at him with concern. He shakes his head, “You’re gonna think I’m crazy.” You sigh,

“Mike, I know you. Just tell me.”

And so he does. He explains everything down to the little details he can remember. It sounds crazy, it absolutely does. But you can’t bring yourself to think he’s faking it.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I know what I saw. She knows what she saw.” He points in the direction of the room Abby was soundly sleeping in.

“I believe you.”

He closes his eyes and exhales a large breath. You continue to clean the cuts along his face and head. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches.” He nods. There’s still an awkward tension between the two of you. He’s upset with himself for letting you leave the way you had, and you’re ashamed of yourself for letting him push you away. You break the silence at the same time,

“You know-“

“I’m sorry-“

You can’t help but laugh a little, and he smiles weakly back at you.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry too.” You continue.

He shrugs. “You were just looking out for me. I understand that now.” It means a lot coming from Mike. He’s stubborn, not usually one to admit when he’s wrong. It makes the moment all the more sincere. You smile slightly, letting a hand brush his cheek where a bruise is blossoming under the skin.

“I wouldn’t have said what I did if I didn’t care about you.”

He nods slowly and leans his cheek into your caress. You can feel the warmth of his hand as he lets it fall to your hip. His voice falls to a whisper.

“I care about you too.”

You smile and swipe a thumb over his bottom lip, where the plush skin has split from impact and smeared blood across his pale chin. He groans as he leans up, it’s only then that you notice the large gash on his side.

He attempts to stand, hobbling on his injured leg. “Mike,” He turns toward your bedroom, ready to grab Abby and get out of your hair. When he turns his back, you can see the blood seeping through his shirt and the large tear across his back. You grab his hand,

“Mike.”

He faces you again, letting a quick glance fall to your now connected hands. “Let her sleep, she’s alright. Let me help you.”

He stands awkwardly in front of your bathroom counter. His muscles flex with each touch of your fingers around his wounds, his fingers gripping the counter until his knuckles are white.

“I think it’d be best if you took this off.”

You’re awkwardly fiddling with the hem of his long sleeve shirt. He meets your gaze in the mirror and you feel small. Your voice is nearly a whisper, “I- I just can’t see.”

You stare at the floor as he pulls the shirt over his head. The gash is messy, but not deep enough to require stitches. Regardless, it’s covered in a thick layer of blood and sweat. You usher him to turn, and you see that the cut on his side is not better.

He can see the way your eyebrows screw together. “Is it that bad?” His voice has a touch of dread hidden in its tone. “I mean,” You glance at him.

“I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but you need to clean them or they’re gonna get infected.”

He swallows and nods. You walk to the shower, turning the knobs and adjusting the water to an appropriate and comfortable temperature. You clear your throat, “Here. I’ll, uh, I’ll let you…do your thing.”

You turn on your heels to give him privacy. As soon as your fingers touch the metallic surface of the doorknob, his hand catches your free hand, pulling gently. You turn toward him, meeting his eye. He pulls you closer and carefully pulls you into an embrace. You’re worried you’ll catch his wounds with your hands so you let them hover above his skin, not actually touching. But you want to.

You can feel his breath on your neck where he’s buried his face. He speaks into the sensitive skin, “Thank you. I don’t thank you enough.” That’s the moment you finally let your hands rest on his skin.

“You don’t have to thank me, Mike. I do it because I care about you.” You gently brush your fingers across his upper back, avoiding his cut. “Besides, you’d do it for me.”

He pulls himself from your neck, and you drop your hands from his back gently, expecting him to pull out of the embrace. But he stays close to you and only pulls back enough to see your face. Your cheeks are so hot. You can feel it and you know he can probably see it. He keeps his hands at your sides, just above your hips in a way that feels respectful. You allow yourself to put your hands on his forearms, thumbs resting in the bend of his elbows.

“Your water is gonna get cold.”

It’s a whisper as it comes out. He simply nods but doesn’t drop his hands from your sides. You smile shyly at him.

“Come with me.”

Your face is instantly hot and you’re suddenly hyper aware of the steam that’s building in the room and around the two of you. With your eyes wide and your mouth opening but no words coming out, he looks at you with hesitation, like he can’t believe the words actually left his mouth.

You can see the fear building on his expression the longer the silence drags on. Thoughts are racing through your head. You’d be lying if you said you’d never thought of this. You loved him. There’d always been a flutter in your stomach and a heat in your cheeks that let you know that perhaps it could be more than a friendship. You want that. But is this really how it’s going to happen?

You imagine the two of you going from childhood friends to becoming well acquainted with each other’s bodies in the span of one stressful night after not speaking for nearly a week. But there are no alarm bells going off in your head. You can’t bring yourself to feel ashamed.

So you kiss him. With his arms still around you and the heat from his bare chest creating a sense of protection from everything. With the whirl of water hitting the tub filling your ears. With the image of Abby sleeping soundly in your bedroom in your mind.

When you pull away, he looks at you with a sense of longing you’ve not seen on him before. You don’t want to say a word, not right now. It’ll be complicated. You know it will be. And you’ll have to have that conversation eventually, but right now the only thing you want is the heat of the water and the silk of his skin against yours.

So you finally unwrap yourself from him to begin working the buttons on your shirt. You’ve turned your brain off momentarily. Your fingers are on autopilot as they remove each article of clothing. If you allowed yourself to think, you’d surely turn in on yourself from the shame.

But when you’re finally bare and displayed in front of him, he doesn’t speak. He only looks with a fondness in his eyes that goes beyond a lustful stare. He slowly works his pants off his injured figure, wincing in the process, and soon he’s just as bare as you.

You’re shaking and cursing yourself internally for doing so. God, why were you shaking? You know he notices as he reaches his hand out to touch your arm lightly, grounding you in reality, and speaks, “Are you okay?”

You nod. More than okay.

The water feels heavenly as it beats against the skin of your back. Mike hobbles into the shower after you. He’s hesitant as you usher him to switch with you. It’s gonna hurt, but it’s necessary.

Your fingers lightly brush the wound on his back. He'd already been wincing slightly from the sting of the water, but your touch has him tensing immediately. You grab a cloth and dampen it enough to be effective in cleaning the general blood and grime from the afflicted wound.

The moment your cloth cover hand touches the wound, he cries out through closed teeth, "Fucking- fuck!" His hands are planted against the shower wall in front of him. He bites his lip, holding in the whimpers of pain, trying his hardest not to wake Abby.

"Shh. It's okay, Mikey."

You let a gentle hand fall to his non injured side, brushing his skin. You're trying to sooth his tense and pained form as much as possible.

Soon enough you have both gashes cleaned up and ready to be bandaged. Mike turns to face you in the shower. His face still has a slight touch of discomfort to it, but he smiles weakly at you.

“Thank you.”

You smile back and nod. You’ve hardly said a word outside of attempting to sooth his pain with sweet words. The cold is starting to seep in from the tiny crack in the shower curtain. You can feel tiny goosebumps beginning to form on your skin. He frowns slightly and breaks the silence again.

“Did I cross a line…with this?”

Your head is already shaking before you can even comprehend the question. Like your body knows the answer before your mind does. “No, Mike.” He hesitates in his response, standing still and quiet before stepping towards you.

He seems to be able to move around a little better. You’re not sure if it’s the water cleaning the previously irritated wounds or if it’s the adrenaline pumping through his body. Either way you’re thankful as his hands are grabbing at your face and pulling you into another kiss.

It’s sloppier than the previous kiss you had shared, and he’s pushed you back so far that your back is hitting the cold tile of the shower wall. A fog has taken over your mind as you reach around his shoulders, digging your fingers into the plush muscle of his back.

The feeling of his tongue swiping into your mouth has sent you entirely mad. You’re whining slightly at the feeling and your eyes are half lidded. You can’t even think of the fact that this is your childhood best friend kissing you. Making you shudder. You can’t find it in you to care, you want him.

“Mikey…”

It’s a whispered moan as you let your head fall back against the tile, exposing the delicate skin of your neck to his wandering mouth.

Despite his injured form, his hands are tight around you. You'd thought of this before, in the heat of the night alone in your high school bedroom, hormones taking over completely.

You'd imagined the strong grip of his hands and the contrast of his plush lips. The bite of white teeth and soothing warmth of the hot water.

It’s absolutely divine, you think. He is divine. You know you’ll have dark bruises on your neck from the way he bites. You can’t help but run a hand through the hair on the back of his head and tug slightly. The moan is elicits rumbles through your neck and you want more.

You’re absolutely drunk off of the feeling of his body being this close to yours, nearly intertwined. You don’t even think when your nails swipe the cut on his back. That is until he lets out a yelp in the crook of your neck and promptly jump back.

You’re wide eyed immediately, realizing what you’d just done.

“I’m- I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Mike.”

You can still see the remnants of a wince on his face but he laughs. And you find yourself letting out a nervous laugh with him. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

You laugh again, holding the palm of your head to your forehead.

“We should probably get out. It’s getting cold.”

You nod.

━━━

You manage to sneak past Abby’s sleeping figure long enough to grab old clothes from your room. You find yourself thanking the universe than Abby is a heavy sleeper.

You’re also thankful that you hadn’t given Mike back an old t-shirt that he had left in your home years ago. He smiles at you when you hand it to him. He puts it on and examines the familiar print on the front.

“You’ve been holding this one hostage, huh?”

You gently nudge his shoulder and let out a chuckle. “Shut up.”

You’ve layered blankets in the middle of your living room floor. You speak as you lay pillows down on the makeshift palette. “Abby is sleeping peacefully, I’m not letting you drive home tonight, and there’s no way I’m letting you sleep on my tiny couch.”

You point exaggeratedly at the “bed” you’ve created for the two of you. “Ta-da.” You let yourself fall back onto the layers of pillows and blankets. It’s surprisingly cushioned. You sigh. “Actually not that bad, Mikey.”

He watches you with a smile from his seat on your couch. “You’ve really out done yourself.” He slides off the couch and into the layers of blankets and pillows next to you. He turns to rest on his uninjured side, facing you. It’s dark in the room, but you’ve left one lamp on. You can see his features glow under the warm light. You brush a hand on his cheek lightly.

“I’m glad you didn’t die tonight, Mike.”

He snickers, but you’re serious. The thought of his face on the news, just another tragedy at Freddy’s, haunts you. “I’m serious.”

He simply stares at you. “You’re not gonna go back there, right?” He closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna take care of her. I can’t keep a job.”

Your thumb brushes at his cheek, soothing his tension. “I’ll help you. When have I ever left you alone in this?” You shiver as you think of the only time you’d walked out on him after that heated argument. You push the thought away and close your eyes.

“Really love you, Mike. You’re my best friend.”

You open your eyes hesitantly and you can see the shine of moisture in his. “Love you too.”

You place a kiss on his lips. It’s chaste, but full of a deep warmth. It leaves you wondering what comes next.

You tuck yourself in close to him.

“Goodnight, Mike.”

#mike schmidt x reader #mike schmidt x you #mike schmidt #mike schmidt angst #mike schmidt fluff

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eddiemunsons80sbaby · 5 months

Text

Everybody Hurts

Chapter 17

Pairing: EddieMunsonxReader

Summary: You needed to escape, escape from your life, your messy divorce, and all the pitying looks. Looks you couldn't ignore when everyone in town had known you and Cam, had known your shame and failure. So, you took the first job you could get, teaching third grade in a town called Hawkins. Little did you know, you were walking right into another messy situation, a messy situation with big brown eyes and long dark waves. But he's resistant, at times unbearable and you start getting curious about the town's past, his past, especially when things don't start adding up.

18+ Only for eventual smut

Next chapter: 12/20

Word Count: 7K

Masterlist

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Nerves fluttered in your stomach as Eddie opened up the passenger door, offering you his hand. You took it, hopping down off the seat, your feet hitting the asphalt of the road with a thud. Your eyes peered up at Steve’s house with trepidation, the very idea of facing all of them after your epic and entirely embarrassing outburst at The Hideout making you want to lose the grilled cheese that Eddie had cooked for you as a late lunch.

It was a nice house. It looked like a basic American Craftsman with some touches of Spanish colonial. The colors were all earth tones, rusty orange siding with forest green details in the shutters, railings, and columns. You spotted a small balcony on the side that would be perfect for late night stargazing or watching the sun rise high into the sky with your morning coffee warming your hands. There was no garden but the front walk was lined with small trees, inviting and warm.

“Hey,” Eddie said, squeezing your hand in an attempt to assure you as if he knew the panic that was raging through your body. “It’s gonna be fine. Seriously. These guys aren’t going to care about any of that. And if anybody should be ashamed, it should be me. You just yelled. I’m the one who acted like an asshole. If they’re still happy to see me, they’re going to be overjoyed to see you. Nancy and Robin have been pestering me daily because you won’t answer their calls. Trust me. They’re going to be over the damn moon to see you.”

You hoped he was right. Not only had you acted like a lunatic in front of them, then you'd completely ghosted all of them. You had only done it as an act of self-preservation, trying to keep yourself from looking the part of the fool that you felt so deeply. It had nothing to do with any of them. But how would they not feel offended that you'd disappeared on them? You would have definitely taken it personally if the roles were reversed. They’d been so kind to you, welcomed you in, and then you'd just ghosted all of them.

“I guess we’ll see,” you muttered softly.

“Seriously, you should have heard the tongue lashing Nancy gave me. She backed me up against the wall at the bar, her finger jabbing my chest so hard she left bruises. Man, that woman might be tiny but she is scary as hell. Then Robin started in on me, then Gareth ripped me a new one, and then I had to listen to Mama Harrington lecture me about being a good man. It was fucking painful, man.”

Your face cracked into a smile, a quiet giggle escaping despite your fear. Leave it to him to make you laugh, to put you at ease, when you were feeling anything but. When Eddie had mentioned heading over to Steve’s, you had tried everything you could think of to talk him out of it, including pulling off your shirt but he would not be deterred. Apparently, everyone was heading over for a cook-out and some drinks. They were all expecting Eddie but no one knew that you were accompanying him. He had a great plan to surprise them all, to remedy his screw-up, and to make everything better for you. He was assuming it would be a good surprise but that remained to be seen.

What if they were all done with you? They barely knew you and you'd managed to dig into secrets that made them uncomfortable, create drama between them all, and then ignored them when they tried to reach out. What reason did you give them to want to keep you around? You'd given them no reason to. It wouldn’t be hard to drop someone you’d only met a few weeks ago. None of them would be feeling any great loss if you were no longer there.

“Is it bad if it brings me pleasure that it was painful for you?” you teased, leaning into his side, your cheek resting against the soft fabric of his shirt, a stark contrast to the muscle of his bicep beneath it.

A chuckle shook Eddie’s chest, his lips ghosting over your forehead, “Nah. I guess I did kind of deserve it.”

“Damn right you did,” you stated, poking him in the ribs, grinning when he arched his body away from you with a shriek. Oh, he was ticklish. That was good information to have and use to your advantage at a later time.

You stepped up onto the porch and Eddie looked down at you, “Ready?”

You nodded even though you felt anything but. You wanted to bolt, race down the sidewalk and away but before you could even process that, Eddie was knocking on the door and it swung wide open, Steve revealed behind it. With one hand on the door and the other on his hip, you watched as his face lit up upon seeing you and then his eyes trailed down to where your and Eddie’s hands were clasped together.

“Holy shit! It’s about damn time!” he exclaimed with a wide grin, his head shaking back and forth slightly. “I thought you two idiots would never figure it out.” Steve turned his head to look over his shoulder. “Munson and Sam finally got their shit together!”

A chorus of cheers, about times, and finallies could be heard from just beyond the door. You flushed as Eddie smiled down at you, an ‘I told you so’ look of arrogance on his face that should annoy you but he just looked so damn cute doing it. You shoved him gently with the hand he didn’t have a hold of, snorting and shaking your head. Of course he wouldn't be able to pass up rubbing this in.

Then Nancy and Robin were there, pulling on your arms, yanking you into the house. They wrapped you in a hug from either side and all of the anxiety you'd been feeling seeped out of your body like water being wrung from a sponge. You squealed, gasping for a breath as both girls squeezed you as tightly as they could.

“I’m happy to see you guys too but I can’t breathe,” you choked out.

They pulled back, laughing, Nancy saying, “Sorry. We were just so worried.”

“Yeah, when you didn’t answer the phone this afternoon, Nancy declared we were showing up on your doorstep tomorrow and we weren’t leaving until you answered,” Robin told you. With a raise of her eyebrows, she hooked her thumb toward the brown curly headed girl. “And trust me, this one can be scary when she doesn’t get her way. She would have broken in if she had to.”

“Then I guess it’s lucky I showed up when I did,” you laughed.

“Damn right,” Nancy huffed, her hand coming to your shoulder and shoving firmly enough to send you stumbling back. Damn, she was freakishly strong for being so small. “You don’t get to disappear on us like that. I don’t care what happened with you and Eddie. That doesn’t change that we’re friends. I’ve lost enough people in my life and I won’t lose anymore.”

You swallowed hard, remembering Nancy telling you about her best friend who vanished only to be found dead later. She had to have known people in the mall fire in a town this small. She definitely knew the boy who was murdered ten years ago as they were together at the trailer park. This girl had suffered immense loss at far too young of an age. Of course she’d panicked when you suddenly vanished and that only made you feel like an even bigger shit.

“I’m sorry,” you told your friend, meaning it with every fiber of your being, your hand coming to Nancy’s bicep, squeezing lightly. “That wasn’t fair to any of you. I was just so damn embarrassed that you all knew that I’d…well, I thought I’d let some guy pull the wool over my eyes again. I assumed Eddie was a womanizer and you all knew and you would think I was an idiot for believing him.”

“Eddie?” snorted Max as she walked up, slinging an arm around your waist in a side hug. “Eddie Munson, the biggest nerd to ever walk the Earth? Dungeon master and geek club leader Eddie? You thought he was a womanizer?” She threw her head back, laughing.

“Well, I mean he is in a band,” you stated in an attempt to defend yourself, narrowing your eyes down at Max who was turning red, her laughter taking over her whole body. “Women love a guy who plays guitar.”

“They also love a guy who plays DnD, is socially awkward as hell, completely lacks any self-awareness, and will talk obnoxiously for hours about things like heavy metal, government control, and Lord of the Rings?” challenged Max, her hand slipping from your side to rest on her hip, eyebrows raising.

“Maybe. I mean, girls are into a lot of different things. Look, he totally has the bad boy thing going for him. He’s got the long hair, the chunky rings, the leather jacket,” you argued, gesturing to where Eddie stood with Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Will.

Nancy’s lips pressed together in amusement, watching as Eddie wrapped an arm around Mike’s head, placing the lanky guy in a headlock while the boy struggled. He brought his other hand up, rubbing it vigorously over the top of Mike’s black hair until Mike yelled out for mercy. Then he released the kid, his head thrown back with laughter just as Lucas jumped onto Eddie’s back and he roared, reaching behind him.

“Yeah, totally a bad boy,” Nancy mused with a roll of her eyes. “Sorry hon. You didn’t snag yourself a bad boy. You snagged yourself a man-child.”

“Oh, man-child. Are we talking about Eddie or Dustin or, honestly, it could be Mike,” El interjected, red solo cup in her hand, as she and Suzie approached their group.

“Or Lucas,” Max groaned, watching as Eddie spun, her boyfriend on his back, arms locked around his neck, legs locked around his middle until Eddie backed into the wall, crushing the guy between him and the plaster until Lucas cried uncle.

“Dusty-Bun may be immature sometimes but it’s just because he’s so young at heart. And he more than makes up for any immaturity with his incredible intellect and his very romantic nature,” Suzie stated and you noticed how the group just smiled endearingly at her.

“It’s not like mine’s any better. Him and Argyle are out back and you know what that means,” Nancy added with a laugh. “I’m surprised Eddie didn’t make a beeline for them straight away. Those three can usually be found in the sacred circle around the firepit.”

“You think that one’s any better? And for some reason, I have to claim him,” Robin sighed, hooking her thumb in the direction of Steve, standing in the kitchen, pulling out lettuce, tomato, onion, all the fixings for burgers on the grill.

You looked at her, confused, “He’s just getting ready to grill. I mean, looks very adult to me.”

Robin’s chin tilted down, snorting, “Yeah. Okay. Steve is very responsible, maybe too responsible. I got over here earlier and he was stressing out over how Lucas told him he was just going to charge a vacation for him and Max on a credit card and then he’d have time to pay it off. Apparently, they don’t have the money right now but he still wants to go. Lucas’s version is if you always wait to have the money, you’ll never do anything. You should have heard Steve. ‘He just thinks credit cards are free money or something. He doesn’t understand the interest he’ll be paying. He could be paying that trip off for years and wind up paying more than double what it actually coasts. This is why you budget and save for things like that.’ Seriously, the guy needs to join the sacred circle more often because he needs to chill.”

“Wait.” Max’s hand came up, her face suddenly tight. “I’m sorry. Lucas wants to do what? Excuse me.”

The girls watched as Max stormed over to the guys in the living room, grabbing onto Lucas’s ear. The poor guy yelped, wincing, as she dragged him out the front door, clearly in for a mouthful. They all looked at each other and then burst into laughter.

“Oops,” Robin smirked with a shrug. “Guess she didn’t know about the vacation plan.”

“What the hell was that about with Sinclair and Red?” asked Eddie, walking up and tossing his arm casually over your shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if it belonged there, and you couldn’t deny how much you enjoyed it. You couldn’t deny how much you wanted this, all of this, to become natural, a part of your everyday life.

“Apparently, Lucas was planning a trip for the two of them but they don’t actually have the money to go right now. So, he was just going to charge it all to a credit card,” Nancy explained. “I guess Max didn’t know and Robin spilled the beans.”

“Damn, Buckley, that’s cold,” Eddie chuckled, thumb running along your arm absently. “How are you going to just rat out my man like that?”

Robin held her hands out beside her, “I didn’t know that she didn’t know. I was just mocking Steve for freaking out about it. Mr. Mom in there couldn’t handle one of his little chicks being so irresponsible with money.”

“To be fair, that is really irresponsible. Credit cards are for emergencies only or using them and paying them off right away to build credit. They’re not just for flying fancies that you can’t afford. It’s a slippery slope into a mountain of debt that you’ll be able to get out from under,” Nancy defended.

“Of course it is,” Robin mocked with a slow nod of her head. “Should have known you’d agree with Steve. It’s a wonder why you two didn’t make it, honestly. You’d think the responsible, follow the rules, parents of the group would have been the perfect match but then our Nancy throws everyone for a loop and goes for the stoner.”

“Speaking of, I’m going to go find Jonathan and Argyle,” Eddie grinned, tongue darting out between his teeth. He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “I’ll be back.”

“Told you Eddie can’t resist the call of Mary Jane,” Nancy told you with a roll of her eyes.

You laughed, “Hey. I’m going to go see if Steve needs any help with the food.”

“Aww, such a good little dinner guest. You go right ahead. Good luck. I’ve learned not to get in that man’s way when he’s cooking,” Robin stated, eyes wide, taking a drink from her cup. “Come on girls. Let’s go upstairs and check out our game options before the guys choose Dragon Strike or something else similarly nerdy and nauseating.”

You watched Suzie and El trail behind Nancy and Robin up the stairs of Steve’s house before making your way into the kitchen. Steve stood at the counter, chopping up the tomatoes into perfectly thin slices for the burgers. His head lifted, a smile appearing as he caught sight of you.

“Hmm…it would appear that someone finally saw what everyone else did, huh?”

You rolled your eyes, “Oh shut it, Steve.”

“I’m just saying, I was right. You two annoyed each other too much. You were at each other’s throats too much, denying it too much, for it not to be an attraction thing, trying to act like you couldn’t stand each other like we all couldn’t see what was really going on.” He snorted, moving on to the lettuce, running it under the tap in the sink before tearing off large pieces. “We all saw it and when I confronted Eddie about it, he was way too defensive. I saw right through him.”

“You confronted him about me? Why?”

“Because he got all grouchy with me about you. He kept making these snide little comments, asking if we’d hooked up yet, asking what I was waiting for.” He rolled his sleeves up, his eyes moving along with them. “Look, Eddie’s not exactly hard to read. Man wears his emotions on his sleeve. You’d have to be blind not to know when something’s bugging him. It didn’t take a genius like Henderson to figure out he was jealous, thinking I was taking the girl he was interested in. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I thought about asking you out but once I saw how he felt, I backed off. Glad I did too. You two just seem right. I think you’ll be good for him. Man could use some good in his life.”

You knew what Steve was talking about because Eddie had made multiple comments about Steve to you too. It hadn’t made sense at the time but now you knew he was digging for information, trying to see if the two of you were a thing. He’d just assumed that you would be attracted to the pretty boy. And why wouldn’t he? That was the guy you'd married but after Cam, you wanted nothing more than everything that was the complete opposite of him. And Eddie, well, him and Cam could not be more different, in all the best ways possible.

You hopped up on a stool, resting your forearms on top of the speckled brown counter. Steve had a kitchen that had jealousy burning within you. Oak cabinets, stainless steel appliances, a light wood floor. It put your own kitchen to shame. You would need to find a second job if you wanted to update your kitchen. More likely you would have to do it piece by piece as you could afford it. A kitchen like this would cost a pretty penny, far more than you made in six months as a teacher.

“This kitchen is fantastic,” you told him, Steve glancing up from the cutting board where he’d moved on to slicing onions. “Was it like this when you bought it?”

“No,” he laughed, “definitely not. It looked like I’d walked through a time portal and straight into the seventies when I bought it. I remodeled it.”

“Damn, that must have cost quite a bit.”

He shrugged, “I mean, yeah, but I saved quite a bit too because I did most of the work. Eddie and Jonathan helped quite a bit. Labor is always where they really get you. I probably paid a third of what I would have by putting in the work myself. It took a few months between everyone’s work schedules but we got it done.”

“I know what you mean. My kitchen is horribly outdated. It’s barely even workable. I would love to remodel my kitchen but there’s no way I could afford to have someone else do it. And, while I am more than willing to put in the work, I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what I’m doing with some of it.” You sighed wistfully. “Who knows? Maybe someday, far into the future, I’ll be able to pay for something like that. Until then, I’ll just have to make do with my birch cabinets and avocado green counters. At least the appliances are newer.”

Steve paused, lips pouting in thought, “You wouldn’t have to wait that long. I bet we could do it if we all help. I mean, it could take a while. But between all of us, we could definitely knock out a kitchen renovation.”

“Oh no. That’s way too much, Steve. I appreciate the offer but I can’t possibly ask all of you to donate your time like that,” you insisted, shaking your head.

This group of people were so kind, had been so wonderful to you, and you could never thank them enough for readily accepting you into their group. They’d given you hope for your future. They’d made you feel alive again, made you feel as if you could move on, could have a life beyond Cam and your failed choices. They'd given you a place to belong. They helped you find your strength to take that step forward. And knowing them had brought the possibility of…no, you couldn’t bring herself to say that word, not yet.

You couldn’t bring yourself to hope for something that big, not yet. This thing with Eddie was new. You were excited to see where it led and you hoped it could be the beginning of something, that maybe, just maybe, he could be the one. Maybe you'd chosen wrong but maybe it was because your life was always meant to lead you here, to him. That was such a wonderful thought. There was a spark of excitement and possibility but you had to tread carefully, baby steps, not scare Eddie off.

But it was hard because you had never felt with Cam the way you did with Eddie. It was a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and anticipation all at once. You couldn’t stop thinking about him, longing for the next time his lips found yours, the next time his hands touched you. He was like a drug and you were hopelessly addicted. It both thrilled and terrified you because you'd never experienced anything like this before. You knew you were already in too deep and with that came the possibility of your heart shattering once again. But something about him made you feel he was worth that risk. You were ready to close your eyes and leap off the cliff. You just hoped Eddie was there to catch you at the bottom.

“What are you talking about?” Steve asked, bursting through your thoughts. “That’s ridiculous. Of course we would help you. That’s what friends do and you’re one of us now.”

“Not really. I mean, you’ve only known me for about a month and I know I’m…” What were you doing with Eddie? Were you just hanging out? Were you a couple? The only time you'd brought it up he’d said you didn’t need to label it and maybe you didn’t. He’d told you he wasn’t going anywhere so that had to mean you were together, right? “I’m…hanging out with Eddie.”

“Hanging out?” Steve’s shoulders shook with the laugh that rumbled out of him. “Is that what it’s called now? Huh, I must be getting too old to keep up with the young kid’s lingo these days.”

You grabbed a dish towel from the counter and threw it at him, hitting him in his handsome face. “Shut up. I don’t know what to call us, okay? We haven’t exactly defined anything so for now, hanging out seems the most appropriate definition. Anyway, I definitely don’t know you all well enough to expect you to donate hours of your time to help me with some huge project at my house. I know Nancy and Robin helped with my garden but that was a few hours. This would be months. It’s way too much.”

“Well, it’s too bad you don’t get to make that decision. Trust me, the minute I mention it, they will all be in. That’s what we do. Just provide food and drinks and everyone who can will show up. And with me as your foreman, I’ll make sure that boyfriend…” He leaned over the counter, pointing at you with the dish towel tightly in his fist. “Yes, I said boyfriend because that’s what it is. Let’s stop kidding ourselves. Hanging out is for friends and you two are far past friends. I’ll make sure your boyfriend doesn’t nail his own hand to the wall or something. And I’ll make sure it’s all done right.”

“I don’t know,” you countered, really not wanting these people to think you were just using them or something.

“I do know. So, just let me handle it, okay?”

“Fine. Do you need any help?” you asked, remembering what you'd come into the kitchen for in the first place before you got distracted with his kitchen.

Steve glanced around the kitchen, “You want to mix up the pasta salad?”

“Sure.”

You hopped down from the stool, coming around the counter just as Steve opened a high cabinet. He stretched up onto his tip toes, his hand reaching, causing his shirt to rise up, exposing a strip of the skin along his abdomen. You audibly gasped when your eyes caught sight of the pale scars that covered it, perfectly matching the scars that Eddie had on various parts of his body.

Steve’s eyes shot over at your gasp, following your line of sight down to his stomach. When he realized what you were looking at, he dropped down onto flat feet, pulling his sweatshirt down quickly but the damage had been done. There was no unseeing what you'd just seen, no putting that Pandora back into the damn box. How could he and Eddie have the same exact scars?

“Steve…how did you get those scars?” you asked, stepping into him as he stepped back into the counter, eyes widening with panic when he realized there was nowhere to run or hide from your question.

“What? I…oh…uh…”

His eyes darted around the kitchen like a wild animal desperate to find an escape. You took a step closer, your own eyes narrowing in suspicion, refusing to let him out of this. You were so sick and tired of all the secrets and lies. If you were going to be a part of this group, the way he claimed you were, the way they all claimed you were, shouldn’t you know what the hell had happened? If they really wanted to be your friend, why didn’t they trust you enough to be honest? Every time you thought you could be okay with not knowing, had put it all in the back of your mind, something else reared its head, reminding you, pestering you. You couldn't stand it.

“The scars,” you repeated. “Where did they come from?”

“Eddie told you about the raccoons, right?”

Your eyes slipped closed, a long, aggravated breath escaping from your lips, because you knew it was bullshit. All of it was bullshit. You'd known it was bullshit from the moment Eddie had told you about the raccoons but tried to accept it, but only an idiot would keep accepting these flimsy claims. There was no way raccoons did that to two grown men. How many of them could there possibly have been? Steve and Eddie maybe would have gotten bitten once, twice, but they would have kicked or thrown those little bastards. There was no way Eddie would have the amount of scars he did from some little woodland creatures.��

“Can you please stop with all the bullshit?” you pleaded. “I know you’re all lying to me. I just don’t know why. The disappearances, the toxic chemicals, the lab, the mall fire, the murders…none of it makes any sense. Don’t try to tell me raccoons did this to you too because there is no way.”

“Sam…” Steve warned, shaking his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Just let it go.”

“Why? Why don’t I want to go there? Eddie said he wouldn’t tell me because he wouldn’t put anyone else at risk. What does that even mean? Why would telling me put me at risk? Is the murderer still out there? It’s been a decade. How is that possible and if it is, shouldn’t I know if some psycho is running around Hawkins? Did he come after you two? Is that where your scars are really from?”

Steve’s head dropped, large hands covering his face, the muscles of his arms tense. You knew you were pushing him and maybe you should feel bad about it but you couldn’t manage it. What could possibly be so bad that they couldn’t even talk about it? It happened ten years ago. Some of it happened even longer ago than that. Why were they all still so scared to speak about it? Why did Eddie think it would put you in danger? Why did they feel the need to lie?

“It’s not that simple,” Steve said, his head lifting, eyes finding yours, willing you to just forget you saw anything, to just walk away. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you. Trust me, you don’t want to know. I promise you. You can’t unknow it once it’s said. You’d run straight out of this town as fast as you could if you knew. Either you’d be terrified or you’d think we all needed to be committed.”

“Why do any of you want me around if you don’t trust me enough to tell me, to believe you? You keep telling me I am one of you, that I am part of this group, but you keep secrets and you lie.”

“It’s not that we don’t trust you. I swear. Shit. I wish I could tell you. I wish we could just be honest. None of us likes lying but there’s no way to explain this so that it makes sense to you.”

“Then just explain it. Where did those scars come from?”

“Bats.”

“Bats?” you asked, even more confused than before. Bats were just a different animal. Same story, different mammal. “So instead of rabid raccoons you expect to believe that rabid bats attacked you two?”

“It’s true. The bats were…not like your normal bats.”

“Why? Because they were affected by the toxic chemicals?”

Steve’s eyes widened and he nodded emphatically, as if you'd just given him the out he was looking for, “Yeah. Yeah. Those chemicals were really bad, you know? They killed Barb.”

“They killed a fully grown human but not the bats?” you interrogated suspiciously, folding your arms over your chest, fully aware that you were just being bullshitted all over again. “What was so special about the bats that they survived exposure?”

Steve shrugged, mouth pursed, hands out in front of him, the strangest sound coming from him, a cross between a whine and a grunt. Jesus Christ. None of them were ever going to tell you what was actually going on. You were always going to be on the outside, the one who didn’t get to know, the one they kept in the dark.

“Steve!” you yelled, slapping your hands down on the counter so loudly that he jumped. “Come on! Do you all really think I’m an idiot?”

“Whoa, what’s going on down here?” asked Nancy as the girls made their way back down the stairs. “We heard yelling. Is…” She paused, looking between you and Steve. “Is everything okay?”

The front door opened, Max and Lucas stepping inside. Lucas looked properly chastised but both of them were also looking between the two people in the kitchen, clearly having heard your outburst. Then the back door opened and closed as Eddie, Jonathan, and Argyle came down the hallway and into the kitchen. Shit. You'd just managed to get past one very public, crazy meltdown and now you were in the middle of another.

“Is someone fighting?” asked Argyle. “We got more stuff if someone needs to chill out, man. No need for tension. Tension is not allowed in the sacred circle. Just let Puff the Magic Dragon take you on a wave of relaxation.”

“Everything’s fine,” you muttered, glaring over at Steve who flinched. You snatched the bowl from his hands, slamming it down on the counter. “I’m just helping get the pasta salad together.”

“Oookkkaaayyy…” came Eddie’s voice from behind you.

“Steve?” asked Robin with concern.

“It’s fine Robs,” he said, grabbing a container of pasta, a cucumber, olives, cherry tomatoes, and Italian dressing from the fridge and placing them on the counter next to the bowl. “Just a conversation that got a little lively. That’s all. Seriously, it’s fine.”

“Doesn’t seem fine,” Dustin argued, eyes narrowing. “She was definitely yelling at you. What did you do?”

“Henderson, why do you always assume I’m to blame?”

“Shit, it’s just nice it’s not me for once,” chuckled Eddie.

You seethed, dumping the pasta in, trying to focus on your task. Not a single one of them was going to tell you anything so what was the point? They wanted you here, at least they acted like they did, but then they all lied to you all the time. You grabbed the knife, chopping the cucumber with force, each slice feeling satisfying, a release of the tension and anger that stirred within you.

“Hey, princess,” Eddie said softly as he slipped up behind you, his hand coming around to cover your wrist, stopping your motions. “You okay there? I don’t know what that cucumber did to you but the way you’re chopping it feels kind of personal.”

You closed your eyes, inhaling slowly through your nose, feeling the rise of your chest, the way your belly filled. You focused on the warmth of Eddie, this man you would never truly know, this man you were already falling for. Shit. Your eyes shot open. No. You couldn’t be. It didn’t happen that quickly, right?

Devastation coursed through you because you knew it was true. No matter how much you'd tried to fight it, tried to deny it, to tell yourself he was a jerk, you'd fallen for him. When had it happened? Had it been that first night, those deep brown eyes burning into you from through the fire? Was that even possible? Love at first sight? That was nuts, right?

Did it even matter? How could anything between you ever be real when there would always be this part of him that he kept locked up from you? How could you ever have something true when you would never get to know all the parts of him? The person you were with should be your best friend, the person who knew you better than anyone else, but you could never be that person for him. And you'd stupidly told him that you could accept that so how could you demand it of him now?

Swallowing down the sour taste that was creeping up your throat, you rolled your shoulders, forcing your body to relax. Pulling your wrist from his hand, you dropped the knife, spinning in his arms to offer him a smile that you hoped appeared genuine even if it was anything but.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Sorry.”

Eddie’s head tilted to the side, his mouth curving up on one side in that little smile you loved so damn much, the backs of his fingers running down your cheek, metal cooling your flushed skin, “You sure?”

“Yep. Totally fine. Just going to finish this salad, okay? You guys pick out a game?” you loudly asked the girls, trying to change the subject to anything but how insane you were acting. Because that’s what it was. You were insane. You had completely lost your mind trying to figure out what they were all hiding and if you didn’t get it under control, you were going to lose all of this, everything that had made you so happy this past month.

“Yeah, uh…pictionary,” Nancy said, looking as if she didn’t believe you in the slightest.

Well, that was fine. Let her see how it felt to be lied to. Maybe that was mean. Maybe you were being an awful person right now but you couldn’t help feeling a little vindicated. If they weren’t going to tell you what was going on with them, then you weren't going to bother telling them what was going on with you. You couldn’t anyway because if you did, then it would just create more tension, tension you couldn’t handle right now.

“Okay, but then we are playing trivial pursuit because I am going to wipe the floor with all of you,” Dustin announced.

“You are the king of Trivial Pursuit. No one can beat him. My Dusty Bun’s big brain is what made me fall in love with him,” Suzie cooed, her hand coming to his chest, cheek against his arm.

“Uh…yeah, okay,” Eddie snorted. “Because knowing a bunch of useless facts is a real life changer.”

“You’re just mad because you never win,” Steve teased.

“Never win?” asked Mike. “Last time, he didn’t even get one piece of pie.”

“Shut it, Wheeler. You only had two,” Eddie countered. “Don’t act like you’re so much better.”

You listened to all of them arguing as you sliced the tomatoes in half, adding them in, along with the olives before opening the dressing and pouring it over the top. Grabbing Steve’s salad tongs, you tossed the mixture around, focusing on the task, the repetitive nature, telling yourself to let it go, to not rock the boat. You were happy. You were in a new relationship. You had friends. You were starting a new life. Getting angry wasn’t going to change anything or help in any way.

“Salad’s done,” you said simply, handing the bowl to Steve.

“Thanks,” he replied, giving you a smile you didn’t return. He cleared his throat. “Hey, while you guys argue about who is the king of some dumb board game, I’m gonna go get the burgers going.”

“I’ll help you, man,” Eddie offered, trailing behind him, the other guys quickly following.

You stood in the kitchen awkwardly, nibbling at your lower lip, the rest of the girls looking at you anxiously as if you were a rabid dog about to attack at any moment. Clearly, you weren't doing the best job of pretending everything was fine but it was getting harder to do with each lie, each denial, each refusal to tell you the truth.

“You sure you’re okay?” asked Nancy.

You lifted your head, smiling wide, “Yep. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You just seem…angry?” Max offered. “I mean, Lucas and I could hear you yelling from the front porch. You drowned me out and that’s saying something.”

“Did you tell him off?” you asked in an attempt to change the subject.

“I mean, yeah, I absolutely ripped him a new one. I don’t know why the hell he would even consider starting our life off drowning in debt. But that’s besides the point. Why were you yelling at Steve?”

“I know he can be a dingus,” Robin laughed, “but why were you asking him if he thought you were an idiot?”

“It doesn’t matter, okay? None of it matters because no one is ever going to tell me the truth. There’s no point in rehashing it. I asked him a question and he lied to me just like everyone else. I asked Nancy and Jonathan about the murders and they lied. Eddie flails in his sleep, whimpering and crying out, and he lies to me. Steve has scars just like Eddie’s and when I ask, he lies. It’s all lies. Clearly none of you trust me and none of you want to tell me so it’s fine, okay? I’m done bringing any of it up. You can keep your secrets.”

“Oh, I…” Nancy said sadly, pressing her lips together.

“It’s fine, Nance. Really. Clearly, whatever happened is between all of you. I wasn’t here and it’s none of my business. I’m the one in the wrong. I shouldn’t be pushing to know things that have nothing to do with me. Can we please just drop it because I can’t take any more lies or half-truths right now?”

“Okay. Yeah,” your friend agreed with a nod. Of course she did. Nancy was more than happy to drop it. She probably wished you hadn’t ever picked it up. “So, are you and Eddie like…together now?”

“I don’t know,” you shrugged. “I think so. I mean, he told me he’s not going anywhere so I assume so.”

El smiled, “Well, that’s a good thing, right?”

You couldn’t help but return the girl’s smile, “Yeah. It is. I really like him. Lord knows why but I do. I mean, it’s all new. We’ll see where it goes but for now, it’s really good.”

“Good,” Robin stated, her arm coming around your shoulder, cheek resting against the side of your head. “You both deserve some happiness. I’m happy for you and we’re all really happy you’re here. Really, we are. Regardless of everything else, please know that. Now, how about we go check on those burgers, huh? I don’t know about all of you, but I’m freaking starving.”

A murmur of assent rose from the girls so you all made your way out into the backyard. Damn, Steve was quite the handyman. You stepped out onto a beautiful wooden deck, the guys just down to the right, standing around the grill that sat on a stone patio. Eddie smiled at you, cigarette in his hand. Out in the middle of the yard was an above ground pool.

“Steve even has a pool?”

“Yeah,” Max grinned. “That’s why his house becomes the designated hangout in the summer. He bitches about how much we’re all over here but he actually loves it. He had shitty parents and no siblings, so he really likes all the chaos. He just has to act grumpy to save face or something but he really loves the family we’ve created.”

“He does. Why else do you think he installed the pool? The guys helped him with it a couple summers ago, along with the deck,” Nancy added. “He’s done a lot to this house.”

“Speaking of which,” Steve called from where he was manning the grill, adding cheese to half of the burgers, “our girl here has a really old kitchen and I told her we could probably help with that.”

“Oh yeah!” Dustin exclaimed. “We all helped Steve. We’re like kitchen restoration experts now.”

“I am a pro with a nail gun,” Lucas stated proudly.

“Don’t let him fool you,” Max whispered conspiratorially, “there was an incident with about thirty nails in one spot because he couldn’t get it right so he just kept adding more.”

You giggled, “Oh boy.”

You made your way down to stand next to Eddie and he instantly pulled you into his side. You snuggled in, inhaling the scent of him, letting it ease all the tension from your body. This should be enough. Good friends who were willing to help you, a beautiful man who made you feel things you didn’t even know you could, and a fresh start. Anyone else would be satisfied with this, would stop digging and causing problems. Why were you your own worst enemy?

“All good, sweetheart?” he inquired, lips brushing over your forehead.

“All perfect,” you assured, arms coming around his waist because it was. It really was. You just hoped it stayed that way.

Chapter 18

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butterflydm · 10 months

Text

wot reread: a memory of light (chapters 17-23)

spoilers for a memory of light, the final book.

Mat wakes up to find Fortuona listening to a report from one of her guards, still naked, and when he calls her ‘Tuon’, she chastises him under threat of execution if he does not show ~proper respect~. Interesting. I wonder if he'll actually stop calling her "Tuon" or not.

Part of my brain wants to compare the earlier Rand & Aviendha wake-up scene to this one, so I’m going to poke at that for a moment:

Rand & Aviendha have a pre-sex mock-threat scene where the Maidens teasingly threaten Rand before he and Aviendha sleep together; Mat has to deal with actual potential death from Tuon’s slaves (Selucia almost shooting him; the guards subduing him)

Rand & Aviendha and Mat & Fortuona are two extreme ‘culture clash’ relationships (Perrin and Faile are also a fairly extreme culture clash, but they’ve pretty much worked that out by now)

They’re also both ‘enemies to lovers, destined to be together due to a prophecy’ pairings, except Aviendha and Rand were 'enemies-to-lovers' in the loosest possible sense of "Aviendha has taken against Rand but doesn't really have any reason to hate him" while Mat got his compassion surgically removed in CoT so that he wouldn't judge Tuon for being a slaver.

Aviendha has done her best to teach Rand Aiel ways but seems to accept now that he will always be a wetlander at heart vs Fortuona expecting Mat to flip a switch and be a devoted Seanchan slave citizen and telling him that if he fails to conform, she may have him executed.

idk it’s ~interesting.

Tuon does make it clear that Mat is never going to have sex with her in private -- at least one of her guard-slaves will always be present.

2. Rand shows up -- Mat notes that he is dressed down, comparatively-speaking -- “no gold or jewelry, no weapon at all”.

Tuon, who is terrified of Rand, immediately freaks out, calling for damane to come and protect her. This scene is... *sigh* yeah, idk. It’s weirdly balanced, I guess I’d say. The narrative has done such a thorough job in trying to shield Mat from the truth about what the Seanchan have been doing recently, and from his own failures and the deaths that are on his head (he is complicit both in the attack on the White Tower -- because he let Tuon go back to her people to continue her invasion -- and the attack on Caemlyn -- because his mistrust of Aes Sedai meant he was unwilling to read a letter; and yet the narrative has hidden both of these failures from him completely). So it just feels like Mat’s perspective on the events here is so clouded by his ignorance of recent events. And that just makes it a weird scene.

When Mat gets trussed up by the Power, he first assumes that it’s Rand but when Rand tells him that it isn’t, he realizes that, well, he must be missing his medallion if he’s being held by the One Power, and he immediately looks towards Tuon who, yep, has the medallion. Guess you should have kept your dad's advice in mind and braced yourself for your trading partner to try to steal your horses, Mat.

This is that ironic moment that I was thinking of back in ToM -- Mat had wanted to freely give Tuon a medallion to protect her, but she betrayed him and stole it instead (and he didn’t even know that she knew it existed, so this is a double-betrayal -- Tuon betrayed him and so did Setalle Anan)

But this balance here, where Mat thinks that Rand is trapping him and then realizes that Tuon is the one who betrayed him... this is the first moment that probably couldn’t have existed without the reality-warping teleportation trip that Mat took down to Ebou Dar. But there’s immediate payoff from it, at least not that I can see -- one of the most frustrating things about Tuon’s horrible actions in CoT & KoD were that they never had any effect on Mat’s opinion of her, because he had a five-second memory in those two books, so I'm concerned that this will go the same way. Ah, I will remember this moment and see if it affects anything in the future.

3. Also, Mat should still have one of the copies of the medallion in his bag? He had both his original and one of the copies, per Elayne’s PoV earlier in the book, so even though Tuon stole his medallion, he does have the inferior backup.

I guess this “oh I ran away here to escape you, Rand, specifically because of The Fear” is supposed to be our explanation for why Mat changed his motivations between books? lol, what? That's a throwback to TSR/TFoH Mat except that TSR/TFoH Mat never actually ran away; he just talked about it a lot and then always ended up helping out anyway. So I guess that's where a lot of my frustrations with this reunion come from -- the parts that aren't weirdly competitive still feel... weird. (plus we still have never gotten the 'how' explanation for how Mat is in Ebou Dar -- fear alone does not catapult a person hundreds of miles in a single night)

Anyway, Rand’s reactions here really do make a lot more sense when I think about everything that Thom could have potentially told him -- the essence being “Mat accidentally ta’veren-trapped the Empress of the Seanchan into a marriage with him; maybe that will be useful”. He doesn’t really show any fear or worry for himself or for Mat, despite the potentially dire situation (though, you know, if he’s only shielded by a single damane, he can absolutely break free and... I don’t think damane can link together in a circle because they’re already in a forced-link using the a’dam? Or did my brain make that up? It does make sense though).

4. otoh, Mat just feels like he’s... taking all of this so unseriously? I can understand why he’s not truly worried here that Rand might hurt ~his slaver bride~ (because despite his bluster about Rand going mad, he’s shown instinctive trust in Rand when the going gets rough) but given that Tuon is having Rand shielded and her desperate panic the moment that she saw him and all the guards... he could show a bit of concern for Rand!

But Mat is just a wet noodle during this entire scene and it’s so bizarre. His marriage was so useless on every possible level and it feels absolutely pointless that it happened. And it didn’t have to be that way! The Mat & Tuon relationship could have been written in a way that made the readers really believe that Mat HAD to marry her in order to fulfill his destiny and make it so that the Seanchan would fight against the Dark One during the Last Battle. But as it is... Rand could have just shown up in the palace and done this entire scene without Mat, because Mat contributes absolutely nothing useful to the discussion at any point.

5. So, here’s the thing about Rand and Mat’s reunion as a whole: in isolation, it doesn’t bother me. It’s a relatively shallow conversation but that makes sense given that it’s occurring in the Seanchan stronghold -- Rand consistently does not want to show enemies the depth of his feelings about specific people, and Mat did his best throughout both CoT & KoD to keep the knowledge of his friendship with Rand away from Tuon (it was Talmanes who spilled the beans) because he didn’t trust her with that knowledge (which was, like, the one smart thing he did in the entirely of CoT & KoD, so I gotta give him credit for it), so it makes sense for them to underplay things in front of Tuon -- they are communicating information (hey, did you know I cleansed saidin? hey, did you know I saved Moiraine?) without communicating too many emotions. It’s something of a weird conversation for them, because the Rand and Mat friendship has never been particularly competitive, but it’s... okay. In isolation.

But I have to take into account that this is the only reunion scene that Mat and Rand ever get to have after they separate in Lord of Chaos, and that makes this scene an absolute narrative failure, because it is not enough to do their friendship justice.

And Sanderson was well aware of the importance of reunions... for other relationships. And, specifically, among the three ta’veren boys:

Perrin gets a reunion dinner & a personal goodbye with Mat in ToM.

Perrin gets a reunion dinner & a personal goodbye with Rand in AMoL.

No reunion dinner and personal goodbye for Mat and Rand. Only Perrin gets such things.

All Rand and Mat get is this emotionally-limp dick-measuring contest, despite them spending large chunks of books 1-5 together and their relationship being a foundational emotional element in those five books, even when they are separated. Yet because Sanderson decided to yeet Mat down to Ebou Dar (despite it making no logistical or narrative sense for that to happen), this one meeting is all they get. And that just... sucks. Even back during the first time I read the books, when I did not yet ship Cauthor, I was so deeply disappointed by this reunion. It is such a betrayal of the complicated relationship between Rand and Mat.

Mat has spent every book since he and Rand have been separated having ‘return to Rand’ be his goal in some way or another, and that just gets wiped away between ToM & AMoL.

6. idk. Mat does... sorta try to contribute -- he offers to talk to Tuon on Rand’s behalf (”I’ll get us out of this”) -- but there’s also some real wtf thoughts going on in his brain. Like when Tuon threatens to take Rand back over the ocean to enslave him as her personal Dragon, Mat thinks “she made a good Empress”. lol, she’s literally just making the exact same threat that Elaida tries to get her embassy to carry out on her behalf back in LoC. Was Elaida also good Empress material, Mat? I mean, maybe this version of Mat also would have praised Elaida for the Box, who knows. Maybe post-canon, he’ll free Elaida and fall head-over-heels in love with her now that he’s attracted to petty tyrants who like to throw tantrums. Elaida won’t be interested back, but that could be a good learning experience for him.

On a more serious note, I think this is the beginning of some incredibly bizarre Seanchan-native style thoughts spawning spontaneously in Mat’s brain. It gets real weird at points, from what I remember (we'll see if my memory was correct!).

7. It is so bizarre that Rand does this huge display of power but then he... essentially rolls over for the Seanchan and lets them join the alliance against the Dark One without them needing to give up anything. His first offer is pretty much the rock-bottom “if worst comes to worst” terms that the Merrilor council was willing to give. That’s horrible negotiating! Always start high, Rand! Start off with “release all your slaves and go back over the ocean” and bargain down from there, rather than bargaining down from “you can keep the lands that you have now”. She's intimidated by you! Press your advantage!

Though I really do think that a lot of flaws in this scene stem from having Mat desert the Last Battle and run to Ebou Dar. Because Mat is treating this situation like his parents are getting a nasty divorce and he's trying to get them to kiss and make up rather than the situation being his aggressive/fear-based slaver wife wanting to kidnap and enslave millions of people versus the person who literally is going to save the world. You can't 'both sides are valid' a situation like that.

There is no ‘both sides’ when one of the sides does not respect the humanity of the other side. That’s as true when it comes to the Seanchan as it is when it comes to the Dark One wanting to destroy the universe. Slavery is violence.

8. I will note that Mat is throwing ‘Tuon’ around a lot in this conversation, so he has not yet taken on-board her threat about having him executed.

Rand does try to bargain for the freedom of the damane -- Tuon says no deal if she doesn’t get to keep her slaves. Keeping her slaves matters more to her than preventing the ending of the world. I thought Perrin was bad because he was willing to let the world burn if it meant saving Faile, but Tuon would let the world burn before she would let a single slave slip through her fingers.

Ugh, honestly, comparing her to Elaida does Elaida such a disservice. Tuon is a much worse person than Elaida ever was.

And Mat says nothing to try to sway her. He spoke to her when it came to trusting Rand with the Last Battle (and that one quote, “you can trust Rand al’Thor with the world itself” is a nice one), but he has nothing to say about her expressed desire to enslave every woman who can channel. Which includes his sister. Which includes Elayne and Nynaeve and Egwene. Which includes Moiraine, who he literally just saved from a different kind of captivity.

Nothing to say on their behalf, Mat?

Nothing.

I will remember that in the future. That when you had the chance to say something to try to sway Tuon on the subject of slavery, you stayed silent.

9. I am going to note something very important here, and then explain why it’s important under some spoiler space for the ending of the book. Part of the bargain that Tuon agrees to (and then signs her name to) is this: “Taking any [damane] afterward [meaning after the Last Battle] who are not in your own land will be seen as breaking the treaty and attacking the other nations.” *

And non-spoilerly side note: yeah, apparently this deal does mean that crossing the border into Seanchan territory means that they can hunt you down and enslave you without penalty. Yikes. Hope you weren’t planning on ever seeing your sister Bode again, Mat, because she can’t come visit you (lol, not as if she’d want to, I suppose).

10. So, overall... the bargain that Sanderson made, where he violated both logic and the narrative itself to ship Mat off to Ebou Dar... I do not understand why he thought it was worth it. Again, this scene with Rand, Mat, and the slaver empress isn’t complete trash -- there are some good moments in it -- but actually having Mat finishing out his narrative arcs in Merrilor/Caemlyn would have been so much better. And most of this scene still could have played out similarly if Mat had come here on purpose.

I think probably the worst part of this scene is Mat obediently trailing after Tuon when she leaves. Ugh, it’s so frustrating that Mat ended up being the General of the Slavers rather than the General of the Light -- that he comes to the Last Battle as Tuon’s slave-husband rather than someone who is actually invested in the fight in his own right. He ran away from the battle but now is willing to fight that same battle on behalf of the slavers? Yikes, what an ugly message. There’s a lot of Unfortunate in those Implications. When it was just the Westlands facing the Last Battle, Mat ran like a coward but now that the SLAVERS are involved, Mat will without hesitation dedicate himself to saving the world again? Yikes, yikes, yikes.

But the stupidest part of this is that Mat had already accepted, for books!, that he would need to be at Rand’s side during the Last Battle. He has spent books trying to get back to Rand to give him additional resources for the Last Battle. But now he’s apparently only willing to risk his neck if his wife-owner is involved. I mean, I guess this has to be why the story got changed and Mat teleported to Ebou Dar -- so that Mat would be part of the Seanchan Contribution to the Last Battle rather than being there because “it’s what had to be done” aka the right thing to do aka his previously established character motivations that were in play as recently as the final chapter of Towers of Midnight.

So, yeah, the portion of Mat’s characterization re: Tuon specifically is not awful but, holy shit, everything related to his relationships to every non-Seanchan character got shredded to an unrecognizable mess. I am really hoping that gets better in future chapters but... yeah, yikes.

11. Like Perrin and Elayne, Gawyn has also been fighting for a week as of right now. So a week has passed in the Caemlyn area and the staging area near Shayol Ghul but only a handful of hours passed between when Perrin said Mat was in Ebou Dar (before the fighting began) and when Rand went to visit Mat.

12. As a whole, I'm good with a lot of what Sanderson has been writing in AMoL! But there are definitely a few big issues have been sticking out:

everything with Mat is a logistical nightmare, even if you discount the awful impact it had on his characterization

everyone Just Knows about Rand's three girlfriends now, without ever reacting to the information

which I guess also falls under the banner of: important character moments keep getting skipped

Rand and Elayne avoiding each other at the start of this book is a weird mirror to how Rand and Aviendha were avoiding each other in TGS, aka it doesn't really make sense why they would do that

13. Anyway, I suspect that my posts are going to be able to cover more chapters now, because I never really have a lot to say about battle scenes and we just started this chapter off with one, and I suspect there will be many more in the future. But we'll see!

14. Gawyn makes sure that Egwene is getting enough sleep and not overusing the Power and he realizes that he no longer has any anger when he thinks about Rand al'Thor. Good for him! On both counts. It won't help anyone if Egwene exhausts herself. That being said, I went "yikes" at hearing that Gawyn is barely sleeping and Egwene is "washing away" his exhaustion because I feel like Moiraine says in the first book that that doesn't actually fix your exhaustion, it just masks it and lets you work through it. Let me check.

Oh, boy, yeah, I'm sorta right (It's Lan and not Moiraine who tells them, and specifically he is telling Mat, Rand, and Perrin about it while Egwene is off with Moiraine doing something else):

"They will run at their fastest, if we let them, right up to the second they drop dead from exhaustion they never even felt."

15. Leilwin née Egeanin has some nerve trying to argue with Gawyn that Egwene shouldn't hold the crimes of the Seanchan as a whole against her as an individual when she has owned a damane herself!

"I did not" - yes, you did! Egwene cares about more than just her own skin, so it would matter to her that you de-personed other people and not just if it was herself. I'm glad that you came around and decided to start treating channelers like people but this is absolutely a crime that you own. You owned damane, even after you met Elayne & Nynaeve and saw that marath'damane were not the monsters that your government tries to teach you that they are. You went back to your people and accepted becoming a member of the Blood, giving up an artifact that you had agreed to dispose of (where was your honor then, when your own skin was on the line?), and only left the Seanchan when you realized that one of the Seekers was on your trail and it was only a matter of time before you were discovered anyway. Saving her own skin has been Leilwin née Egeanin's priority for the vast majority of the time that we, the readers, have known her as a character. Not her honor.

I do like Leilwin née Egeanin as a character -- she's the most fully-realized and complex Seanchan character that we've met, I would say. But, yeah, she owns this crime and Egwene is fully in her right to hold it against her.

16. Mmm, we get a reminder here that the Bloodknife ter'angreal are personally handed out by the Empress. More interesting to me is that Leilwin née Egeanin is able to cut off her instinctive "may she live forever" after mentioning the Empress half-way through the words. Gawyn learns here that it is blood that activates the rings, but he convinces himself that he won't need to use them -- he can protect Egwene as a Warder. And she's winning her portion of the battle, so things are going well for them.

17. Rand is remembering seeing Trollocs for the first time, back in the Age of Legends, when they only knew them as "Aginor's experiments". Yeah, that had to be so mind-blowing (in a bad way), the first time that they were seen. Have I mentioned recently that I do really like that we're back in Rand's head for this book? Cutting us off from Rand's PoV was the biggest mis-step of ToM, imo.

After fighting on behalf of Elayne's armies wearing the face of Jur Grady, so that the Forsaken do not know that he's there, he reveals himself briefly with his own face and power level to give a morale boost to the troops, then returns to Merrilor, where Min is waiting to immediately clamp onto his arm.

18. Though Min has been a silent presence in some of the Rand chapters of the book, this is the first time she actually speaks in this book. Page 353 in the hardcover version. "You look sad."

lol, yeah, Sanderson 100% had no clue how to balance the Rand x Min relationship with the Rand x Elayne x Aviendha relationship, to the point that Min had to become a background element for the chapters during which Sanderson focused on Rand & Aviendha and Rand & Elayne.

19. Rand thinks here that he would have fallen "for sure" if Min hadn't been there during those "months of darkness". Bro. Bro. You did fall. That was a thing that absolutely happened on the page. We literally watched it. It was a whole plot point. You almost destroyed time and the universe because of how dark and cold your interior world had gotten, and it wasn't Min who stopped you from doing it; it was reaching inside yourself and finding hope. All of that was literally on the page.

But giving Min credit for things she never did or that never happened is pretty much the main pattern when it comes to Min, so I guess... here's another one of those moments, lol.

20. So, I think I'm parsing the grammar of this correctly and Cadsuane is saying that both Aviendha and Min got jewelry, yes?

"A sword for your father, a ter'angreal for the Queen of Andor, a crown for Lan Mandragoran, jewelry for the Aiel girl, and for this one." She nodded at Min.

Also, wow, "jewelry for the Aiel girl" -- Cadsuane did not even bother getting Aviendha's name. I wonder if she was pissed off when she realized that the horse that she was betting on to influence Rand for her (Min) wasn't the only voice in his ear.

Anyway, Rand is annoyed because she calls him out -- in front of Min -- in basically giving away sentimental "in case I die" gifts.

21. So... Aviendha and Min are both here at Rand's main camp, but there's zero implication that they are getting to know each other the way that Aviendha wanted them to (and like they had the chance to do in TGS, but both of them avoided each other instead).

Stop skipping important emotional moments!

Also, I kind of have to laugh that... Min was apparently here the whole time, but Perrin didn't think to mention her when he was having his big goodbye scene with Rand. Aren't you two supposed to be friends?

22. Cadsuane insults Elayne to try to get a rise out of Rand but he refuses to respond to the bait. Yeah, between "the Aiel girl" and now insulting Elayne, I think Cadsuane was ticked off when the memo went out that the Dragon has three girlfriends and the trump card that she'd thought she'd held by cultivating Min was not as strong as she believed it to be.

Anyway, she tells Rand here that it's best if he doesn't go into the fight believing absolutely that he's going to die and... okay, I'm going to pop an addition to this thought at the end**.

lol Cadsuane tries to fish for a gift for herself and Rand shuts her down with "I'm giving them to those I care about." I really do find their interactions so funny now that Cadsuane can't successfully bully or bait Rand anymore.

23. Aviendha is going to lead those fighting against the Forsaken who will be popping up once Rand goes into Shayol Ghul. Elayne & Aviendha have both grown into such leaders. 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Rand also makes sure that Alivia is involved in that portion of the battle.

Cadsuane casually drops the news here that the Black Tower has freed itself -- to go back to my earlier Black Tower thoughts, I feel like this would be so much more impactful if Nynaeve were the one delivering this news because she was the one who helped liberate the Black Tower. Because as far as we've seen, the only thing Nynaeve has done in the last eighteen chapters is give Moiraine a hug. She had the time and the motivation to do the Black Tower plotline.

24. I love this scene with Lan, where he realizes that he has hopes for the future now and he wonders if Rand has any idea that he was part of the reason why Lan started looking beyond his own death. Rand and Nynaeve, tearing down his walls without even realizing what they were doing, just by being themselves.

"Rand al'Thor had begun to crack that shell, and then Nynaeve's love had torn it apart completely."

Wouldn't it be neat if this scene had happened right after Nynaeve had returned to Rand and told him that the Black Tower was no longer under Taim's control?

25. Just like the other captain over in Lan's front of the battle did, Bashere also made a bone-headed mistake in his battle planning here. I do feel like we're probably supposed to be picking up at this point that this is no coincidence and not just the captains being over-tired and not thinking clearly. But right now, Elayne is trusting Bashere because of how much trust Rand placed in him, even when Rand was at his most untrusting.

26. In a TAR visit with Amys, Melaine, and Bair, Egwene is told about a blackness that is showing in cracks between rocks, in the places nearest Shayol Ghul, then after a few moments the blackness fades and leaves behind ordinary cracks. The Wise Ones believe it is the Pattern pulling apart and think that it is due to how much balefire is being used during the battle. Egwene says that it is already forbidden to Aes Sedai to use the weave, but she will remind them, and pass word to their other allies. They also tell her goodbye, as soon Rand will go into Shayol Ghul.

27. When Egwene wakes up, it's to meet with Rand -- not as Amyrlin and Dragon, but as childhood friends. His sentimental gift to Egwene is a hair ribbon which she first takes as him implying that she's a child -- which kinda shows how far beyond the Two Rivers that she's gone, because she knows that's not what a hair ribbon means there.

But it's a sweet moment.

So, if Rand had been allowed to give sentimental gifts to Mat... and Perrin too, I guess. What would they have been? This newest version of Mat doesn't really deserve any gifts, lol, so that one is kinda tough. A geode, maybe, or a thunder egg? Mat used to like to collect little treasures.

I saw someone in the tags a while back talking about how refreshing it was that the friendships between women in the books are so vibrant in contrast to the friendships between men and... I also love how great those friendships are, but it really sucks that Jordan (maybe Sanderson too? it's hard to tell) seemed to believe that married men weren't allowed to have close male friends and were only supposed to confide in their spouse. And that's a part of toxic masculinity, the belief that your girlfriend/wife should be your emotional dumping ground while hanging with the bros stays shallow, competitive, and light. And we really saw that a lot with Rand during the darkest books for him -- Min was his emotional dumping ground, there to receive his trauma and not have any of her own (despite going through several traumatic events).

And that part of what's damaged about how the male characters relate to the world never really gets healed. Women can confide in their friends, but male friendships get hollowed out once the men start getting love interests.

(the books kinda lampshade this when they say that Aiel women adopting each other as first-sisters is much more common than men adopting each other as first-brothers -- so there's this implied idea that married men only relate to each other as co-workers or leader-subordinates)

Oh, yeah, and Rand realizes that the seals that Egwene is holding to wait to break for the Last Battle are actually fakes. I feel like nothing really happens with this plotline so I'm not going to get too invested.

28. Mat allows himself be dressed up as a doll for Tuon’s viewing pleasure. This is that other contrast against Elayne that I mentioned back in the post where I talked about Fortuona being a foil to Elayne -- where Tylin and Fortuona order Mat to wear clothes that please them; Mat requested that Elayne pick out someone to help him get better clothes (that were in the style that he would prefer).

Mat is SO MISERABLE in this scene. Why is he forcing himself through all this? Why didn't he leave with Rand?

He hates that the slaves won't look at him; he hates that he's being dressed up like a Seanchan; he hates the idea that everyone is going to be looking at him like this. He hates everything about this. Why is he doing it? If Mat's marriage to Tuon had been what sealed the deal for the treaty, then Mat pushing through even though he's miserable would make sense, but much like the entirety of this whole fucking relationship, Mat is turning his future into a misery for no apparent reason.

29. Of course, now that Mat has been (abruptly, off the page) cut off from all his other emotional connections except for Tuon, he's been locked in. I really do feel like Jordan (and now Sanderson) failed to give Mat enough of a reason to have *waves hands* all of this make sense. The general vibe is "better to stay in the worst marriage in the world than to have no marriage at all" but that is a bizarre storyline to give to someone who never showed any signs of wanting to be married.

But yeah, having servants/slaves undress him so that he can be dressed according to how his owner wants him to look is exactly what Tylin did. Mat thinks here, I won't be owned, but he's not doing a very good job of actually standing his ground. See, the thing is... if this was how Mat's story was going to end up anyway, I feel like Jordan might as well have just had Tylin sell Mat to Tuon back in Winter's Heart? Because that's where we've ended up anyway -- with Mat realizing that Tylin and Tuon are birds of a feather but... for whatever reason... sticking with her anyway, even though it actively makes him unhappy.

I can't think of any reason to have this scene except to remind us of Tylin? (in-world, I imagine that Tuon is having it done to show all the Westlanders that Mat belongs to her now, not to their side, because... she's extremely possessive and jealous -- and also to reassure her own side that she has thoroughly broken her new outlander mate to be loyal to the Empire)

Mat is able to negotiate slightly -- his clothes don't get burned and they're only making a military outfit for him right now -- but he was able to negotiate slightly with Tylin as well. It kinda feels like that's Mat's lot for the foreseeable future -- his life will mostly be a misery, with tiny patches of him being to negotiate a small bit of breathing room. A tiny bit of false freedom in exchange for his loyalty is probably seen as a bargain by Tuon.

30. Yeah, I'm not very happy with Mat's storyline in this book, at least so far. Which sucks because (except for the first chapter of TGS), I've been liking what Sanderson brought to the table for Mat in TGS & ToM. Especially after the trash-fire that was Mat in CoT & KoD (I genuinely dislike Mat as a character in CoT & KoD and it ruins those two books for me).

But it is an interesting illustration of... what parts of a character matter to different individual readers. Some people were never invested in Mat as someone who genuinely cared about doing the right thing even as he called anyone like that foolish, but it was such a vital part of Mat's characterization for me, all the way through Winter's Heart. And it's just gone in CoT & KoD, and losing that part of Mat makes me no longer like Mat as a character. But for some people... that just wasn't an important part of who Mat was to them, and they could shrug off the loss or not even notice it at all.

I've seen something similar with various posts talking about -- "is Rand still Rand if you remove the toxic masculinity portion of his story?" and various other debates about different aspects of his storyline. For some people, Rand being an exploration of toxic masculinity (by embracing Lan's advice) was a huge part of his character and helped them through their own issues with masculinity. For me, it is not that vital part of who Rand is, and if the show doesn't go that way -- if the list isn't gendered, if the focus isn't on "don't let any WOMEN get hurt or killed", I would welcome that change. But for a person who saw Rand's struggle in their own life, that change would feel like a loss.

So it's sad for me that Mat has been locked-into the Prince of Ravens story, particularly in this version of the story where the way they chose to approach the story was to dampen his empathy for the enslaved and shred his emotional connections to his former friends away as if they meant nothing. The parts of Mat that I cared about the most were the parts that were thrown away by the authors as if they were meaningless. And that sucks.

I've caught glimpses in the Sanderson books, of the Mat that I loved in the series from EotW-WH, but so far this version in AMoL feels like half the character that I cared about, with the other half ripped away.

I miss Mat. And it sucks so much more to think that during actual Mat PoV sections than to think it when Mat is missing or gone.

I miss the guy who cared so much about slavery that he risked his own escape plan to free the Windfinders.

I miss the guy who sat quietly with Rand after Rhuidean, exactly the kind of comfort that Rand needed at the time.

His body is still walking around but the part of Mat that I loved... he's not there. He got in the way of the plot, so the authors elided those parts of him out of existence. But those were the parts that I cared about the most.

Yeah. Just makes me sad.

31. Ah, the surprise Sharan army shows up. Why would they hold back until now? The fighting has been going on for a week+ at this point. Hmm... my Doylist (aka author-based, as opposed to in-world) assumption is that the Sharans are showing up now so that it will actually feel like the Seanchan are needed when they show up, so the timing needed to be placed after the treaty with the Seanchan was signed. A whole random huge nation shows up at the fight with tons of channelers -- better throw a different random huge nation with tons of channelers at them! In-world... idk, probably just Demandred being dramatic. They attack on Egwene's part of the battlefield, so now all the fronts are in a bad way.

32. Aviendha is part of the advance group of scouts into the Blasted Lands (before they reach Shayol Ghul). They see Shayol Ghul and the forges where the Fade's blades are made.

I love her scene here with Rand. Aviendha realizes that she and Rand are more alike that she'd ever noticed before, and they stand next to each other, shoulders just barely touching. "He did not own her, and she did not own him. The act of his movement so that they stood facing in the same direction meant far more to her than any other gesture could."

🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Aviendha says that taking the Dark One gai'shain would be a greater victory than killing him. I love her. So Aviendha votes here for Rand to imprison TDO rather than try to kill him. Rand says that he'd thought them finally being in a proper-type relationship would mean no more lectures on Aiel culture and Aviendha is just... so baffled. 🥰

So the plan is for Ituralde and the Aiel to hold this area right before Shayol Ghul, to give Rand time to go in and deal with the Dark One.

33. With the scouting done, they go back to Rand's camp to prep the forces for the assault, and Rand tells Aviendha that the dagger has been helping him stay hidden from the Shadow during the fight, just as she thought that it would. This knife really does feel like it symbolizes how connected Rand-Elayne-Aviendha are as a triad. Aviendha finds out what it can do and gives it to Elayne to protect her; Elayne gives it to Rand to protect him. Rand says it's going to make it easier for him to get to TDO before he's noticed. He calls the dagger "Artham".

Also: Rand tells Aviendha about the true seals going missing! Communication! Love to see it. He mentions that apart from the two of them, Egwene is the only one who knows that the true seals are gone.

Ituralde will be in charge of the troops during the Shayol Ghul assault but Aviendha will lead the channelers.

34. ...Min really thought there was a chance that she was going to go with Rand to face the Dark One? All she would be is a liability!

Anyway, okay, Rand actually does specifically send Min to Egwene to "watch the Seanchan Empress" so I'll keep that in mind. I'm not sure exactly what Min is supposed to do if things go poorly but keeping an eye on Tuon is part of the reason she was sent. (technically he sent her there to "keep an eye on both factions" but he knows he can trust Egwene, so the implied reason is Tuon & the Seanchan). How convenient that Rand is sending the Seanchan to the front that just got flattened by the Sharans, even though he thinks Egwene is "doing well". I guess that one we can say is ta'veren stuff.

Also, in this scene before Min gets sent on her way, she does not offer any last insight about Callandor. It's Moiraine and Nynaeve who talk to him about the flaw here.

35. I feel like this whole "Logain has grown darker" plotline could have been cut out. Not needed. Just let him lead the Asha'man into the Last Battle; there's plenty of glory in that.

36. Demandred shows up on the battlefield after the Sharans have flattened the Aes Sedai forces to grab one of them (it's Leane) to try to send her off with a message to Rand: it's personal and you better face me yourself or I will ruin everything you love (essentially). Yeah... your dramatic entrance a week into the Last Battle has kinda ruined your chance at Rand, I'm pretty sure. Because he's heading towards Shayol Ghul very soon. Too slow, ~dragonslayer~. Fancy title and no dragon around for you to slay.

37. Lanfear dunks on Perrin for not being able to kill Graendal (when he discovered her in TAR).

"I found [the inability to kill women] charming in Lews Therin at one point, but that doesn't make it any less a weakness."

Why is Lanfear helping Perrin out? I do not remember her goal here, if we ever find it out. But she basically handed him the dreamspike and now she's telling him that it's dumb for him to let Graendal get away just because she's a woman (Gaul also tells Perrin this: "A warrior who will not strike a Maiden is a warrior who refuses her honor"). She also straight-up tells him that Graendal is here to influence people's dreams. And Perrin saw Graendal messing around in war tents with maps.

... he does not put the pieces together at this point.

38. Okay, we get the low-down on the time dilation (thank you, physics researcher Mierin!) -- Shayol Ghul is what is distorting time. The closer you are to it, the more time distorts. "For every day that passes [to those close to Shayol Ghul], three or four might pass to those more distant."

In other words, this does not fix Mat's logistics problem, where he was able to undertake a weeks-long journey on horseback over the course of a single night in order to reach Ebou Dar around the same time Moiraine and Thom reached Merrilor, but then an entire week passed in Merrilor while only a handful of hours passed for Mat in Ebou Dar. Mat's logistics still do not add up.

Oh, Lanfear also tells Perrin that one of the people Graendal was influencing was his wife's dad, aka Bashere aka one of the generals of the battle.

39. Given what a dire situation Gawyn & Egwene are in, Gawyn takes the opportunity while scouting to slip on one of the Bloodknife rings and activate it. They're pinned down and trapped by the Sharan army so it makes sense that he's desperate enough to do this. They certainly have no clue that they're about to get sent an additional army on their own side.

It means that he can scout directly past the various Sharan sentries who are surrounding them (it is an incredibly dire situation). Not only does it let him travel with the shadows but he also notices that it lets him move faster as well.

Given that he already has the rings and what a terrible situation he and Egwene are currently trapped in, it would be pretty foolish of him not to use the rings at this time, tbh.

But it looks like when Leilwin née Egeanin said that the rings would eventually kill you once you'd activated them, Gawyn interpreted that as 'might'. And I think that makes sense -- Gawyn can understand on an intellectual level how disposable (non-Blood) lives are in the Seanchan Empire without being able to take it in emotionally. It's not intuitive for him, because he doesn't use people up and throw them away the way that the Seanchan do.

40. We get another pretty powerful flashback to Egwene's time with the damane, when she is temporarily captured by one of the Sharans while she is making her escape following Gawyn. It's actually pretty clever -- she deliberately is letting go of her Aes Sedai control so that her panic over the idea of being captured will draw Gawyn back so that he can help her.

But, yeah, having this vivid reminder of of Egwene's time as a captive of the Seanchan... it really does make the choices that Jordan & Sanderson decided to make with Mat's storyline so baffling. Mat genuinely cares about Egwene, about Elayne, about Nynaeve, about Moiraine, presumably he cares about his sister but I guess who knows. And yet Jordan has Mat laugh off the idea of Tuon attacking the White Tower (which she then followed through on and actually did and yet he does not know about it) and act like the sul'dam are more oppressed and in more danger than the actual slaves; and Sanderson has Mat run away from the Last Battle until the slavers are involved and then he's apparently willing to risk his life again. In the name of the slavers. Baffling writing choices all around.

Egwene on thinking what it would be like to be captured by the Seanchan again: "She would be nothing. She would have her very self stripped away. She would rather be dead."

41. But Gawyn is still too far away and it ends up being Leilwin née Egeanin who saves Egwene here. Together the three of them escape the camp, reunite with Bayle, and then Egwene is able to Skim them back to the White Tower.

42. Near Shayol Ghul, Aviendha and the channelers that she's leading clear the valley so that Rand will be able to approach. There's a pretty intense battle scene and then Aviendha takes charge of organizing all the channelers so that they will be able to hold the valley for as long as Rand's task takes him.

43. ...Thom and Moirine apparently also got married off the page? When did they have time? Did Mat perform a quick ceremony before he teleported himself on top of Pips' back and then teleported himself to Ebou Dar?

Hmm, I wonder (should we make it that far) if this will be Siuan being the watcher outside Shayol Ghul instead of Thom? It kinda would make more sense for that person to be a channeler anyway.

44. As they enter, Rand's wound from Ishamael begin bleeding. As per the prophecy. His blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul. He goes into the cavern holding Callandor and linked with Moiraine and Nynaeve.

spoilers through the epilogue

(* Tuon’s people are violating the terms of the treaty in the epilogue. They comb the battlefield afterwards and are enslaving any channelers “who are not Aes Sedai”. That’s not the deal she made. The deal was they could not take “any who are not in your own land” and none of the fighting for the Last Battle took place in Seanchan-held lands. As of the epilogue, Tuon is already in violation of the agreement. And the sul’dam who takes Moghedien makes it clear that they’re snapping up any channelers that they suspect “won’t be missed”. There are many channelers among Rand’s allies who are not Aes Sedai -- Asha’man, Wise Ones, the Kin, the Windfinders. So, yeah... Rand isn’t getting his “hundred years of peace” because the Seanchan couldn’t last even a single day post-Last Battle without breaking their word.)

(** So... Rand is lying to Cadsuane and the readers in his scene with her, because he IS making plans to potentially survive the Last Battle -- we know that he has Alivia set up a 'post-death' escape plan for him. So this part is more interesting on reread, because Rand has to walk the line of not giving away to Cadsuane that he does hope to live, because part of his 'post-death' plan is retiring into obscurity. I don't have any issue with Rand lying to Cadsuane here, I just wanted to note it)

It remains so weird to me that Sanderson & Team Jordan decided to go the ‘deserter’ route rather than the ‘negotiator’ route with Mat. I’m honestly scratching my head to try to figure out the narrative benefits of doing things this way. Nothing about Mat’s approach into Ebou Dar requires him to skip Merrilor and abandon his people, and many things would make a great deal more sense if Mat had gone to Merrilor: Mat doesn’t seem to want to be here and yet he’s forcing himself to do it every step of the way, so it would make sense if something was actually driving him to take the actions that he’s taking (guilt over Caemlyn). He still could have easily had sex with Fortuona here if he’d been sent by the Merrilor council, so that’s not why we broke the story to get him here without letting him reconnect with his friends.

What could the motivation be? I am unlikely to ever get the chance to interview Sanderson or Harriet or anyone else on Team Jordan, and no one else appears to have ever asked him about any of this, so I am going to have to speculate.

What are the story effects of having Mat desert Team Light & the Band (off the page)?

It means that anything complicated about the Seanchan gets avoided for the first ten chapters and the focus is entirely on the Westlands' feelings and worries.

Mat's emotional connections appear to have been cut off or muted.

What does it gain to simplify and cut off Mat’s Westlands emotional connections?

Is it a case of ‘writing to the epilogue’? If I recall correctly, Mat doesn’t seem to care at all about his Westlands friends or family in the epilogue, so were his emotional bonds destroyed in-between books so that it wouldn’t be jarring that he doesn’t go to his friend’s funeral or that his only concern post-Last Battle appears to be his own skin and appeasing his owner-wife? But why not write that as part of the text? Why not show us the process of Mat disconnecting from his friends?

Is it another instance of Fortuona’s delicate toddler feelings being coddled (not by other characters but by the narrative itself)? If Mat comes to her still having other loyalties, then she definitely would be upset and would probably throw a tantrum, as we’ve seen from her before (she gets pretty close as it is). One of the largest annoyances of how Jordan (& now Sanderson) has written the story around Fortuona is feeling like the narrative itself is tiptoeing around her and bowing to her and trying to kiss her feet (if the narrative played fair with Fortuona & the Seanchan, they would be a lot scarier and a lot less annoying -- like they were all the way through Winter’s Heart, in fact, because Crossroads of Twilight is really when the narrative really started pulling its punches with the Seanchan).

For whatever reason, it remains such a baffling choice. Because all of Mat’s complex (and often ugly) feelings about his marriage and the Seanchan are still there, bubbling under the surface and poking out from time to time, but the heart of his character -- his relationship with any character other than Fortuona -- got strangled off-screen. Such a strange choice.

I do think that it’s likely that the show will do much better with this relationship, if they do decide to commit to it, because the bones of what Mat & Fortuona could have been are really fascinating. But wow, the execution just shits all over any of the better possibilities. What a waste of potential.

#wot #wheel of time #wot reread #wot book spoilers #wot spoilers #wot amol spoilers #wot a memory of light spoilers #mat cauthon #rand al'thor #seanchan warning #egwene al'vere

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felassan · 28 days

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In this September 2023 episode of The Corner of Story and Game (“a podcast about the stories inside of games, the games that writers play, and the writers that create games”), it’s an interview with David Gaider. he talks about his early days at BioWare, a bit about Dragon Age development (including about an idea they had at one point for a Revelry demon or similar), about Stray Gods, creating a musical RPG, and crafting branching narratives in games in general.

A few quotes and notes are under the cut (due to length.)

Host: “Looking back, if you could give one piece of advice to young David before he started down this road, what would that piece of advice be?” DGaider: “That’s a hard one. […] I worked for BW for 17 years. I think my advice would probably have been, don’t give your loyalty to a company. It probably sounds a little depressing, but I mean, I think I always threw myself into my work as if it was my life, and I think that in the long run that was detrimental. Because, I mean, companies are companies, they put themselves first. You are ultimately expendable. You can give everything to them, be intrinsic to making them successful, but they’re never gonna give you that kind of love back, so. I think that would’ve been good advice to hear. It’s like, they called me ‘The Machine’ [because of how much he wrote so fast]. I did sooo much work to the point that it affected my health. I burned myself out. I had like three different periods of burnout while I was writing and they were each progressively worse than before. I always looked on it at the time as like a personal failure, like oh my god, I can’t write anymore, maybe this isn’t what I’m supposed to do. It stressed me out, it affected my health, I gained weight, you know, it really affected me on a personal level because I attached so much of my personal self-worth to how good I was at this job. […] That was a lesson that was a long time coming.”

DG: “The thing about Dragon Age, weirdly, was that every time a game went out it always sold better than anyone ever, on the publisher side, than anybody expected it to. We always expected it to be selling worse than Mass Effect for some reason, but it always sold better. [laughs] To my eternal amusement.”

DG: “I really enjoyed working with the composer and writing the lyrics [for the musical scene in DA:I after Haven is attacked]. So having done that, I had this idea that sort of wormed its way into my head, possibly after watching the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The thing I liked, the musical element of it was diagenic, like it was in the world, it was happening and everybody knew they were singing, it wasn’t just a metaphor for them expressing their feelings, like they knew they were singing and it was weird. And I was like, oh, what if we did something like this, and it’s happening, and we have a dream realm, in the Fade, and what if the characters, like there was some kind of demon, a demon of Revelry or something like that that was making them sing.” The whole team, especially voiceover and localization, were very excited about this idea, but the bosses were like whoa, whoa [as to them it sounded like a lot of work to do], “if we sell 10 million copies, then yes we will do that DLC.” “which was sort of their way of saying no, because there was like, no chance, but we got pretty close, surprisingly.” “But they kind of pooh-pooh’d it, I think the main worry was they thought it wasn’t a very commercial idea. I mean like, I don’t think you understand our audience, but okay.”

The host asked "What would you say is the best compliment you've ever received on something you've created?" DG said that nothing really hit home as much as a fan's response to his character Dorian in DA:I. he related how this is the character he put most of himself into as a gay man, and how a lot of players were personally affected by Dorian and his story. one one occasion, a player emailed him and expressed that they had been contemplating ending things as they hadn't been able to come out due to their religious family. they were feeling conflicted, and played the game as a form of escape. "Dorian was a revelation" to this person and game them the courage to come out to their brother, stand up to their family and move out. the player told David "I just wanted you to know that your character saved my life."

internet discourse started mainly around the time that DAII came out. around then it reached its height and they received a lot of hate, which was very concerning and distressing for DG personally. but moments like the one Dorian inspired were the kind of thing that made it worthwhile. "To actually touch someone to that point is like, wow."

"I never thought back when I started that games could be anything else [than heteronormative]. that's just the way I assumed it would always be. I never considered the possibility of an alternative until Jade Empire. there was a different team, I didn't work on Jade Empire and I still don't know who to this day brought up putting same-sex romances into that game, but here I was working on Dragon Age when I heard that they were doing it and that the company was okay with it. I was shocked. I was like, can we do that? Can we put that into DA? Is that a thing we can do? The idea that I could also tell stories that took more personally from my own life, that was news, and powerful." it was a revelation for players and for the people making the game.

[source and link to complete interview] <- pls note there's quite a bit more discussed in the interview than what is noted in this post.

#dragon age #bioware #mass effect #video games #long post #longpost #lgbtq #homophobia cw #suicide cw #jade empire

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ethers-moth · 2 months

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Autistic people with the same special interests (the two of you) are about to have a field day.

So. Repo! The genetic opera. The magnus archives. The Archival Repo!. The Repo! Archives.

Anyway

Shiloh is developing corruption

- bug collector

- not a full blown avatar but is kind of in the Jonathan Sims position to be influenced by a LOT of them

- feeds on Nathan’s anxiety (she thinks it’s her illness, but it’s more likely just dread that he’s a failure of a parent. He is.) (I love him why is he like that)

- 17 has her say “I always longed for true affection, but you compared me to a corpse”, so when she leaves at the end of the movie that signifies her evolution into an avatar (or rejection of it?) bc she is left with nothing but her bugs. We don’t really know

Nathan is either Slaughter or Hunt

- I definitely am more inclined for hunt for Nathan

- the hunting at the beginning and later when he and Shiloh are on the phone he definitely could do it a lot faster and less dramatically

- he definitely enjoys it is my point

- “thankless job” is also a prime example of his feelings on this job and or its moral implications

- obviously he’s unstable too and that influences jt but he kind of reminds me of Daisy Tonner where he’s over the ethical issue mostly

Luigi is definitely slaughter

- there’s not a really a need for question man is violent and angry I feel like there’s no question he shanks and yells and gets half naked for fun.

- his treatment of the gentern bringing coffee is a great example, he had no reason to freak out other than. Being like that. And also bc he can

- that’s about it actually he feeds on subordinates fear of his unforgiving temper it’s pretty CUT and dry

Pavi is. Hmmm. Flesh??

- I’m stuck on this one, however I think flesh fits best

- his face stealing reminds me of specific serial killer behaviors (usually due to parental issues) that involve using others body parts, usually skin (Ed Gein with his skin suit of his mother I think??) though I think his environment is part of why the face thing is a little less wrong in canon. Idk he’s a fucking FREAK okay

- also we never see his actual face so I feel an argument that it’s tied with dysmorphia isn’t unreasonable

- Pavi feeds off of adoration (even if it’s fake) from the Genterns as well as the fear of having your face skinned

- seriously what is wrong with him

- with the Genterns his boisting of “ask a gentern who they prefer” and overtly unacceptable sexual behavior (“my brother and sister should fuck”) feel like someone who wants validation and attention even if it’s not positive attention

Amber is Flesh too

- I think for a different reason from Pavi, she doesn’t have “inferiority” Dysmorphia that I think he has

- instead, I think Ambers behaviors are “superiority” dysmorphia (both terms I made up)

- in Ambers case she’s changing her appearance to cope with a shifting sense of self and strive for perfection caused by her notoriety and never being told no

- Amber feeds off of being desired and seen and is one of the most famous people in the known canon universe, but her blatant jealousy of Mag really depicts her motivation for perfection

- she also feeds herself to graverobber for drugs (deleted song ‘try my new parts’) I don’t care how good their surgical techniques are nobody is healing their hole that fast without hurting themselves somehow

- basically if Pavi is MAG 90 Amber is MAGP 2

Graverobber is End or Buried

- the end is for obvious reasons with corpse robbing and his lack of fear or caution around death @brainvomitintheparkinglot ‘s idea

- for buried, he’s literally a crack dealer

- he basically feeds the entire cities drug supply (trapping them in addiction that is hard to escape)

- the web usually deals with addiction but I don’t think he has manipulative or controlling motivation, he just works the system against other people

(Rottis corporation supplying everyone is the web, graverobber is a chunk of dust caught in it)

- as shown with Amber, he wont supply without money either, hypothetically pushing his clients into further debt (esp if they have geneco loans) AND addiction

- graverobber feeds off of the metaphorical suffocating nature of debt and addiction as mentioned, and well as literal suffocation

- following the drug thread, I will be treating zydrate like Heroin, in the idea it can be a powder or liquid (even though we only see it as a liquid in canon)

- like most painkilling drugs it can be assumed zydrate can induce vomit and therefore asphyxiation OR in the case of a powder that is inhaled, generally that isn’t optimal for breathing

- also graverobber is probably covered in corpse dust and like. Anthrax

Rotti is web (again, thank you @brainvomitintheparkinglot)

- his company owns the entire city (corporatocrocy)

- he literally controls everyone, his money controls his fucked up kids, and the entire system is his

- the rift with Shiloh and Nathan was organized by Rotti, and I feel like Ambers problem with Mag is somehow his fault too

- as far as I know, Mags blindness is never canonically explained, Rotti could easily be responsible like he was with Marni

- Rotti feeds off the obvious, control over everyone. He also is disappointed his kids found ways around his authority, and yet they’re STILL in his web (addicts and also fucked in the head bc of the circumstances he raised them in)

Mag is. The eye

- yeah. This one is the most direct

- I have a headcanon that she can see through cameras (how she found Shiloh) and how she seems to know all about what is happening in Shilohs life

- mag is both a victim and an avatar of the eye, she sees everything going on around her with the people she loves, but all eyes are always on her, trapping her where she is.

- literally had to do a Melanie king except she didn’t escape, the web and the eye often work in opposition in TMA while also being quite similar, she and Rotti much the same.

- “take these eyes I’d rather be blind” is an inadvertent argument with Rottis control of the web, he kills her for it

Lastly, Marni is either End or Desolation

- she’s not actually present in the film

- End is bc she died and yet is still so so important to the plot

-desolation is bc her actions are kind of why everyone in the story has issues

I could make a whole separate post on Rottis fucked up crack zydrate addicted kids

#repo! the genetic opera #repo!tgo #TMA #the magnus archives #r!tgo #tma entities #smirkes 14 #tma au #is this actuslly an AU this could have happened in canon

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bitletsanddrabbles · 1 year

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Random Prompt List

Five days before the end of NANOWRIMO I decided to start a random prompt list. I figured if I did ten a day, I would have fifty when I was done and I could post them for people to use as they saw fit - inspiration, challenges to friends, text on memes....whatever.

I was 100% successful except for the part where I forgot to post then when I was finished. Oops. Rectifying that now! Now, clearly these are rather Downton Abbey themed, but most of them are vague enough to apply to any fandom you like and even where there are names, those can be swapped out, so if you feel something you like for, say, Star Trek or something, don’t feel like it’s off limits. Go for it. If people are having fun, success has been had.

1. "If Mrs. Patmore murders you, I'm telling the jury it was suicide."

2. "Let the numbers be off! I'm not sitting at the same table as that man!"

3. "Oh bother."

4. "Downton's been a convalescence home and a movie studio. Why not this?"

5. "Where are we going to get a spare butler at this time of night?"

6. "There's not enough wine in the wine cellar for this."

7. "For the last time, put that back where you found it."

8. "Just don't tell the police. Or Carson."

9. "There is a God!"

10. "Help me with this and you can keep your job."

11. "I'd bet a year's wages it was Lady Mary."

12. "Don't you dare try to blame this on the dog!"

13. "Just think, we're getting paid to do this."

14. "Well, this situation calls for tea. And possibly a bludgeoning instrument of some sort."

15. "That's a grand idea. Why don't we simply teach the dog to carry a tray?"

16. "Did she give in gracefully, or do you need help burying the body?"

17. "Just imagine if we were American and buying nine Worth dresses per season."

18. "It could be worse, just don't ask me how."

19. "Are you certain this is a good idea?"

20. "How many bets Mrs. Patmore quits over this one?"

21. "What sort of mad suggestion are you going to make next? We get a cat?"

22. "Reading? Heavens, don't hurt yourself."

23. "You've not touched your food. Are you dying?"

24. "Try the blue one instead."

25. "That's hideous. Buy it."

26. "I hate arm garters. Why can't they just make shirts that fit?"

27. "Knife? Oh no, I slipped and cut myself on a collar."

28. "I'm not shaving in the dark, I'd be lucky if I slit my throat!"

29. "Oh, well, thank you Sweeny Todd."

30. "As if you'd survive reading anything less than Milton. A penny dreadful would finish you off!"

31. "You weren't a son either, so we're both failures."

32. "Oh dear, my actions had consequences. Blub blub."

33. "What's it like to have parents who care about you?"

34. "You want it so badly? Here. Enjoy."

35. "What do you mean she's run away to join the circus?"

36. "Well the surprise worked..."

37. "You're lucky I love you."

38. "That is not where that goes!"

39. "Dare I ask what happened to your dress?"

40. "Oh don't do that, it would make a mess of the roses."

41. "Dukes don't just vanish, unfortunately."

42. "I'm not paid enough to care about that."

43. "Now that the wireless is catching on, you should try and do something in that field. You have the face for it."

44. "Are you going to sell me into slavery if I ask for more?"

45. "If you want me to love you more then stop screaming when I have a headache."

46. "Oh don't do that! You'll hurt yourself."

47. "Oh go for it, I won't tattle."

48. "I was just committing the unholy sin of enjoying life for a few seconds."

49. "Would it kill you to smile? Wait, never mind, of course it would."

50. "Does anyone in this house happen to have some spare sanity?"

#downton abbey #downton abbey fanfiction #downton abbey writing prompts #downton abbey prompt challenge #john bates #daisy parker #thomas barrow #mrs. hughes #mr. carson #mrs. patmore #anna bates #robert crawley #cora crawley #mary crawley #edith crawley #joseph molesley #sarah o'brien #phyllis baxter #have at!

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toopunktofuck · 1 year

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i have trouble telling when i shud euthanize a cat? Like sometimes u dont gotta but ik ive read abt indigenous practices of domesticated animal euthanization of dogs so its nothing new, but if my cat gets lets say, kidney failure, i shud prly get him euthanized right? Hes 8 so this is still prly like 10 years away from now. But yeah ig if he cant eat either. But idk animals prly have different relationship to suffering than we do. Perhaps dont conceptualize it the same. they cling to life more dearly but also can take suicidal actions of risk. Animals are so daring and cool. Life is insane

So you said ignore this ask bc you were high as hell but I think it’s actually a really good question - something I didn’t know the answer to when my own geriatric cat had blood work that indicated she might have renal disease (UTIs in cats can ping the same things on diagnostics). I straight flipped out but my boss at my old petsmart job who also worked part time at a clinic explained to me that their own clinic cat had renal disease and had been living a good quality of life for years! With the right medication, cats can have their kidney disease progression largely slowed down to the extent that they die of something else years later. It’s kind of like the effect that leads them to not treat cancer in elderly human beings in some cases. It’s also not super expensive iirc, I just don’t know for sure because I haven’t had to deal w the situation. I’m the person who has to give a cat in boarding their fluids at my current job if they have renal disease and I’ve seen quite a few cats on fluids who were as old as 17 who had a good quality of life.

I am personally of the opinion that cats can have a good quality of life with renal disease or diabetes. Cats’ quality of life is in my opinion more threatened by the acute rather than the chronic situations.

It is also perfectly OK to make an appointment with your vet to go over a cat’s quality of life - in my experience we LOVE that, because there are a lot of people who really feel like they shouldn’t play god. This is absolutely a thing that is done and to me it’s actually appropriate to ask QOL questions with every new issue. I am also just extremely neurotic tho and I was already that level of neurotic before I worked in a clinic. But if you’re someone who is okay with euthanasia, don’t be afraid to ask the vet questions about quality of life.

Thank you for caring about your cat so much 💕 I’m also gonna have to look into indigenous methods of euthanizing animals because that’s genuinely extremely interesting and I’d love to chat about it with the vets at work lol that sounds morbid but I’m in the business of trying to get people to understand when love won’t save their animal and the argument that we didn’t “used to” euthanize in these situations is VERY common.

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night-market-if · 2 years

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Paper Lanterns Part 28

Paper Lanterns is a community based IF game here on Tumblr. I need something to fuel the creative fires while I chip away at The Night Market demo, and I want to give you all a little something in the meantime. Here’s how it will work.

I will post a snipped under the cut every few days. At the end of the post will be three options. Comment below or send me an ask if you would rather be anonymous, over which route you would like to see. I will tally them up and write the majority option and post it in the following days. From there, we repeat the process until we, as a community, have crafted our story.

Please reblog and share this with others. The more people we have participating, the more fun I think this can be for us.

Winner of the last vote: “You’re not going near her then. She wants you dead.” Respond in fear and practicality

You stare at Malcolm for a long and uncomfortable moment. A moment in which he meets your gaze head on. There was a lot you could say to this revelation. You could rage. You could approach it with understanding. Yet, the overwhelming feeling was confusion. You didn’t want to examine how close you had been to the truth and how many times it had happened. You didn’t want to think about all the ways he could have helped you and all the things he may be doing wrong. Or maybe it was right? It didn’t matter. None of it did. Because when it was all boiled down to the bare minimum of things, the Baron of the Mists was after the Gatekeeper. You were not putting Malcolm in that amount of danger.

“Well, then that settles it,” you say pragmatically. “You aren’t coming with me.”

Leaning forward, Malcolm presses his forehead to your own. A move of comfort you often showed him. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

“What?” you say shakily, forcing a smile “Big bad Baron now and you think you don’t answer to anyone? No, darlin’. You absolutely still answer to me.”

“And to me,” Hazel pipes up. You point at her as if to say ‘see?’

You feel Malcolm smile. Sometimes, you forget how he had not been protected when he was younger. How the three of you became friends out of a necessity for survival. He had always been the solid one, however. The one who was the rock to both you and Hazel. Perhaps it was simply because he was the oldest.

“Malcolm,” you start gently. “You wouldn’t risk me….”

“I have been risking you. I’m just not doing it any longer.”

“I’m not going to be doing it at all,” you counter. “How can I take you with me when it is clear that she had been trying to flush you out.”

It was obvious now that I thought about it. His name having been mentioned by Belladonna, the hint that the Baron was on to you. You being picked for the job, his ex lover, when it was clear others were better for the task. Impossible timelines. An obstacle at every gate. You were set up for failure and danger over and over again in hopes that Malcolm would step forward.

“What if there is a third option?” Hazel asks. You look at her from across the table, your hands having wrapped within Malcolm’s owns at some point during the conversation. “We let her come to us,” she offers. “Going to the Cathedral seems like a stupid idea no matter how you spin it. At least if she comes to us, it’s on our own grounds, and we may be better able to defend ourselves. I have enough magic to make a statement…”

“No,” both Malcolm and you tell her immediately.

Malcolm looked at her like she was crazy. “I just got you out. They were not posting bail for you Hazel. They were going to put you either in the flesh pits or the tunnels. Why would I knowingly send you right back to that fate?.”

“Oh, I don’t know. So the two people I care about don’t die.” Tears gathered in her eyes. Her bottom lip trembled over the reality that you all suddenly found yourself in. “Malcolm,” she begged. “The Baron of the Mists could kill you. She is not a kind woman. And you always said you didn’t want to become a vengeful spirit. You didn’t want to be the things wandering these streets lost and alone. You know as well as I do, if you die, that is exactly what you are going to be. The Night Market will have a claim on you.”

Malcolm shuddered at the thought. It was an old tale that circled the few that had been born within the Market. You could never leave. Not even in death. Immortality altered the mind, however. If there was one thing that Malcolm feared the most, it was being trapped within these streets, lost in his own head.

“Look, the obvious answer is to let me go and talk to her.” He did his best to ignore his sister. You could see he was trying not to think of what could become of him. Or what could even become of her in the upcoming hours. “Yes, I am outing myself as a Baron, but it sounds like suspicions were already high.”

“Belladonna said that you were the one Baron no one wants. They think you hold too much power.” It had been presented to you as a coo. Flush out the Gatekeeper in hopes of riding him of the hold he had over the Night Market.

Malcolm laughed a little at that. “I absolutely hold too much power. This is quite possibly the worst job. Do you know what it is like to hear requests nearly every second of the day to enter the Night Market? People pleading to get away from the nightmares of their life along with the vanity of men and women simply wanting to go shopping? I hate it. I hate it more than anything. I also control it all. Decide who comes and goes, and when. I keep the Market safe by making sure every last gate is secure and sequestered away. Wiping the memories of those that mean to leave this Market and give away our position. Do you know what the does to a person?”

“So give it up,” you tell him. You can see the weariness settling across his face. Something you had blatantly ignored upon him entering your life again.

“He can’t,” Hazel said sadly. “The only way for a Baron to lose their power is for it to be taken from them. You have to kill a Baron in order to take the place of a new one.”

You slump back in your seat. Your head spinning. The rules and regulations of the damn Market had never made sense to you and you, not for the first time, wished you could make it all go away.

“So that means…?”

“It was an accident,” Malcolm says. “But yeah. I killed the old one. Didn’t even know he was a Baron at the time. Surprise surprise when I felt all that transfer to me.”

You sit in silence, the three of you, no one quite sure what to say or do. Only that something was looming on the horizon and there did not seem to be a clean way out of it.

“I still say we fight them on our terms. At the apothecary,” Hazel said after a long drawn out moment.

“I’m okay with this not happening at the Cathedral,” Malcolm says, “but neither of you have the power to deal with a Baron. I do. We can meet them at a neutral place. See if I can help strike a deal.”

You swallow thickly. Both of them were looking to you to make a decision. To weigh in on their fates. The responsibility of the future had never felt more heavy than it did in that moment.

Voting now closed: Part 29 here

Agree to Hazel’s plan and try to protect her as best as you can.

Agree to Malcolm’s plan and try to protect him as best as you can.

Agree to neither plan. You did this to yourself. You have to hope that you don’t die and that you can get away from the two of them without detection.

If you haven't seen, Chapter Two of the Night Market is now out! It is linked below if you're interested. Reblogs and feedback are also love! Also, there is a Paper Lanterns discord now. Click the link below to join.

Patreon || Ko-fi || Demo || Discord

#paper lanterns #interactive fic #community if #hazel albright #malcolm albright #you choose #getting towards the end and I am not ready for it

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sundazesun · 2 years

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From Ellie Georgia via a Facebook group:

"Hi all,

I’m making this post as a last resort. Please no negative comments I can’t handle it. I was literally about to end my life but decided I would try one last time to get help.

I’ve been a radfem and gender critical for many years now. If there’s one thing I believe in it’s sister solidarity and that women helping women is the best thing I’ve experience and love to help other radfem/gender crit women in any capacity I can - whether it’s helping you source a refutation to an argument or adding you as friend and helping comment on a status that’s falling to pieces. So I’m here asking if anyone can possible help me 🙏 🍀 🤞

Basically I’ve fucked my life up. I’m a homeless (well I sleep in a car) “sex worker” (blergh). I got laid off from my job that I had a week ago and am so stressed. I’ve got job interviews coming up. I can either pay $200 to live in the house with family (board) or try and get a hotel room so I can have a shower before my job interviews. I’ve not showered since Tuesday last week. I’ve not eaten since Sunday. My only options to get money would literally be sex work with the horrible dude I’ve seen before who “made me have 50 orgasms” (faked them allllll!!!) and he is keen to see me again. Wants me for 5+ hours for $300, just ridiculous.

Oh and lastly my 17 year old cat who is my whole entire world I can’t even afford her food or medications right now and I’m so scared for her going without her blood pressure tablets fuck 😞 I’m a god damn failure.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have all the licenses I need to work get fundraised and have acquired them all. The only thing I need now is to ace some job interviews and hopefully land some employment. I feel like the best chance of that is by having a damn shower.

I’m on Twitter also you may have seen my tweets. Please do not dox me!!!!

If it is okay I’ll leave my PayPal link here and if ANYONE can spare just $1 it would be amazing and helpful ($1 = one can of cat food!) Other things I would use money for if I don’t get enough for a hotel room/board = hand warmers to stay warm while sleeping in my car, my cats meds/a vet appointment she is overdue for, a pair of black leather shoes for working (current pair have holes in them, 10 + year old pair of Docs), buy a bra that fits (current one - yes I have one bra) is too small 😞, buy some socks (don’t have any with no holes), black work pants that fit (have lost heaps of weight from eating once a day, every 2nd day) buy more wet wipes for “bathing” in the car. That’s just examples so you know I’m not wasting it on anything - I do not drink/smoke/take drugs or gamble!!!

I can prove literally everything I’ve said in this post. I’m not a scammer or grifter - literally just a woman at the end of her rope. Wanting to escape sex work but feel like I’ve been set back after losing my job. I really do not want to have to meet up with someone tonight or tomorrow. It is also winter where I live and fucking freezing cold so I can’t go to a beach and use a shower or something.

Please just ignore this post if you can’t/don’t want to assist.

I’m seriously just a rad fem at the end of her rope asking for help just got this gut feeling maybe some women can help me out. Crying my eyes out as I type this post afraid of rude comments etc I just don’t need it I’ve fucked up my entire life and don’t see a way out unless I get a job ASAP.

Thank you all for reading 💕 and if you help thank you so so so much good karma is coming your way.

Also happy to film personalised videos from my 17 year old cat Cookie as a thank you!!!!

https://www.paypal.me/elliebelly5?locale.x=en_AU"

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dorianepin · 1 year

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i really enjoy micah’s work and i also think courtney generally does a great job of running the stars twitter in a way where the chirping is appropriate and relevant and i like that she cares a lot about accessibility and not doing needlessly flashy things so briefly witnessing ... whatever was going down with them and the miro debate was so embarrassing ahsdlfhsh i’m glad she deleted the tweet though. as much as i love the team and truly believe in the mental resilience of our core i don’t understand why stars fans can be so sensitive to the idea that miro might not have had the best game relative to his usual output because none of that undermines the fact that he offers so many other invaluable attributes that benefit the team in countless fashion. sometimes i feel crazy because i want to say things like “everyone on this team is so emotionally dependent on one another” and i don’t know whether it’s truly a compliment or a critique or just an objective observation with no moral value, and then it also doesn’t necessarily feel fair because — it implies that they can’t play for one another and are too enmeshed to experience protracted success in the face of adversity. the thing is i don’t really know what to call the way jake was clearly rattled after seeing miro bleed out 2 feet away from him on a goal against but i also think jake is an elite goaltender not because he’ll be on a shutout bid every night but because he responds to failure so well and consistently, but then when we say response do we mean in a single period, game, over the course of a series? does that distinction matter when the margins get so slim? so in the end none of these evaluations really feel properly summative. i also don’t really believe in “clutch” as a true goaltender intangible because to me it’s the same bs hindsight evaluation as saying “wow he must want that one back” to a bad goal and as easy as it is to isolate big saves as being momentum breakers in a vacuum it rarely holds that well in a prolonged context.

god i need to stop posting but i feel insane about so many things. i was so exhausted by bhawks discourse because i wish people knew how to discuss an organization critically without utilizing someone’s trauma to make sarcastic jokes that in the end offer absolutely zero levity....... it’s not worth getting into but it’s fine. i get that it’s difficult to navigate one’s perception of organizational power dynamics when the “profitable asset” is a 17 y/o kid and that determining where our own expectations of moral responsibility lie is an impossible exercise but as always my online philosophy is that a little sensitivity can go a long way.

it’s easy to angst about the Narratives but i really do think bedard was raised just fine and as much as he has the ingrained confidence crucial to problem-solving elite-player temperament every article ever written about him just drives home over and over again that he’s not cocky in a destructive fashion and doesn’t take success as a given and is only as good as the work he tells himself he has to put in. but he also isn’t meek like mcdavid was in his draft year, but he’s still been interview-trained and understands his role within the media circus, but he wasn’t raised in the whirlwind of the gta minor league scene... i don’t know it’s just a fascinating junction of increased player autonomy and gen z social media scrutiny.

this is such a useless thing to be mad about but i do hate that the hawks have several prospects i like now. from a detached prospective viewpoint of his rookie year performance it’s like well the calder definitely isn’t a sure thing because that roster is DECIMATED and i have no idea what moves they’ll make in the off-season. i keep saying i wouldn’t be surprised if domi went back and i actually do wonder whether the canucks will deal some players to them and then ... whatever idk. but i think i’m just experiencing a disconnect where i don’t believe anyone is truly looking at the personnel the blackhawks have signed and going “well he has to score 40 goals in his rookie season or else he’s a bust!” like is that really a sentiment people will have? really??? maybe they will but perhaps naively i expect a modicum of calibrated rationality.

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foraging-my-bliss · 18 days

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I did it! Three months ago, I began the phlebotomy program at NWCC, and I will officially be graduating in May! I was so scared when I began the program. All i really knew was that I couldn’t go on continuing to make 10$ an hour serving people who couldn’t care less if i existed or lost my job because they wanted something for free. I was just done. I was also struggling with the fear of something happening to my husband and leaving me with hardly any real skill or income. So, we agreed that I enter into a trade school full time while he worked to keep us going so that I could focus completely on succeeding. I was terrified of letting him down by failing. I’ve done college before. I tried going for my psychology degree but i kept failing my required math class. No matter how much I studied and got tutoring, I just failed and failed and failed until I ran out of money and time. I was traumatized by my failure and wasn’t sure this was going to work out. He also was nervous I would fail again and that it would break me. But I had to try. And here I am. I passed the national exam, passed all of my finals, passed with fantastic grades! And I already started my first phlebotomy job. Is the job overwhelming? So far, yes. It is stressful. But as it is one of the few facilitates that will hire new grads, I am taking this as a stepping stone towards my future. At this facility, everyone does everything. Drug screenings, processing, draws, sample packaging, all of it. Whereas other facilities, (I’ve heard) will typically give you a singular position. So, if I can survive this job for the next 2 or so years, I believe I can survive anywhere. I am still working part time as an entry level phlebotomist, but i am now making 17/hr, which is far better than what I was making in retail. I finally feel like I’ll really be contributing to the finances and helping us get into our future house. I’m hopeful for what the future holds.

#phlebotomy #phlebotomist #phlebotomy graduate #graduate #I’m graduating!#I did it!#i succeeded

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mlobsters · 1 month

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supernatural s15e5 proverbs 17:3 (w. steve yockey)

the ghost pepper jerky thing was pretty cute, minus the gagging. reminds me of this local jalapeño jerky i bought at some i don't even know what thing in a giant corporate building when i was working as a temp doing the most tedious data entry job over the summer one year in phoenix in the late 90s. it was luscious. always chasing that jerky dream

padalecki getting to flex all sorts of different characters. demon blood!sam, lucifer!sam. so, we going with this is just nightmares? not visions? reminds me of when he was so certain the visions he was getting were from god and never considered they were coming from lucifer in whatever season that was. 11? just with all his history, would think visions might be up there in the list of considerations whenever some weird ass shit is going on in his head. but who knows, maybe he has had vivid nightmares like that before so he brushes it off. if i wanna fill in the gaps for them

DEAN Look at you. You look like a baby. SAM Me? Look at you. DEAN What? I look exactly the same.

cute cute. what is that picture of sam lol. wiki says that's s1 sam hair but his hair never looked like that in the show :p

via the wiki

Sam and Dean go undercover as U.S. Wildlife Service agents, with Sam taking the alias "Agent Mark Hamill" and Dean using "Agent Dean Ford". Sam and Dean last used these identities in 1.03 Dead in the Water. "Deep cut", originally a music term, generally means an obscure reference that only people with an intimate knowledge of a topic will get. Additionally, when Eric Kripke was pitching Supernatural, he used the phrase "Star Wars in truck stop America", and described the characters of Sam and Dean Winchester (then Harrison) thus: “If Sam’s the good kid, Dean’s the troublemaker. If Sam’s Luke Skywalker, Dean’s Han Solo.”

very kind of... cheeky shots. the slightly goofy outfits, the taxidermy, her being so low down and looking way up. i see this is another speight jr directed episode

we're pushing hard on this dean will protect the girl who was attacked thing, which seems like setting up for failure

this getup is very cute on sam, not gonna lie

ANDY I didn’t want to hunt people in the first place. Dad would never have – JOSH Dad is dead! JOSH Look, hey. If you don’t want to hunt people… we’ll stop.

LOL the brothers and the younger one doesn't want to hunt and dad is dead. except the hunting is eating people

JOSH I don’t lie to you. I look out for you. So, we’ll stop.

see, just regular brother stuff

DEAN Do I like it? I do. I mean, there’s bad, don’t get me wrong. A lot of bad. Still, feels good to help people. You know? ASHLEY Did you ever want to be anything else? DEAN Jimi Hendrix. DEAN No, not really. I’m where I’m supposed to be.

confirming he's still in on the job and life and all i guess. speaking of, what about sam's crushing grief and depression from last episode

jesus christ. we had one vampire kid offering himself up to be killed last episode, now we've got a werewolf brothers murder suicide

15x05 / hannibal s1e1

LOL what. is chuck just having a laugh or something.

lilith, really?? this reunion tour is so far beyond out of hand :p

LILITH Was dead. Yeah. In the Empty, sleeping the big sleep, until the boss brought me back. SAM The boss? Lucifer? LILITH God. I was supposed to get rescued and in a moment of sweet relief seduce Dean, blah blah blah, obviously that’s not happening now, so – oh, well.

should have gone for an older body if that was the case, i don't think dean's really down for 22 year olds anymore

really doing the greatest hits here. now sam gets a visit from demon!dean in his brain while he has yet another concussion

LILITH Word for word. God… he is not exactly Shakespeare. He’s more of a low-rent Dean Koontz. I had to listen to his whole, quote “writing philosophy”. And his very weird, very pervy obsession with you. Then it always ends the same. One brother killing the other. I mean, this world… he could’ve ended it in so many ways, and… he likes that one. You know, I guess that’s why you had to see the werewolf brothers die the way they did, ‘cause… foreshadowing.

like, the meta shade is getting to be a LOT. i'm not arguing being while i love sam and dean, i don't often like the plot. but if y'all agree, be better :p

i like the actress who is playing lilith though, she seems to be having fun with it

DEAN That Cas? SAM Yeah, straight to voicemail. Again. DEAN Yeah, well. We gave the heads up on Chuck and Lilith, so… what else are we supposed to do?

i thought the whole breakup with cas thing was a bit out of left field but whatever. dean was being an asshole so, good for him taking a break and staying incommunicado

DEAN So, what? We’re just stuck in his… in his maze, still? And now, Lilith is back. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Just throw our greatest hits at us?

mmhm.

SAM Dean, my dreams, or visions, or whatever… they all end the same way. With us killing each other. DEAN You’re just telling me this now? SAM I-I thought they must’ve been some form of messed up PTSD, but… but what if they’re not? What if I’m somehow seeing Chuck’s endings? You know, different ones.

see, that is one of the few bright spots of the late-late seasons. they actually talk about important things in a semi-timely manner

DEAN How would that be possible? SAM ‘Cause of this. When I shot Chuck, the bullet wasn’t a bullet, it was uh… a piece of me. Right? So, what if it created a – a link of sort, you know? I mean, what if – what if I don’t… what if somehow, I’m in his head?

okayy that's not the explanation i was expecting. the bullet was a piece of him? i thought it was just energy. guess i wasn't really paying attention to the technobabble explanation either

feels like it's been a while since dean's really broken down like this and gotten emotional. usually in the big emotion scenes with sam, dean's the one that's keeping pretty steady. but can really feel some of the despair coming through this time and like he's actually choked up

i think i've been a little confused/judgey about how it seemed like he was very emotional in the early seasons and it just locked up tight, like jackles wasn't going there because xyz reason that wasn't necessarily a show reason. which is silly, he's all-in on the show and character. so i'm sure it was a character choice. but i guess the shift felt unnatural to me? maybe it'll make more sense when (i'm saying when, not if) i rewatch it. or maybe it's not as stark as i'm remembering it

#supernatural #spnwatch #spn 15x05 #steve yockey #spn clip

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